Archive | April 2007

Follow-up to Monday’s Review of Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Apr11

If you come to Semicolon to read book reviews, you have a right to know what my standards are for judging a book. Sometimes I just don’t care for a book; the author and I just don’t mesh or it was a bad day for me. If so, I usually say so in my post on the book. Sometimes I really like a book that I know might be offensive to other people; if so, I try to remember to mention the parts that might be offensive so that readers can be forewarned. Sometimes I read a book that I hate for reasons that I am willing to share in print here; if so, I state my reasons as plainly as I can.

I read books that have profanity, vulgarity, sexual content, and violence. I think some of these books are excellent, vividly portraying the human condition and our need for God’s mercy. As many people have pointed out, the Bible tells stories about people who were profane, vulgar, sexually immoral, and violent.

I don’t like books that contain pervasive profanity and/or vulgarity, graphic, detailed sexual descriptions, or lurid, gratuitous violence. And I don’t like books that try to make sin and degradation, however graphically described, seem exciting, fulfilling, and joyous. Enjoyable, yes, sin is usually pleasureable for a season. But adultery and promiscuity do not lead to joy and happiness in this world or the next, and violence is wrong and awful, even if you believe (as I do) that it is sometimes necessary.

“Do not be deceived, whatever a man sows, he will reap.” Books that depict characters who “sow” rebellion and sexual sin and violence and “reap” happiness, peace, and joy are simply untrue. And their authors do a disservice to their own talent and to readers in writing such books. Oscar Wilde said famously that there is no such thing as an immoral book, only a badly written one. However, Oscar Wilde, who was quite witty and often quite immoral himself, was wrong in this instance. Books that deceive and tell lies and portray evil as good and good as evil are immoral —and badly written, too, no matter how skillfully their authors may use words and phrases and elements of prose to create that effect. In fact the more skillful the author is in manipulating words and ideas, the more harm he can do when he sets out to serve a lie instead of the truth.

So one of my standards is that I like books that tell the truth. If I think a book is lying, I’ll say so.

Homeschool Blog Awards

Apr10

hs blog awards

Voting for the Homeschool Blog Awards is going on through Friday, April 13th. I’ve seen some great blogs nominated and found some new-to-me gems while visiting about. And Semicolon has been nominated for Best Curriculum or Business Blog —either because the nominator loves my Around the World curriculum that I haven’t posted about lately or because someone likes my book, Picture Book Preschool, available via the graphic link in the sidebar. Either way I think I’m in last place, but I was nominated. Somebody likes me.

So go check it out and vote for Somebody.

Actually, I think it was this blogger who nominated me, so vote for her –because she has good taste.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born April 10th

Apr10


William Hazlitt, b. 1778. Journalist, essayist, Shakespearean scholar. He wrote many books, including Characters of Shakespeare and A View of the English Stage.
“If we wish to know the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.”

Matthew Calbraith Perry, b. 1794. US Navy commodore who negotiated the first treaty between the United States and Japan in 1854. The 1986 Newbery Honor book, Commodore Perry in the land of the Shogun by Rhoda Blumberg, is a great introduction to this historical episode.

Lew Wallace, b. 1827. Civil War general, Governor of New Mexico Territory, Ambassador to Turkey, and author of Ben Hur: A Tale of the Christ.

Third paragraph of Ben Hur: “Judged by his appearance, he was quite forty-five years old. His beard, once of the deepest black, flowing broadly over his breast, was streaked with white. His face was brown as a parched coffee-berry, and so hidden by a red kufiyeh (as the kerchief of the head is at this day called by the children of the desert) as to be but in part visible. Now and then he raised his eyes, and they were large and dark. He was clad in the flowing garments so universal in the East; but their style may not be described more particularly, for he sat under a miniature tent, and rode a great white dromedary.” Does anyone know what Biblical character is being described in this paragraph?

William Booth, b. 1829. He and his wife Catherine founded the Salvation Army, a Christian ministry to feed, clothe, and evangelize the poor.
“In answer to your inquiry, I consider that the chief dangers which confront the coming century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.” William Booth

Joseph Pulitzer, b. 1847, d.1911. Hungarian American journalist and newspaper publisher. He left in his will an endowment to create the Columbia School of Journalism, and Columbia began in 1917 to award annual prizes for journalism, letters, fiction, drama, and education. Last year I looked at this list of Pulitzer-prize winning novels and counted the ones I’ve read: 12 out of 80. (Eight of the years say “No Award.” I wonder why.) Now I’ve read 14 and a half out of 81.

