Pen and Paper

Kindle 3

2010-09-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

My Kindle 3 arrived and I couldn't be happier with it.

For years I've resisted buying an e-reader. I love the feel of paper, the look of books, the art of choosing one book from hundreds, but space constraints and the lower cost of Kindle books convinced me that I should relent (a little). The Kindle will supplement, not supplant, my buying of paper bound works.

Happy reading!

Unfrigging Believable

2010-07-07T15:28:00.000-07:00

In general, I don't post about anything other than books, but it's getting to the point where I can't hold my tongue anymore.

I can't believe the DOJ dropped this case. See one of the many articles concerning the voter intimidation cases being dropped, here.

A former DOJ attorney testified recently that the cases against the individuals in this video

were dropped because of lobbying and political pressure by groups like the NAACP. Shame on them all. Racism is unbecoming in any shade. Though individuals have a right to say whatever they want, they do not have the right to engage in voter intimidation.

I fear the type of voter fraud/intimidation that individuals like this will engage in this November given the likelihood of their failure to gain or maintain seats in Congress any other way.

No people, by birth or nature, are superior to others. Hatred shouldn't be in vogue or fashionable just because of who you hate--that's how myriads of wars have started. Uh, hello World War frigging II. Your racism isn't OK because it's yours.

People must stand up and start speaking out against these sorts of activities. We don't, because we don't want to be labeled as racists or bigots. That sort of intellectual dishonesty and name-calling as a means to silence valuable opinions, reasonable opinions, must stop. To be frank, if you support Obama, you support what he supports. He and the Attorney General he nominated sanction Black Panthers interference with the fair, open elections that we are Constitutionally guaranteed. He either supports the interference or he is so weak in his convictions, that he cannot uphold his oath to preserve, protect, support and defend the Constitution of the United States against enemies, foreign and domestic. I hope that neither of these two things are true; I hope that I've misunderstood what happened; I hope that there was some reason to drop these cases at their sentencing stage; I hope that groups like the KKK and others don't see this as permission to attempt to intimidate voters this November.

We are a nation of laws. If were are not that, our Republic will fall. No one is to be above reproach, to be above the law, and, if we create a category of view points, a race of people, or a sect of religion that cannot be criticized or that will be held immune to the law, then we are a nation of fools.

Though we sometimes elect fools, I don't believe we are fools. I am hopeful. Even in temperatures breaking 100 degrees, I feel the cool, sweet wind of change moving through my neighborhood. Indeed with acts of voter intimidation and fraud being perpetrated by those who are unable to compete in an open, peaceful exchange of ideas, many Americans will still step forward, braving being hit by a night stick or being called a racist because its the least that we can do when so many better, honor worthy men have come before us, pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor so that we could have the liberty to vote at all.

Tomorrow is Hump Day

2010-06-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

Only two court appearances tomorrow...

So much work.

So little time.

Bill has to get a commission done this week.

Jury

2010-06-01T19:26:00.001-07:00

Jury trial tomorrow. Wish me luck, please.

Needs Editing

2010-03-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

5,000 Year Leap by W. Cleon Skousen is actually a very quick, enjoyable read. I agree with its overall sentiments; nevertheless, it has some structural and grammatical issues. Skoussen's ideas are not fully formed out, the piece lacks flow, and it is in dire need of some editorial tidying. Its issues detract from what is a really strong survey piece. How can things go to press with errors like the use of "it's" where the author means "its" etc.? Overall, it's a good survey of American Constitutional History.

Bauhaus

2010-03-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

From Bauhaus to Our House by Tom Wolfe

Loved it--an essay about navel gazing and what happens when groups of people navel-gaze and gather together to prove which one of them is more perfect at navel-gazing. Wolfe critiques modern architecture, but it isn't just about the negative effects of the Bauhaus style as much as the dangerousness of a group of people who attempt to rid themselves of pesky intellectual and moreover, ideological, competition. You don't have to hate modern or post modern architecture to like the book, but it probably doesn't hurt if you are a bit of an iconoclast.

Time Has Run Out

2010-03-22T16:13:00.001-07:00

I'm not feeling very optimistic today.

Time Is Running Out

2010-03-19T18:51:00.001-07:00

Have your voices heard

2010-03-19T18:49:00.001-07:00

Thank you Spring!

2010-03-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

We are having some really nice weather after a terribly long, cold winter. It's not been warm of enough for me to actually start seedlings, but it's been warm enough for me to start planning spring plantings and thinking off all things that need to be done in preparation for Spring and Summer.

I might even be able to sit outside and read later today!

On the topic of reads, I enjoyed Unnatural Fire by Fidelis Morgan but it wasn't nearly as good as it's sequel The Rival Queens. I read them in the wrong order, finding the first disappointing in comparison to the second book. The situations in the first weren't nearly as memorable and the characters were not nearly as engaging as both were in the second piece. I'm glad I read the second one first or I might not have gotten to the second, better one.

The characters were not realistically foolish. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but the story was too much like the common comedy of manners. The characters were just too dense. Furthermore, with the exception of a character named Betty I had no connection with the characters. In other words, when they inevitably die their deaths result in nothing more than a dull thud. The apparent villains are not attractive and are gravely flawed. The place and voice of the story were lacking the same delicious quality that the second book had. It wasn't easy to laugh with the story, nor were the descriptions of period London as well wrought. I'm only tempted to keep it because I'm rather fond of the author's second book.

Work

2010-01-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

Prepping for a big trial plus getting all of my normal casework finished is nearly impossible.

Book Loving Authors

2009-06-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

I love books written by book-loving authors. It surprises me how many authors don't really seem to love the written word. For them, it's more like I have something to tell you and this is the most expedient way to do it, but then, some authors are lovers of language. Jane Austen comes to mind. Books like hers should be cherished.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows should too. One of the authors has passed away and regrettably this, her first book, will also be her last. Its epistolary style works perfectly. It focuses mostly on Guernsey, an English island between England and France, that was occupied by the Germans during World War II. Its moments, sentences, and stories were wonderful from start to finish. Part of me wanted the book to end so that I could confirm what I thought would happen with its characters; part of me never wanted it to end because I enjoyed reading it so much.

It was quaint and lovely without being trite. The authors write, "I wonder how the book got to ...? Perhaps there is some secret sort of homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers." It makes me think: somehow this book found its perfect reader in me--how lucky am I?

Judas Iscariot

2009-05-28T20:04:00.000-07:00

The Gospel of Judas by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, Gregor Wurst, Bart D. Ehrman felt like it had been rushed to press. That isn't to say that it wasn't good but it felt like parts of it hadn't been fully contemplated. When I was in college, we had to write an essay about metaphors and analogies etc. from Homer's Iliad. Almost every person in the class wrote about one particular quotation--namely, "A generation of men is like a generation of leaves; the wind scatters some leaves upon the ground, while others the burgeoning wood brings forth - and the season of spring comes on. So of men one generation springs forth and another ceases." Some of the essays were beautiful, but only one person considered the the most important question: "Are men really like leaves?" It seems obvious to do so, but only one person did. No one else had really questioned the validity of Homer's assertion.

This book's essays didn't really question "The Gospel of Judas." The writers assumed the Gospel was equally as valid as the ones that were included in the Bible as we know it. The essayists were so enthralled with its discovery and preservation, that it felt like they never reached the most interesting questions. That failing is most clear when one of the essayists wrote that what is included and discarded from the Bible is arbitrary. Isn't it possible that there might be real reasons behind the exclusion or inclusion of one text over another, that there continues to be real religious dialogue about what should be included or excluded?

I agree that the gospel is a wonderful discovery, but where's the second part of the analysis. Is the Gospel of Judas equally as valid, as authenticated, as philosophically rich as those Gospel's included in our present day Bibles? What can we learn from it? I just don't think the essays pushed far enough.

Recent Reviews

2009-04-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

If you're not already a Harry Potter fan, then you'll probably find Tales of the Beedle Bard by J.K. Rowling unremarkable. It made me want to read her novels again; it didn't compare well. It was a very short, very quick read that fit snuggly in the morality tales genre. It was much lighter than Grimm's Fairytales and more like Han's Christian Anderson's morality tales.

On Pilgrimage by Jennifer Lash details a journey from Caen to Santiago de Compostela conducted by Lash over the course of a couple of weeks. She travels alone, largely, and speaks frankly and lovingly of the places she visits and the people she meets along the way. I liked it, but I did find portions of it to be very wordy and in need of editing in some places; for example, it used some words interchangeably, like paramount and tantamount etc., that were not the best choices. Having not read travel/personal pilgrimage books before, I don't know how it compares, and, I think it would have been easier to follow if I had been more familiar with the places being visited. Also, the mood set by the writer was one of perseverance, but she sounded so tired as she forged on.

I can't begin to explain how much I enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It was marvelous. If you love Rebecca or Jane Eyre, then please pick up The Thirteenth Tale. The only disappointing thing is that the author has published no other books (at least that I can find). It was a wonderful read. "Do you intend to tell me the truth?" one of its characters asks. Is that really the point of a good story?

It was mesmerizing. Finally, a book written by someone who clearly adores books and the written word. The story is dark, but not humorless. I certainly wont be putting this one up to trade on bookmooch.com. I loved it. It had everything that a novel should: it had a good point; it was superbly written; and I can't stop comparing other books to it. I finished it weeks ago, reading at least four other books since then and none of them compare.

A friend of mine kindly gave The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber this book (and others) so that I might have something to entertain myself as I recovered from surgery. The book fits in the complex literery, historical thriller category. I feel like I should have loved it, but I really disliked it. Why? I hated the main character. I just couldn't make myself like him. He was so focused on sex; he was boring beyond belief. I found myself hoping to come upon chapters narrated by other characters. He was an antihero that just cried out for a severe beating. Just kidding--sort of. I raced for the end of it driven not by a desire to find out what would happen as much a desire to finish the damn thing and move on to something else. It's like someone took all the elements that I like--drama, Shakespeare, mystery, plot twists, multiple narrators, book lover, manuscripts, forgers--ate them and vomited them in the form of this book. I so wish that I had like it because one of my dearest friends did and gave it to me, but, regrettably, I did not.

I finished The Courage to Be Rich by Suze Orman and Howard Clark's Big Book of Bargains by guess who? Howard Clark at about the same time. I've watched both of their television shows a handful of times as well. They've mentioned one another and referred to one another as friends and so, at times, I chuckled while reading their books because they are so different. Suze Orman is much more in touch with emotional spending and is more thorough in attempting to get people to prioritize and to come to terms with bad spending/saving habits. I think that Clark Howard’s book is a good one for someone that is already money conscious and is looking for affirmation of their penny pinching ways or is looking for some great tips; though Orman’s book is better for someone who is curious about the world of personal finance. Orman’s book is also a better fit for someone who has had money problems and is looking for a light at the end of the tunnel. I took a couple of notes from Clark’s book but have put it up on bookmooch since it isn’t one that I need to keep for reference, but I’ll be hanging on to Orman’s for a while.

