I Just Love Reading!

Helen Rittelmeyer at First Things says:

The better I became at reading, the less I felt like talking about how much reading meant to me, which may be a natural side effect of coming to love something that previously you only wanted to love. I used to do quite a lot of that sort of book bragging, I’m sad to say, and I don’t suppose the victims of my tediousness will be much consoled to know that I believe those years of pretension were a necessary prelude to what followed. It was also around that time that I stopped thinking that whether a person read books was the most important thing about them, or the best indication of whether we would have anything in common or whether I would like them—all of which are things I believed back when reading was more of a tribal affiliation than a passion.

I have found, consistently, that people who truly love to read will talk, not about about how much they love to read, but about the content of their reading and how that content is affecting them. If all drama is change, then reading is a great personal drama: ideas and story change the reader somehow, introducing new ideas, challenging old ones, altering mood (whether for better or for worse), broadening the mind -- or contracting it. 

I have to confess that I've dropped quotes in a conversation to see if the other person has read the same books I have, but I think that's fair as long as it doesn't hit obnoxious levels of fannishness (though I feel that way about a lot of things).

The Goodreads 100 Books Meme

In the spirit of the 100 book meme, Goodreads has posted a fairly diverse group of novels for its members to rank, drawn from both the most popular and the most highly rated books from its readers' libraries. And in the true internet spirit of borrowing, I've typed up the list for the rest of us to pass around. Goodreads reports that its average user has read 27 out of the 100; I've read 57 (and Darwin has read 31), and I find that most of the ones I haven't are books I've seen around but haven't felt a great compulsion to take and read.

Here's the key:
Books I've read
Books I started but didn't find interesting enough to continue
Could be interested to read
If I were handed this, I'd look for the nearest cereal box as an alternative
Haven't read

To Kill a Mockingbird
The Catcher in the Rye
Fellowship of the Ring
Pride and Prejudice
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Romeo and Juliet
Jane Eyre
1984
Hamlet
The Hobbit
Brave New World
The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
The Great Gatsby
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Fahrenheit 451
Wuthering Heights
Alice in Wonderland
The Secret Garden
Green Eggs and Ham
Little Women
Of Mice and Men
The Handmaid's Tale
Lord of the Flies
The DaVinci Code
Frankenstein
Dune
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Gone With The Wind
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
A Wrinkle in Time
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Slaughterhouse Five
Anne of Green Gables
Twilight
Where the Sidewalk Ends
The Little Prince
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Princess Bride
The Picture of Dorian Grey
The Hunger Games
Sense and Sensibility
The Golden Compass
Dracula
The Color Purple
The Kite Runner
The Odyssey
Anna Karenina
And Then There Were None
Interview with the Vampire
The Book Thief
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Count of Monte Cristo
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
The Joy Luck Club
Little House on the Prairie
The Giver
Life of Pi
Rebecca
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Ender's Game
A Tale of Two Cities
The Stranger
East of Eden
Les Miserables
The Bell Jar
Lolita
The Road
The Time Traveler's Wife
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Stand
Catch-22
The Sun Also Rises
The Pillars of the Earth
Crime and Punishment
The Good Earth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Help
Watchmen
Lonesome Dove
Water for Elephants
Outlander
American Gods
The Poisonwood Bible
My Sister's Keeper
The Master and Margarita
The Notebook
Like Water for Chocolate
Beloved
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Invisible Man
A Game of Thrones
The Fountainhead
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Ulysses
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Brothers Karamazov
The House of the Spirits
Fight Club
Middlesex
Interpreter of Maladies

Reading Jane Austen as a Moral Philosopher

Reading Jane Austen as a Moral Philosopher, by Thomas Rodham.

In a modern literary novel, the plot is driven by the characters, and this is how it should be, because it is their fictional inner lives with which the reader is concerned. The reader is provided with direct access to events in the minds of the characters and can understand the plot as unfolding naturally from them. Not so in Austen. Her focus is on how her characters react to events, not on their capacity to cause them. The happy endings, like the intermediate trials and tribulations, are always dei ex machinis (also a standard feature of the romance genre in general) – that is to say, they ring somewhat false. This is because Austen’s plots are author-driven – they proceed according to what she wants to say, not according to what her characters want to do. So unexpected things are continuously happening: the characters are always doing strange things offstage (like jilting lovers, or eloping, or falling into terrible illnesses) that seem not at all realistic in terms of following from what we have been told of their motivations and dispositions. 