1919 The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. Read in 2006. Semicolon review here.
1921 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton
1925 So Big Edna Ferber
1928 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder
1932 The Good Earth Pearl S. Buck
1937 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
1939 The Yearling Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940 The Grapes Of Wrath John Steinbeck
1947 All the King’s Men Robert Penn Warren I read this one over my blog break and thought it was quite a reflection on depression-era Louisiana and the life and legacy of Huey Long. Scroll down for a review.
1952 The Caine Mutiny Herman B. Wouk
1953 The Old Man And The Sea Ernest Hemingway
1961 To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee
1975 The Killer Angels Michael Shaara
1986 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry This book constitutes the “half” in fourteen and a half. Actually, I don’t think I read quite half. Unappreciative Semicolon review here.
2005 Gilead Marilynne Robinson

So how many Pulitzer prize winning novels have you read, and which ones do you recommend? I recommend all of the above except the Hemingway and the Steinbeck and of course, Lonesome Larry’s Texas opus.

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

Apr10

Once upon a time, about twenty-five years ago, I read a biography of Huey “Kingfish” Long, and I only remember the highlights: Huey ran Louisiana in the 1930’s, was a populist to end all populists, had a proposed program called “Share the Wealth,” and was assassinated by some guy who was in turn shot by Long’s bodyguard(s). Robert Penn Warren’s 1947 Pulitzer prize winning fictional account of the life and times of Willie Stark, popular governor of an unnamed Southern state, pretty much follows the general outline of what I remember of Long’s career. However, it’s been a long time, so I can’t vouch for the details.

The book is much more than Huey Long renamed and fictionalized, however. It’s an exploration of how power corrupts, of how we’re all, as Willie says, “conceived in sin and born in corruption.” The novel is misnamed. It’s either about Willie and one of his men, the narrator, Jack Burden. Or it’s about all the King’s women —his long-suffering wife, Lucy, his mistress, Sadie, and his upper class lover, Anne. For a Southern novel it’s strangely silent on the subject of race and race relations. It seems that in the Louisiana of Willie Stark, black people are to be seldom seen and definitely not heard. It’s the white voters who count, and Willie has a gift for making the poor white hicks of rural Louisiana feel as if they’re an important part of the power structure. He’s one of them, he says, a hick, too, raised up by God to lead them on to good roads, decent sanitation, free education, and universal health care. And he’ll pay for it all by taxing the rich. Gee, haven’t we all heard that speech before? Maybe old Huey/Willie has been reincarnated several times since the 1930’s.

“For what reason, barring Original Sin, is a man most likely to step over the line?
Ambition, love, fear, money.”

All the King’s Men explores all of these motivations for sin and corruption. The novel’s characters display the consequences of action and of inaction in a world in which the choices are between using evil means to create some possible (corrupt) good or remaining pure by not participating in the world, particularly the world of politics, at all. I think there is a Third Way, as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair would say, but perhaps I am mistaken. Or perhaps in Louisiana there are only two possibilities: become corrupted by the process or stand back and let the corrupt men rule the state.

It seems to me that all this should relate to New Orleans post-Katrina, but I’m not sure how it does.

Resurrection Center of the Blogosphere

Apr9

We continue to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Lord even after the feast day has passed.

Today at the Mission: “On Good Friday I sat and talked with a man whose heart is stretched to breaking, and we talked about how God came for us when we least deserved it, and how he just keeps coming for us, and he never leaves us and he never forgets where we are, and he never has something more important to do or someone he likes better.”

Catez on Mary Magdalene and passion: “Today people still don’t get what her devotion to Jesus was about – so they try to bring it down to a merely physical and human level, and speculate to sell books and make a profit. Calling common what God has cleansed.”

At a Hen’s Pace posts a wonderful sermon by St. John Chrysotstom.