I Saw Three Ships by Elizabeth Goudge is a quaint, heartwarming story. It’s a brief, beautifully written, lyrical and sentimental Christmas tale about a little orphan girl named Polly who experiences a number of Christmas miracles. It is light handed and well-paced. Also, my version has some simple illustrations by Margot Tomes that, like the story itself, are sort of Dickensian. I enjoyed it and wish that I could find a copy of Goudge’s The Little White Horse to read too. It’s crisp and clean and warm all at once.

Dewey: The Small Town Library Cat Who Touched the World--If only it had just been about the library and the cat. The portions of the book that were not directly about Dewey were opressive in tone and, at times, clumsily executed or extraneous. It's a testament to Dewey and Myron's love of Dewey that I liked the book as much as I did. Somtimes we so want our pets to matter to other people, that we try to make others understand how important they are to us by demanding that they feel the same way about them; it can be uncomfortable when someone becomes really insistent that we have to feel the same way about the things they love as they do. Myron tried to make Dewey matter to us in exactly the same way he mattered to her by giving us all sorts of information about herself and her family. Dewey mattered because he was Dewey. The story didn't need anything more than him.

Speechless

2009-04-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

I have never really written anything that mattered. And I remain without the words to adequately express the sorrow that is currently burning a hole in the pit of my stomach. Singing with Anne, in her choir, was magical. I have often, since graduating, missed the choir and the people in it; I have never missed it more than I do today having found out that Anne has passed away. We were her choir, no matter what name we took, e.g., St. John's Small Choir, St. John's Choir.

When I read about her passing, through tears of denial, I felt compelled to go back and listen to Rachmaninov's Vespers. While listening to them, it's hard not to realize that Anne had a profound influence over the St. John's musical tradition, as well as each of her choir members. I can't listen to good music without thinking: What would she think of this piece?; Anne would love this; or, I wish we were all still singing together.

It kills me that I can't really remember exactly what we sounded like, but I'll listen to something like the Vespers and moments of memory rise within me. I can feel what it was like more than hear it. We were beautiful because of Anne. She had an amazing ability to select just the right pieces of music, to know exactly what we should sound like, and to pound those pieces into us until we sang them as she had imagined they must be sung. She always maintained a sense of humor with her students and friends, never shying away from laughter or a glass of wine as I recall.

It's been almost ten years since we all started singing together. I've been in multiple choirs since and none compare. Thank you Anne.

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-25T08:14:00.000-08:00

Peace on Earth! Have a wonderful day with your friends and family. Praise God our Heavenly King.

Read In Order to Make Room for Other Books

2008-12-07T17:00:00.000-08:00

To a Very-Special Friend (Exley Gifts Books, 1997). Short, sweet.

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success... (New World Library, 1994). People rave about Depak Chopra, but I just don't see it. This one did not speak to me. If it works for him, then great.

JonBenet: Inside the Murder Investigation (St. Martin's Press, 2000). Not sure what to say about this one. The failures of this particular investigation are good examples of a)why inexperienced officers should not be allowed at murder scenes; b) why written policy of how to investigate doesn't matter if it isn't followed; c) ineffective communication between officers and a DA office; d) how important intuition is to investigation, but that it doesn't mean anything if there isn't evidence to make the case; and e) politics can overcome investigations.

The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan was really interesting. One of the many things he discusses is the influence of weather on art. It's almost a footnote to the book as a whole, but I found it very interesting to posit that you can measure climate changes by changes in art content, such as the number of winter scenes in certain centuries or the types of clouds that are being painted. We're keeping this one because Bill wants to read it too. It's very well written and though I didn't always agree with all of Fagan's conclusions, I did find it difficult to put this one down.

I also finished Jan Dargatz, 52 Simple Ways.... Of all the Christmas books of this ilk, it's the most helpful one I've read; though, it was repetitive in instances. Every Chapter was supposed to have a different Christmas related suggestion, but, at times, it seemed like suggestions would come in one chapter and then have their own heading later on, having already been mentioned under a different chapter heading. I enjoyed it though and actually took down some notes in my journal on suggestions for Christmas questions to contemplate in Advent, Christmas and Epiphany. I also took down some of the craft/packaging suggestions. For example, Dargatz recommended taking the fronts of of last year's Christmas cards and sending them as postcards in order to save money and paper. That seems pretty cute and clever. I'd recommend borrowing it from the local library, as I am glad I read it, but we don't need to own a copy.

Haunted

2008-10-19T10:54:00.000-07:00

I can't begin to explain how much I enjoyed The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It was marvelous. If you love Rebecca or Jane Eyre, then please pick up The Thirteenth Tale. The only disappointing thing is that the author has published no other books (at least that I can find). It was a wonderful read. "Do you intend to tell me the truth?" one of its characters asks. Is that really the point of a good story?

It was mesmerizing. Finally, a book written by someone who clearly adores books and the written word. The story is dark, but not humorless. I certainly wont be putting this one up to trade on bookmooch.com. I loved it. It had everything that a novel should: it had a good point; it was superbly written; and I can't stop comparing other books to it. I finished it weeks ago, reading at least four other books since then and none of them compare.

Having finished The Haunting by Shirley Jackson shortly after the The Thirteenth Tale, it was a bit of a disappointment. I've enjoyed some of her others stories much more. It wasn't nearly as haunting as I had expected. The old movie was more interesting to me than the book, and don't even bother watching the remake. I'd probably eat blood pudding again rather than watch the remake, and that ended with me gagging, so you can imagine how good the movie was. Also, I don't think I've ever read such a short book with so many semicolons in it; perhaps, the driving test I took when I was sixteen compares.

Everyone raves about Jodi Picoult. She's definitely an accomplished writer, very adept at switching perspectives between characters. She has an identifiable style, but I was left with a who cares kind of feeling when I finished in Plain Truth. It might have been me. That's why I'm going to try one of her other ones.

The Last Duel by Eric Jager was fun. It was sort of like a short survey book of 14th century French culture told by through the rivalry between the Carrouges and the Gris. I was entertained by it, turning pages to see what happened to its characters. It certainly served to illustrate how brutal life can be. It provided some interesting information about what French 14th century culture was like, particularly for women. I found it to be informative, but I wanted more insights. The book wasn't without insights, but it was almost too short; I yearned for more from the author in the way of conclusions. Sometimes after watching a particular movie or book, I sit and think: Damn it. I wish someone else had made this or someone else had written this. I did not think that after finishing The Last Duel, but I did wish that Eric Jager had done something more with the piece. It was very good and I enjoyed it, but I felt like it was missing something--something that Jager could have given it.

Now, Randy Pausch certainly gave his all to the Last Lecture. Much has been written about this. Websites all over the internet have his actual lecture posted in print and pictures. I wont go into the details of it here, because there's no reason to describe it where others have done so quite well. I'll simply say that my mother-in-law left the book here after there last trip in September. She seemed to think it was ok but not wonderful. I liked it. It made me laugh aloud; he preserved who he was in life while confronting horrible circumstances and the scariest thing of all: death. I found it pretty inspirational and I'm going to loan it to my Dad because I think he'll like it too. From it, I took this sound advice...Dream, help others dream, and enjoy the journey of making your dreams and others' dreams come true, because your journey may be both longer and shorter than you think.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

2008-08-17T18:41:00.001-07:00

Eats, Shoots & Leaves was hilarious. Portions of it were repetitive, but, if you've ever looked at a sign like "Shcool" or "Buckle Up/The Life You Save Could be Your Own Self" and thought "What the #*(RY@#*($?," then this is for you. It revived in me a desire to read punctuation and grammar manuals. Yes, I know they have doctors for this sort of thing.

Anyway, I've been tagged with a book meme, but it isn't an easy one. Posting my answers will have to wait for tomorrow.

New Booty

2008-08-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

My mother recently recommended that I read Child of the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge, then very shortly thereafter Kate wrote highly of Goudge. Trying to find any works by Goudge was like trying to buy fine wine in Burger King--nothing, absolutely nothing of hers was in stock/print at B&N. It was disappointing, but I'll continue to look elsewhere. I was able to make the following acquisitions:

Kate Atkinson, Case Histories (Back Bay Books, 2005). Thriller/Family Saga.

Thomas Gallagher, Paddy's Lament (Harcourt Brace, 1987). I was in a history mood. Who doesn't like a little Irish with their History?

Jodi Picoult, Plain Truth (Washington Square Press, 2007). Picoult seems to be extremely prolific, so I thought I'd give one a try.

Justin Pollard and Howard Reid, The Rise and Fall of Alexandria: Birthplace of the Modern World (Penguin, 2007). Who doesn't like Dido?

Eric Jager, The Last Duel (Broadway, 2005). It was almost difficult to tell whether this should be in the history or the fiction section of the store.

Sheridan Hay, The Secret of Lost Things (Anchor Books, 2008). I like novels about books/bookstores and mysteries. This one appears to have received some what mixed reviews, but I'll just have to make up my own mind.

Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action Around the World (Yale University Press, 2005). Sowell is a brilliant economist and sociologist. I can't wait to read this one or Race and Culture.

Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots, & Leaves (Gotham, 2006). This book looks absolutely hilarious.

Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Novels Like a Professor (Harper Paperbacks, 2008). I miss St. John's.

Brian Fagan, The Little Ice Age:How Climate Made History, 1300-1850 (Basic Books, 2001). Many actually think we are headed to another Ice Age. I thought I should bone up. Yes, that was meant to be taken in jest, at least partially.

Norman F. Cantor, Antiquity (Harper Perennial, 2004). I'm not sure, given its length, that it can meaningfully cover as much history as it purports to cover, but it looked like a light survey.

Joan Aiken, The Watson's and Emma Watson: Jane Austen's Uncompleted Novel By Joan Aiken (Sourcebooks Landmark, 2008). Don't mess with Jane unless you're up to the task. I like Aiken, but will withhold final approval for now.

Joan Aiken, Jane Fairfax: The Secret Story of the Second Heroine in Jane Austen's Emma (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997). I love Austen, so I just can't help myself when I spot a possibly good spin off. It strikes fear into my heart that there appears to have been a recent proliferation of Austen spin offs that may fall very short of the mark.

Amy Shuen, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide (O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2008). This one is my husband's pick.

Tracy Chevalier, The Lady and the Unicorn (Plume, 2004). Art, history, fiction. What more can a woman ask for?

Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (Riverhead Trade, 2002). Some people have drawn comparisons between this book and the Usual Suspects. Yippee!

Rebecca Stott, Ghostwalk (Spiegel & Grau, 2008). Supernatural thriller.

Sally Beauman, Rebecca's Tale (Harper Paperback, 2007). I'll reread Rebecca before reading this one.

Ah. Now I get to sit down and read them. I'm thoroughly enjoying Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale at this time.

Good Reads

2008-07-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Fourth!

I recently finished Tom Robbins' Jitterbug Perfume, Penelope Fitzgerald's Bookshop, Kevin Dwyer and Jure Fiorillo's True Stories of Law and Order: Special Victim's Unit, and Angela Rixon's The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cat Breeds.

