Bonus 75. Dinners with Ruth

Nina Totenberg. 2022.

Just wow!  One of my most favorite reads this year, this book was not on my radar at all.  Written and read by NPR star Nina Totenberg, the title does not do the book justice.  While of course it is about the many dinners she shared with RBG, it is way more than that.  It is mostly about friendships, how to be a good friend, and how to build relationships.  I did not know that Nina and Ruth were close friends for decades and that during all those years, they were able to keep their personal and professional relationships completely separate.  Nina's vignettes about dinner and events with their husbands and those rich, long-term relationships between couples was at once impressive and heartwarming.  That Nina and Ruth were able to keep their professional relationship--in which Nina reported on the Court and interviewed Ruth many, many times--out of their time together was inspiring.
I also particularly loved some of the insight into the incredible person RBG was.  The story about Nina's husband teaching RBG to work the microwave (she did not know you could not put tinfoil in it) and the oven (she didn't know you couldn't leave the cardboard packaging on) while her husband, Marty, was dying was so moving.  There were so many stories about Marty's devotion to RBG and about the Marty/RBG dynamic.  I remember RBG nodding off to sleep at the State of the Union Address one year and commentators speculating that this was a sign she was too old to be on the Court. That this was after Marty died was somehow lost in my recollection of the events, but the story behind that was that RBG was a night owl and would often work until 3 or 4 in the morning every night.  Marty was the one who would make sure she stopped working and went to bed, so at the end of his life and after he died, there was no one to do this.  As a result, she often would not remember to go to bed.  She had always been a napper on days when she had to get up early to be at the Court or for some other commitment, but after he died, she would also forget to nap, hence the more frequent nodding off in public.  That Nina knew this and that she and her husband served in that capacity to the extent that RBG would let them was just another sweet example of this friendship.
I don't think you need to be interested in law to love this book.  It is a lovely, lovely reflection on friends that I think almost anyone would enjoy.

Highly recommend.

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