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To This Great Stage of Fools: Born February 8th

Feb8

John Ruskin, b. 1819. Known as a literary and art critic, Ruskin lived a rather tragic life. He was a friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, Rossetti, Morris, Meredith, and Swinburne, and his wife left him and married the painter Millais. He fell in love with a young Irish girl, but she would not marry him and she later died. He lost his faith in Christianity, suffered from mental illness, and finally re-embraced the Christian faith of his youth, although he refused to believe in hell. Maybe this rejection had something to do with the fact that during episodes of mental illness he had horrendous visions of himself battling with Satan.

Henry Walter Bates, b. 1825. Naturalist, entomologist, and evolutionist. He wrote The Naturalist on the River Amazons, published in 1863. Has anybody out there read it?
If you’d like to know more about this pioneer in entomology, here’s a good article from The New Yorker, August 22, 1988, about Bates’s life and travels along the Amazon.

Jules Verne, b. 1828. In a letter: “I must be slightly off my head. I get caught up in all the extraordinary adventures of my heroes.”

Digby Mackworth Dolben, b. 1848. English poet, he was rather a character. He wrote love poetry to another (male) student at Eton and then considered conversion to Roman Catholicism and went around wearing a Benedictine monk’s habit. He drowned in a rather mysterious accident at the age of nineteen before he could go up to Oxford.

Kate Chopin, b. 1851. American author of The Awakening.

Martin Buber, b. 1878. Jewish philosopher and teacher. In 1938 he left Germany and went to live in Jerusalem. He wrote the book, I and Thou about the relationships of people to people and persons to God. “Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear by entering into relation to other persons.”

John Grisham, b. 1955. OK, I’m not really terribly intellectual at all. Of all the authors who have birthdays today, the only two I’ve read are Jules Verne (Around the World in EIghty Days and John Grisham. Which Grisham novel do you like best? Do you agree with me that his novels have not gotten better but rather the opposite? I did enjoy The Firm and The Client and, my favorite, The Rainmaker.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born February 7th

Feb7

I wrote a post a couple of years ago (my, have I really been doing this blogging thing for that long?) about all the illustrious people born on February 7th: Sir Thomas More, b. 1478, Charles Dickens, b. 1812, Laura Ingalls Wilder, b. 1867, Sinclair Lewis, b. 1885, Henry Clifford Darby, b. 1909.

And last year at this time, I told you about all my favorite Dickensian things.

This year I present a Dickens quiz. Can you match the quotation to the novel?

1. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

2. “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

3. “I would rather, I declare, have been a pig-faced lady, than be exposed to such a life as this!”

4. “It’s over and can’t be helped, and that’s one consolation as they always says in Turkey, ven they cuts the wrong man’s head off.”

5. “If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass–a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience–by experience.”

6. “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!”

7. “We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.”

Those are from the seven Dickens novels I’ve read. Perhaps you’ve read them. too?

(Doesn’t Shakespeare somewhere call the law “an ass”?)

February: Library Lovers’ Month

Feb4

Let’s do an impromtu librarian and library lovers’ carnival in honor of libraries. I’m no libertarian; I think public libraries are a wonderful application of government and a wonderful example of free public education. I further believe public libraries, where an education is set out free for the taking, could and probably should replace public schools, where children are coerced into learning what the government wants to teach. However, this is not a debate forum. Send me (in the comments or sherryDOTearlyATgmailDOTcom) your links to any post that you’ve written or seen in praise or support of libraries and librarians, and I’ll link them here. I’ll start the ball rolling with a few of my own discoveries:

My favorite librarian bloggers are Camille at Book Moot, a children’s librarian who substitutes in public school libraries, Norma at Collecting My Thoughts, a retired college librarian, and Carmon of Buried Treasure Books who believes in privately-funded, membership libraries. I read all kinds of book-loving, library-loving blogs. Oh, by the way, Norma has a nice blogroll of librarian blogs. And I used to be an elementary school librarian–in another life.

