K-Dramas Recommended

Feb25

The following K-Dramas (Korean TV drama) have been recommended lately in various blog posts that I have seen. I’m making a list here for future reference. Why is the latest TV-watching fad (other than Downton Abbey) seemingly coming out of tiny Korea?

Queen in Hyuns Man aka Queen and I, recommended at Christ and Pop Culture. Time travel romance. Also recommended at With an Accent. I started watching this one, and so far it’s cute, but a little confusing.

King 2 Hearts, recommended at The Common Room.

Full House, with actors Song Hye-kyo, Rain, Han Eun-jeong and Kim Sung-soo, recommended at The Common Room. Romantic comedy.

City Hunter, recommended at The Common Room. Also recommended at Christ and Pop Culture. Crime/revenge story.

Jumong, recommended at The Common Room. Historical drama.

Secret Garden, recommended at The Common Room. Body-swapping romantic comedy.

Rooftop Prince, recommended at Something Out of the Ordinary.

Faith/The Great Doctor, recommended at The Common Room. Time travel historical drama.

Hello Miss, recommended at The Common Room.

Golden Bride, recommended in a comment by Harmonyl at The Common Room post on K-drama.

Tree With Deep Roots, recommended in a comment by Harmonyl at The Common Room post on K-drama. Combination mystery thriller, action, romance, and historical.

Heartstrings, recommended at The Common Room.

Don’t Ask Me About the Past, recommended at The Common Room

Apparently, you can watch these on Hulu or sometimes on Netflix, and lots of people are enjoying them. The Headmistress at The Common Room says she’s addicted. I don’t have room in my life for any new addictions, but around the first of the year I may check one of these series/movies out.

Any other suggestions?

Bad Religion by Ross Douthat

Feb24

Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has written a useful, compact history of the progression of Christian thought and heresy from the rise of modernism in the 1920’s (and again in the 1960’s)to the post-WW II revival of Christian neo-orthodoxy to the dissolution of church-going, especially in the mainline Protestant churches, in the 1960’s and 70’s, to the rise of evangelicalism to the present day lapse into mostly-heresy. Of course, these are trends not absolute descriptions of every Christian or every denomination.

I say it’s useful even though Douthat paints with a broad brush, and he admits that “a different set of emphases and shadings could yield a very different portrait of American Christianity at midcentury.” This caveat extends to the entire book. Douthat makes statements such as “the message of Christianity itself seemed to have suddenly lost its credibility” (in the 1970’s) or we are a nation “where gurus and therapists have filled the roles once occupied by spouses and friends.” I read these sorts of categorical statements, and at first I agree, but then I think of all sorts of exceptions and conditions and stipulations.

Maybe this book is the sort of nonfiction polemic which is best reviewed by my giving you a chapter-by-chapter summary of the major theses of Douthat’s argument, and then you can judge for yourself whether or not the book would be useful for you to read.

Part 1 of the book is history, a brief overview of the fluctuations in faith and practice of orthodox Christianity in the twentieth century and the twenty-first.

Chapter One: The Lost World. This chapter begins with the conversion to Catholicism of poet W.H. Auden and continues with Reinhold Niebuhr, Billy Graham, Archbishop Fulton Sheen, and Martin Luther King, Jr. as emblematic of the post-war return to Christianity and neoorthodoxy. Christian churches had the potential to become “the salt of the earth, a light to the nations, and a place where even modern man could find a home.”

Chapter Two: The Locust Years. The 1960’s and 70’s brought continued growth for conservative churches but but a crisis for mainline Protestant chuches and for Catholic parishes in the United States. “The culture of mainline Protestantism simply disintegrated,” and Catholics lost in terms of mass attendance, priestly and other vocations, and participation in almost every aspect of parish life. Douthat argues that political polarization, the sexual revolution, globalization and resulting religious universalism, and America’s ever-growing wealth combined to cause the decline in the credibility and eventually practice of the traditional, orthodox Christian message.

Chapter Three: Accomodation. Many churches and denominations responded to the challenges of the 60’s and 70 with an accomodationist message: “seek to forge a new Christianity more consonant with the spirit of the age, one better adapted to the trends that were undercutting orthodoxy.” The accomodationists, Catholic and Protestant, lost members, but didn’t simply disappear.

