Reading in Review

 Oh dear, this was a sad year for reading. I only read 31 books. I think I might have forgotten to list some, but the truth is that my reading was sorely limited this year, partly because of teaching full time in the spring, partly because of moving, partly because my attention and will are weak, and I watched more movies and scrolled through more media. Should I give myself grace for having weakened in my consumption of good literature? Or should I be honest about my failing and charge myself with the task of applying more self-discipline next year? 

Granted, I dedicated a lot of time to teaching, grading, and planning. Much of my reading was for school, either researching for class, or prepping to teach. My list includes rereads like The Outsiders and The Diary of Anne Frank and Night, which I will miss reading. They deserve regular rereading.  

In addition to the books on rhetoric and public speaking on my list, I also did quite a bit of reading online about teaching these subjects. I spent a lot of time on the American Rhetoric website reading classic speeches, as well as googling around for other good examples of the use and abuse of rhetoric. I read a bit about logic and fallacies.  (But I also spent much too much time on Facebook marketplace reading ads - an interesting study in rhetoric in itself. In the language of the amateur marketer.)

Now that we don't have such a comfortable place for watching tv (our new couch in the basement is not nearly as cushy), I suspect our tv watching will decrease. And I no longer need to scroll Zillow as I did much of the spring nor Facebook marketplace as I did much of the summer and fall nor shop for presents as I did much of December.  So I will have more time to read!

What were the highlights of my reading year?

I am glad I finished The Hunchback of Notre Dame, although I did not enjoy it very much. It was long and wordy, although I appreciated some of the descriptive parts and wish I had read it before our trip to Paris this summer. The characters were flat and static. Very little, if any character development - except to descend further into darkness, as Claude Frollo and his brother Jehan and the soldier Phoebus did. Esmeralda seemed to grow more stupid in her love for Phoebus. Gringoire became more of a caricature. And Esmeralda's mother seemed more insane that wracked by grief. No one seemed to have any interior life or sense of faith. Although the hunchback was the most sympathetic character, and he seemed to have the most virtue of any of the characters, Hugo made his virtue seemed almost more unintentional, like a blind loyalty or innate passion.  But I'm glad I stuck with it as a piece of literary history, and I feel some sense of accomplishment for finishing this classic, even though I found all of the characters disappointing, and none seem to be redeemed by the end of the novel.  Hugo's outlook seems to be similar to Thomas Hobbes' "life is nasty, brutish, and short." While the book was billed as an encomium to the Cathedral de Notre Dame, it made the cathedral seem a dark and foreboding place that hid misdeeds by the misguided and eventually corrupt/evil curate Frollo and a prison more than a place of refuge for Esmeralda and the hunchback. 

One book I enjoyed that was new to me was Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag. This also was a book club pick, and I liked this one better than some of my fellow readers, although I did feel exasperated with the blindness of some of the characters. I always enjoy a story about the hard lives of pioneers on the prairie, though, and this one seemed to be a very true to life account of the harsh aspects of that time and place.  I reread Persuasion for this book club also- can't go wrong with Jane Austen! My brother, who is into online auctions now, bid on a set of 3 Jane Austen editions from the late 1800s- the ended up selling for around $700, so he didn't win the auction, but it shows the love her books deserve. 

My reading of young adult books has also trailed off, although my reading for class the first half of the year, which seems a lifetime ago now, was primarily middle grade fiction. I miss reading aloud with my daughter, a habit we dropped when we moved. She was tiring of listening to Anne Shirley novels, but I would be happy to pick them up again. Perhaps another resolution! I'm sure she'd love if we returned to that habit. We didn't keep the comfy folding papasan chair that I used to sit in to read, but now she has her sister's full bed, so there's plenty of room to cuddle up on a cold winter's eve. I just need to prioritize the practice. I did finish listening to The Hobbit in the car with her, as she was reading it for her 6th grade class, and I always enjoy the dramatized version, which we found on Internet Archive. 

Although my spiritual reading was primarily reflection pieces - I spent a lot of time finding prayers for the season for my class - I did do some reading related to our travels. I read Christy Wilkin's book about Lourdes, but perhaps my favorite spiritual reading was Plough magazine. I included these issues as books because I read each issue, 4 per year, cover to cover. The essays range from historical to theological to cultural and issues include art and poetry and a biography of a holy person. Although published by the Bruderhof, many of the writers are Catholics.  The Winter theme was Beauty and Work was the theme for the fall. It's the one print periodical I'm still subscribing to right now. 

I skimmed through a number of books on rhetoric before starting teaching this fall, and I did actually enjoy my close read of Aristotle's Art of Rhetoric. It is concerned as much with the nature of being human and being moved by emotions, motivated by virtue, and attracted to beauty, as with "rules" rhetoric and logic. Although some sections get bogged down in lists and definitions, it includes a number of observations about human nature that provide for good class discussions, such as what is happiness and what things inspire it? And what are the characteristics of a good life which are worthy of being deliberated? Justice and the characteristics of a government ruled by law are also topics of interest. A lot packed into a short book, and a reminder of how public speaking and writing form the character of our nation.  Although much public discourse is colored by incivility and ad hominem attacks and other fallacies of logic, learning about rhetoric perhaps can resolve some of that divisiveness as ideas are shared and thoughtfully debated.  One of the first books I finished for 2026 is John Duffy's Provocations of Virtue, which considers the rhetoric classroom as a learning lab for practicing ethics through discussion, debate, and learning to communicate ethically. It gave me a lot to think about at the opening of the semester.

Now it's time for me to get back to planning for this semester.  The recognition that my reading was severely diminished this year is a wake up call to dedicate myself more to intellectual discipline - turning off the phone and picking up the book. Of course, the goal isn't a number, but a growth in knowledge, understanding, curiosity, empathy, commitment, imagination, faith, motivation, etc. May the books I read be more than just a competition to best myself. Here's to turning more pages, but also turning over more ideas, in 2026!

From the Indianapolis Museum of Art

Year End Reading in Review

In between shopping out flights and making travel details to go to Indiana for my aunt and uncle's memorial service this weekend, I have been prepping for my next semester, which started in the classroom Tuesday. I am working on getting my new calendar updated. This means it's time to update my reading list and add a new tab for Reading 2023.  I need to minimize the last couple of years, also. 

Just my youngest and I will go to the memorial this weekend. A larger ceremony is being planned in Texas in the near future, so a bigger group of us will gather for that. Even though that ceremony is the "official" celebration of life, I wanted to gather with my siblings and cousins in Indiana to relive memories and toast our aunt and uncle. It will be good to be together to honor them before we move back into the routines of the school year. One of my resolutions for this year is going to be go... 

But to review: 

Number of books: 66 listed here. I think I have missed a few.  I also read a lot of the Norton Anthology Shorter 13th edition and Home Fire twice for class, although I listed it once. Youngest and I read quite a few books aloud, but we were a little slower this year because of weekend activities. 

