Difficult Books

Jun29

An article by Alistair Harper in The Guardian‘s book blog asks: “Do you avoid difficult reads, or seek them out? Which tomes are worth the pain, and which are best left on the shelf?”

I would answer that David Copperfield, Les Miserables, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Moby Dick, Le Morte D’Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings are all worth the time and effort, but if it’s too much effort after the first 200 pages or so, then I guess any one of those is just not for you. Try something else.

After having dipped into all of the following authors, I will leave them on the shelf and off my reading list for the duration: James Joyce, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Mann, E.M. Forster. I also find Steinbeck and a lot of other twentieth century classics not difficult so much as just . . . boring.

I’ve never read Proust, and I don’t know that I’ll get around to it. I read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which won the Man Booker Prize last year, but I didn’t really care for it and found myself skimming about midway through.

I’m reading The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt right now, and I’m not sure. The odd punctuation is annoying me, and I’d like for the pace to pick up a bit.

What about you? Which classic or noted authors do you find worth the work? Which “difficult books” have you tried and found wanting? For which difficult books do you find that persistence pays dividends? Which ones have you given up before finishing?

Bliss List, Book Hooks, Fascinations

Jun29

I gave you my list 52 things that fascinate me on Sunday a week ago.

I linked to some of other bloggers’ rather fascinating lists just a couple of days ago, but since then more have joined the game. We’re making a list of the things that draw us into a a book or the subjects that make us want to read and study more or just the things that make us happy—in a book or in real life.

Brenda at Coffee, Tea, Books, and Me shares her list of things she loves, a Bliss List. She loves Celtic Women, and John Denver and teacups and reading on rainy days. So do I, although I like Celtic Thunder better.
Some others are calling their similar lists Book Hooks, a list of things, people, places, ideas that catch their interest and make them want to read more.
Word Lily likes books about spies and detectives, other cultures and languages, and convents/cloistered life, among other things.
Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness likes reimagined fairy tales and multiple narrators.
Ms Bookish has 20 hooks that will make her pick up a book, including bookstores and “a Cinderella angle.”
Stella Matutina loves New Orleans and the French Revolution.
Melissa at Book Nut: A few things that fascinate me.
Carol’s fascination list at Magistramater includes clerical life, conversions, and names. Me, too.
Colleen at Chasing Ray who started this exercise in imagination for me enjoys saints and travelers and scrapbooks.
And author Kelly Link, from whom Colleen got the idea, has a good list, including zombies and the color green. (Zombies make me run away from a book, not toward, but each to his own.)

Do you have a list of fascinations, or book hooks, or a bliss list? Please share.

Bad Books?

Jun28

From an article in Touchstone by David Mills:

The young adult books I read startled me by how dreary they were, even when they were most chipper. The world they describe is ultimately a trivial and a tawdry and a boring one. There is much evil in them, but the evil does not frighten or challenge because the authors do not see it. The good in them is usually weak, tepid, ineffective, a helping hand or a shoulder to cry on, not a gallant knight on a glorious horse. The salvation in them is equally weak, more often resignation than transformation.

Read the entire article, and then come back and tell me: agree with Mr. Mills or disagree? Can you give specific examples to support or refute his criticisms?

Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

Jun27

This novelization of the old folk tale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” is riveting, exciting, and broadly heroic. I’ve been reading Ms. Durst’s blog for a while, and I’ve enjoyed her comedic fractured fairy tales (see here and here, for example). But Ice is not a comedy, even though Cassie, the heroine, and her Bear husband do share some lighthearted banter in between harrowing and tragic scenes of suffering and devastation.

The story is similar to the more familiar “Beauty and the Beast” or the even older “Cupid and Psyche”,” but it takes place in the far north and involves a Polar Bear King rather than a transmogrified beast or a Greek god. Ms. Durst has transplanted the story from Scandinavia to Alaska, but when you get close enough to the North Pole, it’s all North anyway. And very cold and icy. Cassie’s father is an Arctic researcher and scientist, and her mother is dead. Or perhaps, as Cassie’s Gram tells the story, Cassie’s mother is the daughter of the North Wind and a prisoner in the troll’s castle, east of the sun and west of the moon.