Chapter Four: Resistance. Other churches chose a different path: resistance to forces of modernism, sexual and materialistic hedonism, and moral relativism. Eventually, Catholics and Evangelicals found themselves as co-belligerents in resisting the “spirit of the age” and defending traditional Christian beliefs. As Evangelicalism grew, evangelicals re-engaged in politics and public life; Catholics moved away from adapting to the secular culture to the “tireless proselytization” and “moral arguments” of Pope John Paul II. However, the resistance wasn’t enough to stem the tide of heresy.

So, Part 2 of the book is entitled The Age of Heresy.

Chapter Five: Lost in the Gospels. Liberal, Dan Brown/Bart Ehrman/Eileen Pagels pseudo-Christian pseudo-scholarship encourages Americans to invent their own religion in which “no account of Christian origins is more authoritative than any other, ‘cafeteria’ Christianity is more intellectually serious than the orthodox attempt to grapple with the entire New Testament buffet, and the only Jesus who really matters is the one you invent for yourself.”

Chapter Six: Pray and Grow Rich. Joel Osteen, Kenneth Hagin, and others preach a Jesus who may not say crudely “name it and claim it” but who still “seems less like a savior than like a college buddy with really good stock tips, which are more or less guaranteed to pay off for any Christian bold enough to act on them.” I think Mr. Douthat goes a little off-course when he associates financial counselors like Larry Burkett and pastors such as Rick Warren, who Douthat admits have criticized the prosperity teaching of the Word-Faith movement, with that same heretical theology. It’s always tempting to tie everything into your thesis and make the chapter balance.

Chapter Seven: The God Within. “The message of Eat, Pray, Love (by Elizabeth Gilbert) is the same gospel preached by a cavalcade of contemporary gurus, teachers, and would-be holy men and women: Deepak Chopra and Eckhart Tolle, Paulo Coelho and James Redfield, Neale Donald Walsch and Marianne Williamson. It’s the insight offered by just about every spiritual authority ever given a platform in Oprah Winfrey’s media empire.” God exists, if He exists, inside our own hearts and minds and souls, a subset of Me.

Chapter Eight: The City on a Hill. Of course, it’s not just the New-Age liberals who have succumbed to heresy or to heretical tendencies. “A version of (American) exceptionalism is entirely compatible with Christian orthodoxy. . . Christianity makes room for particular loves and loyalties, but not for myths of national innocence or fantasies about building the kingdom of heaven on earth.” When Christians begin to go along with the slogan “my country, right or wrong” or worse, believe that America can do no wrong, they are in danger of placing a kingdom of this world before the kingdom of our Lord.

The final, brief section of Mr. Douthat’s book is a conclusion called The Recovery of Christianity. He suggests some possible sources and models for renewal: the emerging church movement, the neo-monastic movement, church growth in the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and societal and financial catastrophe that may vindicate and make relevant again the Christian message.

I have serious doubts that any of those four events and movements will be the catalyst that God uses for revival. However, as Mr Douthat writes, “the kind of faith that should animate such a (Christian) renaissance can be lived out Christian by Christian, congregation by congregation, day by day, without regard to whether it succeeds in changing the American way of religion as a whole.” God is responsible for revival; I am responsible to live an obedient life before Him daily.

I’ve given a broad overview of a book that has much specific food for thought, challenging, even convicting, words of warning, and a few practical ideas about “how we then should live.” Recommended for all Christians, especially those who are involved in and thinking about political and cultural engagement.

Celebrating Purim

Feb21

The Jewish holiday of Purim begins at sundown on Saturday, February 23rd. Purim is the commemoration of the deliverance of the Jewish people from genocide at the hand of a Persian official named Haman. The Jewish girl Esther was used by God to effect this deliverance, as chronicled in the Book of Esther in the Bible.

The photo pictures a sample of the Jewish treat hamentashen which is traditionally served on Purim.

Here are few links to posts here at Semicolon and elsewhere about celebrating the story of Esther and God’s Purim deliverance of His people:

Esther by Chuck Swindoll. Some thoughts from me, not only on Mr. Swindoll’s book but also on Christian fiction and God’s calling for people in key places.

Soundtrack for the book of Esther. A few songs that I think embody the themes of the book.

Esther, Illustrated.

Purim: Celebrating Our Deliverance.

Annie’s Feast of Purim Page.