Of the 66

• 37 were novels
• 11 were read alouds - Easy chapter books mostly. Two by Melissa Wiley that I have been meaning to read for years.  I need to check if I missed some of these. I feel like we might have finished more. I didn't list picture books, but I read much fewer this year.
• 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
• Only 7 were spiritual reading - way down from years past when I had my Catholic book club. And these were all pretty light. 
• Only 2 books of poetry
• 12 were rereads, mostly the read alouds
• 23 were nonfiction. 
• Of those, 10 were memoir type books
• 2 were collections of essays by Ann Patchett that were primarily memoir
• 3 of them were about gardening and trees.

Of the 36 books of fiction.

• 10 might be considered classics - some of the children's books and the Cather books: Shadows on the Rock and Death Comes for the Archbishop. The Bobbsey Twins and Pippi Longstocking are perpetual favorites, but I also love Misty of Chincoteague and I had never read Edward Eager's Magic or Not
• A unexpected trend: I read 5 books about Korea/Korean Americans. This was not intentional, but educational.
• I listened to 2 audiobooks - Greenlight, which was probably better as an audio book because Matthew McConaughy has such a great reading voice, and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage also read by the author Ann Patchett. I need to line up more audiobooks for our hours in the car now that I'm almost done with Bible in a Year. 

My favorites:  This was not a year of "You've got to read this!" but I did really enjoy Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, Commonwealth by Ann Patchett, Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, and Memphis by Tara Stringfellow. Four very different novels. 

My favorite nonfiction book was The Heartbeat of Trees although I am reading Braiding Sweetgrass, still, and really like it - for next year. I also would recommend Jo Harjo's memoir Poet Warrior. Her life story makes interesting reading, and it is interspersed with poems that complement the narrative.

For spiritual books, I would probably pick Liturgy of the Ordinary. If The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Francis Schaeffer counts as spiritual reading, I'd list that - or a very different book by a very different author, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. Both of those are guided by spiritual insights. 

One of my goals for next year is to be more intentional about picking a spiritually nourishing book to read. Now I did do several Bible Study books with my ecumenical Bible Study group, but those books are workbooks, so not really "reading" themselves. Without my beloved Catholic moms reading group (I need to start another one), I don't pick up as many books that feed and instruct my soul. I did read most of a Thomas Merton book and most of Devotions by Mary Oliver and part of a book on the Eucharist - to finish in the near future. I need to do some research about what to read for Lent.

So another resolution is to finish what I have started - if it is worth while.  I've got a few books in the stack. I also have a big stack of books I haven't read on my nightstand - I need to cut that down without adding to it. 

I'm reading along with the Moms and Millennials book club in San Diego from the Book Riot Reading Challenge. Some of hte categories are a bit esoteric or niche, but I like reading things I wouldn't usually choose. I won't finish it, but I think last year I read books from 21 of the 24 categories. 

Finally, I want to add a big classic to the list again this year - maybe this is the year I finally read Bleak House!

Out of time. I need to pack for our trip. And decide what books to bring along...

Year End Reading in Review

I love the year-end lists of best movies, best songs, biggest news stories, and best books that come out at the end of the year. It's a pop culture lesson all in one place. (which I need after realizing how bad my knowledge of pop music was at a party yesterday with some Navy spouses who are mostly about 10 years younger than me. We played one of those headbands games where you have to guess your identity - and I didn't know half the people.  Made me feel like an old lady.) Here at last is my own yearly summation of what I've read, too. Time to review the old 2018 list and start a new one for 2019! 

My reading was about average in 2018 -  50 books total that I wrote down. I read some essays and journals and parts of books for my nature writing class that I didn't record because they weren't complete books, but would add to a total page count, if I were keeping track of that.  The Norton Anthology of Nature Writing has been my near constant companion these last few months, and I bought a couple collections of critical essays that I haven't quite finished, but I'm almost done with them - they'll go on the list for 2019.  I also didn't write down some of the short chapter books the little one and I read - I regret to say she discovered those rainbow fairy books and we've read a few of them, making the transition to books without a picture on every page, but I really need to be more intentional about what we are reading.  

Here is my yearly review

8  books were rereads - but some of those I read long ago - The Hiding Place, A Wrinkle in Time, Walden. Some not that long ago: Till We Have Faces. Of the rereads, I enjoyed revisiting The Hiding Place and Wendell Berry books, but Walden also was inspiring to revisit - but more of an investment. 

4 books were children's books - A Wrinkle in Time, Brighty of the Grand Canyon, Happy Times in Noisy Village, Saints for the Small by Frank Morriss, which I wanted to buy from the library because it was a very entertaining presentation of saints' lives. We've read 100s of picture books - I should keep track of my favorites. My most recent favorite new picture book was Red Sky at Night - the text is weather proverbs that aren't really narrative, but the pictures, silhouettes against colorful watercolor landscapes, tell a story of a father figure (maybe a grandpa) taking two children on a boat trip to an island, where they play until they flee before a coming storm. I thought it was brilliant; the four year old was entertained. I'm not so fond of some of the other new picture books that are done in a style that seems more appropriate for adult design - process color, lifeless figures, too much going on on each page. The effect is hard to look at.

I count 5 books that could be called classics: Walden, The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces (arguably), Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy, Trollope's Sir Harry Hotspur. Maybe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? You might make the case that only Walden is really a classic on this list - so this category needs some additions next year.

Maybe only 8 books might count as spiritual reading - we read more novels for book club this year, so I'm not including those. My favorite of these was The Long Loneliness by Dorothy Day - it provided much to contemplate and provoke. My mom gave me a gift subscription to Magnificat for my birthday, so I started reading that midyear also, as I mentioned last post.  A real boon. I meant to read it to the kids in the mornings, but it stayed on the back of the toilet mostly.

13 books would fall into the category of "Nature Writing." Of these, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Cheryl Strayed's Wild - sometimes best sellers are disappointing. I always like reading Scott Russell Sanders, and his Staying Put did not disappoint. (Perhaps I am partial to him because he is also a Hoosier, although not by birth.)  Terry Tempest Williams' book about National Parks and Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost also were delights to read. I added more books by both of these authors to my Amazon Wish List after reading some essays they wrote. These books were library finds, and I just checked out another one by Solnit. Williams has a Mormon background and I don't know that Solnit writes from any faith tradition, but they both convey a sense of the sacred in the ordinary. (Sidenote: I am also growing my Thriftbooks.com list - have been buying more from them this fall and moving away from Amazon. Sometimes better prices, and always less advertising. My son's friend also just recommended the Better World website,too.)

4 literary journals are included on this list and 2 books of poetry. My sister-in-law gave me the Paris Review last year, and this year she gave me The New Yorker. These are some of my favorite presents -  and I am grateful to my mom - thank you, Mom! - for Magnificat. I need to give more gift subscriptions. Was happy to subscribe to First Things on the request of my oldest.

12 books were novels. I best of all loved, loved the Godden book. I always like her books better than I expect to, and Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy was no different. Well written, engaging plot, uplifting theme.

Worst: Ready Player One: I cannot get over how bad I thought this book was compared to how many people like it. Did I miss something? Were my expectations too high? Or do people really like nostalgia trips and are willing to read bad dialogue in exchange for reliving Family Ties reruns? 