Real Learning on homeschool burnout: “If your heart is heavy and you are wondering why you ever thought it a good idea to stay home with a gaggle of small children and medium sized children and teenaged children all day every day, it’s time to take stock and lighten up! Let’s take this love-filled Easter season, the time the Church has set aside to celebrate new life, and let’s learn a new song. Let’s look at ways to bring the joy back to the home education lifestyle.”

Finally, I grabbed this link at the new-to-me blog, Granny’s House, one of the blogs nominated for Best Homeschool Mom Blog in the Homeschool Blog Awards: 10 Things To Do With Leftover Easter Eggs.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Apr9

My first impulse here is to issue all kinds of disclaimers: I am NOT a book banner; I am NOT a prude; I am neither a homophobe nor a sexophobe, if there is such a thing as the latter. I’d love for the young adults I know to have fun and fall in love and even have passionate, fulfilling (married) sex. But all the disclaimers in the world will not change the fact that some people are not going to understand why I hated this book —just as I don’t really understand why any discerning reader would like it. So let us procceed to the actual review/rant.

How did I hate this book? Let me count the ways:

I hated the casual vulgarity and pervasive profanity and uncommitted sex, both homo and hetero, and the way that all these evils, yes evils, were portrayed as natural, beautiful, and oh-so-cool.

I hated the absence of parents who cared enough to even be worried about their teenage children who were club-hopping and roaming the streets of New York City all night long. Nick’s parents were hardly mentioned, and Norah’s parents were perfectly happy to have her check in via cell phone at 4:00 A.M.

I hated the lessons in sexual technique that were embedded in the story.

I hated the punk music scene motif where everything and anything could be exused or explained with a song, ususally a song with angry, vulgar, repetitive lyrics.

I hated the unmourned loss of innocence that had overtaken Nick and Norah both before the story even began. I hated whoever was responsible (their parents?) for allowing them to each have an ex-lover, much less have exes who broke their hearts and used their bodies and made them jaded and old before their time.

I hated the hip dialog and occcasional flashes of real insight that covered a vast ocean of spiritual emptiness.

As much as I hated Nick’s and Norah’s jaded worldliness, I hated it even more when they acted and talked like the vulnerable kids they really were because I knew they were going to get hurt —deeply hurt. There’s no father in the story to protect and cherish Norah and teach her to value herself and save her love and her body for someone who will cherish her and love her for more than her ability to kiss and make out and eventually give out good sexual favors. The best Norah’s father can do is chuckle indulgently at her disrespectful repartee and make sure she gets to Brown (university) in the fall.

Oh, yes, I also hated all the casual money —teenagers whose parents do provide one essential: plenty of money to buy them into trouble and possibly out of it. These are essentially careless rich people, shades of The Great Gatsby, who are trying to pretend that honest caring can be found in such an environment.

What did I like about Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist? Not much.

I liked the singing in the rain scene, but that scene led to a sexual encounter, unconsummated but graphic, that would fit right into any garden variety porn magazine with nary so much as a rewrite. So . . . not so much.

I liked some of the names of the characters: Nick, Norah, Thom, Tris, the band called Fluffy. But then there were other band names and nicknames that I can’t even repeat on a G-rated blog. So . . . not so much.

Call me a hater, but the lifestyle that is glorified and rationalized and played back as a beautiful mix of love songs in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is worth hating. And it’s a fake. I can think of any number of things that are likely to happen to two teens roaming the clubs in New York City, using fake ID’s, and playing with fire, sexually speaking. None of those things, all bad, happen to Nick and Norah because Nick and Norah are poster children for a promiscuous and unrepentant lifestyle of sex without commitment and sexuality expressed freely with no rules and no consequences. “See here, young people, you may have to kiss (or have sexual relations with) a few frogs first, but someday across a crowded club, you’ll see your prince or princess and all shall be well.” That’s a lie, and those who’ve tried it know it’s a lie. N&N is propaganda, pure simple, for the Good Life of sex (protected please), no drugs (drugs are out of fashion), and punk instead of rock and roll. You can lose your innocence young and still have an innocent first love —even though it’s not the first.