55 TV Series Worth Checking Out

Feb21

Maybe you don’t want to watch every episode of all of these. I certainly haven’t. But they are all worth an hour or a half hour of your time to check them out. You might end up laughing, or crying, your way through the entire series.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot. I love Dame Agatha’s novels and stories, and I love David Suchet as Poirot.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents. If you like The Twilight Zone or if you’ve been captivated by Rear Window or Vertigo, you’ll also enjoy Hitchcock’s TV series. Spooky and riveting.

Alias Smith and Jones. A Western comedy/drama about a couple of outlaws who want to earn their pardon by going straight. Unfortunately, the odds are not in their favor. I used to love this show when I was a young teenager.

The Andy Griffith Show. Andy Griffith stars as Sheriff Andy Taylor, and Don Knots plays his hapless deputy, Barney Fife. Good clean fun in Mayberry, North Carolina.

Anne of Green Gables. Megan Follows and Colleen Dewhurst and especially Richard Farnsworth as Matthew make this classic story come to life.

Band of Brothers. This Steven Spielberg-Tom Hanks production tells the true story of Easy Company (E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division) from D-Day to the end of the war in Europe.

Baseball by Ken Burns. Mr Burns is just a good historian and filmmaker. I don’t even like basebal or sports in general, and yet I still found this series entertaining and educational.

Bleak House. BBC mini-series by Andrew Davies based on the novel by Charles Dickens.

Burn Notice. My most recent TV show. I watched all the way through five seasons. There are lots of explosions and shooting and general mayhem, but underneath all the fancy fireworks this spy show has heart as it depicts the relationships between old friends and between a mother and son. Nick Rynerson on the fairytale-esque moral universe of Burn Notice.

Brideshead Revisited. 1981 British TV serial based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel. This mini-series is much better than the 2008 movie in my opinion.

Cadfael. A medieval detective, monk, herbalist, and gardener played by Derek Jacobi. I like almost anything Mr. Jacobi plays in.

Christy. The book is better, but actress Kellie Martin made a beautiful Christy, and Tyne Daly was convincing as Miss Alice. Based on the book by Catherine Marshall.

The Civil War by Ken Burns. Absolutely mesmerizing documentary history of America’s defining war.

The Cosby Show. Bill Cosby is so funny, and the supporting cast of this justly popular comedy was the perfect TV family.

Cranford. Based on Mrs. Gaskell’s series of stories about the spinsters who live in the small town of Cranford, this series stars Dame Judy Dench and Eileen Atkins as the Smith sisters.

The Dick Van Dyke Show. Another funny guy, and another great TV family. My urchins have enjoyed this show a lot.

Doc Martin A British surgeon with impaired social skills develops a fear of blood and becomes a family practice doctor in a small town.

Downton Abbey. The first season of this British period drama began in 1912 with the sinking of the Titanic and ended with the outbreak of World War I, and it was a great ride. I laughed, I cried. The second season, which takes places during World War I, was just as good, if not better. I’m really ~~looking forward to~~ enjoying the third season this year. (Addendum 2/18/2013: The last episode of the third season was too, too much.)

Friday Night Lights. Here’s my final opinion about this series. Overall, I thought it was well worth the time.

Gillgan’s Island. Sitcom about “a fateful trip” in which five passengers, the first mate and the skipper of small boat are marooned on a desert island, featuring Bob Denver as Gilligan. Here’s the theme song intro that gives the basic premise.

Green Acres. A parody of a parody of a parody of country life, Green Acres is the place to be. Not to be taken seriously ever.

Hogan’s Heroes. A sitcom set in a Nazi prisoner of war camp? It sounds a little non-PC nowadays, but back in the late 60’s it was ridiculously farcical. American Colonel Hogan would routinely manipulate the incompetent Commander Klink and get Sergeant Schultz to look the other way while Hogan’s men conducted secret spy and underground missions. The signature line is from Sergeant Schultz, one of the camp guards who ignores the hijinks going on the prisoners’ barracks: “I see nothink. I hear nothink. I know nothink.”

How It’s Made. A documentary showing how common, everyday items are manufactured. Z-baby enjoys this show.

I, Claudius. 1976 British mini-series based on the novel by Robert Graves, starring Derek Jacobi as Claudius the accidental and seemingly mad emperor of Rome.

I Love Lucy. Classic television. Classic comedy.

The Jack Benny Show. Also classic. My grandmother and I used to watch Jack Benny together on Friday nights when I spent the night at her house. Good memories.