6 books were nonfiction/memoir/self-help books not counted in my list of books of a spiritual nature, although Teaching from Rest and One Beautiful Dream are definitely books with a Catholic perspective. I Don't Know How She Does It was less helpful than I hoped. The Gardener and The Carpenter was more interesting as a parenting book than I expected.  I wish I had spent more time with Marilynne Robinson's book about her reading life.

That leaves novels and short stories  - 14 in this category, which has some overlap. The Library at the End of the World was mildly entertaining but it didn't seem worth spending much time on. Bridge of Sighs I had to work to get into but ended up liking more and more as I read it. 

Looking ahead: Reading more classics and "hard books" is now on my list after this review and inspiration from a first read of 2019 Reader, Come Home by Maryanne Wolf. It looks at the effects of digital learning on the brain - a really good read, not just because it confirms my suspicion that kids don't learn to read deeply or retain as much information on digital texts as they do by reading print texts, but also because it provides both research and expert quotes arguing for the importance of contemplation and reflection - both encouraged and facilitated by deep reading. I wrote down a bunch of quotes to share eventually. Also TBR: I have A Sand County Almanac on my bedside table, David James Duncan on my wish list, Solnit's Wanderlust in the library bag, and I've started Rules of Civility, which I am really enjoying so far, but am waiting for something to happen. Is it just a portrait of a Russian gentleman living in reduced straights in the Metropol Hotel or will the plot thicken? We shall see. 

Also in my stack: Rome guide books. Our trip is a month away and I have a lot of planning to do. Easy for a couple college kids to bustle around Italy; harder for a group of seven on a budget.

A summary of my reading trends this year is pretty similar to the last few years: nature literature for class, Catholic/Christian books for book club. Random finds from the library or little free library book boxes. This year I am starting a new book club that follows the list of the Read Harder Book Challenge, so more to come!

2017 Reading in Review

Half way through January, and I have only finished two books. I am almost done with a third, but after spending 40 hours in the car for our Christmas trip, I haven't sat down to read as much. Having the kids home from school has also slowed my reading because we spend more time talking or watching Dr. Blake or The Great British Baking Show, our newest Netflix series.  I'm also trying to read the Gospel of the day and a reflection at night, but I find myself skimming. Not exactly lectio divina.

Time for the annual reading round-up, the grand analysis of reading trends of 2017.  I read more this past year, but as I look through my list, I am having trouble identifying a "Don't Miss This!" book.  I read a lot of interesting and worthwhile books, books that I would recommend, but there's not one that outshines the rest. Here is the summary:

Number of books: 64.  More than the last couple of years, but I counted literary journals - of which I have also read more since I have a Paris Review subscription and my sister is sharing Lapham's Quarterly.  Although I read more, I posted much less.

• 6 of those 64 were journals of short stories, essays, and poetry.
• 7 were rereads
• 26 were nonfiction. 
• Of those, 9 were memoir type books
• 4 were books for spiritual growth
• 3 were collections of essays
• The other 11 could be categorized as how to or history I think. Now that I think of it, I did not include the three travel guides to Ireland that I read pretty thoroughly and included a lot of historical and cultural information.

Of the 43 books of fiction:

• Only 6 were children's chapter books. And only 1 was a read aloud. I did not count the countless picture books the preschooler and I have read.
• 4 poetry collections. I read more than usual amounts of poetry this year including the journals.
• No big classics per se, although the Montgomery books and the Laura Ingalls Wilder book are children's classics, and the Elizabeth Bowen book, Death of the Heart, might count as a lesser classic in a stretch.

The evaluation:

• Books I read even though I didn't love them and wish I didn't spend the time: Never Unfriended, A Table in the Wilderness  - both of these were books that addressed faith written by young bloggers and both had a similar feel - a bit repetitive, a bit hyperbolic.  Other books I was disappointed in: I couldn't bring myself to love either Gibbons' Recipe for the Charmed Life or the Diaz book. Other people love the acclaimed The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, but I never felt drawn in. Oscar reminded me a bit of Ignatius Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, a book I disliked intensely. Because he was large or because he was critical? I'm not sure, but neither book gets a thumbs up from me. Station Eleven also got great reviews, but I couldn't bring myself to accept that people would still be living in tents in an airport twenty years after a catastrophic flu epidemic - WHEN PERFECTLY GOOD HOUSES ARE EVERYWHERE! And libraries full of books about how to set up electric currents, among many other valuable skills. What else did people have to do all day. They don't even seem to be gardening!! I couldn't suspend my disbelief enough. 
• My favorite novels this year were Reading Turgenev, Silence, The Course of Love, and for fun, Finding Bernadette. Silence I've read before, but the William Trevor is new to me. I was charmed by Alain de Botton's The Course of Love, an analysis of a marriage. It was a book I couldn't wait to sit down with - Charming and interesting point of view, likable characters. The Bernadette book was light and fluffy, but one that was fun to read. My fifteen year old read it first and loved it.  It's sometimes hard to find books she likes to read that don't seem too adult - so I'm always excited when I find a winner for her.
• I did love Melissa Sweet's Some Writer! about E. B. White and rereading Emily of New Moon - those two win for best children's book, and maybe favorites of the year.
• Other books I would recommend: of course, The Joy of Love by Pope Francis, and also Houselander's Reed of God, Barron's Vibrant Paradoxes, Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and George Weigel's Letters to a Young Catholic.  Books that stayed with me several weeks after I read them: Tattoos on the Heart by Father Greg Boyle, Irish Saints, and the Warnick book This is Where You Belong. Neil Gaiman's big book of collected essays The View from the Cheap Seats may be the book I read with the most relish.  I don't love all the science fiction that Gaiman loves, but I love his frank delight in literature. 

In 2018, I'd like to recommit to reading something from a "Best of" list - maybe Dickens, maybe Willa Cather again, a Chekhov book I have in a pile, or maybe a writer I never really got to know? - I want to read a writer who never disappoints. I've got a few books on my bedside table from The Little Free Library - those aren't always promising, but one is The Very Long Engagement. I again want to get back in the habit of reading aloud to the two youngest girls at night - but the allure of netflix is strong... Usually we save it for weekends, but our weeknights, in between homework and practices are usually pretty full. Bedtime comes too soon.

2016 Reading in Review

This may be a little late for a "Best of" list, as usual, but here again is my yearly review of books read in 2016.

I have not been as prolific a reader this year as in the past, and that is not because my reading is more demanding or thoughtful. Looking back at past posts, I see that I read 71 books in 2009, my first year of blogging - and most were not YA books. Some were hefty classics. In 2012, I read 60, but almost half were YA books. Blogging must have slowed my reading.  Last year I read 51 books. This year: only 43. Boo.

The two primary causes for the drop in the amount of reading are 1. teaching - my English classes, subbing in the school, and tutoring, which I officially quit this fall, coaching, and religious education - and 2. Media - but not blogging. 2016 was probably my least active year on the blog. I am not a constant phone checker, but I'll spend 15 or 45 minutes a couple times a day browsing through social media and email, which is time that could be spent reading. Also, for the past several months on weekend evenings with the kids we have been watching the Little House on the Prairie videos - other time that could be spent reading out loud. And having a toddler and teenagers wears out my brain, so time I used to spend reading is sometimes spent worrying about the kids.