...There are also Austen’s positive illustrations of what virtuous conduct looks like. Here one sees why the plot is so firmly in the author’s hands, not the characters’: Austen is primarily concerned with setting up particular scenes – moral trials – in which we can see how virtuous characters behave in testing circumstances. These lessons to the reader are what she gave the most exacting attention to. This is where her words are perfectly chosen and sparkling with intelligence and deep insight. These are the parts that she really cared about. The rest – the rituals of the romantic comedy genre and ‘social realism’ – is just background. (emphasis mine)

This is why I always object so strenuously when someone chooses to characterize Jane Austen's books as romances. Modern romances are author-driven in that the author is setting up situations to which the characters (and, vicariously, the reader) respond sexually. Austen "set(s) up particular scenes – moral trials – in which we can see how virtuous characters behave in testing circumstances."

Pride and Prejudice, at 200 and at 17

Today is the 200th anniversary of publication of Pride and Prejudice, and many people have up retrospectives or tributes or scholarly articles analyzing the enduring popularity of Jane Austen's best-known work.

I first read Pride and Prejudice at age seventeen, seventeen years ago. Doubtless there were then, as there have been for the past 200 years, Austenphiles, but I never knew any. Austen's works were, to me, simply Old Novels, and I neither sought them as desirable or shunned them as being the sort of thing those girls read, simply because I never heard anyone ever talk of having read them. The A&E miniseries had come out the year before, but even if I had heard of it, we didn't have cable, nor did we jaunt down much to Blockbuster, and the library's VHS collection could be spotty.

My family had an old paperback copy of Pride and Prejudice acquired in some donation, and it sat, unread, on the shelf with other battered copies of Great Books that had someone made their way into the house.  One day in 1996, I was going with my dad and siblings downtown to a Cincinnati Reds game, and we were going to ride the bus to the stadium, back when we still called it Riverfront Stadium, although by then it had been renamed Cinergy Field (before it became the Great American Ball Park). Any of you who have ever ridden a city bus know that there is no romance in public transportation. It is to be endured, and a book is one of the best ways to endure it. On my way out of the house, I pulled Pride and Prejudice from its dusty spot on the shelf.

In regards to Austen, I was a complete tabula rasa. I had never even heard the names of Elizabeth Bennett or Mr. Darcy. The blurb on the back of the book said, "No novel in the English language has brought forth more superlatives than Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen's simplicity, gentle wit and ability to draw her readers into the life of eighteenth-century England have brought her universal acclaim. As William Lyon Phelps said, 'Jane Austen is one of the supreme literary artists of the world. Pride and Prejudice is her masterpiece.'"Fine words, but not a lot to go on in guessing what the book was actually about. And so, in complete innocence as to plot, content, characters, or author, I read.

I read on the bus all the way to the stadium. I read walking into the stadium. I am not generally an advocate of reading through events that one has chosen to attend, but I read through the ball game (no big loss; as someone once said, a baseball game is thirty minutes of excitement jam-packed into three hours). I read on the bus all the way home. I read late at night in my room to finish the book. Every incident and plot twist was new and surprising to me; every phrase fresh. I carried no cultural baggage about Pride and Prejudice being the epitome of romance or of Mr. Darcy being the archetype of the perfect man; I simply found it a wonderful book.

In those delightful days before the sheer ubiquity of the internet, it was much harder (though many still made intrepid attempts) to get caught up in fandom. I was spared the silliness of having my enthusiasms instantly validated by Facebook memes or fan fiction or quizzes about "Which Austen Man is Right For You?" The massive Austen marketing machine had not yet been set into full gear. Instead, I had to read the critical essay at the beginning, then read the book again, then read it again.

It took me a number of years to get around to reading Austen's other novels, and for that I'm glad -- I was no prodigy; reading Northanger Abbey now is an infinitely more rewarding and comprehensible experience that it would have been if I had first read it when I shared Catherine Morland's age and experience. Catherine is a heroine for an older woman looking back; Elizabeth Bennett is a heroine for a young woman looking forward.

It's a rare experience now for me to have such a fresh first encounter with a book, and such a well-known one at that. My own children have seen movie versions of Pride and Prejudice more than once, have listened to the audio book, and know the plot. They'll read it for themselves one day, but that first thrill of discovery won't have that pristine newness to it. But of all the books I could come to so marvelously unencumbered by the critical (or uncritical) opinions of others, I'm so glad I struck on Pride and Prejudice at seventeen -- as felicitous a match as any of Austen's heroines made.

Interior Castle for the Young

In honor of the feast day of St. Teresa of Avila, we read the first chapter of Interior Castle, in which Teresa uses an image of the soul that the girls found congenial: a castle made of a single diamond. Teresa is an engaging and easy writer, and this first section is a very accessible introduction for children to her thought.