Jane Eyre. Based on the book by Charlotte Bronte, this 1983 BBC production starred Timothy Dalton as Mr. Rochester, and it was quite well done and true to the book.

John Adams. Based on the biography by David McCullough.

Larkrise to Candleford. Inhabitants of small English village in the late 1800’s are seen through the eyes of the postmistress and her assistant.

Little House on the Prairie. The earliest episodes and seasons of this long-running dramatic series based on the books by Laura Ingalls Wilder are the best, but it’s mostly worth watching.

LOST. The best TV drama series ever. Start at the beginning and go until you hit the ending. Be somewhat disappointed, either that it’s over or that it ends the way it does. Love it anyway.

Magic School Bus. Science and magical fun for kids.

M*A*S*H* Vietnam-era sensibilities hilariously transported to the Korean War.

Mission Impossible. This spies and gadgets series premiered on September 17, 1966, and it went through eight seasons. “Your mission, should you decide to accept it” and “this recording will self-destruct in five seconds” quickly became popular catch-phrases, and the movies with Tom Cruise are only more enjoyable after you’ve seen some of the original.

Monk. A detective with OCD. What will they think of next?

Mork and Mindy. Robin Williams plays alien space creature Mork from the planet Ork. This silly TV show about a girl who befriends a space alien was where Robin Williams got his start in acting. “Nanoo, nanoo!”

Mythbusters. Two Hollywood special effects experts attempt to debunk urban legends by directly testing them.

North and South. Based on the novel by Mrs. Gaskell, nothing to do with the American Civil War, and featuring the same actor who plays Mr. Bates on Downton Abbey, the talented Brendan Coyle.

Numb3ers. A detective with obsessive-compulsive, amazing genius math skills.

Once Upon a Time. This is a new show (two seasons so far) from the producers of LOST, and our family enjoyed the first season very much. Itâ€™s about fairytale characters trapped in our world by an evil curse. The characters have no memory of who they really are, and itâ€™s up to Snow Whiteâ€™s and Prince Charmingâ€™s daughter, Emma, to free them from the curse.

Perry Mason. Raymond Burr is the suave, intelligent defense lawyer who almost never loses a case.

Pride and Prejudice. Starring Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. Yes, I too love Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy.

Psych. A detective who claims to to have psychic abilities, but actually has hyperactive intelligence and lots of boy-charm.

Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton and books. This kids’ series is fun for adults, too, and it features books, book, and more books! Yeah for books!

The Red Skelton Hour. If you can’t watch the whole show, watch a little Red Skelton on youtube. Such a great clown.

The Rockford Files. James Garner as Jim Rockford, an ex-con, seedy detective with lots of heart and not much money. Lots of car chases, beautiful femmes fatales, and mob violence set on/near the beach in sunny California.

Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends It’s the only animated series on this list because it’s the only one I would care to revisit. I mean who could resist “Fractured Fairy Tales” and “Peabody’s Improbable Adventures” and “Dudley Doright”, not mention the stars of the show, Bullwinkle Moose and Rocky the Flying Squirrel? Intelligent and hilarious cartoons.

Roots. Alex Haley researched his ancestry and what he couldn’t find out, he made up (and probably plagiarized.) It’s still good TV/historical fiction.

Route 66. Martin Milner and George Maharis drive their Corvette down Route 66, looking for adventure.

The Six Wives of Henry VIII. This series of six episodes about the infamous Henry and his serial wives was one of my favorites when I was a young, impressionable girl. I learned a lot about British history, and I learned never to marry a king.

Star Trek. The original series created by Gene Roddenberry with Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) and all the other iconic characters. Free full-length Star Trek episodes at CBS.com. Also available for free with Amazon Prime.

The Twilight Zone. These episodes of quiet nightmare and horror are mostly memorable and iconic.

The Waltons. A 1970’s family drama set during the Great Depression. It features a large, country family who share the values of hard work and family support to get them through hard times. Richard Thomas stars as John-Boy Walton, narrator of the story and the oldest son of the Walton clan.

Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years, 1929-1939. This series takes place before Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain during WW II, and it shows what made him the man he was. Actor Robert Hardy IS Winston Churchill in the realm of my imagination.

White Collar. I’m enjoying this series now. It’s about a con man and an FBI agent who become unlikely, sometimes uneasy, allies and friends.

Dowager Countess Lady Grantham’s Maxims

Feb20

“No one wants to kiss a girl in black.”

