interesting review blog on New Yorker site

Thank you for providing the most intellectually stimulating conversation I have had the opportunity to listen to in a very long time. I am a working new mom. My background is in biology and I am a practicing pathologist. Life is hectic trying to be everything as I am sure you know. I am a new listener to talk radio as I find it a bit more calming than a screaming baby plus music. I was listening to one of your interviews about Sacred Hearts on my way into work last sunday morning. It was the best commute I have had since before my daughter was born! Discussions on science and religion are always interesting. You said something in the interview about a revelation that you had when you stopped trying to place your modern sensibilities on the choice, or lack there of, of entering convent life. You realized that there may actually be gains for the young women of the Renaissance. I had a similar experience while reading Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel many years ago. I do not participate in any specific religion and would have further balked at the confines of a convent. Yet as a woman who’s hunger for ideas, knowledge and challenge is never satisfied, it was enlightening for me to realize that the convent provided Galileo’s daughter with the opportunity to get an education, to read and to write. Her alternative was to become a young wife with a prescribed daily life and little intellectual freedom. I am eager to begin reading your books. Where should I start?

The body is indeed a fascinating theme in this period. To me this seems self-evident… but then again I’ve spent a decade obsessed with 16th-century midwife manuals. There is more grit, are more hygiene issues in the Renaissance than anyone wants to read in a bedtime novel; we forget that the Renaissance was just a small step beyond the “Middle Ages” (previously known as “Dark”).
And as for authors replying to reviews, I’d say (1) it’s very social media of you, good job, and (2) in reality, they always have. Even in the Renaissance. Just that it was slower.