* * *

 THE FIRST MANSIONS

 CHAPTER I. THIS CHAPTER TREATS OF THE BEAUTY AND DIGNITY OF OUR SOULS AND MAKES A COMPARISON TO EXPLAIN THIS. THE ADVANTAGE OF KNOWING AND UNDERSTANDING THIS AND THE FAVOURS GOD GRANTS TO US IS SHOWN, AND HOW PRAYER IS THE GATE OF THE SPIRITUAL CASTLE.

  1. Plan of this book. 2. The Interior Castle. 3. Our curable self ignorance. 4. God dwells in the centre of the soul. 5. Why all souls do not receive certain favours. 6. Reasons for speaking of these favours. 7. The entrance of the Castle. 8. Entering into oneself. 9. Prayer. 10. Those who dwell in the first mansion. 11. Entering. 12. Difficulties of the subject.

 1. WHILE I was begging our Lord to-day to speak for me, since I knew not what to say nor how to commence this work which obedience has laid upon me, an idea occurred to me which I will explain, and which will serve as a foundation for that I am about to write.

2. I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions.If we reflect, sisters, we shall see that the soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What, do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God, for, as He has told us, He created us in His own image and likeness.

 3. As this is so, we need not tire ourselves by trying to realize all the beauty of this castle, although, being His creature, there is all the difference between the soul and God that there is between the creature and the Creator; the fact that it is made in God's image teaches us how great are its dignity and loveliness. It is no small misfortune and disgrace that, through our own fault, we neither understand our nature nor our origin. Would it not be gross ignorance, my daughters, if, when a man was questioned about his name, or country, or parents, he could not answer? Stupid as this would be, it is unspeakably more foolish to care to learn nothing of our nature except that we possess bodies, and only to realize vaguely that we have souls, because people say so and it is a doctrine of faith. Rarely do we reflect upon what gifts our souls may possess, Who dwells within them, or how extremely precious they are. Therefore we do little to preserve their beauty; all our care is concentrated on our bodies, which are but the coarse setting of the diamond, or the outer walls of the castle.

 4. Let us imagine, as I said, that there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse. Think over this comparison very carefully; God grant it may enlighten you about the different kinds of graces He is pleased to bestow upon the soul. No one can know all about them, much less a person so ignorant as I am. The knowledge that such things are possible will console you greatly should our Lord ever grant you any of these favours; people themselves deprived of them can then at least praise Him for His great goodness in bestowing them on others. The thought of heaven and the happiness of the saints does us no harm, but cheers and urges us to win this joy for ourselves, nor will it injure us to know that during this exile God can communicate Himself to us loathsome worms; it will rather make us love Him for such immense goodness and infinite mercy.

 5. I feel sure that vexation at thinking that during our life on earth God can bestow these graces on the souls of others shows a want of humility and charity for one's neighbour, for why should we not feel glad at a brother's receiving divine favours which do not deprive us of our own share? Should we not rather rejoice at His Majesty's thus manifesting His greatness wherever He chooses? Sometimes our Lord acts thus solely for the sake of showing His power, as He declared when the Apostles questioned whether the blind man whom He cured had been suffering for his own or his parents' sins. God does not bestow these favours on certain souls because they are more holy than others who do not receive them, but to manifest His greatness, as in the case of St. Paul and St. Mary Magdalen, and that we may glorify Him in His creatures.

 6. People may say such things appear impossible and it is best not to scandalize the weak in faith by speaking about them. But it is better that the latter should disbelieve us, than that we should desist from enlightening souls which receive these graces, that they may rejoice and may endeavour to love God better for His favours, seeing He is so mighty and so great. There is no danger here of shocking those for whom I write by treating of such matters, for they know and believe that God gives even greater proofs of His love. I am certain that if any one of you doubts the truth of this, God will never allow her to learn it by experience, for He desires that no limits should be set to His work: therefore, never discredit them because you are not thus led yourselves.

 7. Now let us return to our beautiful and charming castle and discover how to enter it. This appears incongruous: if this castle is the soul, clearly no one can have to enter it, for it is the person himself: one might as well tell some one to go into a room he is already in! There are, however, very different ways of being in this castle; many souls live in the courtyard of the building where the sentinels stand, neither caring to enter farther, nor to know who dwells in that most delightful place, what is in it and what rooms it contains.