“I couldn’t have electricity in the house; I wouldn’t sleep a wink. All those vapors floating about.”

“No Englishman would dream of dying in someone elseâ€™s house.â€

“To have strange men prodding and prying around the house. To say nothing of pocketing the spoons. It’s out of the question.”

“Don’t be defeatist, dear. It’s very middle-class.”

“Life is a game, where the player must appear ridiculous.â€

â€œIâ€™m not a romantic . . . But even I concede that the heart does not exist solely for the purpose of pumping blood.â€

“When you give these little people power, it goes to their heads like strong drink.”

“Sometimes we must let the blow fall by degrees. Give him time to find the strength to face it.”

“The truth is neither here nor there. It’s the look of the thing that matters.”

A woman isn’t entitled to her own opinions “until she is married, then her husband will tell her what her opinions are.”

â€œIâ€™m a woman … I can be as contrary as I choose.â€

“It’s bad enough parenting a child when you like each other.”

“You can normally find an Italian who isn’t too picky.”

“Oh, I should steer clear of May. Marry in May, rue the day.”

â€œEveryone goes down the aisle with half the story hidden.â€

“Americans never understand the importance of tradition.”

“Marriage is a long business.”

“Nothing succeeds like excess.”

“No guest should be admitted without the date of their departure being known.”

“It seems a pity to miss such a good pudding.”

“Grief makes one so terribly tired.”

“Lie is so unmusical a word.”

Finally, here’s a quote from Maggie Smith on working with the American actress Shirley MacLaine:

“I know there is something out there and like most people, I tend to believe in it more when things go bad. But I’m not like Shirley MacLaine, who probably believes we were past lovers in another life.”

Futuristic Computer Techie Fiction

Feb19

Little Brother by Cory Doctorow.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.

OK, I made that genre name up all by myself. “Techno-thriller” and “genre-busting” are the terms I’ve most often seen applied to these novels. The thing I like about these books is definitely NOT the testosterone-fueled language, violence, and general boy-ness, but rather it seems that unlike many of us both inside and outside the gaming world, Mr. Doctorow and Mr. Cline have thought long and hard about the implications and trends in our technological culture, particularly those related to immersing ourselves in video games and internet alternate worlds. And the scenarios are not necessarily pretty, although the books cited above avoid an alarmist hatred of the virtual world while showing the possible dangers of our rush toward a world enmeshed in and enthralled by the virtual world of computers and computer gaming.

Cory Doctorow is, according to Wikipedia, “a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog Boing Boing.” He’s also the author of the first three books on the above list, and maybe the partial inspiration for the fourth. In Pirate Cinema, Doctorow’s latest (whoops, it looks as if he’s just released a sequel to Little Brother called Homeland, so not his latest), the language is rough and there is support for stealing and for recreational drug use. However, Doctorowâ€™s insight into the underworld of hacker culture is still fascinating, even if I donâ€™t agree with all of his hobbyhorse ideas. In the book sixteen year old Trent is obsessed with making movies on his computer. The problem is that he uses cuts from old movies to make his new, artistically reassembled, movies. And in this England of the near-future, this plagiarism or pirating of old movies is highly illegal and punishable by death. OK, not death, but near-death: loss of all internet privileges. Because he’s caused his entire family to lose access to the internet, access which has become indispensable to workers, students, and anyone else who wants healthcare or economic or government engagement, Trent leaves home and immerses himself in the underground London world of the homeless and the disenfranchised. He also meets the artists and activists who are trying to change the law to make his work and the art of others like him legal and socially acceptable. The message of the book is obvious and a bit heavy-handed: copyright law is bad and stifles artists. Whether you agree with that premise or not (I disagree mostly), Pirate Cinema will make you think about who owns what and why. In keeping with Doctorow’s copyright philosophy, Pirate Cinema is available at his website as a free download.

Ready Player One is obviously a tribute of sorts to Doctorow’s books and ideas. In fact, at one point Doctorow, along with actor Will Wheaton, are mentioned as minor characters in the book, two of the “good guys.” In the year 2044 Wade Watts escapes the poverty and hopelessness of the real world by spending most of his time plugged into the Oasis, a virtual world that has in some cases overtaken the real world. Wade goes to school in the Oasis, and after school he spends most of his waking hours looking for the answers to the riddle that Oasis creator James Halliday encoded into his virtual universe before he died. The person who solves Halliday’s puzzles, based on the pop culture of Halliday’s youth in the 1980’s, will win a fortune.

