Recent reads

From a used book store. It wasn't for sale. "Beloved Books, Ye are to me,/An unretorting family,/ Ye, for each day's irritation, / Always bring a consolation, /During all sad perturbations, / With your silent inspirations. / How should sadness come, or gloom, / While ye lie about my room, / Or look down from friendly nooks, /My benison upon ye; Books."

I can't seem to read much more than kids' books these days. Part of the problem is that I can't keep my eyes open after putting the kids to bed.  I had been known to fall asleep during the nightly rosary occasionally, but now it's a nightly routine. No better place to fall asleep than in the arms of Our Lady, someone once said. But I do get frustrated every time my husband wakes me up from my cramped position on the couch to tell me to come to bed. Pregnancy exhaustion at work.

For example, I can't keep my eyes open through Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds.  I have 4 hardcover Trollope books that we've been moving around for years. In the interest of getting rid of books, I'm trying to read those I've been holding onto for the future. The future is now! After this one, I will either be able to let them all go, or maybe if I invest enough time into this one I will begin to develop appreciation for Trollope.

Nonetheless, I did just finish the memoirs of Fr. Ray Ryland, Drawn from Shadows into Truth, his conversion story, after weeks of reading small bits. My grandparents knew Ryland when he was a part of the Disciples of Christ Church. They went to the same college in Oklahoma, so  I have a personal interest in reading his story. It is readable, although perhaps not grippingly so, notwithstanding personal connection. Perhaps most interesting to me was the fact that he met and studied with such an influential group of people. He started his theological studies after World War II, an energetic time in all denominations. Among his mentors:  Dean Sperry of Harvard Divinity School, Paul Tillich and Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary (and Cardinal Avery Dulles' father), and later then Bishop Bernard Law and Fr. Louis, Thomas Merton. Ryland went from Disciples of Christ to Unitarian to high church Episcopalian before he became Catholic in his search for truth. The writings of John Henry Cardinal Newman were also hugely influential in his conversion, although he read Newman as an Episcopalian differently than he did as a Catholic.  I got a bit bogged down in the last couple of chapters are about church history, distracted by more dramatic juvenile fiction, but Ryland's story was an interesting read.

 Much easier to read were Ungifted by Gordon Korman and The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood. Finished both in a couple hours each.  Ungifted was an entertaining tale of an underachiever who accidentally gets sent to a school for gifted children. He gets himself in and out of a series of scrapes and makes friends with the geeky kids at the school. The message about how even misfits have gifts was pretty predictable, but characters were likable and the plot fairly novel. Only hesitations in wholeheartedly recommending are that the ending hinges on an act of revenge and the marine brother-in-law seems more interested in his dog than his own baby. 

The Incorrigible Children was not what I expected. I imagined the children would be more terrible than they are. I didn't realize the heroine is a Latin-loving governess. The writing invites comparison with Lemony Snicket's, but isn't as dark. There's a gothic feel to the setting and plot - 19th century governess comes to huge mansion to take care of three children found in the woods who have apparently been raised by wolves.  Most of the mystery involves the absentee Lord of the castle. 

I enjoyed the book more than I thought I would, but also was angry at the ending, which is a cliffhanger that opens the way for a sequel. (Book 4 comes out in December. Not sure how many total are planned - probably depends on sales figures.) Not only is there a cliffhanger, but there's only the barest hint of closure, which is frustrating because it seems purely mercenary to make this into a series instead of just writing a longer book.  If the book had had a satisfactory ending and then a sequel had been made about the children a year later, that would be one thing, but the way this books ends with all the plot strings hanging out unresolved is offputting. The climactic moment comes about 5 pages from the end of the book.  I'm not a big fan of serial books to begin with, although I know serialization played a big part in the birth of the novel, so the publishers are probably aiming to please the preteens who love serials, instead of cheapskate me, who wants a complete work in hand.

On the positive side, the governess, Penelope Lumley, is appealingly likable, and the book contains little nuggets of good advice from Miss Lumley's teacher.  The titular children are fascinating and not really incorrigible, so the title is a bit misleading.  The setting, Ashton Place, is imposing but not as dark as the castle in say, Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights.  So other than the ending, I enjoyed reading the book. I just wish I hadn't looked at the author's website. Some of her other books look silly (a girl discovers she is part Celtic goddess and worries about what to wear?) and she has a nice big photo of a bag made of condoms on her blog. I can tolerate left-wing authors, but I'd prefer to read people who aren't loud about their political views, especially about teaching kids about safe sex. That's my prerogative. Disenchanted.

Finally, we are almost finished reading aloud the last of the Ramona series, Ramona's World, the only one I had never read before. I don't know what we'll read next. Everyone has been enjoying these books, and we've had one of our longest strings of nightly reading aloud in years  Maybe I'm more dedicated to it because I'm not working and the kids are in school. Maybe because the kids have loved this series, even though 4 of the 6 have already read them. (Ok, the older boys aren't really listening, but the 6th and 8th graders are, as they pretend to read their own books.) Need to find something to continue the trend. Thought about Homer Price? Something similarly humorous and heartwarming? Something a little more challenging? Recommendations?