 8. Certain books on prayer that you have read advise the soul to enter into itself, and this is what I mean. I was recently told by a great theologian that souls without prayer are like bodies, palsied and lame, having hands and feet they cannot use. Just so, there are souls so infirm and accustomed to think of nothing but earthly matters, that there seems no cure for them. It appears impossible for them to retire into their own hearts; accustomed as they are to be with the reptiles and other creatures which live outside the castle, they have come at last to imitate their habits. Though these souls are by their nature so richly endowed, capable of communion even with God Himself, yet their case seems hopeless. Unless they endeavour to understand and remedy their most miserable plight, their minds will become, as it were, bereft of movement, just as Lot's wife became a pillar of salt for looking backwards in disobedience to God's command.

 9. As far as I can understand, the gate by which to enter this castle is prayer and meditation. I do not allude more to mental than to vocal prayer, for if it is prayer at all, the mind must take part in it. If a person neither considers to Whom he is addressing himself, what he asks, nor what he is who ventures to speak to God, although his lips may utter many words, I do not call it prayer. Sometimes, indeed, one may pray devoutly without making all these considerations through having practised them at other times. The custom of speaking to God Almighty as freely as with a slave--caring nothing whether the words are suitable or not, but simply saying the first thing that comes to mind from being learnt by rote by frequent repetition--cannot be called prayer: God grant that no Christian may address Him in this manner. I trust His Majesty will prevent any of you, sisters, from doing so. Our habit in this Order of conversing about spiritual matters is a good preservative against such evil ways.

 10. Let us speak no more of these crippled souls, who are in a most miserable and dangerous state, unless our Lord bid them rise, as He did the palsied man who had waited more than thirty years at the pool of Bethsaida. We will now think of the others who at last enter the precincts of the castle; they are still very worldly, yet have some desire to do right, and at times, though rarely, commend themselves to God's care. They think about their souls every now and then; although very busy, they pray a few times a month, with minds generally filled with a thousand other matters, for where their treasure is, there is their heart also. Still, occasionally they cast aside these cares; it is a great boon for them to realize to some extent the state of their souls, and to see that they will never reach the gate by the road they are following.

 11. At length they enter the first rooms in the basement of the castle, accompanied by numerous reptiles which disturb their peace, and prevent their seeing the beauty of the building; still, it is a great gain that these persons should have found their way in at all.

 12. You may think, my daughters, that all this does not concern you, because, by God's grace, you are farther advanced; still, you must be patient with me, for I can explain myself on some spiritual matters concerning prayer in no other way. May our Lord enable me to speak to the point; the subject is most difficult to understand without personal experience of such graces. Any one who has received them will know how impossible it is to avoid touching on subjects which, by the mercy of God, will never apply to us.

Find the rest here.

Augustine's Confessions, for children

Yesterday being the feast of St. Monica, and today being the feast of St. Augustine, it seemed like a good time to break out Confessions and read about the childhoods of the saints.  Augustine writes so simply and clearly that he is not onerous for school-age children to listen to, or to read for themselves, but he's also very prolific. I found myself editing on the fly, skipping passages, and flipping around a great deal to find the sections that would be of most interest to the youngsters here.

I've gone through Books 1 and 2, which draw from Augustine's infancy and youth, and highlighted passages that I think will be most compelling for children to listen to, or read themselves. (Teenagers ought to be able to read more extensively on their own -- Confessions is definitely not an inaccessible or difficult book, stylistically.) Each section is short and concise -- certainly children reading at a fourth-grade level or above should have no difficulty reading a passage a day by themselves.

All of Book 1 is appropriate for children. The sections that I have not bolded are ones that can be skipped in the interests of time or flagging interest on the part of the youngsters, but I recommend them all.

Book 2 moves into Augustine's adolescence, and starts examining issues of lust and sexual incontinence that parents might want to avoid with pre-teens. Parents might want to preview the sections here that are not bolded before reading them aloud or assigning them to younger children.

My translation is by R.S. Pine-Coffin, from Penguin Classics.

Book 1.1: Introduction, "you made us for yourself, and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you."
1.2, 3, 4, 5: Continuation of Augustine's questions to God about His existence, His creative love, His attentions to Augustine himself. These are interesting, I think, to children who are themselves so full of questions, but can be skipped.
1.6: Augustine's babyhood.
1.7: faults of infancy
1.8: early boyhood, learning to speak
1.9: trials of going to school
1.10: sports
1.11: Augustine is gravely ill, but recovers before his family feels the need to baptize him.
1,12: the paradoxes of study
1.13: the trials learning Greek and Latin
1.14: Homer vs. Virgil
1.15: short digression on using study for God's glory
1.16: teaching children to admire the false example of false gods
1.17: Augustine recites the speech of Juno
1.18: intellectual vanity vs. eternal concerns
1.19: Augustine's bad habits of childhood
1.20: Augustine's good qualities of childhood

Book 2.1: Augustine recounts his adolescence and sins, particularly lust, to which he was prone.
2.2: continued.
2.3: onset of lust, and his father's unwillingess to check him.
2.4: theft of the pears
2.5: reason informs all behaviors, virtuous or vicious
2.6: meditation on the theft
2.7: acknowledgement of sin
2.8: Augustine explores why he stole the pears
2.9: incitements to the theft
2.10: wandering from God

Augustine also recounts some of the life of his mother, St. Monica. We enjoyed reading these sections yesterday on her feast.