Palm Tree Pundit: In Praise of our Public Library

Mrs. Happy Housewife: Ode to Libraries

Carrie at Mommy Brain says, ‘We love our library!” And she posted a poem to elaborate on the theme.

Directed Reading

Feb3

Author Tayari Jones suggests a plan for “directed reading,” reading not just more books but more of a variety of books. Here are her suggestions and what I did last year in relation to her list:

TWO BOOKS by international authors, written in English, NOT set in the U.S.A.
If books by British authors count, I’m fine for this one. If not, I’m in trouble. I did read books set in Indonesia, Botswana, Antarctica, Norway, India, China, Afghanistan, Sudan, Scotland, and England. Oh, how about Nectar in a Sieve by Markandaya?

ONE BOOK that is translated into English
Not a one on my list. Probably this would be a good idea. Any suggestions?

THREE BOOKS from small presses
Other than maybe the ones I reviewed for Mind and Media, I doubt if any of my books from last year fall into this category. Again any suggestions?

TWO BOOKS of non-fiction (excluding memoir)
I read several non-fiction books. No problem.

ONE Over-hyped book by an author whose success I resent
I’m NOT reading The DaVinci Code no matter how many copies it sells. Nor am I interested in Left Behind. Any other suggestions? I’m not sure I need this category. Maybe if I were a writer like Jones, I’d want to analyze and see what made those books so popular.

TWO of the “classics” that I never got around to reading
I re-read some classics last year, but didn’t read any for the first time. I want to read Kristin Lavransdattir this year.

ONE BOOK that receives a TERRIBLE review in a major publication
I don’t read enough reviews in major publications to know if anything I’ve read got slammed.

TWO BOOKS of poetry by people I don’t know.
Ouch, I don’t usually read books of poetry. I read poems, but not books of poetry.

ONE avant-garde or experimental title.
Nope. I’m not an experimental or avant-garde girl. Maybe I’ll read some manga this year. Is that cutting-edge or just juvenile?

TWO short-story collections
I must admit that I don’t care for short stories. I never have. They’re too short. Kate, however, likes short stories. Don’t go by me; listen to her. Maybe I’ll try again.

ONE novel set at least two-hundred years ago
The Shakespeare Stealer by Gary Blackwood, Pagan’s Crusade by Catherine Jinks, Blood and Judgment by Lars Walker, Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, and several more.

ONE novel set at least two-hundred years in the future
Children of Men by PD James and Airborn by Kenneth Oppel are both set in the future, but not 200 years into the future.

ONE novel written at least two-hundred years ago
Gulliver’s Travels is surprisingly the only book I read last year that was written that long ago. (That would be before 1805.)

TWO plays
Yes, I did read some plays for the American Literature discussion group I was teaching last year, but I didn’t put them on my list.

ONE offering by the most recent Nobel Laureate
Nobel Prize for Literature 2004: Elfriede Jelinek
Nobel Prize for Literature 2005: Harold Pinter
I have read a couple of plays by Pinter, courtesy of a modern theater class I took in college. I don’t think I’ll revisit Mr. Pinter’s world anytime soon.

ONE Young Adult Novel
No problem. I like YA novels. At least, I like the ones I like. Best YA novel I read last year: The Flame Tree by Richard Lewis.

ONE book on craft.
I assume this means a book on writing since Ms. Jones is a writer. I’ve got that covered, too. I read Invisible Child by Katherine Paterson and Blog by Hugh Hewitt. So I read about my craft and hers.

Edward Champion has a 75 book challenge and some added category suggestions: “I would add the following ideals: a mystery book, a science fiction book, a “chick lit” book, a book written for popular audiences (We don’t have to be literary snobs all the time, do we? Besides it helps to know what everyday people are reading from time to time.), a book that is at least 800 pages, a book that is less than 100 pages, a children’s book, a substantial percentage of books written by women and minorities, a memoir written by or about a truly whacked out individual, a lengthy nonfiction book about a subject I know absolutely nothing about, a microhistory, et al.]”