Excuses, excuses - or simply analysis?  I like to do an accounting of sorts in an attempt to figure out how to devote more time to the things that matter. And sometimes I wonder how much reading is it important to do? I read a few blogs where the authors read a hundred or more books a year.  If you are a reviewer or an educator or an editor, you must be a prolific reader. But if not, reading a lot is just one choice of entertainment and edification over another.  I also see the reports and infographics of how little some people read - some people never read a book again after graduation, or haven't read a book in five years, etc.

As a reader and teacher, these numbers are horrifying but don't reveal a moral failure, exactly.  Surely, the world would be a better place if people read more rather than gossiping on-line, but many people choose to spend time with family or on other hobbies - knitting, drawing, whittling, whatever - rather than reading.  And reading junk books probably ranks on par with binging on Netflix series, as we have been doing with The Crown.  Another sort of learning...

Leaving behind conjecture to move on to the analysis of what I have read this year:

• 43 books
• 5 were rereads: Song of the Lark, The Bridge Over San Luis Rey, Sing Down the Moon, Little House on the Prairie, A Right to Be Merry
• 21 were fiction.
• 8 of those were YA or children's chapter books
• 22 were nonfiction
• of which 15 were spiritual reading, thanks to my Catholic book club
• 2 were anthologies of short stories and poetry. I actually did quite a bit of reading in preparation for my literature course this year, since I hadn't taught one in a while that had a focus on Western Lit from Ancient Times to the Renaissance.  But I didn't count that in my reading list because it was mostly excerpts and scanning for selections to assign.
• 4 were books in translation: the Mauriac, the 2 by Fr. Jacques Philippe, and Amoris Laetitia, so not a lot of diversity. 
• Sadly, only 2 could maybe count as classics, and those are a stretch - I don't think I read anything published before 1915: Song of the Lark and 1927 Bridge Over San Luis Rey. Maybe Little House on the Prairie? 

Favorites: Fiction: Song of the Lark, All the Light You Cannot See, 
Nonfiction: Man's Search for Meaning, When Breath Becomes Air, A Right to Be Merry
Least Favorite: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Doing this analysis shows me that I really need to expand my reading.  I didn't read any novels that were "don't miss in this lifetime." The book I mention most to fellow readers is When Breath Becomes Air.  Next year I need to make sure I read at least a couple classics, a couple books from non-Western authors, and a book or two that could be life changing or at least unforgettable in the near future.

That ties in to next year: The Immediate Book Meme courtesy of the Darwins and Melanie:

1. What book are you reading now?
The Faith Club by Ranya Idliby, Priscilla Oliver, and Suzanne Warner
This is a collection of conversations between three women of different faiths (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish) who meet to write an interfaith children's book after 9/11 in an attempt to overcome prejudice and misunderstandings. It came out in 2007. The concept is interesting and so are the conversations, but I keep finding myself surprised that it is these three women who are preparing to write a book. All three of them are not particularly active in living their respective faiths. I am thinking that by the end of the book they not only will gain a deeper understanding of the three Abrahamic traditions, but that they also engage with and love the faith they explain, although I suspect the book remains rather surface level.
Louisa: An Extraordinary Life of Mrs. Adams by Louisa Thomas
This is an advanced reading copy of a biography of Mrs. John Quincy Adams.  I'm having a really hard time sticking with it. While the time period is fascinating and the main characters have interesting roles in American history, the author makes both Mr. and Mrs. Adams rather unlikable.  She's sickly and querulous; he's demanding and unsympathetic.  Other major figures in the time period remain shadowy.  I haven't stopped reading it because I'm fascinated by the early years of American diplomacy. JQR is busy trying to establish America's presence as an independent nationality and wants his wife, who has never set foot on American soil, although her parents were Americans living in Paris, to represent republican ideals.  An interesting to be alive.

I need something new.

2. What book did you just finish?
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance  The link is to the WSJ interview with the author, which gives a good taste of what the book is about.  This may end up being one of my favorite books of the year.  It was less political than I thought it was going to be, and more of a memoir.  The author is a Kentucky hillbilly who finds success after he is taken in by his grandmother, joins the Marines, eventually goes to Ohio State and finally to Yale Law School, where he was mentored by Amy Chua, the Tiger Mother.  The setting is familiar. The rough characters that Vance grows up with are humanized and given a lovable side, which they deserve after being stereotyped by the people who don't understand how Trump could win this election.  This book is a reminder of Mother Theresa's admonission that we need to serve those here at home before seeking outside of our family/nation for those who need help. 

I bought this book as a gift for my dad and then read it while he was visiting, so I didn't write down any favorite lines, and it's not really that type of book, but my favorite part of the interview: "Mr. Vance goes back to Ohio a few times a year to see his aunt, sister and father (with whom he reconnected when he was 12), and tries to go back to Kentucky regularly. “I don’t feel at all like I can’t go back home,” he says. “The weird thing about my life is that I always feel a little out of place in both Ohio and among the elites, but I’m always most comfortable when I’m around my family.”"

I sometimes feel that same alien way out here in on the left coast. 

What Pope Francis Really Said by Tom Hoopes 
This was the book club choice for January. A quick, good read, much already familiar. As Nancy Gibbs, a writer from Rolling Stone, said, "He has not changed the words, but he has changed the music." . I already mentioned it as the source of my resolutions to build a charism of encouragement and a culture of encounter.  He mentions how technology "tends to absorb everything into its ironclad logic. In the most radical sense of the term, power is its motive -- a lordship over all."  A favorite anecdote: when he visits the Little Sisters of the Poor in America and says that you need to sing into the ear of Jesus daily "I love you, Jesus. I'm doing this for you; ...if it's just one of those days when everything is hard, you can look at that difficult resident and say, "you know, Jesus, you're really being a nuisance right now. You are really being spoiled, Jesus! I'm doing this for you!" 

Francis seems to embody what it means to have a friendship with Jesus and to have a true understanding of how Mary inspires "the revolutionary nature of love and tenderness."

Cincinnati Review.  From the Little Free Library book box. How does so much dull, gloomy writing get published? And why did I waste my time reading it? The poetry brings to mind Dana Gioia's complaint against modern verse for being opaque. Or completely nonsensical, as the case may be.

3. What do you plan to read next?

From the Little Free Library: Gettysburg Review. I picked this up at the same time as the Cincinnati Review. I loved reading Granta and Lapham's Quarterly. We'll see if this holds any treasures or if it puts me off reviews for a good long time.

For Catholic Ladies Book Club - we don't have a pick for next month or the rest of the year, but I'm going to recommend Sarah Swafford's Emotional Virtue because I bought it for my daughter on the advice of a friend who works in youth ministry. Need suggestions! Have any good ideas for books on a spiritual topic that would suit discussion in a book club?

I saw a couple books at the library book sale that I want to read: The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro and Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

I occasionally check if the Elena Ferrante books are on the shelf at the library but the first one never is.

What classics should I add to my TBR?  Loved reading Agatha Christie. Thought about looking for Barbara Pym for my 9th grader because I want her to branch out of YA mysteries and dystopian romances.  And for a read aloud? I have an illustrated copy of the Secret Garden I might pick up with the fifth grader.