Book 9.8: Monica's childhood and early addiction to drinking wine
9.9: Monica's humility and careful dealings with her husband and mother-in-law (be prepared to discuss how it used to be acceptable for husbands to beat their wives!)
9.11: the death of Monica

I really feel that there is a niche for a beautifully illustrated children's book about the boyhood of St. Augustine, with text taken from Confessions. I would buy it.

David Copperfield for the Young

The month of May is just redolent enough of summer that it's hard to be motivated about anything, but homeschooling is getting especially sluggish. I reassure myself on two points: 1) the math book is almost finished; and 2) we're reading David Copperfield aloud, and Dickens is an education unto himself. 

It has weighed upon me that my girls are getting older, and that their lives have been wholesome, happy, and easy. We are blessed that so far our family has been sheltered from the real ugliness of life. I don't regret that the last death in our family occurred before any of them were old enough to remember, or that we've had little to no serious illness or injury. I'm not sorry that they don't know any families sundered by divorce, except my own. I thank God that none of their friends have been abused or hungry or homeless. But there is a big world out there full of people who don't know such a warm and comfortable life. One day they will encounter the vale of tears personally. I want to shepherd them through their first vicarious brush with the harsh fact that life is not so kind to every child.

Hence, David Copperfield. Young David is emotionally abused and beaten by his cold and controlling stepfather, sent to a brutish boarding school, is bereft of his mother, forced to fend for himself in the big city while working at a degrading job, and has to tramp alone across country, all before he turns 11. There's lots of dramatic potential there, and Dickens works it for the full Dickensian effect. The girls have been following along quite well. At a third of the way through the book, we've had many good conversations about how adults should treat children, about bad forms of education, about trust and self-reliance and people who will take advantage of others. Dickens's prose has settled in their ears and his plot in their imaginations and his themes in their minds.

Until now I've been reading unabridged, but I've run up against my first insuperable obstacle. David, on holiday, has once again met up with Steerforth, his eidolon, and they have traveled to Steerforth's home. There Dickens gives us Steerforth's idolatrous mother and her companion, Rosa Dartle. I cannot get a handle on Rosa. She loves, she hates, she insinuates. She is all smothered intensity and desire and fury. All this is well and good. But I can't find her voice, and if I can't interpret the character for the girls, they lose interest. Rosa's brand of repressed sexuality and rage is not interesting to the 10- and 8-year old, to say nothing of the 6-year-old. When I'm struggling through a passage trying to work out some tactics and motivation while the kids are hanging upside down on the couch with their legs kicking in the air, I know I'm beat.

I consulted YouTube to see what various film adaptions had done with Rosa, only to find that she seems (at least in this early appearance) to have been excised from the story. So I'm doing the same right now. We'll skip ahead to Yarmouth and let Steerforth have his first fateful encounter with Little Em'ly. Miss Mowcher the dwarf comes up in a few chapters, and she too may end up severely edited or on the cutting room floor. We need to move on to Dora, a character so ridiculous that all the young ladies will howl at her silliness, and David's too. Puppy love is a familiar, if goofy, concept to them.

And of course they're already asking when they can see the movie.

Happy Easter, Chums

Ah, it's nice to be back. I was good and didn't cheat on my internet fast all week, although I was dying to read Brandon's post comparing Casanova and Don Juan after Darwin mentioned it to me.

Still, I took great advantage of my copious internet-free time on Tuesday to do lots of useful stuff around the house read David Copperfield all day. Considering all the recent discussion of marriage, I found lots to chew on in David's farcial first marriage to the unbelievably childish Dora. Obviously Dickens was having a great deal of fun writing this character, both for her zany self and in contrast to the long-suffering Agnes, but Dora is perfectly calculated to make anyone's teeth ache. Dickens knows this. He knows that Dora, as he chose to write her, is not a character who is capable of participating in a marriage (or in any adult occupation, really), which is why her early death is sad but necessary in a literary sense.