Jitterbug was titillating. Never having read any of Robbins books before I have to admit I have not been a fan of the contemporary novel. Characters in them often seem bored with themselves and I'm left wondering: "If your character is bored with himself and you sound bored with your character, why should I be interested?" This novel, though, is different. Personally, portions of it were an affront to my sense of morality; yet, I realized "Erleichda, Erleichda" was meant for me too. You'll have to read the book to know what that means. (Robbins doesn't appear to be a fan of Christianity). I am; however, one can't fail to appreciate the completeness of what Robbins creates. It's nice to read something with an actual point of view. His characters operate outside the bounds of morality--that's the point. "The universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken." There could be too much of a good thing in reading his novels one after the other, but I will return to Robbins in due time.

I'm not sure that I liked The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. The story feels like it's over before it has begun. The characters are considerately crafted, but what a downer. She artfully recreates the backbiting and constant gossip of a small town where the inhabitants attempt to keep things the same or control all things at all costs. How dare anyone attempt to elevate themselves without their permission? It was very well-written, but I can't say it was enjoyable to read about people behaving horribly.

True Stories was a quick read. Can't say it was incredibly good or bad. It was what it purported to be: summaries of the real crimes that inspired SVU episodes. This one was a gift from my mother in law. Given what I do, I can't say I'm surprised that she thought of me when she came across the book. Plus, we do share a love of SVU and old Law and Order episodes. The book doesn't really provide any substantial insights, but simply provides easy-to-read, brief summaries of the criminals and their crimes.

Angela Rixon's book was quick and cute. Love the kitties.

Short Post

2008-06-29T23:40:00.000-07:00

While catching up on work and spending time with friends and family over the last few days, I've finished a Tom Robbins book and am in the process of finishing a Penelope Fitzgerald book. Posts about them shall follow later this week. I wish we had something other than Barnes and Noble in town--maybe a Borders. I truly miss the Tattered Cover (Denver). This next weekend we'll try to do some second-hand book shopping or make it to the Green Valley Book Fair. Nonetheless, here are some of our newest acquisitions from the Barnes:

John Williams, Augustus (First Vintage, 2004). Who doesn't miss the HBO series' Rome.

Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward (Random House, Inc., 2005). I think I liked Jitterbug Perfume, probably. I am, at the very least, interested.

Patricia Hampl, Blue Arabesque: A Search for the Sublime (Harcourt Books, 2006). I'm not fond of art books without pictures. Yes, I know how that sounds. Would you find reading a cookbook without ever trying its recipes fulfilling? This one looks very interesting though, so we'll give it a try.

Angela Rixon, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cat Breeds (Wellfleet Press, 2008). This one was a gift from my Mom. It probably doesn't have much new information in it compared with books on cats that we already possess, but it has some good skeletal drawings and pictures that should help with the Life with Cats series that my husband is working on.

Books!

2008-05-03T21:14:00.000-07:00

Newest acquisitions:

Steven Pressfield, Gates of Fire (Bantam Book, 1998). One of my favorite books (if not my favorite book) is Thucydides' History of the Pelopennesian War. His description of the Battle of Thermopylae is epic, memorable, and, to this day, brings me to tears. I look forward to this one.

Elizabeth Gaskell, Cranford (Penguin Books, 2005). Looks warm, peaceful. Can't beat something they bother to make a BBC version of with Judi Dench starring.

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale (Simon & Schuster, 2006). One of the reviews on the back compares the book to Jane Eyre and Rebecca. I'll take eerie and fascinating any day.

Jon Spence, Becoming Jane Austen (MJF, 2003). Apparently the movie Becoming Jane Austen, used this book and it's author as a consultant in the course of making its movie. I, of course, love all things Jane Austen.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (Picador, 2004). It purports to reveal the human condition. Keep your fingers crossed.

Mark Helprin, Freddy and Fredericka (Penguin Press, 2005). This one comes highly recommended by Carly. Satire and parody suck if they aren't well executed. Carly assures me that this book does both justly.

Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, Steel (Norton, 1999). This one makes it on to many must-read lists.

Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation (Penguin Books, 2003). History and religion--Oh my.

Patrick Taylor, An Irish Country Doctor (Forge, 2004). The title says it all.

Unread LibraryThing Meme

2008-04-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

Consider yourself tagged if you are reading this. When you post your list on your blog, please track back to mine so that I can read your lists too.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment*
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick*
Ulysses
Madame Bovary*
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov*
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies? I think I've read this but am not entirely sure
War and Peace*
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales*
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man*
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead*
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo I have read this, but it was so long ago that I can't count it.
Dracula*
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno*
The Satanic Verses
Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park*
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse*
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver TwistA long time ago.
Gulliver’s Travels*
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince*
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
DublinersThe unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter*
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion*
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*. I didn't really like it.
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid*
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Kindling

2008-04-26T19:14:00.000-07:00

I read--ok, skimmed--a book while waiting for my husband to finish up at work, and it occurred to me: Thank God for books like these. Else, what would we use as kindling? I am sure that someone somewhere will learn to appreciate this book. It's one that I've put on Book Mooch--have at. Only because it's one that I am trying to off load will I spare naming it here.

Gracian's The Art of Worldly of Wisdom was interesting. I read it (along with the one above) while getting a pedicure and waiting for my husband. It definitely has some gems in it. For example, "...Virtue alone is sufficient unto itself: and it, only, makes a man worth loving life, and in death, remembering."

So, today the fam' spent a day shopping, and, I, as a result, have some new acquisitions:

Dave Barry, Dave Barry's Greatest Hits (Ballantine Books, 1988). With my job, I could use some laughs.

Steve Martin, Born Standing Up (Scribner, 2007). I think he wrote this a long time ago, but I am not sure. This was one of Bill's picks.

Dava Sobel, Longitude (Walker and Company, 2005). If Patrick O'Brian and William F. Buckley like it, then that's good enough for me.

Vanora Bennett, Potrait of an Unknown Woman (Harper, 2007). Historical Fiction has been on my mind recently. Henry VIII's court and the English in general around that time interest me. Note to authors: if you put Sir Thomas More on the covers to your books, I'm at least 50% more likely to buy it than not.

David Liss, A Conspiracy of Paper (Ballantine Books, 2001). Historical thriller. Could be horrible. Looked worthy. We shall see.

Martha Cooley, The Archivist (Back Bay, 1999). It's described in one review as valuable and rare. I've liked Byatt's spin on literary detective stories, so I thought I'd try this one.

Mortimer J. Adler, Aristotle for Everybody (Touchstone, 1997). Thank God for used bookstores.

Kelly Jones, The Seventh Unicorn (Berkley, 2005). Art detective story.

Edwin Thomas, The Blighted Cliffs (St. Martin's Press, 2005). Naval adventure.

Matthew Pearl, The Poe Shadow (Random House, 2007). "Thick with intrigue." We shall see.

Charmaine Craig, The Good Men (Riverhead Books, 2002). A historical novel about the Cathar Rebellion. It's probably a lot about the failures of the Catholic Church. I hope it does more than harp on those failures and is, instead, informative about the Cathars.

John Irving, The Cider House Rules (Ballantine Book, 1993). Let's hope it's as good as they say it is.

Alison Jenkins, The Antique Sampler Set (Reader's Digest, 2007). Looks like some good crossstich projects may be in my near future.

Caleb Carr, The Italian Secretary (Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2005). I loved the Alienist, which I read nearly 10 years ago; so, keep your fingers crossed, please (I know I will).

Ken Follett, The Pillars of the Earth (New American Library, 2007). Oprah and I don't generally overlap in our reading selections. I guess I can make one exception.

Michael Shaara, The Killer Angels (Ballantine Books, 2007). One of my favorite (most inspiring) speeches ever is in this book. At some point, I'll post about it.

Finally

2008-04-24T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well, it took much longer than expected, but, finally, the vast majority of our books has been entered into LibraryThing (or enough that I feel comfortable changing from a private to a public setting). I'm not going to add all of our music scores, as they would all have to be hand entered and I simply don't have the patience for that. Our library is under Voracious_Reader should anyone be looking for it--see the side bar as well for a direct link to our library. LibraryThing really is terrific for keeping track...especially at 1,665 and counting.

Not Bad

2008-04-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

I read She said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall by Misty Bernall yesterday. Cassie's mother's expresses that her daughter's death matters more or at least as much as what lead to her answer of "Yes" at the hands of the Columbine shooters, than that she simply said "Yes."

She makes the case that without faith and parents that happened to find out that their child was in trouble, Cassie could have had a very different, but equally infamous life. The story is of what was--as well as what could have been--for a deeply troubled, but incredibly determined teen.

It is the power of a mother's love that hopes all things, that brings us Cassie's story. Her mother asks "why my daughter?" "My death is not my own, but yours, and its significance depends on what you do with it" she quotes from a Hebrew prayer service for fallen soldiers. What significance does her daughter's death have?

Whether or not the exchange between the gunman and Cassie actually took place, which is apparently debatable, doesn't really matter. We want that exchange to have happened. She's a heroine. For evil to have looked into the face of good, and for good, even in the face of death, to have triumphed is uplifting. Faith does not come easily for Cassie, nor most of us. Yet, in the end, when it was really all that mattered, it did come. She was not alone, and she did not doubt. So, it isn't the truth of the exchange that matters. The significance is the desire within us to answer "Yes."

Much News

2008-04-13T18:02:00.000-07:00

I always feel that so much time elapses between posts that I can hardly decide what to write each time. I wont discuss work, as I have done nothing but for a month. In terms of books, our library was recently finished, and I am still busy cataloging all the books. It's not easy, but it is a lot of fun.

On a related note, one of my dearest friends has mentioned being a devoted Book mooch member and I have finally joined as well. It's almost cult-like. I find myself checking to see when my friends last longed onto the site. Creepy? Perhaps. It really is a lot of fun though. There will be a hyperlink or a cloud on the left-hand-side of this blog to get to the site. If you love books, don't always want to keep what you've read, you have access to the Internet and the post office, then this is perfect for you.

Regarding recent reads, my mother-in-law gave us two huge bags of books to read and dispense with however we should chose. Yippee! I wont give a list of the acquisitions here because the books are already tucked away in the library. Most seemed highly readable, some are keepers, and others will make a graceful exit to the Book mooch pile when we've finished with them. Either way, it was really very nice of her to think of us.

On an earlier visit she had brought a pile and in it was Daniel Tammet's Born on a Blue Day. It's an autobiography by a man who has two unusual genetic syndromes: (1) autism and (2) synesthesia. He has a highly functional form of autism called Asperger's with which I am somewhat familiar because one of my friends has the same syndrome. Asperger's manifests itself in a variety of ways, but most people who have it are highly intelligent and lack the ability to develop social skills from the same set of stimulus as others. In short, they tend to be smart and awkward. Synesthesia can mean the ability to see words as colored, numbers have personalities or shapes etc.