Unfortunately for me, I missed most of the 80’s. I was busy being a newlywed, graduate student, librarian, and then having babies. Pop culture in the 80’s passed me by, went over my head, and generally didn’t interest my twenty-something self. Now if you ask me about the 1970’s . . . Fortunately for me, some of the stuff Halliday used in his puzzle tribute/Easter egg that is embedded in the Oasis began in the 1970’s and extended into the eighties, so I knew about Star Wars, Back to the Future, PacMan, Dungeons and Dragons, and lots of other stuff from the book. Other eighties cultural memories that the book references were completely unknown to me. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. The story is great, and Wade is a likable, flawed, and engaging hero.

Geeky grown-up kids of the eighties (and seventies) and geeky kids that have grown up since then will all enjoy this tribute to our computer-driven culture that still manages to showcase some of the problems with our obsession with games and computers and virtual worlds and social media. I won’t spoil the ending, but Wade learns that real face-to-face relationships have their advantages. The book does contain positive references to homosexual behavior, and God is considered irrelevant throughout the book. The bad language is typical teenage boy-type stuff, but somewhat offensive.

I recommend both Cline’s book and those by Mr. Doctorow for those who are mature enough to sort out the ideas and philosophies contained in the futuristic worlds that the authors have created. Mr. Cline and Mr. Doctorow both raise questions worth thinking about in regard to our tech-permeated world, even if I don’t agree with all the “answers” they sometimes take for granted.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Feb17

This novel from a Nigerian/American author is classified as young adult fiction in my library, probably because the narrator is fifteen years old, but I think it will resonate with adults of all ages, and with readers around the world because the themes–abusive relationships, religious legalism, freedom, and the source of joy–are all universal themes.

Fifteen year old Kambili and her older brother Jaja live with their mother and father in a wealthy or at least upper middle class Catholic home in Enugu, Nigeria. Their father’s strict, legalistic Catholicism pervades the family’s life, from twenty minute prayers before meals to reciting the rosary on car trips to fasting before mass every Sunday. Not only is the family required to be strictly Catholic by Kambili’s papa but they are also held to a stringent schedule made up of course by the father. Kambili has conflicting feelings about Papa: she is pleased, even thrilled, when he approves of her words or actions, but of course when harsh punishment comes her way, Kambili is crushed.

Then, the catalyst for change enters the life of this silent, repressed family: Kambili’s Aunty Ifeoma invites the children to visit her home in Nsukka. Aunty Ifeoma is a widow, a teacher, much poorer than her brother, but the joy in Aunty’s home is overflowing and overwhelming for her love-starved niece and nephew. Kambili and Jaja learn another way of life, without rigid schedules and authoritarian rule-keeping, and most of all without fear. Kambili, who comes across as much younger than fifteen throughout most of the story probably because of her repressed childhood, doesn’t know what to think or do with all the freedom that she is given in Aunty Ifeoma’s home, so she mostly does nothing and remains very, very quiet, even silent. Jaja sees the possibilities of freedom and becomes rebellious. However, it is the children’s meek, long-suffering mother, who has also suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, who takes the most surprising action of all.

The story is terribly sad. The depth of the dysfunction and abuse in the family is revealed slowly, a little at a time, until it becomes overpowering. Papa is not a wholly evil man; he publishes the truth about the government in his newspaper and he is generous to the poor, to family, and to many others. But of course, this generosity and honesty displayed to outside world makes the secret, petty evil that Papa perpetrates inside his home even worse.

I hope I haven’t spoiled the narrative arc of this novel by telling what it is generally about. I don’t think so. Ms. Adichie is quite skilled in the way she spins her story, and she enlists our sympathy as readers for all the characters in the novel, even Papa to some extent. One senses that he is caught in a web of legalism himself, and he cannot see a way out. That emotional captivity certainly doesn’t justify the abuse, but it explains to some extent why the children and their mother take so long to escape and why their feelings about Papa are so contradictory and confused.

Recommended.

Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic by Matthew Lickona

Feb15

My Protestant sensibilities are put off and, yes, somewhat offended by what Mr. Lickona and the Catholic Church call “sacramentals”. A scapular is a sacramental (sacred object or action) worn by lay Catholics to remind them of their devotion to the church and to the Lord:

“The devotional scapular typically consists of two small (usually rectangular) pieces of cloth, wood or laminated paper, a few inches in size, which may bear religious images or text. These are joined by two bands of cloth and the wearer places one square on the chest, rests the bands one on each shoulder and lets the second square drop down the back. In many cases . . . the scapular come(s) with a set of promises for the faithful who wear them. Some of the promises are rooted in tradition, and others have been formally approved by religious leaders. For instance, for Roman Catholics, as for some other sacramentals, over the centuries several popes have approved specific indulgences for scapulars.” ~Wikipedia

It feels superstitious to me, and Mr. Lickona admits in his book that the idea of sacramentals and indulgences sometimes bothers him a bit, too. Nevertheless, as I read about Matthew Lickona’s spiritual journey from cradle Catholic to mature and devout defender of the faith, I was impressed with the centrality of the things that I believe really matter: devotion to Christ and commitment to trust in His grace to carry us through the things that we don’t always understand.

“I am a Roman Catholic, baptized as an infant and raised in the faith, a faith which holds the exemplary and redemptive suffering of Jesus Christ at its core.”

“My faith is weak. I am anxious when I think about the future. I have trouble considering the lilies of the field. I ought to trust in the Lord, I know; it’s His will I’m trying to obey. But He has been known to give crosses as gifts, so I often look elsewhere for comfort.”

“I think about God and the faith, and I hope my thinking has some spiritual worth. But knowing a great deal about God is not knowing God. Faith in Him is bound up with knowing Him, and woe to me if my faith is borrowed from the true faith of others. Because if I do not know Him, I fear He will not know me, and the door will be shut.”

“Just as I don’t base my faith on a personal experience of God, I don’t imagine that any particular personal suffering would make me doubt his existence, any more than it would make me doubt that water is wet. I do not tie up God’s existence, or even His love, with the sufferings of the world. My God is the God of Job.”

My God, too is the God of Job and of Peter, (Mr. Lickona would call him Saint Peter) who said to Jesus, “”Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”

As long as we’re both following Jesus for those words that give eternal life, I can ignore the scapulars and the statues of the saints and the other Catholic trappings that Mr. Lickona says draw him to Christ and that I see as distractions at best. I think Matthew Lickona and I would disagree about many things, but it seems to me after reading his spiritual memoir that he and I would agree about Jesus.

I’ll be content to let Him sort out the rest of it at the Judgement, and if Mr. Lickona wants to go swimming with his scapular firmly in place to remind him of the grace and mercy of Our Lord Jesus, who am I to argue?

“Who are you to judge someone elseâ€™s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand.” Romans 14:4

Matthew Lickona’s blog, Korrektiv: bad Catholics blogging at a time near the end of the world

Downton Abbey Links and Thinks

Feb11

First of all, Upside Downton Abbey:

Melissa Wiley is blogging about each episode of Downton after it airs over at Geek Mom.

If Downton Abbey took place entirely on Facebook . . .

Best “Maggie Moments”:

By the way, Amazon will have exclusive rights to Downton Abbey Season 3 on June 18th, and will gain exclusive rights to the other two seasons â€œlater this year.â€ It won’t be available on Netflix or Hulu, starting sometime later this year.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Feb9

Victor Hugo’s epic novel is divided into five volumes:

Volume 1: Fantine
Volume 2: Cosette
Volume 3: Marius
Volume 4: Saint-Denis
Volume 5: Jean Valjean

In January I read, or rather re-read, the first two volumes, but I’m sort of stuck. I first read the entire novel when I was in college. This reading was back in the Dark Ages, before the stage musical, before any movie versions that I was aware of, certainly before the most recent movie musical version starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. I didn’t know what would happen to Cosette, Marius, and Jean Valjean. This burning desire to know how the story would turn out explains why I stayed up until two in the morning once upon a college dorm room, reading Les Miserables even though I had an eight o’clock class that same morning. I had to finish; I had to know.

Now I already know. And although I am enjoying my re-read thirty-plus years later, I no longer have the suspense pulling at me to finish the novel. So, I’m not sure when I will get the motivation to go ahead and read the rest, but here are a few observations on the first two parts.

The first part of Book 1, like the first part of the musical, actually focuses on Monseigneur Bienvenu, the Bishop of M., who first shows Jean Valjean what grace and mercy look like.

Of M. Bienvenu: “He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.” Brown Bear Daughter thinks the good bishop is too good to be true, but I have met people who, having put their past behind them (and it is implied that M. Bienvenue may have a past of some sort), are veritable saints.

