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Library Wish List

Apr20

I went to Barnes and Noble last night and found six new books that I think I would like to read. My practice is to scope out the books at B&N and then get them from the library to read as soon as they are available. I can’t afford to support my reading habit with my own private funds; I’m on the dole, the public library dole. Books I may want to read (please inform me if you’ve read any of these and know that I’d be wasting my time):

In the Company of Cheerful Ladies by Alexander McCall Smith. This is his newest #1 Ladies’ Detective Agency book. I’ve read Tears of the Giraffe, Morality for Beautiful Girls, and The Full Cupboard of Life all in the past month or so. I also have Mr. Smith’s book The Sunday Philosophy Club, a mystery set in Scotland instead of Botswana. I got all these books from the library, and the Scottish book is next in my queue, so to speak. I find these mysteries to be restful, and the cultural insights are surprising and thought-provoking.

Riding the Bus with my Sister by Rachel Simon. I was at the Hallmark shop a few days ago, and I saw an advertisement for a Hallmark Hall of Fame special based on this book. The author of the book is a professor and writer who agreed to accompany her mentally disabled sister, Beth, for a year as she rode the buses of the city in which she lived. I had never heard of this, apparently very popular, nonfiction book, but I spotted it B&N last night. Since the TV special stars Rosie O’Donnell as Beth and I prefer books anyway, I think I’ll read the book.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. This best-seller is set in Afghanistan under the Taliban. The author was born in Afghanistan, but he now lives in California. I hope the book’s presence on the best-seller shelf doesn’t mean that it is way too graphically violent or sexually explicit for my tastes. However, I do like exploring different worlds through the medium of fiction.

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I saw this one recommended on someone’s blog, and although it’s also a best-seller, it sounds intriguing. Whoops, I was googling to see who had recommended the book, and I found a very negativereview at Collected Miscellany. Oh, well, maybe I’ll try it anyway.

With No One As Witness by Elizabeth George. George is an American whose mysteries are all set in England (Scotland Yard). Inspector Thomas Lynley and his assistants Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata are chasing a serial killer in this one. George’s books are way too “graphically violent and sexually explicit” for me, but I read them anyway because the detectives themselves are so interesting.

Long Spoon Lane by Anne Perry. Anne Perry has two 1800’s mystery series, one set in the late 1800’s featuring William Monk, a private detective suffering from amnesia, and another with Police Detective Thomas Pitt and his wife Charlotte set in Victorian England. Long Spoon Lane has Pitt and Charlotte pursuing anarchists.

The Ambassador’s Son by Homer Hickam. Homer Hickam used to work for NASa (like Engineer Husband), so he’s popular in these parts. He wrote Rocket Boys which gave us the movie October Sky about a group of boys who become interested in rockets in the 1950’s in rural West Virginia. The Ambassador’s Son, according to Mr. Hickam’s website, “is an exciting Josh Thurlow adventure set in the exotic South Pacific.” It includes John Kennedy and Dick Nixon as fictional characters . . . ???

Right now I’m reading Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. It starts out slowly, but it’s good. The narrator reminds me of my father-in-law. I need to blog about him someday.

Impeccable Literary Taste?

Apr7

Shucks, I just know what I like. Marla Swoffer passed this book meme to me, so I’ll do my best to live up to expectations.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

I want to memorize Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, but I can only do it in English. It’s long, so it should keep me busy for awhile.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

One of my daughters has a crush on Lord Peter Wimsey. Does that count? I think I’ve had a crush on Meriadoc Brandybuck (not the actor, the fictional character).

The last book you bought is: Best Loved Poems of the American People ($5.00 at a discount bookstore)

The last book you read: I just finished The Silent Speaker by Rex Stout. I got it from the library because it’s one of the few Nero Wolfe mysteries I don’t have in my collection. (So much for my impeccable literary taste–if you look down on murder mysteries.)