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever. and addressed me like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something wanting.
...What I missed, I still regarded -- always regarded -- as something that had been a dream of youthful fancy; that was incapable of realisation; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men do. But that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.
"The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart." These words of Mrs. Strong's were constantly recurring to me, at that time; were almost always present to my mind. ...For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it first loved Dora; that if it had been disciplined, it never could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret existence.
"There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and purpose." Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own shoulders what I must, and still be happy. This was the discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.

What sadness in these words, and (to my mind) how much better not to marry than to live with such "disparity in marriage" as "unsuitability of mind and purpose". Dickens doesn't choose to trace the course of such a marriage through the long slog of years, but I shudder to contemplate it.

Reading Hemingway

There's a sort of mantlepiece shelf in our library -- I say a sort of mantlepiece because it's over a sort-of fireplace: a fireplace-ish niche which lacks that essential element, a chimney, because once upon a time it contained a Victorian era ventless gas heater. This shelf I claimed, not long after we started unpacking books, as my aspiration shelf, the place where I line up all the books I intend to read. There they stand until I pull them down, read them, and return them to their appropriate shelf.

One night, for no particular reason other than I realized the aspiration shelf was short on fiction and because one of the gaps in my literary knowledge is that I'd never actually read anything by him, I added The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell To Arms to the aspiration shelf, and a couple nights ago while I was wandering about the library kibitzing MrsDarwin's novel revisions, I pulled The Sun Also Rises down and started reading it.

As I say, I'd never actually read any Hemingway before, though of course I'd heard roughly the same jokes and observations that anyone who hangs around book people will have soaked up about him. He writes in short sentences. Declarative sentences. And he's a masculine writer. Writing about war. And drinking. And bullfighting. And drinking. And blood. And drinking.

Somehow I'd got it into my head that reading Hemingway would be roughly as difficult a haul as reading Faulkner was a couple years ago, only with tortuously short sentences instead of tortuously long ones. As such, I was surprised to find Hemingway's prose to be almost completely transparent. Indeed, I wouldn't have noticed him to be any particular kind of prose stylist if I hadn't been assured ahead of time that he was known for his direct and vigorous prose. It just reads... normal. Thinking on this, it occurs to me that I normally associate a distinctive style either with some kind of dialect or effort to convey thought, or with the use of especially ornate or poetic diction while writing prose. Short, clear sentences that tell you what is going on just seem like the modern norm.

Though since Hemingway is so noted for his style, I now find myself wondering if rather than being a "typical example" of modern prose style he's something of the model of what has since become common.

Either way, I find myself quite enjoying The Sun Also Rises, and it even works as a lunch reading or bedtime reading book, in a way that Literature typically doesn't for me.

A Poem of Pronunciation

This is the most awesome thing I've read in days -- if only because it allowed me to correct MrsDarwin's pronunciation twice. (Not out of greater knowledge, but because she was the one reading and so I didn't get caught on the read-but-not-heard ones that would have tripped me up.) [source]

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Weep for those who must learn our language as a second one -- which would be just about everyone who didn't grow up speaking it.

On reading Jane Eyre

This was originally posted at Reading for Believers.

Jane emphasizes her appearance. She doesn't fit the fashionable type: tall, dark, and elegant. Over and over again she describes herself as plain, having irregular features, small, etc. This is comforting to the reader; almost every woman secretly worries she's some kind of ugly, and it's good to see the less beautiful girl get the man and the fortune. When I first read Jane, at 13, I felt a great kinship with her, although my features are generally regular and at the time I had a long thick mass of curly hair that was to die for. Still, I've never had a Grecian nose, so I was just like Jane, right?

This time around, I read from the perspective of an older, long married woman, and Jane sounds a dream of lost youth. I'm 32, and I've had five children in fairly close succession, which has irrevokably changed my body in ways obvious and and not so visible. Taking a break from reading Jane, I looked in the mirror and was underwhelmed: I have the bad skin and flaking scalp of winter dryness, my hair wants washing because I can't be sure of getting hot water in the shower, my hands are cracked and scaly, I have lines on my face and an increasing number of gray hairs. Jane sees herself as dull and uncompetitive; I (like Mr. Rochester, I guess) saw a fresh girl at the height of her powers. Gawd, I feel old.

Reading in Review

I don't know if this is of much interest to anyone other than me, but since the sidebar serves as a tally of sorts of reading that I've done through the year, and I've now built up a couple years of backlog, I thought I'd clear it out into a post so I don't lose the information.