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist won the Cybil Award for Young Adult Fiction. After this review, I probably won’t be asked to judge in any of the categories next year, so I may as well say that I don’t think the book should have ever made it out of the slush pile at any reputable publishing house, much less to the top of any award list. It won’t appeal to a broad cross-section of young adult readers in spite of the steamy sex and emo angst. The young adults I know aren’t looking for either of those things in their reading materials. Nick and Norah won’t last past next year (I hope. I hope.) And it’s a bad book to be enshrined as the first winner of the Cybil for Young Adult Fiction.

I’m sorry, but someone had to say it. I’ve nothing to lose except a few readers, so it may as well be me.

He Is Risen!

Apr8

Easter Cross2007

This is a picture of our cross, made from the wood of our 2006 Christmas tree, decorated for Resurrection morning. May your day be filled with the celebration of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is risen indeed!

Christ the Lord is ris’n today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say! Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high: Alleluia!
Sing ye heavens, thou earth reply. Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done; Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won: Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids him rise; Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise. Alleluia!

Lives again our glorious King! Alleluia!
Where, O Death is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Once he died our souls to save; Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O grave Alleluia!

Soar we now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted Head, Alleluia!
Made like him, like him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies. Alleluia!

Resurrection Reading: Night by Elie Wiesel

Apr7

No, I’ve never read this account of Mr. Wiesel’s experiences during the final days of World War II as he is enslaved in first Birkenau, then Auschwitz, then Buna, and finally Buchenwald, not until this week. It’s not a long book, only a little over a hundred pages, but it’s about the most powerful indictment of the evil that lies deep inside every man that I’ve ever read. If you don’t believe in “original sin,” Night will change your mind. It’s a very, very dark story, and the fact that it’s true and told in a quite factual manner makes it even more disturbing. The Nazi persecution and near-extermination of the Jews happened; it’s depressing, but unavoidable. And as Mr. Wiesel shows in his book, even those who were enslaved and murdered were not able to remain pure; he tells over and over again of how son turned against father, how friends fought each other for a scrap of bread, and of how he found himself doing and thinking things that would have been unthinkable before his captivity.

So why is this “Resurrection Reading”? Well, despite the “night” that pervades this book and despite the death that is its constant theme, the book points me, as a Christian, to resurrection. Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.” By extension, only the dead need a resurrection, and only he who is aquainted with both the depravity of man and the evil that is within his own being is aware of his need of a saviour.

As the book ends, Mr. Wiesel has been liberated from Buchenwald, but he looks into the mirror and sees a corpse. Only a resurrection can help this particular patient.

Night is definitely appropriate and powerful reading for a Holy Saturday of darkness.

Poetry and Fine Art Friday: The Dawning by George Herbert

Apr6

WAKE, sad heart, whom sorrow ever drowns;
Take up thine eyes, which feed on earth;
Unfold thy forehead, gathered into frowns;
Thy Saviour comes, and with Him mirth:
Awake, awake,
And with a thankful heart His comforts take.
But thou dost still lament, and pine, and cry,
And feel His death, but not His victory.

Arise, sad heart ; if thou dost not withstand,
Christ’s resurrection thine may be;
Do not by hanging down break from the hand
Which, as it riseth, raiseth thee:
Arise, Arise;
And with His burial linen drie thine eyes.
Christ left His grave-clothes, that we might, when grief
Draws tears or blood, not want a handkerchief.

George Herbert was a both pastor and one of the 17th century metaphysical poets. These poets, including John Donne, Henry Vaughan, and Andrew Marvell, liked to use elaborate word-plays or conceits to tie their poems into a pleasing package. So, in the poem above, Jesus’ grave-clothes become a handkerchief to dry the eyes of all mankind, and we are raised from grief and sorrow by Christ’s resurrection.

I have three rules for my homeschooled literature students, and if you’re having trouble with the April poetry posts here and here, you might try my rules.

1. Always read poetry out loud. Hide in a closet if you must, but poetry read aloud is much easier to understand and feel.

2. Read each poem more than once. I suggest you read the poem aloud three times at least.

3. Don’t try to understand every word or phrase. Grab onto the phrases or images that do make sense to you, and enjoy those. Little by little , the poem may come to be meaningful as a whole.

Try it; you may like it.

The portraits of a joyful Jesus are available, along with many others, here.