Hence, born on a blue day does not mean a rainy day, but that Tammet experiences Wednesdays, the day on which he was born, as blue. It was entertaining and uplifting, but I still get the sense that I don't entirely know him. It's not clear whether that's as a consequence of his syndromes keeping him from adequately expressing himself, that it's my failure as a reader, or, that, in his late twenties, he simply isn't old enough to know himself. He is clearly highly creative and mathematical in the way that he experiences and interprets things. In some ways, he is able to describe the difficulties of his life as concepts and experiences, but not as feelings. I found myself filling in the gaps in emotion with my own. He verges on poetic at times--mostly, as he describes his experiences of synesthesia--and has wrought an inspiring tale. Being entirely unfamiliar with autobiographies, I can draw no comparison. If you like reading about the human mind, I would recommend it.

On an entirely different note. I was entirely ready to call Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl a delicious piece of smut, and, then I realized that that simply wasn't giving it it's just due. It was an exceptionally quick read for being slightly over 700 hundred pages. If you enjoy light historical fiction, I would highly recommend it, having no idea how it compares to the movie, which I've not seen.

It was fun if not entirely historically accurate. I wont go into the deviations from accepted history, as that would ruin aspects of the story. I realized that anyone writing about Henry VIII's wives would find it difficult not to read a little bit like a romance novel at times. Gregory really didn't slip too often into lurid details, and she really gave a good feel for the comings and goings to and from the Tudor Court. In terms of historical drama, I prefer Gulland's ability to craft characters with greater depth and sense of purpose to Gregory's entertaining but weaker narrator and a 21st century perspective that creeps around all four of the book's corner, but I will gladly read another Gregory book.

Friends

2008-02-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

My husband and I are having bookshelves built into the walls of our library. It has been so exciting-and a little frustrating if truth were told-to watch as a room, with hundreds of books piled as high as the eight-foot ceiling, has slowly transformed. We are still waiting for the process to be completed; yet, I can feel the books, which have been packed away for over a year, call out to me: Read Us! I can’t wait to put them away, thumbing through the ones I have read and the ones I haven’t and deciding things like, does Spinoza get shelved with religion or philosophy? What a delicious exercise to categorize and reread as I go, and, finally, to be able add them all to Library Thing. I’m doing mental cartwheels if you can’t tell already.

Yet, while I relish the prospect of seeing and putting away our beloved books that have been collected by us over the course of 30 years from library sales, garage sales, dusty, used bookstores where we literally had to hack our way through a film of dust and cobwebs, as gifts, and from a multitude of other places, I found out earlier this week that some of our friends experienced a terrible flood and lost a number of their dearly-loved texts. I’m not sure that anyone could love books more than my husband and I do, but, if anyone could, they’re pretty good candidates. Their loss, but also a wonderful description of their experiences regarding their books can be read at http://littlebookroom.blogspot.com/. If you love books, please visit their blog. The entries regarding the flood made me mourn; they also made me incredibly grateful. I’ve been privileged to fall in love over and over again with books and the characters and ideas therein and to have many wonderful discussions of Great Books (and not so Great Books) with insightful friends. I am hopeful for my friends that they shall not only recover the collection they lost-so that it can be passed on to their son-but that they will continue to delight in reading together and enjoying relationships they have with other booklovers. It doesn’t matter how many texts they have at any given time; they will always be able to pass on their abiding love of reading and writing.

Delays

2007-11-06T09:05:00.000-08:00

If you like historical drama or even French history, I would recommend Sandra Gulland's The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. Series. It's deftly crafted and certainly made me want to reinvestigate my knowledge concerning the French Revolution and Napoleon's rule. Although Gertrude Himmelfarb's book on philosophy did concern the French Enlightenment, and, therefore, the Revolution, it's emphasis was not on battles, but the history of thought etc. I think I might to follow-up and read a couple of the books Gulland provides in her acknwoledgements section.
Months ago when I finished the Harry Potter series, I thought about writing about it, but I think I'll wait even longer. Not that many are reading this, but I would hate to spoil someone's read. Let's just say that I would continue to argue that there is more to the series than initially mees the eye. It is about good and evil. It does have a religious point-of-view. It is overwhelmingly about love and free will. It provides for a jolly good week of reading too.

Recent Reads

2007-08-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

I've been extremely busy with traveling and such and that has actually afforded me substantial time to read but not to post. So here's an update on the latest reads:

Good Omens by Neil Gaimon and Terry Pratchett--what a good little book. It has definitely inspired me to read more of each author's books. FUNNY! Definitely British humor though.

The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion was informative, a little scary, and parts were boring. The author attempted to be scholarly and to keep it historical, as opposed to editorial in focus. I'm not as familiar with pieces about Islam (other than the Koran) and so I don't have much of a basis for comparison with other works, but it probably compares well with other works of the same type.

Orange Trees of Versailles by Annie Pietri was strange. I thought it was a children's book and it's listed as such, but I don't know that it was. At best it would fit in the Brother's Grimm sort of category of children's stories. It was a quick read, but I am not convinced that I enjoyed it. Nice cover illustration though.

The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success was wonderful. It's nice to read a fact-based history of economics and religion that isn't written by someone with a secularist agenda. I so enjoyed it that I bought another book by the same author and am looking for more. It's dense in terms of subject matter, but it makes for a very entertaining and quick read.

The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots was boring. I had a "so-what" response upon finishing it. Plus, I found it very difficult to finish the book. I kept reading and finishing other books before finishing this one. It was thick with information, but I didn't find it at all engaging. I actually felt the book was a little cowardly, safe.

The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments was perfect. I read Gertrude Himmelfarb's The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values a few years ago, and thought it was extremely thought provoking and well-written. I think the same of The Roads; however, I would recommend becoming familiar with the basics of western philosophy before reading this one. If you're unfamiliar with Kant, Hume, Smith etc...(the list goes on and on), then it would be really difficult to follow or identify with what this author writes.

The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield was ok, not wonderful. I felt like the fantasy/philosophy story was well excuted, but I felt like the religious/philosophical stuff was jumbled. It was a little like: let's put some ancient Greek ideas of religion, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity (and golf) in a pot and see what we cook up. I did like some of the sentiments like God is always with you etc., but I can't quite say I enjoyed it. I also think other books have tried the same sort of thing but have done better. I may retract this later. Maybe I should let the book sit and steep a little.

Green Valley Book Fair

2007-05-28T21:11:00.000-07:00

Bill and I went on a spontaneous day trip with friends on Sunday. We went to the Green Valley Book Fair. Bill had never gone before and I haven't gone in years. It was worth the hour-long treck to Mount Crawford. The drive was beautiful and conversation was great. We were able to catch up with old friends and make a new one (I hope). We had a few exciting moments when we had to pull over because an unexpected rain storm made it impossible to see the road. All in all it was a fun day with friends that ended with dinner at Mono Loco and drinks at a local bar.

I couldn't resist temptation, so our acquisitions were as follows:

Johnathan Swift, A Tale of a Tube and Other Works(Oxford University Press, 1984). I think that many of the stories in this volume were published before Gulliver's Travels, but I'm not sure.

Elizabeth Kostova, The Historian (Little, Brown and Company, 2005). Challenging royal authority is rarely good for one's health, but it sure can be fun.

Owen Gingerich, The Book Nobody Read (Penguin Books, 2004). Revolutionary.

Nancy Geary, Being Mrs. Alcott (Warner Books, 2005). I was feeling a bit stodgy?

Marisha Pessl, Calamity Physics (Penguin Group, 2006). Now this one is actually one that a friend passed on to me after having finished it. So, after having finished it, I'm sure I'll feel morally compelled to do the same.

Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt and Education: Renewing Our Common World (Westview Press, 2001). I wish I were that smart.

Pope John Paul II, The Way to Christ (Harper Collins, 1984). He seemed like a wonderful person.

Louisa Thomas Redgrave, The Vineyard (Penguin Books, 2003). Having recently entertained thoughts of starting a business, I thought a reality check was probably in order. Plus, how could one read a book about a vineyard and not drink wine while doing so?

Mark Helprin, A Dove of the East (Harcourt Brace and Company, 1975). He's a great writer, and I've now gotten word that I must absolutely read his Freddy and Fredericka, his thinly veiled satire of Diana and the Prince.

Mark Helprin, The Pacific and Other Stories (Penguin Books, 2004). One always have to have a few short story books available for those moments when you can't really set aside enough time to read a whole book.

John Dunning, The Sign of the Book (Scribner, 2005). I do like a good mystery. Keep your fingers crossed.

I've been in a reading as opposed to a writing mode recently, but I've made a promise to myself to set the necessary time aside to write some reviews.

Oops

2007-04-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

I'm a moron.

At some point, Blogger and Google merged (don't ask me what that means exactly), and, as a consequence, I've had difficulty logging into my own account.

On top of that we've been really busy since our wedding. Because I didn't see any of my friends commenting on my blog, I thought posting could wait--nobody's reading it anyway.

Wrong.

I finally got into my account only to be reminded, that last year after having received one too many "Please feel free to purchase our condoms and anal lube at lolawannadoya6969.com," that I had selected to moderate comments before they posted to the blog. As a direct consequence of having forgotten that, I had over 70 comments waiting to be published. Oops.

It shant happen again.

Anyhoo, in four days, I'll be sworn in as an assistant commonwealth's attorney for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Yipee! I am very happy about this new job, and the opportunities that come with it.

If anyone had wondered during my hiatus: "Does she have time to read?" The answer is "yes," but I haven't had nearly enough time to read all the things want to (but that's not new). With my new job I believe I'll have more time to read--since I wont be working seven days a week. I've run out and gotten a new bunch of books in preparation (not that I needed more of them).

So, without further ado, this weeks acquisitions:

Matthew Stewart, The Courtier and the Heretic:Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World(W.W. Norton & Company, 2006). Hello, my name is Kat, and I'm a Johnny.

Danny Danziger and John Gillingham, 1215: The Year of the Magna Carta (Simon & Schuster, 2003). Challenging royal authority is rarely good for one's health, but it sure can be fun.

The Thomas Jefferson Reader (Konecky&Konecky). How could a UVA graduate not have at least one Jefferson book?

James T. Fisher, Communion of Immigrants: A History of Catholics in America(Oxford University Press, 2002). I don't know. It looked interesting.

Paul Doherty, Alexander the Great: The Death of God, (Constable and Robinson, LTD., 2004). I'll be imaging the cast of 300 while I read this one.

Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances (Everyman Classic, 1993). I wonder what the differences are between French chivalry and English chivalry? Any takers? I remember your essay on the Knight's tale Peculiar.

Annie Pietri, Orange Trees of Versailles (Delacorte Press, 2004). What an intriguing cover.

Philip Zweig, Icons (2004). Bill and I love artbooks. No shocker given his aspirations. But we simply can't afford those big huge art books that cost more than our student loan payments, so this one was a great find. Byzantine art, even when shrunken down to 4" by 8", is breathtaking.

Elizabeth Cook, Achilles (St. Martin's Press, 2001). It's suprisingly tiny.

Aline S. Taylor, Isabel of Burguny (Madison Books, 2001). I'm not one who much goes for books that fall into the "women's studies" category, but this one did look good; it also pops up under european history, so I'm willing to take a chance.