The style and substance remind me of the books of Madeleine L’Engle, especially A Wrinkle in Time and Troubling the Sea. There’s the same mingling of science and scientific research with story and fantasy and magic and also same sense of “more things in heaven and earth, Horatio.” The religious underpinnings lean a bit toward reincarnation; the Polar Bear King is actually a munaqsri, a sort of Death Angel who claims the souls of dying polar bears and gives the souls to newborn polar bears, thus ensuring the continuation of the species. However, there’s a bit of Christian-ish imagery, too, in the ending (an ending I won’t spoil for you, but I thought it was wonderful).

Also echoing L’Engle in the Great Conversation, Durst has created a heroine in Cassie who is strong and determined, if sometimes impetuous. Cassie has a lot to overcome, a journey to an impossible destination, friends who want to stop her for her own good and for that of the child she is carrying, and her own ambivalence about the pregnancy and her relationship to Bear, who is her husband and her mother’s rescuer and father to her child. The story as Ms. Durst tells it is about trust and about persistence in the face of insurmountable odds and about self-sacrifice and what that means when the choices are all painful and imperfect.

At any rate, when I compare this book to L’Engle, I’m giving it high praise indeed because Madeleine L’Engle is on my list of top ten or twelve favorite authors. Sarah Beth Durst has written a book that I enjoyed and thought about after I finished. I wondered whether I would make the choices that Cassie made. I wondered what I would do to stop my daughter from making the choices Cassie made. I wondered how in the world authors make such wonderful storybook worlds for us to inhabit for a day or an afternoon.

Thanks to Sarah Beth Durst and to the authors of many other books that have brightened and enriched my world.

Here’s a list of a few other fairy tale adaptations that we have enjoyed here at Semicolon house or that we hope to enjoy:
Other retellings of East of the Sun, West of the Moon
East by Edith Pattou. I read this one a couple of years ago, but didn’t review it. I like Ice better.
Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow by Jessica Day George

From Beauty and the Beast:
The afore-mentioned Beauty by Robin McKinley.
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. A different version of Beauty and the Beast.
Beast by Donna Jo Napoli.

The Sleeping Beauty
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley.
Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. Semicolon review here.
Briar Rose by Jane Yolen.

Cinderella-ish
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine.
Bella at Midnight by Diane Stanley. Brown Bear Daughter’s review.
Just Ella by Margaret Peterson Haddix.
The Amaranth Enchantment by Julie Berry.
Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George.

Other Folk Tales Ride Again
A Curse Dark As Gold by Elizabeth Bunce. (Rumpelstiltskin) Semicolon review here.
The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. Semicolon review here.
Zel by Donna Jo Napoli. (Rapunzel)
Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George. (The Twelve Dancing Princesses)Semicolon review here.

Sunday Salon: 20 Examples That Feed My Fascinations

Jun26

Last week, I gave you a list of 52 things that fascinate me. This week I’m going to list some specific examples of the stuff that fascinates and gives joy and makes me think.

1. Crayola Monologues: I found this video in a list at First Things.

2. Carol at Magistra Mater recommends five five-star books. Carol’s entire blog is fascinating. She says, “My goal is to make my home a light, a sanctuary, a dwelling filled with the aroma of good things, a place where friends and family can flourish.” Carol reads and writes and makes bread and best of all, she thinks. Lovely.

3. What if the problem of evil isn’t a problem at all? by Christopher Benson at Mere Orthodoxy This brief article speaks to my fascination with God’s providence and with apologetics in general. What if evil in the world provides the only context from which we can talk about the goodness and mercy of God?

4. I already tweeted this link, and probably everyone has seen it. But since I am a fan of all things Lewisian, here’s a link to the first trailer for the new Narnia movie, due out in December, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. If they don’t showcase the meaning of Eustace’s dragon transformation and his healing, I’m out of patience with these movie interpreters of Lewis’s wonderful stories.

5. Carrie hosts The Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge at Reading to Know. This challenge supports my love of all things Lewisian.

