“The Little Book”

Here’s a review of “The Little Book” from The Washington Post:  Back to the Future. This is one of our two books for October.

One fun aspect this book for me was that the main character, Wheeler Burden, is descended from Myles Standish, because my sister-in-law Janet is a “nonfiction” descendant of Myles Standish.   The thousands of Standish descendants have kept track of one another by way of elaborate charts.  The author apparently made the protagonist a Standish as a short-hand way of saying he was a blueblood.

Some Americans like to look for our own version of royalty, so they go back to the first settlers or to other famous people.  During political campaigns, geneologists trot out charts proving that one candidate is related to some other famous person or even an opposing candidate, such as the distant cousinship of Barack Obama and Dick Cheney.  We’re all related to one another in some way!  None of this directly pertains to the book except that “The Little Book” is full of relationship entanglements.  You might need a chart. Cathy