4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?
Louisa - not loving it.  About to give up. Same with The Faith Club. May skim to the end and then put back in the give-away box.

5. What book do you keep meaning to start?
Helena - Evelyn Waugh. It has been sitting on my book shelf since the church garage sale last January.

A book by Anthony Trollope that I purchased at the library book sale last April. Can't remember the title.

I am invited to three book clubs next month, two made up of military spouses, one is the high school PTO book of the semester meeting which is another book about kids and sex. The other selections are Angry Housewives Eating BonBons and a book inspired by Girl on the Train called The Girl from Perfume River.

I may not join any of these book clubs

A family read aloud - not sure what it should be.

6. What is your current reading trend?
Random books from the Little Free Library, religious book for book club, mind candy books like the time travel mysteries by Connie Willis. 

2015 Reading Wrap-Up

My reading time has been very intermittent the last few weeks.  In between Christmas preparations, travel, and guests, I haven't picked up a book in days.  I didn't get much reading done on our car trip because of the bad weather and brief hours of daylight. But I did finish a couple of books that rounded out my total count for 2015 to 50 books, which includes read alouds and YA preview-reads. Not bad for a busy, busy year.

I do regret a bit how much social media cuts into my reading time - time waiting in line or in the evening is often spent scrolling through social media posts instead of reading, although occasionally a friend will share an old photo that inspires a smile and a happy memory that is worth the time.   Is limiting media another resolution waiting to happen? Glad Lent is early this year. I always like the feeling of a fresh start that the new year and the discipline of Lent bring.

Back back to books: Several of the last few books I finished this month were from the Little Free Library down by the beach, which often features advanced review copies gratis a generous benefactor/reviewer in the neighborhood.  Beyond the Beautiful Forevers was a moving story of life in a Mumbai slum.  It told the story of several families, but because it moved from family to family, it didn't quite affect me the way a more singly focused book might have.  It seemed almost more of a documentary.

On the other hand, In Love and War, the autobiography of Admiral James and Mrs. Sybil Stockdale was affecting. The couple lived on Coronado most of their marriage, and during the most trying time, when James was a prison of war for seven years in Vietnam. Seven years. I can't even imagine. Communication between them was minimal at the time.  Most of the seven years Jim was in solitary confinement, but by some grace of God, he and the other inmates invented codes relayed by scratching on the wall or sweeping a broom a certain way. I wish he explained better how they communicated the code. Sybil became a spokeswoman for POW wives, and contacted the government and the press to publicize the mistreatment the prisoners were receiving. Much of the history of the Vietnam war is still unclear to me, but this book helped bring part of it to life, especially the negative effect that visiting celebrities and do-gooders who sympathized with the Communists incurred for the prisoners. The Stockdale's story is an incredible testimony to marital fidelity, perseverance, ingenuity, duty, and fortitude. The writing is matter-of-fact and linear, but the facts and details are what make the story interesting.

Meanwhile Americanah is a story that relies heavily on non-linear story-telling. It's basically a love story about an ambitious South African woman who emigrates to America and then returns home a decade later and looks up her old boyfriend.  It was an assigned book for my son's senior AP Literature class. As a book for adults, it was fine but not incredible, and it didn't strike me as the best treatment of the subject.  It reminded me of other books about the African experience, without being as good - Why didn't the teacher assign Cry the Beloved Country?  Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese's story about a young man from Africa becoming a doctor seemed better, too.

I skimmed through When Sorry Isn't Enough, one of the Gary Chapman series, about languages of apology.  This was a free copy from the family retreat we went to in Big Bear.  It was interesting, and perhaps useful for some people, but I personally, didn't see much of myself in it.  I like people to apologize and to know why they are apologizing, but the type of apology needs to fit the crime, rather than the personality.

The last book of the year I read was a new young adult book. The Doldrums, that I picked up as a review copy from the LFL near the beach.  It was a little disappointing.  A young boy whose grandparents are famous explorers dreams of escaping his dreary existence. His mother and father keep him locked up in their museum of a house. He and two misfit friends plan an adventure that never quite happens, although they get into something of a minor adventure at the local museum.  I kept waiting for more. The characters were interesting, but the action was dull. It was one of those books that seems like it is going to be a fantasy or fairy tale type story, but it remains about eccentric reality.  Promising, but doesn't deliver.

As I glance through the list of what I read this year, I realize my reading list heavy with those kinds of books. It's hard to pick a favorite this year.

Out of 50 books

• 15 were children's or young adult books
• 12 were nonfiction
• 7 were spiritually nourishing, or supposed to be
• and only 2 were classics - if you count Mere Christianity. Three if you count Sayers' Whose Body. Four if you count Country of Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett. And do you include Rumer Godden's An Episode of Sparrows?  Should I just call this category "published pre-1960's"? Throw Up a Road Slowly and Gunnar's Daughter into that count - brings the total to 7.  Or "Lesser known classics"?  "Books by authors who have a dedicated cult of niche readers"?

My favorites this year?  I enjoyed discovering John L'Heureux and David Lodge, although I didn't love all their books.  I liked all of the pre-1960's books. I was fascinated by the Stockdale's story.  I'm glad I read Pope Francis' The Joy of the Gospel. But I don't have one overwhelming favorite. you've-got-to-read-this, this year. A year of good books, but not great ones.

Most overrated? The Magical Art of Tidying Up. A good suggestion of how to minimize belongings, but it's an already short book that could have been condensed into an essay.  I'm not sure it merited all the recommendations it received.  That said, I do have boxes in my basement that haven't been unpacked in 3 moves - childhood mementoes. Textbooks. Pictures that don't fit on the wall here or are outdated.  Other miscellaneous detritus of a life.

And the dubious title of least favorite belongs to Last Days of California.  I also didn't really care for A Hunger in the Heart, Once a Runner, and Something Out There, either.  It was a year with more disappointing reads than favorite ones.

What's next to read? I'll be planning for a class again, so back to reading essays.  I'd like to look at The Gutenberg Elegies. I might also check out the library's copy of  David Foster Wallace's collected essays, not because I like him, but because everyone else does, and it includes his syllabus for a writing class. I am also waiting for the first Elena Ferrante novel The Brilliant Friend to be available, based on my sister's recommendation.  And I need to get my kids reading some Shakespeare.  Since I am doing a Catholic book club with some friends, I'll probably read some more non-fiction this year.  I have a wishlist of about 60 books on Amazon.  We'll see what we end up choosing. I'll keep you posted!

Following along with The Immediate Book Meme

Linking up with the Darwins on a reading meme. Can't resist these...


1. What book are you reading now?

A Room with a View - E. M. Forster
Thy Will Be Done: Letters to People in the World - St. Francis de Sales
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew - Margaret Sidney

2. What book did you just finish?

Morrissey autobiography (not worthy of Penguin Classic status!)
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Charlotte's Web - E. B. White
The Lost Boy - David Pelzer

3. What do you plan to read next?

Need suggestions! Something holy for Lent and something fun to get through last weeks of pregnancy

4. What book do you keep meaning to finish?

Woman - Edith Stein

5.What book do you keep meaning to start?