Any other ideas? How do you go about trying to broaden your reading horizons? Or do you? I think that I need to read more old stuff, a la the old CS Lewis suggestion:

“It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.
Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

Read Lewis’s entire essay, Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation, courtesy of Jollyblogger
I was led into this discussion by Dani at A Work in Progress and Susan at Pages Turned. Blame them.

It’s About a Monkey

Feb3

But the challenges of adapting Curious George are in fact a bit more complex. Earnest literary types have interpreted the first book as a barely disguised slave narrative. Have you considered that the man’s weird outfit could be a send-up of a colonial officer’s uniform? Or that George is brown and lacks a tail? (Lots of monkeys are brown and most species have visible tails.) Or that he is abducted against his will from Africa and brought across the sea to a foreign land where he engages in high jinks when the master is away?

This interpretation–surely the subject of many half-baked teacher-college lectures–was not on the mind of the Reys as they fled from the Nazis. Perhaps it is helpful to remember something that Margret once said of her books: “I don’t like messages. . . . These are just stories.” Curious George Goes to Hollywood by John J. Miller

OK, that’s it. I am declaring a moratorium on listening to any adults who presume to read adult meanings and prejudices into picture books. The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton is NOT an agrarian tract. Drummer Hoff by Barbara Emberly does NOT teach children to glorify war. And Curious George is a book about a curious monkey and his friend, not about a slave and his master. George is a monkey, and the theme of the books, if there is one, is curiosity and how too much of it sometimes leads to trouble. If you see subversive plot elements or themes in this or other commonly enjoyed picture books, you probably brought them with you. And the children won’t pick up on any of these “half-baked teacher college” ideas, or if they do, if ill intent or preaching outweighs the fun of the story, the children will quit listening. Good, popular picture books have good pictures (Duh!) and tell good stories.

Keep your re-interpreting hands off my picture books.

HT: Camille at Book Moot

Friday’s Center of the Blogosphere

Feb3

George Grant writes about bumping into Francis Schaeffer—in a bookstore of all places. This post was in honor of Mr. Schaeffer’s birthday on January 30th.

LaShawn Barber on Coretta Scott King, who died on Tuesday at the age of 78.

I’m reading A Tale of Two Cities, as I mentioned a few days ago. In it Dickens notes:

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imagin-ings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.

Julana of Numbering Our Days tells a sad, true story that illustrates Dickens’ observation.

Advice from an editor about spacing between sentences. Unfortunately, I have the habit of leaving two spaces, just as I double click to open programs on my computer even though one click is usually enough.

Behind the Burqa

Jan31

The full title is Behind the Burqa: Our Life in Afghanistan and How We Escaped to Freedom by “Sulima” and “Hala” as told to Batya Swift Yasgur. I’ll do a quick review in light of the fact that this book is propaganda, not in a bad sense, but propaganda nevertheless. The purpose of the book is to “anger you, frighten you, and ultimately, inspire you with the compelling and suspenseful stories of these women.” The author wants you and me to care about the plight of Afghan women and about the difficulties of illegal immigrants who are seeking asylum in this country, and she even includes an appendix at the end of the book on “how you can help” with ideas, addresses, and websites for those who want to do something in response to the stories in the book.

I already find that I care just as much or more about what is happening to the people, especially the women and children, of Afghanistan as I do about Iraq. I would say that reading The Kite Runner last year was responsible for bringing my interest in Afghanistan to the surface. So after seeing Behind the Burqa in the bookstore, I was interested in reading this account of two sisters’ lives in Soviet and Taliban ruled Afghanistan and of their escape to the United States. My evaluation: the book is good, well-written, and accomplishes the purpose the author set out to accomplish. I did come away from the book wanting to do something to help those who flee to the U.S. to escape persecution only to be trapped inside our immigration system. I’m not sure what that “something” will be yet, but the appendix again suggests several websites to go to for more information about helping both Afghanistan and asylum seekers in the U.S. I don’t know enough about them to recommend all these organizations, but if you are interested, I would suggest you check out the websites for yourself.

Women for Afghan Women
Equality NowEquality Now
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service
Lawyers Committee for Human Rights
Physicians for Human Rights
Hebrew Immigration and Aid Society