Jean Zimmerman, The Women of the House (Harcourt Books, 2006). I hate it when there are errors on the book jacket, they never bode well for its interior. We'll see.

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe on tape as read by Michael York. Yes, yes, cheesy I know, but you just want one of your own.

Benton Rain Patterson, Harold and William (Cooper Sqaure Press, 2001). History!

Caryl Johnston, Consecrated Venom (Floris Books, 2001). I just finished Neil Gaimon and Terry Pratchett's Good Omen's--funny, by the way. Caryl's book, same theme, different genre.

Harold Bloom, Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (Riverhead Books, 2004). Bloom's an odd duck.

Clare Francis, A Dark Devotion (Macmillan, 1997). I'm on the look out for a new mystery series. Is this the one?

Philip Larkin, A Girl in Winter (The Overlook Press, 1985).

Congrat's to the recently engaged Richmond couple and to the-ready-to-burst-with-child Charlottesvillian attorney. No, I do not mean me.

WOW

2006-10-13T08:31:00.000-07:00

Look at this!
What an amazing time to live in. Though, I've often wondered whether my personality fits in with an earlier time period, this is too fantastic not to note.

Acquisitions

2006-10-07T23:52:00.000-07:00

I've been a member of the Quality Paperback Book Club for years, but, of recent, I haven't been too interested in their offerings. Apparently, I'd gone so long without buying a book, that they offered to allow me to rejoin. They're a bit like drug dealers aren't they, i.e., the first time's free, so we've gotten a bunch of new books.

Anyhow, our book collection has profitted from their peddling.

Patricia Schultz, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die (Workman Pyblishing, 2003). We're already planning 1,000 trips.
James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare (HarperCollins Publishers, 2005). "Wedding is great Juno's crown./O blessed bond of board and bed!/'Tis hymen peoples every town;/High wedlock then be honored./Honor, high honor and renown,/To Hymen, god of evrery town!" (As you Like It, 5.4.140-145). How could anyone not like Shakespeare? Lovely. Just lovely.
Biggest Book of Slow Cook Recipes (Better Homes and Gardens, 2002). Yum.
T.J. Wray and Gregory Mobley, The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots (Palgrave, 2005). It'll either be great or really laughable.
Julian Barnes, Arthur & George (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). Historical novel...We shall see.
Donna Leon, Through a Glass Darkly: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005). I love a good mystery.

Unbelievably Cool if True

2006-10-05T13:49:00.000-07:00

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061005/D8KIF7J80.html

The Forgotten One

2006-08-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Just one more.

Vio Ettiore, The Basilica of St. Mark in Venice (Scala/Riverside, 1999). Beautiful. I'd love to visit Italy.

This Week: Newest Treats

2006-08-19T00:00:00.000-07:00

So, though I have barely enough time to sleep at this point, I can't resist temptation. I couldn't find my keys to get into my office-please note that it is SATURDAY!--though I did later find them in the pocket to the suit I wore yesterday. Since I couldn't go to work, I decided to go shopping for books. I only went to two bookstores and I did some pretty good damage anyway. One of the bookstores was offering buy one, get one for free--I was like "Is it my birthday?!" Anyhow, here are my newest acquisitions:

Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart (Anchor, 2000). "Human character" is mentioned like ten times on the back of the book. Yummy.
Peters Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel (Vintage, 2001). I do enjoy Irish humor.
Valerie Martin, Mary Reilly (Pocket, 1991). I don't recall being a huge fan of the movie, but I generally think movie adaptions of books suck.
John Lescroart, Sons of Holmes (NAL Trade, 2003). So the title Rasputin's Revenge caught my eye, but it was not the first in the series, so I picked up this one instead. We'll see.
Anonymous, Primary Colors: A Novel of Politics (Warner Bros. 1996). I believe that this one speaks for itself.
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism; On Liberty; On Considerations on Representative Government; Remarks on Bentham's Philosophy. I know. I know. I'm a glutton for punishment. The thing is that, when I read excerpts from On Liberty, I really enjoyed them.
Camille Paglia, Sex, Art, and American Culture (Vintage, 1992). She's hilarious (not in a bad way).
Sylvia Nasar, Beautiful Mind (Simon & Schuster, 2001). Maybe I'll see the movie after I read the book.
Somerset Maugham, Collected Short Stories, V.4 (Penguin, 1978). I read The Appointment in Samarra when I was in high school. Maugham retold the story:

There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to
buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white
and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace
I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was
Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,
now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid
my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The
merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his
spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then
the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

What an interesting vignette. On its surface it's clearly about death, but isn't it also about how events are set in motion. Anyhow, I'm sure I'll like the collected stories.
Gaston Leroux, The Phantom Opera (Puffin Classics, 1994). Speaks for itself.

And now, I am off to bed. Good night and good reading.

To My Friends

2006-08-05T19:48:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to you-know-who for you-know-what!

(The truth is that all of my friends have interesting or wonderful things going on right now, and so the safest way to address everyone is the above maxim/salutation.)

Coming Up for Air

2006-07-31T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I am still drowning, but I'm taking a day or two off.

Work has been moving ahead at a million miles per minute.

I had a wonderful time in Washington D.C. over the weekend. It was nice to see old friends.

I'm looking forward to all the wedding-related stuff I intend to get done this week.

I did make an acquisition this week, via a gift from a friend (you know who you are):
1. Stephen Lubet, Lawyer's Poker: 52 Lessons that Lawyers Can Learn from Card Players (Oxford University Press, 2006). It looks like a fun book written by a law professor at North Western University. He also wrote a trial advocacy manual, that I believe I read while in law school. This one looks entertaining. I hope it's pithy.

Here's a cliff hanger: Come this fall I may have big non-wedding related news. :)

I'm Drowning

2006-06-06T17:05:00.000-07:00

Work is Life.

Life is work.

Work is life...

Clients always want more time; however, I cannot change the length of a day. It will, for now, remain a paltry 24 hours. Shame on me for being unavailable for 5 a day.

Party Hardily

2006-05-24T05:36:00.000-07:00

Although I've neglected my friends, my blog, my fiance, and my cats, it has paid off. I just won a particularly large component of a serious case.

Finally, I can breath.

I'll write more later this week.

Wedding planning has been rather consuming as well.

Women Writers Meme

2006-04-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

BOLD those you’ve read. Italicize the ones you’ve been meaning to read and ??? the ones you have never heard of (or wish you had never heard of? Or the ones you wonder, "why is this book on this list?". I left the ones that I've heard of but don't really have an interest in reading, plain--that is, neither bolded nor italicized.

Alcott, Louisa May–Little Women
Allende, Isabel–The House of Spirits
Angelou, Maya–I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Atwood, Margaret–Cat’s Eye
Austen, Jane–Emma
Bambara, Toni Cade–Salt Eaters ???
Barnes, Djuna–Nightwood ???
de Beauvoir, Simone–The Second Sex
Blume, Judy–Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret
Burnett, Frances–The Secret Garden
Bronte, Charlotte–Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily–Wuthering Heights
Buck, Pearl S.–The Good Earth
Byatt, A.S.–Possession
Cather, Willa–My Antonia
Christie, Agatha–Murder on the Orient Express
Cisneros, Sandra–The House on Mango Street
Clinton, Hillary Rodham–Living History????????? There aren't enough question marks in this universe.
Cooper, Anna Julia–A Voice From the South
Danticat, Edwidge–Breath, Eyes, Memory ???
Davis, Angela–Women, Culture, and Politics
Desai, Anita–Clear Light of Day ???
Dickinson, Emily–Collected Poems
Duncan, Lois–I Know What You Did Last Summer
DuMaurier, Daphne–Rebecca
Eliot, Geroge–Middlemarch
Emecheta, Buchi–Second Class Citizen
Erdrich, Louise–Tracks ???
Esquivel, Laura–Like Water for Chocolate
Flagg, Fannie–Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe ???
Friedan, Betty–The Feminine Mystique
Frank, Anne–Diary of a Young Girl
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins–The Yellow Wallpaper ???
Gordimer, Nadine–July’s People ???
Grafton, Sue–S is for Silence ???
Hamilton, Edith–Mythology
Highsmith, Patricia–The Talented Mr. Ripley
Hooks, Bell–Bone Black ???
Hurston, Zora Neale–Dust Tracks on the Road
Jacobs, Harriet–Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl ???
Jackson, Helen Hunt–Ramona
Jackson, Shirley–The Haunting of Hill House
Jong, Erica–Fear of Flying
Keene, Carolyn–The Nancy Drew Mysteries (any of them? Try all of them.)
Kidd, Sue Monk–The Secret Life of Bees
Kincaid, Jamaica–Lucy
Kingsolver, Barbara–The Poisonwood Bible
Kingston, Maxine Hong–The Woman Warrior
Larsen, Nella–Passing ???
L’Engle, Madeleine–A Wrinkle in Time
Le Guin, Ursula K.–The Left Hand of Darkness ???
Lee, Harper–To Kill a Mockingbird
Lessing, Doris–The Golden Notebook
Lively, Penelope–Moon Tiger ???
Lorde, Audre–The Cancer Journals ???
Martin, Ann M.–The Babysitters Club Series
McCullers, Carson–The Member of the Wedding
McMillan, Terry–Disappearing Acts ???
Markandaya, Kamala–Nectar in a Sieve ???
Marshall, Paule–Brown Girl, Brownstones ???
Mitchell, Margaret–Gone with the Wind
Montgomery, Lucy–Anne of Green Gables
Morgan, Joan–When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost ???
Morrison, Toni–Song of Solomon
Murasaki, Lady Shikibu–The Tale of Genji
Munro, Alice–Lives of Girls and Women ???
Murdoch, Iris–Severed Head ???
Naylor, Gloria–Mama Day ???
Niffenegger, Audrey–The Time Traveller’s Wife
Oates, Joyce Carol–We Were the Mulvaneys
O’Connor, Flannery–A Good Man is Hard to Find
Piercy, Marge–Woman on the Edge of Time ???
Picoult, Jodi–My Sister’s Keeper ???
Plath, Sylvia–The Bell Jar
Porter, Katharine Anne–Ship of Fools ???
Proulx, E. Annie–The Shipping News
Rand, Ayn–The Fountainhead
Ray, Rachel–365: No Repeats ???
Rhys, Jean–Wide Sargasso Sea
Robinson, Marilynne–Housekeeping ???
Rocha, Sharon–For Laci ???
Sebold, Alice–The Lovely Bones ???
Shelley, Mary–Frankenstein
Smith, Betty–A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Smith, Zadie–White Teeth ???
Spark, Muriel–The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Spyri, Johanna–Heidi
Strout, Elizabeth–Amy and Isabelle ???
Steel, Danielle–The House ???
Tan, Amy–The Joy Luck Club
Tannen, Deborah–You’re Wearing That
Ulrich, Laurel–A Midwife’s Tale
Urquhart, Jane–Away ???
Walker, Alice–The Temple of My Familiar
Welty, Eudora–One Writer’s BeginningsWharton, Edith–Age of Innocence
Wilder, Laura Ingalls–Little House in the Big Woods
Wollstonecraft, Mary–A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Woolf, Virginia–A Room of One’s Own

It's as interesting to see what's on the list as what's not. I'm taken back by how many I've never even heard of. I do recognize a number of authors, but associate them with other books or don't know what they've written, e.g., I've heard of Danielle Steele, but I don't know what she's written.