Story of a Soul - St. Therese Lisieux
Boswell's Life of Johnson
Bleak House - Dickens

6. What is your current reading trend?

A little bit of something spiritual (stashed in the bathroom) for morning/evening reflection,
classic novel alternating with contemporary fiction/memoir, and
something with the kids

Reading in review 2013

'Tis the time of year to turn again to the review of books. I know this isn't especially interesting to anyone but me, just like the last post, but I'll do it again out of a desire for keeping track, for trying to measure some accomplishment or use of time that wasn't necessarily useful or productive, but not wasted either, or some accumulation of knowledge or wisdom, or for exercising my weakening memory.

 Books read: 53
Of these, YA books numbered: 23, at least
Of the 53, at least 14 were written before 1950. (Weil was published in 1951.)
16 or so were written in about the last 5 years.
37 were fiction.
The Hobbit, Skylark, the Ramona books, and Homer Price were read alouds. Most of the other YA books were newer ones that we read for our little mother-daughter book club in Guam: a brief source of joy for me and her, I like to think (although I'm sure her happiness came from sharing snack time with friends.)

The harder job is to pick a favorite book of the year.  The top runners:
Anna Karenina, A Passage to India, and Grapes of Wrath
  - What can I say? The classics remain classic for a reason. All three of these had fascinating characters, lyrical writing, haunting imagery, and timeless themes.  All three are very different.  Plenty of reasons to love these books that I don't have time, the eloquence, or the need to go into.
Least favorites are easier to choose. None of these were horrible books; they just were forgettable to me:
The Marriage Plot - bloated
Ship of Fools - boring
Language of Flowers - thin

Very little spiritual reading done this past year. Enjoyed reading Thomas Merton and want to read more. Didn't enjoy the Weil as much as I thought I would, but perhaps my situation was a distraction.  I just didn't have much appetite for mysticism at the moment.

Best non-fiction? Enjoyed my uncle's self-published memoir Leaf of Mine for personal reasons. Keep coming back to A Geography of Bliss in conversation with other people. One reason for reading non-fiction for me is to figure out what people are talking about and to have something to talk about in awkward social situations.  And a second reason is to stay somewhat informed/inspired about reading/teaching reading just in case.  So I have to say I really enjoyed the Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing both as a book about reading and about writing, and the same goes for the collection of Welty essays The Eye of the Story. Both of these were Christmas vacation reads. I have to admit I skimmed some of the Welty essays, so technically I didn't finish the book, but the essays I did read were so meaty, I didn't have the energy to read the whole thing, which includes author studies, essays on fiction, reviews, and some more personal prose. Her essays on Jane Austen and Willa Cather were especially good, as are the essays on fiction. For example, here is a paragraph from "Looking at the Short Story":
               "And we have observed that the finest story writers seem to be in one sense obstructionists. As if they held back their own best interests - or what would be in another writer their best interests. It's a strange thing. And what is stranger is that if we look for the source of the deepest pleasure we receive from a writer, how often do we not find that is seems to be connected with this very obstruction.
    . . . We are speaking of beauty. And beauty is not a blatant or promiscuous or obvious quality; indeed, it is associated with reticence, with stubbornness, of a number of kinds. It arises somehow from a desire not to comply with what may be expected, but to act inevitably, as long as some human truth is in sight, whatever that inevitability may call for. Beauty is not a means, not a way of furthering a thing in the world. It is a result; it belongs to ordering, to form to aftereffect."

Or from the essay "On Place":
"Through the story's translation and ordering of life, the unconvincing raw material becomes the very heart's family. Life is strange. Stories hardly make it more so; with all they are able to tell and surmise, they make it more believable, more inevitably so."

And later (this pertains to a discussion we had recently with my brother- and sister-in-law):
 "The open mind and the receptive heart -- which are at last and with fortune's smile the informed mind and the experienced heart -- are to be gained anywhere, any time, without necessarily moving an inch from any present address. There must surely be as many ways of seeing place as there are pairs of eyes to see it. The impact happens in so many different ways." (The conversation was about whether travel makes you a better person. More on that...)

And every transient person, military or otherwise, must sometimes agree with this:
 "There may come to be new places in our lives that are second spiritual homes -- closer to us in some ways, perhaps, than our original homes. But the home tie is the blood tie. And had it meant nothing to us, any other place thereafter would have meant less, and we would carry no compass inside ourselves to find home ever, anywhere at all. We would not even guess what we had missed."

It's a big book of essays; I could quote more. Instead, I'll look forward to 2014.  What are my reading goals? Number one is to continue the reading with the kids, but I'd like to get in another Dickens and Shakespeare - could those be kids' lit choices?  Also I want to reread some more of what we have on the shelves: Cather and Faulkner, Austen's Mansfield Park?  I walked past Henry James yesterday and thought maybe I should reread one of his. And I still have more Forster books I haven't read.  But the Navy wives book club pick is A Child Called It. Sure to be interesting even if not intellectually challenging.

Meanwhile, finding reading time remains challenging. My list gets shorter every year. And with no travel this Christmas break, I haven't even finished a book in 2014. Time to finish up something!

Resolution time

I've been trying to come up with some meaningful resolutions, and this year I'm going practical.  In the past, I've been a little more namby-pamby, which is a set-up for forgetting what my resolutions are (ah, the usefulness of a blog: Here is a link to what I said last year and the year before!).

But I still like the idea of resolutions, so I am not giving up at trying to reform my wayward soul.  Actually, after watching the 7th part of the Catholicism series last night on saints, I'm inspired. Fr. Barron comes down hard on those of us who excuse ourselves from trying to be a saint because we can't see how we compare to the giants of faith. He urges us to reject spiritual mediocrity, or at least to give up making excuses for not trying to be a saint.  So after watching this dvd, I realize I really should resolve to

1. Refocus yet again on loving God and my neighbor, especially, as Mother Teresa reminds us,* the neighbors who live in my house. Which in practical terms, means ... um.... responding with love ...hm ... maybe what I should work on is affirming others.  I often forget to dole out praises, among other ways in which I fail to love without limit.

and 2. Read more Edith Stein and finally read Story of a Soul.

So those are my Spiritual goals. I figure my list of books to read lays out some Intellectual goals. I am still waiting to hear if I am going to get to teach a class next semester, but even if I don't, I want to reread another Shakespeare play, yet to be determined, and Oedipus Rex. And I'm working on my syllabus. I keep getting sidetracked by good quotes and diversions.  I have to thank Sally, I think, for the recommendation of Perrine's Sound and Sense. A very sensible literature textbook. Love it. Another little gift to myself.

On to Practical Goals: First and foremost, I am resolving to drink more water. Water, water, water. I am vowing to drink at least one glass of water for each cup of coffee, plus water at every meal.  When I was in training mode back in college, I used to keep a water bottle with me at all times. I would drink 3 or 4 20 oz. glasses of water or diet sprite mixed with cranberry juice at every meal in the olde dining hall.  Back in my nursing days, I was always thirsty, so I did a little better, but I've realized lately that I can go all day drinking nothing but coffee. Not advisable in a climate where the temps never dip below 75. Wrinkles are showing up everywhere, which reminds me of those articles about supermodel health secrets: They all listed drinking water as their secret weapon against aging. I'm probably too late to slow the aging process, but at least I can try to avoid getting dehydrated on a trail run.