What are you currently reading? I have a cold , and I’m reading Bad Ground by Dale Cramer.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
1. The Bible, of course.
2. Boy Scout Handbook or survival manual or whatever it is they have. I’d need it because I’m not outdoors-smart.
3. The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien
4. First Aid for Dummies
5. Les Miserables (if I hadn’t already memorized it).

April 2, 2005

Apr2

Today is the 200th anniversary of Denmark’s greatest storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen. What’s your favorite Andersen tale?

I like The Ugly Duckling, partly because Z-baby does such a plaintive rendition of the ugly duckling song from Timeless Tales from Hallmark: The Ugly Duckling. The words go like this:

I’m all alone, on my own,
With no one beside me,
No one to guide me,
On my own and all alone.

Unfortunately, you can’t get the full effect without Z-baby’s sweet little ducky voice. You can watch the video, which I recommend. I also recommend the 1952 movie, Hans Christian Andersen, with Danny Kaye. It’s got lots of good songs, too: Inchworm, I’m Hans Christian Andersen, Thumbelina, Wonderful Copenhagen. You and your urchins will enjoy the movie although it has only a tenuous connection to Andersen’s real life.

As for books, there are all sorts of editions, collections, illustrations, and other versions of Andersen’s fairy tales. I like this version of The Snow Queen by Amy Ehrlich, illustrated by one of my favorite artists, Susan Jeffers. To read the stories in English, you can go to this Andersen website.

Hans Christian Andersen had an interesting, if somewhat sad, life. He travelled extensively, and he met many famous authors including Victor Hugo, Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, and Charles Dickens. He fell in love with Jenny Lind, the famous soprano nicknamed “The Swedish Nightingale,” and he wrote his story “The Nightingale” as a tribute to her. Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, made fun of Andersen in a book, and Andersen retaliated by writing a play with a foolish philosopher as one of the characters.
The Hans Christian Andersen Center has Victor Borge playing Andersen’s ode to Denmark, Denmark, My Native Land.
Andersen Fairy Tales has animated versions of some of HCA’s tales on the web.
The Hans Christian Andersen Storytelling Center is in Central Park, NYC, and storytelling takes place there, rain or shine, from June until September. The storytelling center is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year along with HCA’s 200th birthday.
Hans Christian Andersen also enjoyed making paper cut-outs and silhouettes. He id said to have always carried a pair of scissors with him, and he often cut out characters and objects of paper to accompany his storytelling.

So have you had time to figure out your favorite HCA fairy tale? I think my favorite is “The Emperor’s New Clothes” because it seems to be applicable to so many situations in modern life. The innocent, but wise, person sees the truth while everyone else is pretending to believe a lie. The emperor truly does have no clothes. Don’t leave until you’ve told me what your favorite is and why you like it. (By the way, I think “The Little Fir Tree” is a terribly depressing Christmas story.)

March 31st Birthdays

Mar31

Rene Descartes, mathematician and philospher, b. 1596. Eldest Daughter read something by Descartes in one of her classes, and she’s added him to the list of historical characters for whom she has a strong antipathy. I’ll bet even she’d feel sorry for him after reading about his sad end:

In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden persuaded Descartes to go to Stockholm. However the Queen wanted to draw tangents at 5 a.m. and Descartes broke the habit of his lifetime of getting up at 11 o’clock. After only a few months in the cold northern climate, walking to the palace at 5 o’clock every morning, he died of pneumonia. –

Franz Josef Haydn, musician and composer, b. 1732.

Edward Fitzgerald, translator and poet, b. 1809. It’s difficult to say how much of Edward Fitzgerald’s “translation” of the eleventh century poet, philosopher, and scientist Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat is Fitzgerald and how much is Khayyam. Although a rather free translation, his version or versions are said to be more true to the spirit of the original than any more literal translation. It was my old friend Dante Gabriel Rossetti who made Fitzgerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam famous when he commended it.

Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet’s Paradise to come.
Ah, take the Cash, and let the promise go,
Nor heed the music of a distant Drum!

Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut, author of A Diary from Dixie, b. 1823. This diary is often quoted in the Ken Burns series on the Civil War. You can read it online. Mrs. Chesnut’s husband was a U.S. senator from South Carolina and then an aide to Jefferson Davis during the War.

Andrew Lang, poet, novelist, editor, folklorist, historian, biographer, scholar, and essayist, b. 1844. Of course, we know Lang for his multi-colored fairy tales books.

March 30th Birthdays

Mar30

Anna Sewell, author of Black Beauty, b. 1820. “We call them dumb animals, and so they are, for they cannot tell us how they feel, but they do not suffer less because they have no words.” Black Beauty is, of course, the definitive horse story and the prime example of an argument in fiction for the humane treatment of animals. Anna Sewell was disabled at the age of fourteen when a sprained (or maybe broken?) ankle was treated improperly. For the rest of her life, she depended on a pony cart for transportation since she could no longer walk. She began writing Black Beauty when she was in her forties after a doctor told her she had only a year to live. The book actually took her more than five years to write, and she died a few months after its publication. Anna Sewell and her family were Quakers and believed in non-violence toward people and animals.
I wonder what Anna Sewell would say about Terri Schiavo?

“My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”
“Now I say that with cruelty and oppression it is everybody’s business to interfere when they see it.”

Also, Vincent Van Gogh, artist, b. 1853. Go here to view all of Van Gogh’s paintings, letters, and other works online. You can also purchase a Van Gogh poster or read what critics think about Van Gogh’s work.
Paul Verlaine, French Decadent poet, b. 1844. I don’t read French, so I can’t really comment on his poetry, but he seems to have lived a decadent life. Somewhere in the middle of all the decadence, he converted to Catholicism, but the conversion may have been just another experiment in tasting all the sensatons that life had to offer.
I can’t think that either Van Gogh or Verlaine would have been easy or pleasant to know or to love.

The Children of Men by P.D. James

Mar29

Imagine a world in which there are no children.
Imagine a world in which the youngest people are twenty-five years old.
Imagine a world in which all the males are sterile, and therefore no babies can be conceived.
Imagine a world from which God has withdrawn the blessing of procreation.
The Children of Men by P.D. James pictures just such a dystopia in which the human race is only a short time away from extinction. It’s a sad world in which women lavish affection on dolls and kittens because they can no longer devote their love and attention to children. Men and women lose interest in sexual relations that have been stripped of meaning. The elderly commit suicide because they are no longer needed or useful to a younger generation.
There is a story, which starts out as a sort of 1984ish (Orwell) resistance against the dictatorship that has become the government of England in this dying world. Then, something unexpected turns the plot into fugitives running from the state police in an attempt to live long enough to save the world. Enough said. James is an excellent writer, and this novel, while different from her detective stories with Adam Dalgliesh the intellectual Scotland Yard detective, is thought-provoking and applicable to our time.
I wonder how it would affect the social behaviour of human beings to live in a society in which children are no longer valued or sought after? I wonder how Chinese people are changed by their “one child policy”? I wonder whether those parts of the world in which the birth rate has fallen below replacement are pushing themselves into the kind of world James describes?
We’ve already passed 1984 and we’ve seen some of the things Orwell describes come true: doublespeak, totalitarian dictatorships that use torture to control their people.
Similarly, James’s book contains some scary truths projected into a 2021 world from which all children have vanished. People in Western industrialized countries are having fewer children. The implications of this birth dearth are yet to be realized. P.D. James does not paint a pretty picture of a world without children.

St. Patrick’s Breastplate, or The Lorica

Mar17

This powerful poem/prayer of blessing and invocation is supposed to have been composed by St. Patrick himself both in Latin and in Gaelic. This version is one translation that I found here.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.

