November 17, 2011

17 Reading





I’m taking a few days off. Oh, not from exercise, blogging, appreciating your notes, or the Discovery shop, but from projects and work. Lazy me, indeed.

I’ve been spending money wantonly. Three nice jewel tone shirts from the thrift store today. A stocking stuffer for the daughter and granddaughter also. I purchased three books also…from the Mystery Guilt…a slip of my fingers to be sure. The mountain of things to be scanned sit right over there being ignored while I read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s No Ordinary Time. Tiny type for my old eyes, but wonderful content.

Goodwin is quoted in a Wikipedia article as saying that, “those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen.” After publication of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys there was a great furor over the large sections of other authors books she quoted with no attribution.

“Slate magazine also reported that there were multiple passages in Goodwin’s book on the Roosevelts (No Ordinary Time) that were apparently lifted directly from Joseph Lash’s Eleanor and Franklin, Hugh Gregory Gallagher’s FDR’s Splendid Deception, and other books.”

I loved her writings before this disaster, I understand there was a settlement, yet I find this book a fascinating gathering of historical information all pulled together in one place.

If you want me, I’m right over there reading.

6 comments:

  1. I loved No Ordinary Time. I would read it again if I saw it in the library.

    I consult Wikipedia regularly, but I don't take everything I see there are complete truth. (I have come across errors here and there.)

    In any case, writing about the Roosevelts is a special case because, as we know, it was no ordinary time.

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  2. Too bad she forgot the quotation marks. That's a "no no" for history writers. I want to see those shirts with you in them. Dianne

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  3. Second the request for photos of the new jewel tone shirts....

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  4. Ouch! That's too bad. I should be doing some other book reading too.

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