If I can keep up with watering myself, I think this will be the year I start increasing my mileage running. I'm already doing a bit more, but I think one of these days I'm going to do either a half or full marathon.  I have run one of each, and still remember the emotional high of completing them, although I think I have forgotten most of the pain.  I realize this is not a very forceful statement of intention because it could conflict with resolution number 1.  The catch: finding time to train without taking away from family and reading time.  Too many good things in life.

Finally, I'd also like to get involved in some kind of community service project.  I truly miss our visits to the nursing home back in Mississippi, and my minimal work with St. Vincent de Paul, where I answered phones and listened in to the always interesting conversations of the clients.  I also admire a friend here for being involved in foster care.  Our Thanksgiving service with Salvation Army was a good time, but it was a one-time event.  I haven't yet figured out where my place is, and "volunteerism" is not a big movement here. I miss being a part of a parish in the community, although I think we're in the right place in the chapel on base.  Excuses, excuses, I know. So I resolve to come to a resolution about this resolution soon.

*The quote from Mother Teresa: It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.

What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family.

Year-end Reading Review

It turns out that 2011 was the year of the Classics for me.  I finished 71 books this year. A lot of these were rereads or YA books.  Since I made my little foray back into teaching at the community college, I also reread a lot of short stories and poetry and essays about these short stories and poetry, and remembered why I wish I could just be a perpetual student.  These re-reads were definitely the highlight of my reading year.  Rereading monuments of British Lit, Jane Eyre and Middlemarch, with the good ladies of Reading for Believers was another joy.

So without further ado, a short “Best of 2011”:

Favorite YA book:  The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. A moving portrait of unlikely friends and the power of words.  But we all got a good laugh out of reading aloud The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Favorite Nonfiction: I think I’m going to say A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah.  It was striking – both in the subject matter and in the telling.

Favorite Contemporary Fiction: This is a tough call. Can I include Dorothy Sayers’ Gaudy Night as contemporary fiction?  Does Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis fall into this category? Mrs. Mike? Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky was another favorite that doesn’t quite fit “contemporary” – maybe I should call it “Favorite book printed in the last 100 years.” Looking over my list, most of the newer books I read were YA books or nonfiction. Not intentionally, but there you go.

Favorite Classic/Reread: Another tough call. This year was heavy on the classics. As much as I enjoyed revisiting Homer, I have to admit I lean toward the 19^th century Brits, Eliot and Bronte, reviewed on Reading for Believers here and here. But I also enjoyed reading Percy and Faulkner again while in their native region.

Best Spiritual:  Easier choice: Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer by Thomas Dubay and Light of the World by Benedict XVI.  You can’t top the Pope for wisdom.  But I was convicted by Dubay’s book.  And I stuck with those convictions for about 2 weeks, but I keep remembering them with compunction.

Biggest Waste of Time: One of the first of the year: Nanci Kincaid’s southern chick lit Eat, Drink, and Be from Mississippi,  and one of the last: Follet’s Fall of Giants. 

Book and Poetry Notes - quick takes style

I’m starting to get back into a reading habit again, after a bit of a hiatus during which all I could manage were a couple crime thrillers, which are great for diversion but don't offer much meat for discussion. I’m not as discriminating a reader as perhaps I should be. I like sugary candy, too.

I have, however, started and left unfinished a number of interesting books I’d like to go back to. I went to the library about a month ago – shortly before my husband came home - and left with a big ambitious stack of books. A couple were about Afghanistan – Before the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton, which tells about the split between the Sunni and Shiite in the style of a storyteller. The other was In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian, and American Occupation by David Loyn, a British journalist, which was about all these failed attempts to subdue the country. The first I’m intending to read eventually; the second had too many in-depth details about battles and politics for me to get my mind around at the moment. My husband’s marine friend read it and was convinced it held the key to the end of the American engagement in Afghanistan.

****

Then there were novels I turned in but didn't read – The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. I loved Possession and liked Still Life and Angels and Insects, but the 500 pages of The Children’s Book was just too imposing. Maybe someday in a summer. Even The Red Pyramid – the new Rick Riordan middle grade book I meant to read but never got around to and couldn’t renew - was too much.The three older boys devoured it. I hope it wasn’t damaging to their psyches. Neither could I finish The Enchanted Castle by Edith Nesbit or get any of the kids to read it. I think I would’ve loved this book at age 10, but I just couldn’t get past the third chapter, and now with books like The Red Pyramid, The Enchanted Castle just seems quaint and not thrilling at all.

****

Next up were a couple spiritual books: A Map of Life by F. J. Sheed and A Thomas Merton Reader, both of which I want to finish, but need to own. The second is a book for dipping into, not reading straight through, while the first I set down and just never picked back up. I’m way behind in spiritual reading, which I guess could explain the spinning wheels effect in my life. Prayer and lectio divina have suffered in these days of busyness. Usually when I make time for them, the rest of my time is used more wisely. I need a little Lent.

*****

Now I remember that is was a memoir to pick up that led to the trip to the library – Mary Karr’s Liar’s Club which I finished and commented a little on in Reading for Believers. Then I picked up Julia and Julie which I keep reading out of fascination (and wrote about, but haven't posted). Such a different life than mine. Not a life that I want. Not a book that I really wanted to spend time with but one I could put down because it diverted my attention by giving me things to complain about, ie: Look at the way she treats her husband! Listen to the bad advice she gives her friend! Read how many times she mentions she married young but she’s trying to convince everyone that she’s still cool!

But I have to admire her persistence in actually making these recipes. Did she actually make and then really eat calf foot gelee? Fascinating. Lately, I have been struggling with committing to projects that take passion and perseverance, so I’m envying those who witness those characteristics.
******

Another memoir of a sort that I finally finished was our read aloud of Little House on the Prairie. We haven’t had a lot of read aloud time lately, and when I started this book I got a lot of flack from the older boys and from my 8 yr old daughter. In fact part of the reason I was reading it was because she refused to read it herself. Can this be my child?! So for the first few nights, no one wanted to listen. But I kept reading over their wrestling, and finally, about the time malaria struck the families in the creek bottom, I started to get some kids interested. And by the time the Indians came in the house, everyone was paying attention. And by the time the Ingalls were driving away from their snug little house I was in tears, still emotionally drained by the long trail of Indians heading west and the heartbreak of the family having to pull up their stakes again.

Poor Ma. I totally felt her pain when she lifts up her hands and sits down after Pa tells her they are leaving. But then to her sighing, “A whole year gone, Charles,” Pa answers cheerfully, “What’s a year amount to? We have all the time there is.” And he plays his fiddle and sings, and a year of hard work becomes a good memory and a great little book.

*******

Finally some poetry, little bites of beauty which I did manage to digest: Resurrection by Nicole Cooley was not what I thought it was going to be. A bit of a man-hater. Poems of the Vieux Carre by former New Orleans poet laureate Amy Boudreau was hugely entertaining. It was a tour guide to the city written in quatrains. Perfect for our 4 trips to NO over the last month.


