Hi friends! A while back, I was super excited about a visit to the Kennedy Center to see Hamilton: the Musical live. Well… I think you can probably guess what happened. It got canceled and our tickets refunded.

But in preparing to see the musical, Kevin and I ventured to read Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton. We wanted to get the full scoop on who this forgotten Founding Father was and how his life impacted America. And while this 731 page monster was at times daunting to get through, overall I fell in love with this erudite yet peculiar character in our nation’s story – and I fell in love with learning history.

Even though Hamilton was cancelled, something new and exciting took its place. And I’m not talking about the Disney+ streaming version with the original cast (although let’s be real – THANK YOU DISNEY!!)

I found a new surprising hobby: reading biographies! I love reading our nation’s story through the eyes of people who built America. And given I’m also dating an American History major and government employee, I guess it was bound to happen. So, I decided to make it a personal goal to read a biography of every U.S. president!

Much to Kevin’s excitement, this means we’ll be visiting a lot of used books stores for a while. I want to collect my books at bargain prices about all 45 presidents. I’m following the advice of a certain blogger who took on this goal in a much more in-depth way, reading every biography he can find of each president and rating/reviewing each one.

So far, I’ve collected Presidents 1-7, 11, 15-17, 26, 28-30, 32-33, and 35-37. Though there’s not yet a definitive Trump biography, I did find an old copy of The Art of the Deal. While reading through each one is the big goal, the fun objective is finding and collecting each one through the used books stores. It’s like a hunt. First, to find great stores in the area or anywhere I travel and second, to find the presidents I’ve yet to collect.

I’ll keep you all updated how my journey goes, but for now I’m enjoying reading Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow.

Fun question: Who is your favorite president and why? Feel free to comment below!