I arise today through the strength of Christ with His Baptism,
through the strength of His Crucifixion with His Burial
through the strength of His Resurrection with His Ascension,
through the strength of His descent for the Judgment of Doom.

I arise today through the strength of the love of Cherubim
in obedience of Angels, in the service of the Archangels,
in hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
in prayers of Patriarchs, in predictions of Prophets,
in preachings of Apostles, in faiths of Confessors,
in innocence of Holy Virgins, in deeds of righteous men.

I arise today, through the strength of Heaven:
light of Sun, brilliance of Moon, splendour of Fire,
speed of Lightning, swiftness of Wind, depth of Sea,
stability of Earth, firmness of Rock.

I arise today, through God’s strength to pilot me: God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me,
God’s host to secure me:
against snares of devils, against temptations of vices, against inclinations of nature, against everyone who shall wish me ill, afar and anear, alone and in a crowd.
I summon today all these powers between me (and these evils):
against every cruel and merciless power that may oppose my body and my soul,
against incantations of false prophets,
against black laws of heathenry,
against false laws of heretics, against craft of idolatry,
against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
against every knowledge that endangers man’s body and soul.
Christ to protect me today against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, so that there may come abundance of reward.

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ in me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ on my right,
Christ on my left, Christ in breadth, Christ in length,
Christ in height, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me.

I arise today through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.
Salvation is of the Lord. Salvation is of the Lord.
Salvation is of Christ. May Thy Salvation, O Lord, be ever with us.

A Few (shorter) Irish Blessings for St. Patrick’s Day

Mar17

May your neighbors respect you,
Trouble neglect you,
The angels protect you,
And heaven accept you

May you have warm words on a cold evening, a full moon on a dark night, and the road downhill all the way to your door.

May there be a generation of children
On the children of your children.

May God be with you and bless you,
May you see your children’s children,
May you be poor in misfortune, rich in blessings.
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

May those who love us, love us
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts
And if he can’t turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles
So we will know them by their limping!

Airborn by Kenneth Oppel

Mar16

What if airplanes had never been invented? What if all the technological innovation of the early 20th century had gone into perfecting air travel in huge airships kept aloft by a gas called hydrium that was even lighter than hydrogen?
In Kenneth Oppel’s alternative history Airborn, the Aurora is just such an airship, larger and more luxurious than the Titanic. And Matt is a cabin boy on the Aurora. He has no fear of heights and feels he was born to fly an airship, particularly the Aurora, his home. As the novel begins, Matt’s airship encounters a hot air balloon and its pilot on a trip to circumnavigate the globe. However, the balloon is in distress, and Matt must rescue the pilot at the risk of his own life.
This rescue is just the beginning of Matt’s adventures. He and his friend Kate search for an almost mythical creature, explore an island, and fight air pirates–while attempting to remain just friends. The book was sheer fun and adventure, with a little romance thrown in, and a satisfying ending.

March 14th Birthdays

Mar14

Arthur William Edgar O’Shaughnesy, English poet, b 1844.
Albert Einstein, scientist, b. 1879. This year is the centennial of Einstein’s “Annus Mirabilis,” his miracle year of 1905, during which he created the Special Theory of Relativity and the quantum theory of light, explained in one paper Brownian motion and in another how to determine the size of atoms or molecules in space, and extended the theory of relativity to include the famous equation E-mc squared. He did all this while working forty hours a week in a patent office. I don’t have a clue what any of these discoveries really mean, but I’m impressed with the Einstein miracle.

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.” Albert Einstein

Marguerite DeAngeli, author of 1950’s Newbery-award winning book, The Door in the Wall, b. 1889. In this favorite quote from The Door in the Wall, Brother Matthew is speaking to Robin, a boy who has been crippled probably by polio:

“Whether thou’lt walk soon I know not. This I know. We must teach thy hands to be skillful in many ways, and we must teach thy mind to go about whether thy legs will carry thee or no. For reading is another door in the wall, dost understand, my son?”