When I picked up these two books and The Best American Poetry of 2008, I was looking for poetry by Mary Karr, and this book was the only one that came up on the card catalog. Although it only had one of her poems, focusing on the collection was an indulgence that pulled me back into reading something that required a little audience participation. I read a bit here and there while subbing last week, and then reread some of the poems after reading what the authors had said about them in the back of the book. I didn’t realize at first that the descriptions were back there, and found them entertaining and enlightening.  Is it a weaknes in the poem or in the reader if you appreciate a poem more after reading the notes? A couple I appreciated less after reading the bloated remarks of the poets.
A couple favorites: (does this count as a Poetry Friday post?)

Robert Bly’s “Wanting Sumptuous Heavens” (a ramage, I learned from the notes)


No one grumbles among the oyster clans,
And lobsters play their bone guitars all summer.
Only we, with our opposable thumbs, want
Heaven to be, and God to come, again.
There is no end to our grumbling; we want
Comfortable earth and sumptuous Heaven.
But the heron standing on one leg in the bog
Drinks his dark rum all day, and is content.


Nice read aloud for the contented um sounds.

And J.D. McClatchy’s “Resignation”

I like trees because they seem more resigned to
the way they have to live than other things do.
-Willa Cather

Here the oak and silver breasted birches
Stand in their sweet familiarity
While underground, as in a black mirror,
They have concealed their tangled grievances,
Identical to the branching calm above
But there ensnared, each with the others’ hold
On what gives life to which is brutal enough.
Still, in the air, none tries to keep company
Or change its fortune. They seem to lean
On the light, unconcerned with what the world
Makes of their decencies, and will not sow
A jealous purchase on their length of days,
To never having been loved as they wanted
Or deserved, to anyone’s sudden infatuation
Gouged into their sides, to all they are forced
To shelter and to hide, they have resigned themselves.


- both of these were from The New Yorker


A couple other lines I noted: from Kathryn Starbuck’s “The Shoe” a poem she said she forgot she wrote and submitted:

“… I made braids out of dead funeral
flowers to border the rooms where
once he breathed and took on the heavy
chores, gladly, of loving me. I sprinkled
one teaspoon of his ashes on our bereft bed
and slept with them. They scourged my body.


But when that single shoe, the mate I thought
had got sent off with its partner, showed up
today, alone, crouching behind the couch, alive
with Effie’s opulent Turkish angora fur, I knew
solace was something I could neither seek nor
find. Oh beloved! I know I am an old woman
But I cannot live in your shoe."
-from the Harvard Review


And from Lee Upton’s “Thomas Hardy”

“Too late, he says. But it’s never too late
for the poetry of regret.”

- first published in Barrow Street

****
Finally a note I copied out of the forward to My Antonia by Kathleen Norris from an essay called “The Demands of Art” that Cather wrote in 1895, 17 yrs before she published her first novel:

“When one comes to write, all that you have been taught leaves you, all that you have stolen lies discovered. You are then a translator, without a lexicon, without notes…. You have then to give voice to the hearts of men, and you can do it only so far as you have known them, loved them. It is a solemn and terrible thing to write a novel.”

Blogs are much easier.  Go to Conversiondiary for more reads.

What to take to a deserted island

When we were with my husband’s family for his sister’s wedding, we played a homemade version of the Newlywed Game (rated MG for multigenerational). One of the questions was “What three things would your spouse take to a deserted island?”

I had books down, of course, and my husband won a point by getting this right. But tonight, as I stirred up yet another batch of Christmas cookies (chewy chocolate crinkle cookies this time) for yet another classroom party, I started thinking about what three books I would want to take. Maybe it was because the Eighth Day books catalog has a book called The Case for Books: Past, Present, and Future by Robert Darnton about the future of the book listed that set my mind to wandering or Mr. Riddle's comment on electronic readers. The Bible is the first choice, obviously – thereby precluding the need for another work of spirituality? And the collected works of Shakespeare is the second obvious choice. Perhaps I’m stretching the rules a little by allowing “collected work” to stand for one book.

So what next: The collected work of Jane Austen? The collected work of Charles Dickens? Dante? Dostoevsky? What would I want to read over and over if I had only one book to read? It would need to be entertaining, thought provoking, and complex enough that it would reveal something new when read and reread repeatedly. Not too melancholy because I would think if you were stuck on an island you’d need something to avert madness. I could read Wendell Berry repeatedly although I'm not sure I'd call him complex in that he tells you straightforwardly what he stands for.  His collected works would remind me of home, but maybe I would need something to keep my mind off home. To disconnect from time and place, perhaps I would bring English Fairy Tales, Canterbury Tales, or Augustine’s Confessions…


I think if a deserted island were in my future, I’d break down and get a Kindle. And a lifetime supply of batteries.

Another list, to be continued

I started reading The Sound and the Fury again, in my attempt to reacquaint or newly acquaint myself with the literature of Mississippi. Despite having such a boggy, backwoods reputation, the state has certainly outshown my homestate of Indiana in producing literary stars. Not that Hoosiers are known for being particularly poetic, considering the best known poet of Indiana is James Whitcomb Riley, whose poetry is rarely found in collegiate anthologies, but can be appreciated for its dramatic effect.  Lew Wallace had a home near where we were living in IN several years ago, so I finally read Ben Hur and enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Gene Stratton Porter's A Girl of the Limberlost was a favorite when I was in middle school; I should add it to my reread list.

On that list: in addition to Mississippians (and children's books), I've been trying to reread novels or authors I liked to try to remember why I liked them.  My adolescent reading was centered around reading a list of "classics" and "recommended for college" books that I plowed through without direction to get to the end of the list. The Sound and the Fury was one of these books, and a book I've read about more than I've spent time with. Faulkner has premier status among the American canon, and although I could tell you why others think so, I couldn't tell you whether I agree, except to parrot what I can remember of the lectures of Dr. Cowan, the mythological Southern Lit professor at UD.

So now I'm trying to figure out the chronology of what Benjy/Maury is perceiving.  This subjectivity of time reminds me of what my sister-in-law told me about 2012 and Mayan calendars, which led me to compare it to Pope B's description of the nature of time/eternity in The Spirit of the Liturgy. My head is starting to spin with the remembering.

But even though reading S and F is slow going, Faulkner's genuis is evident. What inspired him to take this perspective, and to take the risk of writing this back and forth chronology/ point of view that has been mimicked, often poorly (The Help comes to mind), ever since?

Other novels I relatively recently reenjoyed:
The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter
Cry, the Beloved Country
David Copperfield
Pride and Prejudice
Abel's Island
Mystery and Manners
Short stories of Eudora Welty
The Great Gatsby
Brideshead Revisited
A Severe Mercy (not really a novel, but...)

Wanting to reread:
More Faulkner
Tennessee Williams
Richard Wright
Shelby Foote
Walker Percy
My Antonia
To Kill a Mockingbird
Kristin Lavransdatter (if my lost copy ever shows up...)
Howard's End

But with all these good intentions, I sat up reading Matthew Pearl's latest, The Last Dickens, last night.