Dinners with Ruth by Nina Totenberg

 

For our second meeting in September, we met in person (with Liz!) at the Crepevine and discussed Nina Totenberg's Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. The memoir describes Totenberg's career as an American legal affairs correspondent for National Public Radio and her personal life including close friendships with Cokie Roberts and of course Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In the book, the reader learns interesting stories about Totenberg's challenges as a woman reporter, the first time Totenberg and RBG met, her difficult time tending to her ill first husband, and supporting RBG when her husband died, just to name a few. The book includes pictures of Totenberg with her family, RBG, and other famous people, and the audio book, as read by the author, includes some musical excerpts of her father playing the violin.

We all enjoyed the book. Some minor critiques were that we assumed it would be more about RBG than it actually was and there was an awful lot of name dropping, but let's face it, Totenberg has a lot of friends who happen to be famous. The stories were genuine and inspiring. Some that stood out the most for us were the blatant sexism Totenberg faced as a young journalist, the discussions she and RBG would have at dinner while the young interns watched, her support of Cokie Roberts as she fought cancer, and a beautiful poem.

We had some interesting discussions ourselves on topics including politics, career. children, a closed caption invention, TMI, and ChatGPT.

After lunch, we enjoyed strolling around downtown on a gorgeous, sunny afternoon. We were sorry to miss Karen and Cathy. Next time!