A few general observations prior to the list:

- My rate seems pretty constant:  22 in 2011 , 22 in 2010.
- My attempts to bridge the gap between what I do read and what I want to read seem to founder.  At the beginning of 2010 I laid out for myself a shelf of 10 books that I wanted to read by the end of the year -- working on the theory that this would allow me to pick another 10+ on the spur of the moment.  These are were much all substantive "I ought to read this" kind of books, both fiction and non-fiction.  Yet in the end, I only finished three of these, and they were the lightest reading on the list.  Though I did start three more of the target books (all of which remain unfinished.)
- While from long habit I think of myself as a fiction reader, what seems best classed "light non-fiction" seems to make up a lot of what I end up reading.  (12 in 2009, depending on definition, and 6 in 2010)
- It also strikes me that what I finish reading reflects that most of my reading is either done in very short snatches (and thus favors books which don't require long stretches of close concentration) or else getting completely sucked into a book and doing nothing else while at home until it's done.  Books which are neither suspenseful nor well suited to serial reading seem to suffer.
- I did at least make it through a little bit of what can be classed as literature: Pride and Prejudice (re-read after some years) in 2009 and The Leopard and Absolom, Absolom! in 2010.  This also means I can now say that I've finished a Faulkner novel.  Not really sure if I'll try that again, but I guess one ought to try.
- As proof that I'm not above re-trying what failed the first time, I find myself with an even longer shelf of books that I have set out for myself to read (or finish reading) in 2011. 

Brief comments and ratings on a five star scale follow.

2009

The Stargazing Year: A Backyard Astronomer's Journey Through the Seasons of the Night Sky**** This is a quiet and episodic book, divided into one chapter for each month of the year, detailing both the author's growing enthusiasm as an amateur astronomer and the specific objects you can see in the night sky each month of the year. I found this a particularly nostalgic read having grown up around planetariums and star gazing.

Alexander the Great: Journey to the End of the Earth ** Having very much enjoyed some of Norman Cantor's earlier history books, this one was seriously disappointing, both error prone and shallow.

Waiter Rant*** The transition from blog to book is something very little writing can withstand, but the author of Waiter Rant produced a readable and well written book, part autobiography, part behind-the-scenes-in-the-restaurant-business.

The Man Who Was Thursday ***** This was a fourth of fifth read of what remains far and away my favorite Chesterton book.

Last Call ***** Again a re-read, this one of one of Tim Powers' best novels, a modern fantasy in which the highest stakes gamblers of all struggle to control supernatural archetypes through a game called Assumption played with Tarot cards, with control over each other's souls and the throne of the Fisher King as the stakes.

The Death of a Pope **** A well written thriller in which international intrigue surrounds the conclave to elect a new pope.

Empires of Trust: How Rome Built--and America Is Building--a New World **** Thomas Madden looks at the similarities between American history and that of the Roman Republic, with an emphasis on how the Romans stumbled into an empire while in search of security.

Pride and Prejudice ***** Another re-read. While the story is long familiar, immersing in Austen's prose style is always a delight.

Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded *** Looks at the explosion of Krakatoa not just as a disaster movie-size geological event, but also as one of the first times a global news story was reported and followed around the world via the telegraph and international news services in near real time.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals *** Pollan's effort to trace back everything that went into a series of meals is interesting, but occasionally veers off into paranoia or lack of realism. Those who are already seriously into making most of their meals "from scratch" in the normal kitchen sense may wonder why he doesn't calm down and just make dinner.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life *** I'm a sucker for back-to-the-land agriculture stores, and this one is quite well written (coming from an author Barbara Kingsolver), though there are odd moments when I'd find myself mentally at odds with the author's opinions, or with the composition of this particular experiment in self sufficiency.

The Fracture Zone: My Return to the Balkans *** Recounts the author's experiences in the Balkans over several decades and reinforces the lesson that that Balkans are fascinating, but often bad news.

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy *** The building of the post-revolution United States Navy, with all of the congressional horse trading, budget overruns, and mission creep that one would expect.

Valkyrie *** This book is short and is not a comprehensive history of the Valkyrie plot, but the personal history from childhood through the end of the war of the longest surviving Valkyrie conspirator makes for a fascinating window on the period.

Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader *** Charmingly written, some of these reflections on life as a book reader and hoarder felt strongly familiar, while others made me think, "Wow this person is different."

The Battle: A New History of Waterloo *** Dry in places, but fascinating in depth of detail, this is perhaps the definitive modern history of one of the most pivotal battles of modern history.

The Killer Angels **** Well written and gripping, while rich in historical detail, the classic novel about the battle of Gettysburg.

The Age of Napoleon ** In some ways, this seemed more written to fill a spot in the Modern Library Chronicles series than to stand on its own as a book, though I found Alistair Horne's game try at it enjoyable, if cursory.