However, Jean Valjean does not immediately become good after his life-changing encounter with the bishop. Even after he is shown mercy, in the book Valjean robs a child on the road, out of habit(?) or dullness or ingrained hopelessness. He only sees himself in his own sin after this shameful act that cannot be excused by “the law is too harsh” or “I had to help my sister and her children by stealing a loaf of bread.” When Valjean sees himself in all his wickedness, then he is given even more grace to go ahead and “become an honest man,” sort of, or at least a useful and respectable man.

Fantine is another character who is more multi-dimensional in the novel than in the musical/movie. She is certainly “more sinned against”, abandoned by Cosette’s father, cheated by the Thenardiers, and driven into debt, prostitution, and slavery by her situation. However, she also nurses hatred and pride in her heart as she thinks of how she lost her factory job and as she continues on to a life of prostitution instead of appealing to M. Madeleine to give her job back. And she, like Valjean, needs and receives redemption and mercy.

Part 2 does introduce us to Cosette, and we watch her grow into a young lady as Jean Valjean grows in his ability to love and to sacrifice himself for another. He becomes Cosette’s true father.

Girl Detective enjoyed reading all 1231 pages of Les Miserables, but she complains, as do most people, about the long digressions and says the book begs to be abridged. I understand and have some sympathy for the abridgment position, especially when it comes to the name-dropping, political sections when Tholomyes and later Marius and his friends talk about people and political situations that we latter-day readers have never heard of and don’t need or want to know about. The political/historical parts where Hugo writes about people who add no value to the story are skippable. But the sewer and the cloister chapters are actually quite interesting to me anyway, and they set a tone for the setting of the story that I think makes it richer and more intense. (Not sure those are the right adjectives? Maybe â€œdeepâ€ or â€œvividâ€.) Yeah, you can skip those and the whole battle of Waterloo, except the part where Thenardier rescues somebody, and the argot chapter and itâ€™s OK, but I would argue that at the least there is good writing (essay and historical writing) there, too.

If the digressions bore you, skip them or get an abridged version. If you’re like me and you enjoy ponderous chapters full of information about arcane subjects, chapters that interrupt the action but do something that I can’t put my finger on exactly for the tone and development of the story, then go ahead and read them. I can’t say that you miss anything, really, by skipping, or that there is any virtue in being able to say you’ve read the entire, unabridged version. Just read it in some version. My favorite novel ever.

By the way, I loved the movie, except for the one part with Santa and various other vulgar vignettes in the Thenardiers’ inn, a scene which begged to be abridged, cut, censored and never even thought up in the first place. Drunken Santa Claus, at least, makes no appearance in Victor Hugo’s novel.

Novel Views: Les Miserables by Jeff Clark. These charts and graphs are fascinating. Did you know that, other than character names, some of the most common words used in Les Miserables are: bishop, love, mother, child, gamin, Paris, old, right, war, barricade, sewer, man, day, street, city, wall, door? And each character has characteristic verbs that are used to describe his/her actions.
Jean Valjean fell, condemned, concealed, stood, robbed, slept, caught.
Fantine coughed, sighed, sang, shared.
Cosette gazed, grew, developed, fetched, noticed, woke, loved.
Marius lived, fixed, paid, launched, fell, reflected, heard.
Javert pinioned, killed, permitted, bound, hunted, recognized, yielded.
Thenardier screamed, unmasked, growled, shook, lied, cast, thrust.
Gavroche muttered, sang, scratched, climbed, shrugged, pushed.

Emotional Detachment and Les Miserables by Michael Sacasas at Mere Orthodoxy. This article asks if some critics of the new movie and of the story itself are disturbed by “having been brought dangerously near the edge of feeling again what had been assiduously suppressed by reflexively deployed irony or cynicism.”

Les Miserables book study at the blog Mommy Life. Barbara Curtis, the blogger at Mommy Life has gone on to be with the Lord, but her blog lives on in cyberspace. Her comments and thoghts on Hugo’s opus are full of insight and Christian theology.

Magistramater gives us some quotations from Volume 1 and from Volume 2.

Amy’s rambling thoughts on Les Miserables at Hope Is the Word.

I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago, and now I think I’m about ready to get back to Les Miserables and finish it. I’ll try to check in again when I’ve finished Volume Three, Marius.