6. Brenda at Coffee, Tea, Books, and Me shares her list of things she loves, a Bliss List. She loves Celtic Women, and John Denver and teacups and reading on rainy days. So do I.

7. Some others are calling their similar lists Book Hooks, a list of things, people, places, ideas that catch their interest and make them want to read more.
Word Lily likes books about spies and detectives, other cultures and languages, and convents/cloistered life, among other things.
Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness likes reimagined fairy tales and multiple narrators.
Ms Bookish has 20 hooks that will make her pick up a book, including bookstores and “a Cinderella angle.”
Stella Matutina loves New Orleans and the French Revolution.
Melissa at Book Nut: A few things that fascinate me.
Carol’s fascination list at Magistramater includes clerical life, conversions, and names. Me, too.
Do you have a list of fascinations, or book hooks, or a bliss list? Please share.

8. Heidi at SImple Homeschool lists picture books that take you around the world. I love exploring other cultures and places, and I like picture books. I’m working on a sequel to Picture Book Preschool, called Picture Book Around the World. I keep collecting titles, but I’m not finding the persistence and self-discipline to finish this project. Anyone want to give me a kick in the pants? Or more suggestions for picture books that explore other lands?

9. The 2010 Bad Poetry Contest at Chip’s Blog. These are some seriously BAD poems. I don’t know how the judges managed to choose the worst of the worst.

10. To feed my Shakespearean muse (and to get the bad poetry taste off of my palate), I turn to this brand new version of Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.

11. “Mpower Pictures (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”) and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel The Great Divorce. Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens’ book author N.D. Wilson (Leepike Ridge, 100 Cupboards) is attached to write.” I told you I’m a C.S. Lewis fan, and I’m rather impressed with Mr. Wilson’s oeuvre so far, too.

12. This project ties in to my love of community and outside-the-box, but I have practical questions. Doesn’t it ever rain in New York? How can pianos stay outside in the weather and remain playable?

13. Hmmmm. My teens watch Glee, and I’m wondering how this new character for next season will work out. Probably very badly, but we’ll hope for the best.

14. Speaking of love, courtship and marriage, there’s an op-ed in Newsweek (June 11, 2010) about how marriage is outdated and unnecessary. Albert Mohler comments on this idea from a Christian perspective. Could it be that instead of gay “marriage” what we’ll eventually evolve to is no marriage for anyone other than Christians who still in their dinosauric way see the value and sanctity of such a union?

15. Mockingbird by Katharine Erskine. Small World says: “If you liked the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, you will love Mockingbird.”

16. Prepare to Die: A Princess Bride quiz by David K. Israel.

17. I could have used this advice about making a youtube video embed show up as a simple audio file last year when I was counting down the hymns. Some of the video is annoying or unnecessary.

18. Tim Hawkins: I Don’t Drink Beer. Someone asked The Headmistress what she thought about drinking alcohol, and then later I saw a video by Christian comedian Tim Hawkins. This song explains exactly why I don’t drink beer, right down to the nauseous.

19. Your Book as a Database by Chris Kubica. I’m not sure I understand completely, but it’s definitely mind-expanding.

20. “Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think. Bryan Caplan makes the case for having more children.” The economic and long term benefits of having more children.

Beautiful by Cindy Martinusen-Coloma

Jun25

I added Beautiful to my TBR list because it was one of three finalists in the Young Adult fiction category for the 2010 Christy Awards. I just finished the book, and clicked over to the awards site to make sure I had that information right. Lo, and behold, the winners of the Christy Awards for Christian fiction are to be announced tomorrow evening at a ceremony at in St. Louis, Missouri.

I can’t say Beautiful is the best of the three finalists nominated for the award since I haven’t read the other two, but I did find this novel about self-image and suffering to be both absorbing and unusual for the genre of Christian fiction. The story is about two sisters, Megan and Ellie, Irish twins, who are so different from each other that most people don’t even know they’re related. Megan is “the emo, the goth, the bad sister.” Ellie is the good girl, popular, pretty, perfectionist, over-achieving. The story is really about the senior year in high school for both girls and about how one night, through sudden tragedy, everything in their family and in their world changes.