Time, A Luxury?

2006-04-17T21:40:00.000-07:00

I would love to weigh in on the recent "wretchedness" posts by Kate, Writing in Apathy, and Odious, and Jack at The Pumpkin King, but time doesn't permit me to do so right at this moment.

Recently having finished Eldest, which is the sequel, or, more accurately, the second in a trilogy by Christopher Paolini, I realized the frequency of my posts has declined. And since I enjoyed it much better than the first installment--namely, Eragon, it seemed the right time to start posting again.

Its main character isn't in the dreaded teenage-angsty stage anymore. Whenever I think of teenage angsty characters, Luke Skywalker's simpering "But I don't wannna" comes to mind. Paolini'story is aided by the fact that his main character is easier to write, as an adult than a teen. I don't know much about fantasy literature, but his tales of elves, humans, and dwarfs seems like standard fair. It was fun, but light.

Bill can't believe that I read what he has deemed "inferior imitation" before having read Lord of the Rings. Oh well. I'm not saying it's a substitute for the king of all fantasy novels, but it maybe a good introduction to the genre. Plus, I have a sneaking suspcision that I will catch him reading Eragon anyday now.

This Takes the Cake

2006-04-17T11:23:00.000-07:00

Are you kidding me?

No.

Famous

2006-04-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

It seems that all my talented friends are being published at this point. JOE: Congratulations to having another article published!

Joe are you working on any more fiction, or are you transitioning into editorials only? And, NO..to your inquiry about us having a football themed wedding. :)

Right on Baby, Right On

2006-03-28T18:55:00.000-08:00

I'm willing to openly debate anything. That fact doesn't mean that I'll change my mind at the flip of a coin. Honestly, Jesus himself would have to swoop down and tell me I was wrong to get me to change my mind on certain issues.

I'm not secretly judgmental; I'm openly opinionated. E.g., Anyone who doesn't take their values seriously probably doesn't have any. That's one of those not-so-secret judgmental opinions I have.

Can you tell I had a nasty day at work?

You Are 48% Open Minded

You aren't exactly open minded, but you have been known to occasionally change your mind.
You're tolerant enough to get along with others who are very different...
But you may be quietly judgmental of things or people you think are wrong.
You take your own values pretty seriously, and it would take a lot to change them.

How Open Minded Are You?

Ex Post

2006-03-23T18:05:00.000-08:00

I realized that my last comment could be read in far too many ways, which I had not intended.

What I intended was a comparison between the characters of Emma and Elizabeth. Both are heroines in Austen novels, and though their novels share themes, and the characters have some similarities, they do differ from one another heartily. Emma's world is confined in a sense that Elizabeth's is not. She's Pride to Elizabeth's Prejudice. Emma lacks sensitivity, whereas Elizabeth may have too much.

Furthermore, Emma's world is more confined that Elizabeth's, and is driven very much by Emma's own imagination. Clearly, the opening phrase of Emma--namely, that she was "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition" and "had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her" and the fact that the book is titled after the main character indicates that the book is, at heart, about Emma. Reality often intrudes on her private world, and, as she emotionally matures, she realizes that though she is witty/clever, she is often mistaken about her emotions and the emotions of others.

Where Emma begins with a very personal and particular phrase, Pride and Prejudice begins with a general phrase about society. "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." This reader is left to assume that the opposite is true as well--that, that ALL women are in want of a man with a good fortune too.

The novels have interwoven themes and subthemes, and I can't even begin to realize them all. Certainly both are about how Emma and Elizabeth survive their own personal failings and find true love in the process. But, I've often wondered what Elizabeth and Emma would say to one another about the subject of Love over a nice cup of tea.

Congratulations!

2006-03-23T17:31:00.000-08:00

Congrats to Odious over at Odious and Peculiar. He's been published and paid! Check it out at flashquake. He's husband to Kate whose poem I recommended only days ago, which brings to mind one (of many) Jane Austen quotations--namely, "It's such happiness when good people get together--and they always do." (Emma)

Would Elizabeth Bennet say the same thing?

Icky, Icky

2006-03-22T17:15:00.000-08:00

So, recently I've happened upon novels that play with time. For example, Muriel Spark's The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is told from the present and the future simultaneously--that is, school girls reminisce and contemplate their lives and connections with a charismatic, if often misleading, teacher.

Spark's memorable characters are engaging, but I'm not sure we're on the same page with respect to what she says about those characters. Her style is perceptive, but cold. She doesn't shirk from depicting evil and failure, silliness, and human folly, but I wasn't sure that she did anything more. Then, I stopped being mentally lazy, and I got it.

The title character, Miss Jean Brodie, a silly romanantic, elevates the personal above the universal. That's why she's a good facist. She's pitiable, and yet ugly. She reminds me of Peter Keating in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. She lives vicariously through her students, convinced that she's controlling them, and is omnipotent about their futures. Student A is destined to be a great lover, and student B is destined to be X, Y, or Z. Sandy (the other primary character) observes, "She thinks she is Providence . . . she thinks she is the God of Calvin, she sees the beginning and the end." She confuses the Italian Renaisance with Italian facism. In the end, she isn't nearly as perceptive about the world or her students as she thinks she is.

She loves facism. Through her dynamic personality she controls her students, infusing their minds with her facist ideology, personifing facist authority. She convinces them that Catholism is passe, that morality is whatever the elite make it, that religion is populism, that we are all predestined to be whatever we become. In the end, though, one of her own students betrays her, exposing her shallowness and nonconformity/conformity to the school's headmistress.

Sandy, one of the Brodie-set, the "creme de la creme," rejects her teacher, and finally ends up becoming a nun. Sandy revolts against the idea that she is above all things and all others, including morality. She becomes keenly aware that her conformity to Miss Jean Brodie's "group judgment" which is at odds with her individual judgment is a source of human cruelty. Furthermore, Sandy thuroughly revolts against Miss Brodie's Calvinist ideology of predestination. Sandy, though, is not without fault. She engages in an affair with a married man, while on the road to rejecting Miss Brodie's ideology.

Miss Jean Brodie tells one of her students that she should have an affair with the art teacher (Miss Brodie's ex). She never sees Sandy as a candidate for the endeavor, so, as Sandy begins to revolt against Miss Brodie and her misleading romanticism and rejection of religion, Sandy starts the affair. The affair is just the first step. It isn't until Sandy realizes that Miss Brodie didn't think she was good enough to have the affair (Miss Brodie thinks highly of herself and must live out her fantasies through those she finds acceptable substitutes for the real thing), and that she takes NO responsibility for having contributed to the death of one of the other school girls, that Sandy truly rebels, exposing Ms. Brodie. Miss Brodie never knows who betrayed her deepest secrets and sentiments to the school, or why.

I'm writing this during a quick break. Now back to court!

Going to the Chapel, and We're Gonna Get Married...

2006-03-14T17:32:00.000-08:00

Wedding guests: please feel free to visit our wedding blog titled "Once Upon a Time."

Sacred Music

2006-03-13T05:14:00.000-08:00

I sang Bach's St. John's Passion this weekend with the Oratorio Society. It was a splendid performance--much better than the Christmas one. Though, after seeing the Fab Four on Wednesday, having rehearsal Friday and Saturday, seeing Swan Lake on Saturday and performing the Passion on Sunday, I am tired.

On the subject of splendid books and blogs, Kate wrote a nice poem over at the Little Bookroom.

Lost

2006-02-08T05:44:00.000-08:00

I am lost in the abyss--that is, Juvenile Court.

I'll post more this weekend, having actually been able to finish a couple books while waiting for my cases to be called in Juvenile Court and Domestic Relations Court. Yipee!

Crazy

2006-01-15T16:32:00.000-08:00

I dislike memes. They lull their takers and readers into a false sense of knowing one another. They're sort of like those peer-building excercises where you're forced to sit with a coworker and ask them questions, like "What's your favorite color?" And yet, I, like everyone else, feel compelled to take them, so hate 'em or love 'em, you will find the occassional meme here.

This one comes courtesy of Kate at The Little Bookroom.

2 names you go by:
1. Kat
2. KP

2 parts of your heritage:
1. Irish
2. English (or so my parents tell me)

2 things that scare you:
1. Walking into a dark room
2. Being followed

2 of your everyday essentials:
1. Reading
2. Laughing

2 things you are wearing right now:
1. Black yoga pants
2. Aqua and yellow double tank top

2 favorite bands or musical artists:
1. Bach
2. Ella Fitzgerald

2 things you want in a real relationship (other than real love) (I copied this one from Kate)
1. Honesty
2. Intellectual stimulation

2 truths:
1. Bill just asked me if I'd like to go get ice cream. I told him no, saying I'm too tired to go.
2. I've felt really fat since I having had mono. I had to be on steroids, so I've gained over 50 pounds. I really would like to have some ice cream right now.

2 physical things that appeal to you (in the opposite sex):
1. Height
2. Nice butt

2 of your favorite hobbies;
1. Reading
2. Crossstich or sewing

2 things you want really badly:
1. To be less stressed about work and the wedding
2. To own a bookstore or work for a publishing house

2 places you want to go on vacation:
1. Italy
2. Greece

2 things you want to do before you die:
1. Be a good Christian
2. Be financially succesful

2 ways that you are stereotypically a chick:
1. I complain about being fat, but then eat things that are bad for me anyway.
2. I love kitties.

2 things you are thinking about now:
1. Maybe I shouldn't be so honest in anwering the questions to this meme.
2. Yum. Ice cream.

2 stores you shop at:
1. Jones New York
2. Any Bookstore that catches my eye

2 people I would like to see take this quiz:
1. You.

Night Train Arrives Late

2006-01-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

Nihilism tastes bad to me, and love's topping doesn't make it any sweeter.

Martin Amis' Night Train tracks a heroine, a deep-voiced, incredibly sensitive, female cop, who works around mean, unhappy men. Amis' heroine speaks in first person as she unravels the mystery of the death of one of her sort-of friends. That friend was a beautiful, let me stress that she was breathtakingly beautiful, brilliant, but depressed young woman, who dies by gunshot to the head in the book's opening scenes. She speaks in the second person.

It seems that these two disparate creations are yoked to one another, as the heroine investigates who killed the beauty. Eventually (it's not a huge suprise), you find out that the beauty offed herself. Why? Because the world is such and ugly place, you're better being part of it, even if that means you're an alcoholic cop. Perfection and sophistication can't save you. Even perfection itself is mortal. But, beauty leaves a roadmap for her investigator. Being inexorably tied to the cop, she lays a roadmap leading to her killer: herself.