Napoleon: A Life *** Not the deepest survey by any stretch, but an decent quick overview of Napoleon's life.

Hobberdy Dick ***** An excellent short novel dealing with themes and characters from English folklore, set in the aftermath of the English Civil War.

The Return of the King ***** Nothing makes you value Tolkien's original prose like re-watching one of Jackson's movie adaptations. I'd re-watched the movie of RotK and immediately had to go read the book.

A Christmas Carol ***** Need one say more?




2010

The Price of Everything *** As a novel, Roberts' work is passable, as a primer on the microeconomics of price it puts things in very understandable terms.

The Gargoyle Code **** Fr. Longnecker's homage to The Screwtape Letters is a successful updating because he remembers to take aim at the foibles of his audience, not just "the mainstream culture".

The Indian Bride *** Dark and spare as Nordic crime novels are supposed to be.

The One Minute Manager ** What's there is basically good advice, but I could have done with a nonfiction explanation rather than the "fable" format.

The Last Full Measure *** A wider canvas and overall not quite as well executed as his father's Killer Angels, but still an enjoyable Civil War historical novel.

The Little World of Don Camillo ***** Guareschi's stories about the two fisted priest and his arch enemy/friend the communist mayor in a small village in the Po river valley remain as universally human and as specifically Italian as ever.

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit **** Yes well, it's a Wodehouse novel. What more need one say?

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-line Pioneers **** You don't think about how much the inventions of the past changed the world. This is effectively a "Triumph Of the Nerds" telling about the personalities who brought the world the telegraph in a remarkably short time, the telegraph operator culture the network created, and how the wired age was different from the age before it.

Three Men in a Boat ***** I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never actually read Three Men In A Boat before, though of course I'd heard the story of the can of pineapple numerous times.

Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time *** This book did a good job of setting Paul's epistles in the cultural context in which they were written -- though I found it a bit disorienting to read a book in which the author felt it necessary to explain why Paul would be such a curmudgeon as to be against things like promiscuous sex. (You see, back then, they had bad promiscuous sex.) Still a primer on how alien and messed up Classical culture could be is always fun reading.

Galileo's Daughter **** The life of Galileo framed around his relationship with his daughter Sister Maria Celeste. It is touching, informative, and well written.

The Leopard**** A Sicilian novel set in the period of Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily and the uniting of Italy into one country, it's both well written and gives a strong sense of the passing of an age.

Three Cups of Tea *** A mountain climber-turned activist working to build schools for girls in Pakistan and later Afghanistan.

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome *** At times dry or slightly disjointed, but this bio of one of Rome's great emperors fills the gap that many people forget existed between the expanding empire of the time of Christ and the shrinking empire of Late Antiquity. Hadrian is the emperor who fixed Rome's boundaries and turned his focus to consolidating and administering all the territory which had been added over the previous two centuries, and the process brought a measure of stability which would last nearly a hundred years.

Absalom, Absalom! *** Faulkner's classic novel in Faulkner's classic style. I was very impressed with what he was doing, but not always with how he was doing it.

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto *** Pollan can become tendentious at times, but his defense of eating "real" (as in, made from ingredients you can identify rather than industrially processed) food and tailoring how much you eat to how much physical work you do (duh) is common sensical. Though it often struck me that those who mostly make their own meals at home are pretty much already where he works hard to find his way to.

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think **** This was a particularly fascinating look at how people tell how much they've eaten and how much they should eat. It's not remotely a diet book, but to the extent that it looks at how you determine how much to eat (and how you can be fooled into eating more than you mean to) it can be a useful tool for making your own plan to limit eating.

The Civil War: A Narrative--Fort Sumter to Perryville, Vol. 1 **** Steeped in detail but still readable, Foote's novelist background shows in making this one of the more readable history books you'll run into.

Crossroads of Freedom: Antietam *** McPherson argues that Antietam was the true turning point in the civil war, but the book is actually a pretty cursory discussion of the battle itself and more a high level discussion of the changing dynamics of the war.

Spies of the Balkans **** Furst's latest World War II era page-turner is set in northern Greece and the Balkans as the war spreads.

A Most Contagious Game *** A well mannered British mystery in which a man retires from work in the City to the old country house he's always dreamed of, to find that it comes complete with a priest hole, a skeleton, and a two hundred year old murder mystery.

Parched **** Heather King's harrowing autobiography of addiction and recovery is incredibly well written, though since change comes so late in the narrative I found myself heading straight back to Amazon to order Redeemed and find out "what happened next".