The theme of sibling rivalry isn’t a new one. But this book kept surprising me. Just when I thought the book was about Ellie, (even though it’s told in third person, we read about Ellie’s thoughts from the beginning), the point of view would switch to Megan and her rather sarcastic views about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Then, as soon as I adjusted to Megan’s voice, the focus would move back to Ellie. And the theme wasn’t just one note, either. The book was about sibling rivalry, yes, but also about coming of age and suffering and where-is-God-when-it hurts. And it’s a tale of beauty and the beast: who are you when your face, your physical self, is broken and altered and your beauty and competence and direction are taken away?

This book would be good as a discussion starter in a young ladies’ or mother/daughter book club. In fact, my copy from the library had discussion questions in the back. I also thought about the possibility of pairing this book with the nonfiction classic, Joni by Joni Eareckson Tada. Joni, who became a quadraplegic after a diving accident as a teenager, writes with an openness about her struggles with seeing and knowing God in the midst of suffering and disappointment that would serve to illuminate the fictional struggles of Ellie who also deals with both pain and disfigurement in an honest and believable way.

There’s some “God talk” in the book Beautiful, but it’s really minimal. Although Megan and Ellie have obviously grown and changed by the end of the story, neither of them “has it all figured out.” Each girl is on a journey, and the journey doesn’t end with the book’s ending.

I don’t know if Beautiful will win a Christy Award tomorrow night, but I do recommend it a good, thoughtful read.

Poem #29: A Red, Red Rose by Robert Burns (1794)

Jun24

“Poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music.”~Ezra Pound

O, my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June.
O, my luve’s like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my Dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
O I will luve thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!

Robbie Burns, by all acccounts, had more than one “only luve”, but that doesn’t keep this love poem from being terribly romantic and eternally popular. Burns was mostly homeschooled by his father as a child, and later, self-taught.

Burns referred to “A Red, Red Rose” as a “simple old Scots song which I had picked up in the country.”

When asked for the source of his greatest creative inspiration, singer songwriter Bob Dylan selected Burns’s 1794 song “A Red, Red Rose”, as the lyric that had the biggest effect on his life.

June is, by the way, National Rose Month.

For more poetry on this Friday, check out Poetry Friday, hosted today at The Art of Irreverence.

100 Movies of Summer: Double Indemnity (1944)

Jun24

Director: Billy Wilder
Writers: Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler from the novel by James M. Cain
Starring: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson

The entire movie is narrated by insurance salesman, Walter Neff, as he confesses into a dictaphone the terrible crime he has been led to commit. His partner in murder is Phyllis Dietrichson, a blonde bombshell who’s unhappily married to a grouchy and jealous oil executive, Mr. Dietrichson (we never learn his first name). Neff and Phyllis deserve each other, but Phyllis comes across as the more ruthless and cruel of the two. (According to IMDB, Barbara Stanwyck was the first choice to play Phyllis, but she was unnerved when seeing the role was of a ruthless killer. When she expressed her concern to Billy Wilder, he asked her, “Are you a mouse or an actress?” ) It was bit disconcerting at first watching the father of My Three Sons play a cad and a murderer, but Fred MacMurray was quite convincing in the role.

This is one of the few 1940’s movies I’ve seen that could give Hitchcock a run for his money. It’s well-plotted, the dialog is snappy and not too hokey, and the ending is good. I highly recommend this one to fans of Hitchcock and of film noir in general. Wilder plays with the lighting and camera angles with a finesse that made me a believer in his directorial skills. Barbara Stanwyck, by the way, is absolutely beautiful, a lot prettier than most of the other actresses of her day.

My urchins learned from this movie the meaning of the term “double indemnity” and the lesson that crime never pays. At least, I think that’s what they learned.

Walter Neff: Who’d you think I was anyway? The guy that walks into a good looking dame’s front parlour and says, “Good afternoon, I sell accident insurance on husbands… you got one that’s been around too long? One you’d like to turn into a little hard cash?”

Ummm, yeah, that’s who she thought you were, sucker.