Why would a brilliant, beautiful woman, with no apparent problems kill herself? This was the toughest part of the story for me to feel comfortable with. She kills herself because she can. She's sad because there isn't anything out there. Her family doesn't provide her comfort and can't sheild her from nothingness, from death itself. The world has nothing to offer her (so she thinks). It holds no secrets, no mystery, no pot 'o gold at the end. She's a physicist for whom there are no mathmatical questions she can't answer. She starts making up the numbers to her experiments, perhaps because everything is too predictable to her. There's simply no point to continuing, since the end is the same. Whether she meets her end 90 years from now, or at the barrel of a gun, "Black holes mean oblivion. Mean death."

Yuck. How sad. The whole book exudes sadness, grief. The only glimmer of hope is that the heroine wrestles with oblivion and wins. It's a small triumph if you ask me, because she takes no happiness in the defeat.

This creates a paradox: the dead girl's love and care which leads her to leave clues for the detective is what saves the detective from devaluing human life. The dead girl kills herself. Amis in the heroines first person, metallic voice says "Suicide is the night train...speeding your way into darkness...this train takes you into the night, and leaves you there" except that isn't what the beauty's death does. It sheds light on everything. It wasn't without purpose, at least to the heroine. And what does the beauty care, she's dead. Her life and her death must have had some purpose, or she would have left clues for the heroine to discover. She knew her death would provide insights into life. Love, something which nihilism says does exist, is what drives her to care.

It's the Neitzche effect on a detective novel. God is dead. Don't think about the afterlife. Think about the now. Be earthly. Be like the heroine. Worship no absolute, enjoy the grit. God, the beauty, perfection, afterlife, it can't save you and it can't offer you anything earthy (EXCEPT HERE IT INSPIRES THE HEROINE TO SAVOR LIFE). Don't look for life's purpose, you wont find one, and, if you do, then you're just lying to yourself, trying to make yourself feel better by clasping tightly to the chimeric rags of a ghost.

I'm not a nihilist if that isn't obvious already. I get it, but I just don't agree, nor do I like it. Nihilism just doesn't sit well with my senses. The book was well-written. I enjoyed it (in a twisted way), but I just don't like the suicide theory that drives this Night Train.

I'm Still Here

2006-01-04T05:36:00.000-08:00

I'm reading. I promise. I am, however, in the midst of preparing for multiple trials right now, and that's why I haven't been posting recently. For those of you who have commented on the paucity of my posts, thank you. It makes me feel great to know that someone other than myself gives these a once over. Posts to follow, soon.

Plus, even when I am not posting, I'm still reading yours...keep 'um coming.

Encore

2005-11-29T18:14:00.000-08:00

Bill and I spent a busy vacation week in NY. On the upside, we visited with friends and family--it was fun. There was far too much traveling involved though. We traveled for more than 40 hours in between Wednesday and Monday. We dealt with late trains, canceled trains, and more. Boo!

The traveling did provide me with time to have some additional hours of sleep and get some reading done. I finished The Princess Bride and Buttercup's Baby. It was impossible for me to read The Princess Bride without hearing and seeing the movie in my mind as a read. It was enjoyable, but it wasn't absolutely fabulous. Buttercup's Baby was just odd. William Goldman is one weird, brilliant guy. I have to say that without the movie, it would have been really difficult for me to have imagined what the story would look and sound like. The characters are realy one dimensional, and Goldman leaves a lot of room for interpretation. How incredibly odd to invent another author/narrator etc.

This brings to mind one of my fond memories from St. John's. I remember getting together with the majority of my dorm to watch The Princess Bride in a tiny little room in the student union. "Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

We did get to see friends and family. Bill's parents are very kind, and it's always nice to spend time with them. Bill's Dad's family is hospitable and kind as well. We saw Bill's grandma--she's cute. Bill's sister is really blossoming into a lovely woman.

Shopping the day after Thanksgiving was a hoot. I've never seen lines to just get in the stores (midday)! Bill and I visited the Pommes Frites in the East Village. Wonderful--I still feel the fries hardening my arteries. We also visited the Strand again. Joe doesn't like it because of it's being ill-organized, but I do. When I enter a bargain store, part of the pleasure is searching through the shelves and finding treasures. I can always order something over the internet if I know what I want to begin with, but I like coming across jewels by chance. I've found favorites--like The End of the Affair that way. It's all the more delicious.

So, these are my new additions to my growing inventory:

Martin Amis, Night Train (Vintage, 1997). This is a psycholical play on the old detective novels. I've read about 121 pages of it, so I'll relate more on it later this week.

Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Penguin, 1790). Odious commented on how Serenity was largely based in Burkeian philosophy. Having not read up on my Burke in quite sometime I thought this was a good find. Plus, not being a lover of the French (pre-Iraq invasion era), I can't ever resist a philospher exposing the faults of their political system.

Kenneth R. Timmerman, The French Betrayal of America (Three Rivers Press, 2004). I can't really count this one as my own. It's gift for my mother. Apparently, it documents how the French provided Sadddam with weapons and tools for nuclear war etc.

Marguerite Duras, The Sea Wall (Perennial Library, 1952). I've always liked Duras. Beautiful prose. Deeply absorbing. Incredibly dark, and yet uplifting.

Charles R. Morris, American Catholic (Vintage, 1997). Is it true that there are more Catholics in NY than in Dublin? Yup. I don't know if there's an agenda to this one, or whether its more factual than editorial.

J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan (Puffin Books, 1911). Yippee. Who doesn't like Peter Pan in their man? Do not make that into a dirty joke, Odious, Peculiar, Larissa, Kate, Joe, Carly, Cube or Proclus.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees (Penguin, 2002). This one I can't really count either since I have it on loan from Bill's sister, Kate.

Dorothy Dunnett, Niccolo Rising (Vintage, 1986). Having already purchased Volumes II and III of this series, I was happy to come across Volume I. Cheers!

Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (Anchor Books, 2002). Joe called this one trash...but he calls anything popular trash. I don't happen to agree. Some very popular things are actually very good, like The Bible, candy, and love. :)

Haydn Middleton, Grimm's Last Fairytale (Thomas Dunne Books, 1999). Gothic. My latest genre obsession.

Adam Nicholson, God's Secretaries (Perennial, 2003). History. Always an obsession. If Christopher Hitchens endorses it, then I'll read it. No guarentee I'll agree with it, but I'll read it.

Early Irish Myths and Sagas (Penguin, 1981). Folktales are a wonderful way to discover the sole of any given culture. Like science fiction, folktales allow the authors to say a lot about humans nature, perhaps even more than other types of stories. It's like Shakespearean characters who were most themseves when masked by costumes. Sometimes you have to hide a little to say the most.

Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (Penguin, 1999 ed.). So, I got confused an thought that Joe had recommended Collins, but it was actually Kate. No matter. I trust both sources. I look forward to reading a "Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism."

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (Penguin, 1993 ed.). Mystery. An English detective novel. Yum.

Edited by Nicholas Griffin, The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume I, The Private Years (Houghton Mifflin Co, 1992). Biographies. How many volumes could there be? This one is 532 pages.

Henry James, Daisy Miller (Penguin Books, 1878 ed.). I haven't liked the James I've read in the past, but this one's short so I thought I'd give it a try.

Alan Wall, The School of Night (Thomas Dunne Books, 2001). More gothic. This one is by a contemporary author, but the story is set in the past. I'll have to see how it compares with old Gothic horror/mystery.

Martin Amis, Time's Arrow (Harmony Books, 1991). Who knows? Joe recommended it.

That's it for now folks.

Gothic Novels

2005-11-18T23:42:00.000-08:00

What's a good place to start?

What are a few of the gothic novels I've read, and why do I think they're Gothic novels? Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bronte's Jane Eyre, Lewis' Monk, Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Lemony Snickett. What do all of these novels share? Extreme emotion and situations. Ruins in the country side. Grit in the cities. Mean, sexual clerics. Obsession with the past. What part of the past? Preindustrialization...which means medieval (like Gothic architecture? Huge heroes and huge villains.

Moreover, most of them are written by and/or are about unusually-bright young women falling in love with men who are unworthy of them. Most of those are written in the late 1800's or eary 1900's (I think)--that would have been smack dab in the middle of the Victorian era. What was the Victorian era like? Controlled?

Hm.

Who's Watching You Kid

2005-11-17T09:16:00.000-08:00

Just for kicks I thought I'd check in on who's reading my blog and how long they stay etc. It was nice to find that, at the very least, my friends check in with some frequency, but I was shocked to learn that random people end up here based on some interesting internet searches.

Most vexing: type "penus" into a search engine, and my site's listed. I wondered, "Why?", and realized that it's those damned spammers who put HTML code in their comments. So, I started checking the other internet searches that lead people here and realized that many arrive here while searching for cliffs notes or free essays.

I'm tempted to write reviews like, isn't terrible when Jane Eyre dies at boarding school (see, I suspect that people who pillage blogs for plot, theme, and mood info on great books, probaby didn't read much more than the book's jacket)--why name an entire book after a character who dies in the first few chapters?, or Troy's victory was long and hard fought in the Iliad, or it's so wonderful when Dante finally makes love to Beatrice in the final stanzas of the Paradiso.

I'd like to see the reception those comments would receive from a TA.

On the other hand, it pleasures me to know that someone might think that what I have to say is interesting enough to plagiarize and pillage for their own use.

So Tree-Killers

2005-11-14T08:40:00.000-08:00

...otherwise known as literature-buffs, what's your definition of a "Gothic Novel?"

Bibliolicious

2005-11-11T23:41:00.000-08:00

Well, I did ascend to heaven and fall back to earth. Thank you for all of the nice birthday wishes. My birthday was a wonderful one spent with friends and family.

I really do like my inlaws, as unusual as that may be. I keep telling my fiance that I don't want to have a big wedding, but part of me wants to. If he and his parents and sister are any indication of what the rest of his family are like, then I'd love to have all of them at the wedding reception. His family is fun-loving, smart, and a joy to be around. I think my parents will enjoy having them all at the reception.

So anyhow, Bill and drove to Columbia, Maryland and went to Daedulus Warehouse. My parents drove up as well. I had a nice time chatting with them and going out to lunch at Bennigan's. They indulged my love of books, without question, which was nice because even though I tried to limit myself to only those books I REAAAAALLLLY wanted, I REAAAAAAlly wanted a lot of books.