The novella by James Cain was based on a “1927 crime in which a married Queens woman, Ruth Brown Snyder, persuaded her lover to kill her husband Albert after Albert had just recently taken out a large insurance policy with a double indemnity clause.” Ms. Snyder was executed at Sing-Sing on January 12, 1928 for the murder of Albert Snyder. Her accomplice, a corset salesman, also received the death sentence.

Has any one here read the Cain novel? Better or worse than the movie? Or just different?

IMDB link to Double Indemnity.
Buy Double Indemnity at Amazon.

100 Movies of Summer: Red River (1948)

Jun23

Directors: Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson
Writers: Borden Chase and Charles Schnee
Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, and Walter Brennan

Karate Kid says: This movie was about some cowboys on a cattle drive. They live next to the Red River, which is the river that makes up the border between Texas and Oklahoma. They owned the Red River Ranch, and decided to take their cattle to somewhere they could sell it. On their way, they will have a stampede, an ambush, and even a mutiny!

Mom says: I liked this one better than I did The Searchers, but the ending was lame. The writers were drawing on the imagery of herd behavior in which dominant males fight for leadership of the group. There are two young “bucks” on the cattle drive, Matt and Cherry. Then, there’s Dunson, the old but strong leader of the drive, who is also conservative and set in his ways and determined to be obeyed and feared, no matter what the cost. The tension between these three, but mostly between Matt and Dunson, who is Matt’s mentor and father figure, makes the movie go. But then, at the end, although Matt’s love interest, Tess Millay, has a great scene in which she tells them both off for acting like idiots, the tension just sort of drains off into anti-climax.

Still, it’s a good movie to watch with your kids if you’re learning about the cattle drive/cowboy era of U.S. history or if you just like cowboy movies. Dunson shoots or threatens to shoot a few men in cold blood basically for just getting in his way or challenging his authority, and that part was rather shocking to my youngest (and to me). The stereotype of savage Native Americans was still there, but not as prominent as it was in The Searchers. In Red RIver, the Indians are not characters, and the Indian attack is just a plot device to place another obstacle in the way of the cattle drive and give the hero a chance to be heroic. The one Native American character who is on the cattle drive with the cowboys is a part of the comic relief, not very believable or interesting.

IMDB link to Red River.
Buy Red River on Amazon.

Scratch Beginnings by Adam Shepard

Jun22

Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream by Adam Shepard.

I’m going to buy a copy of this book for a young man I know, who in addition to making what I consider very foolish decisions about his spiritual life, is also stuck in a dead end job and not at all sure how to move on and begin doing more than living from paycheck to paycheck. My friend wants to go back to college, but he can barely afford to pay the rent and his car payment each month. He feels trapped. The book won’t change his spiritual condition, but it might inspire him to change his economic and physical status.

Adam Shepard started out lower on the economic scale than my friend is now. He decided, after graduating from college, to try an experiment. He would take twenty-five dollars, a sleeping bag, and the clothes on his back, and go to a randomly chosen city to start life with no friends, no credit rating, and no safety net. He chose Charleston, South Carolina out of a hat and took the train to that fair city. Once he got there, he headed for the nearest homeless shelter (which didn’t turn out to be too nearby). His goal was, by the end of a year, to have a car, a furnished apartment, and $2500 in the bank.

The book would be an inspiration particularly to young people just starting out in life and perhaps to those who are working to bring themselves up out of poverty after bad decisions or bad luck or some combination thereof have put them there. I want to give a copy to my friend because he’s discouraged about his future, and I want him to see what hard work and determination can do. The book is just one guy’s experience. The details of where Mr. Shepard got a job and what he did to save money and to make ends meet won’t work for everyone. But the general principles of working as hard as you can, overcoming setbacks with persistence, and making the most of the opportunities you have are good for anyone, anywhere.

Did Mr Shepard meet his goals? Yes, and he did it in ten months, not twelve. He did it with very little help from the government (food stamps) and with a great deal of self-discipline and stubborn resolve. The language in the book is sometimes crude, the language of the streets where Mr. Shepard found himself, but the message is worth the skimming over language I had to do. I think you’ll find it worthwhile, too.

The Headmistress at The Common Room compares Scratch Beginnings with Nickled and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.