I had a great time rummaging through well-organized book shelves. I made many aquisitions--namely,

Patrick McGrath, Spider (Vintage, 1990). Thank God for new gothic. What would happen if I read all the old gothic novels and ran out of new ones to read? Apparently this one's soon to be a motion picture too.
Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose (Harcourt, 1980). Well, I know they're both brilliant economists, and I believe fervently in the connection between personal liberty and free markets, so I couldn't help but pick this one up.
Patrick McGrath, Dr. Haggard's Disease (Vintage, 1993). Gothic. Need I say more?
Louis Auchincloss, East Side Story (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). This is a fictionalized account of those fated-few who rose to fame on the east side of New York in the mid to late 1800's. Seems like a prolific author. That could spell disaster or something great.
Jonathan Kirsch, God Against the Gods (Penguin Books, 2004). Looks like an interesting history of one particular aspect of religion--namely, the battle between monotheists and polytheists. It seems to imply that religious intolerance stems from that one difference, even now. We'll see.
Edited by B.A. Botkin, A Civil War Treasury. I love moral allegories like those in folklore, so I couldn't pass this one up. This has newspaper clippings, folkstories, and so on that came out before, during, and after the civil war. It'll be interesting to see how the war affected literature.
Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare (Knopf, 2002). Carly read this and said it was good, but that it offers a very different account of the Salem witch trials from prior books concerning the same topic. She says she'll bring me one of the prior accounts to read first. Yipee!
Dorothy Dunnett, Race of Scorpions (Vintage, 1989). This is third in the House of Niccolo historical fiction series. Problem: I don't believe I own the first in the series. To the library we go! Don't you just love 15th century Italy.
Peggy Noonan, A Politcal Life in the Raegan Era (Encore, 2003). She has always written columns and speeches that were barbed with wit and yielded many delights, so this seemed worth a couple bucks.
John McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care (Gotham Books, 2003). Written by a linguist--at least it wont be poorly written--it looks like it confronts the possible derailment of democracy based on our lack of a large, vibrant educated populus...blah, blah, blah, and the consequences on our future intellectual life.
Nino Ricci, Testament (Mariner Books, 2003). Another historical novel cast as a "fictional biography." There's a beautiful reproduction of Ecce Homo by Vivente Juan Macip on the cover. It's, suprise suprise, an account of Jesus' life from four perspectives--namely, that of a Jewish political revolutionist, a female discipile, Jesus' mother, Mary, and a shepherd.
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (Touchstone, 1983). Strangely enough, I was one of the few nut jobs who enjoyed natural philosophy in college. Kudos to Mr. Hans Von Breisen for his convincing me that it has a place in contemporary physics as well. I can't pass up religion and philosophy in the same book.
James A. Connor, Kepler's Witch (Harper Books, 2004). Ok, so Kepler, a witch, and the Pope walk into a bar. And Kepler says,...
Mike Dash, Batavia's Graveyard (Crown Publisher's, 2002). I read a book called The Company: Portrait of a Murder by Arabella Edge, which made Robinson Crusoe look lucky for being marooned on an island alone. That book made my skin crawl. I didn't enjoy it, but it did make me wonder how much of the book was historically accurate.
Craig Boreth, How To Iron You Own Damn Shirt: The Perfect Husband Shirt (Three Rivers Press 2005). Bill's sister tried to buy this book for him as a joke, and I recommended against her giving it to him for Christmas. Then, he ended up buying it for himself.
Deborah Coates, Cat Haiku (Arrow Books 2003). Bill bought be this quaint little book. How could it fail to appeal to my love for bad poetry with
I think that the new
Kitten makes a fine punching
Bag and trampoline.
I'm waiting for you to contribute Billy.
Craig Harline, The Burdens of Sister Margaret: Inside a 17th Century Convent(Abridged edition) (Yale Nota Bene, 2000). I've read a couple of novels and plays that take place in convents that involve the theme of of madness versus divine inspiration, e.g., Anges of God.
Frederick Buechener, Speak What We Feel: Four Who Wrote in Blood (Harper 2001). This is about what G.K. Chesterton, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Mark Twain, and William Shakespeare say about religion and spirituality. Hm.
David McCullough, Brave Companions (Simon and Schuster, 1992). I like McCullough's other books in spite of the fact that he attended Yale.
Henri Pirenne, Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe (Harvest Book, 1936). Girls not only like bagels, but Medieval History.
Anton Chekhov, The Duel (Modern Library, 2003). I hope the translation is good.
Terence M. Green, Shadow of Ashland (Forge, 1996). Sometimes I'll take a chance on a book just because of who endorses it. For insteance, the Atlanta Constitution endorsed this one, so I'm gonna give it a go.
Dorothy Dunnett, The Spring of the Ram (Vintage, 1987). Second book in the House of Niccolo series.
Paul Auster, City of Glass (Picador, 2004). This is another one of Bill's. He likes the artwork and thinks it sounds like an interesting adaption of a graphic novel.
E. M. Forester, Aspects of the Novel (Harcourt, 1927). A dear friend of mine was recommended A Room With A View. Given my experience with that book, I'm willing to read his literary criticism.
Peter Nichols, Evolution's Captain (Perenial, 2003). This is a biography that graces over Charles Darwin and favors the less well-known Captain Robert FitzRoy, the captain of the first voyage of the HMS Beagle.
Chris Van Allsburg, Ben's Dream (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1982). I adore Van Allsburg's books, such as The Garden of Abdul Gasazi, Jumanji, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and The Polar Express.

It's a wonderful feeling not knowing which one to start first.

Bonkers for Britten

2005-11-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

Doesn't everyong love Benjamin Britten?

Catching Up

2005-11-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

I am Charlotte Simmons was great, but I want a complete explanation from Joe, who said I reminded him of the main character. She did indeed do something foolish--lots.

The book indicts American higher education as being shallow, booze-filled, purposeless, and filled with immorality, detailing the corruption of an intelligent, naive girl.

I certainly experienced some of the things that he shares as "the gospel truth of what occurs in America's colleges;" however, my own college experience was actually filled with reading and learning, as well as boys and drinking. There were no cliff notes in my dorm room!

The story is well-considered and mature. I felt like the characters were well-developed, and they behaved in internally consistent ways. It's a little like a tragedy. Wolfe stretches all that is normally small into bigger and bigger proportions. She experiences a spiritual crisis and is both victim and perpetrator of cultural snobbery, i.e., morality is simply for the little people who fail to understand the complexities that are innate to human nature.

To Joe: I did see myself in the main character, in her naivete and her inability to make good decisions. She likes the guy she shouldn't. She can't like her intellectual equal. She gets hurt, so on and so forth, but the story isn't as clichéd as I make it sound. It's fleshy and new, interesting.

In the end, the novel is multi-layered. It's about higher education, but it's also simply about one girl (I don't say woman, because she isn't one) being startled by the absence of morality at her ivy league school. It's about the brilliance of a star growing dim. She cannot achieve without being constantly admired, so she settles for being liked instead of being good. She lacks moral judgement and courage.

Thumbs up from me. If you can stomach the copious amounts of sex, drinking, poor English, disrespect for all things beautiful, and general debauchery, then give it a go.

By the way, right now I don't feel like being all political and editorializing about the current lack of educating that goes on in schools but--I shall just say--it's not a baseless indictment.

Whahhahahahahaha

2005-10-31T20:05:00.000-08:00

My birthday is quickly approaching. My fiance's parents, sister, fiance, and my parents are taking me to a huge book and music warehouse in Columbia, Maryland for my birthday. Yipee! I MUST get well. The store is a few hours away, and this cold could make for a rather long car ride.

More on the trip later.

Invective

2005-10-31T11:25:00.000-08:00

I don't know how to put a stop to this sort of invective blogging. You can read all about it at Forbes.com in an article titled "Attack of the Blogs" by Daniel Lyons.

I am concerned about how blogs may have a dire effect on the outcome of the next presidential election, but I don't think it can be helped. The only laws that I would consider tightening are slander/libel ones. I don't think that blogs or speech should be censored. People who lie should pay the price.

Mimema

2005-10-31T11:00:00.000-08:00

So, I am home sick, and am on the verge of ripping my throat out because it's so sore. In order to stave off the madness, I've decided to take the opportunity to catch up on some reading and posting.

So, a few weeks ago (or posts I guess), Odious at Odious and Peculiar posted a list of the 100 Best Novels, bolding the ones he had read. Well, he was appalled at how few of them he has read, something his Kate is relishing as the beginning to a good-old-fashioned-reading contest. I happen to know for a fact that both Kate and Odious are incredibly well-read, so I think I need to take a look at this purported list and see how frightfully short I fall of measuring up to it. Plus, I'm going to the bookstore this weekend (a trip for my Birthday) and it would be great to generate a list of things to keep an eye out for while there, but I really relish just digging in and not looking for anything...more on that later. The bolded, I've read.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
6. Ulysses by James Joyce
7. Beloved by Toni Morrison
8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
9. 1984 by George Orwell
10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov
12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
17. Animal Farm by George Orwell
18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
23. Their Eyes are Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
27. Native Son by Richard Wright
28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London
34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
37. The World According to Garp by John Irving
38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster
40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally
42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce
45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
51. My Antonia by Willa Cather
52. Howards End by E. M. Forster
53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
56. Jazz by Toni Morrison
57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron
58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster
60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor
62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
68. Light in August by William Faulkner
69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs
74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Tokias by Gertrude Stein
79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett
80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer
81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
82. White Noise by Don DeLillo
83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
87. The Bostonians by Henry James
88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald
92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles
94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling
96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald
97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster
99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

So, I am appalled by how much Faulkner I've read when, forgive me, I find him boring, and how little E.M. Forester, Woolf, and Fitzgerald I've read when I find all them incredibly engaging.

Also, there are a few that I think I may have read, but my sickness haze is clouding my memory. I think I may have read Lord Jim, Tropic of Cancer, and a couple of others, but, since I can't say for sure, it wouldn't be right to bold them.

Oh, and I am dismayed at how few I've read.

Cheap

2005-10-31T10:00:00.000-08:00

My blog is worth $5,080.86.
How much is your blog worth?

100 Greatest What?

2005-10-28T17:06:00.000-07:00

Time has published another best of list...(Do all nations produce so many lists, e.g., 100 best metal songs, 50 hottest celebrity moms, 100 one-hit-wonders), but here's a list that actually catches my attention: 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. It's an interesting list. I can't say that I agree with all of the list's author's selections, frankly, there are some on the list of which I haven't even heard Shame on me.

For a fabulous play on the list check out The Morning News. He has consolidated a number of reviews (from Amazon.com I believe) of the books on the list. It's pretty terrific. E.g., one person writes of Joseph Heller's Catch-22 (1961) "Obviously, a lot of people were smoking a lot of weed in the '60's to think this thing is worth reading" or of John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath "While the story did have a great moral to go along with it, it was about dirt! Dirt and migrating. Dirt and migrating and more dirt." HEEHEEHEE.

Distilling someone's life work down to a sentence: it's an art form.

Playing with One's Self

2005-10-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

Well, as per usual, I haven't posted for a significant period of time, and I can't make good on my promises to post more regularly. So, no promises this time. Don't bother leaving nasty notes. I know I'm bad.

Anyhow, I think the purpose of prayer, in answer to Joe's question, is to bring one closer to God. You have to think of Him in order to bring yourself closer to his will, and you have to invite him into your life in order to know him.

There appear to be different types/forms of prayer. Some people live and work in silence, engaging in active prayer through work. For some people prayer can be verbal, and it can take a specific chant-like form, i.e., Nicene or Apostles Creed and/or nonstructured form. Structured prayers often tell a story of the christian faith. For example, consider the Nicene Creed:

We believe in one God,
the father, the Almighty,
maker of Heaven and Earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
True God from True God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

The Creed attempts to summarize the tenants of Christian beliefs, and in essense rejects/excludes other ideas as unwholesome and philosophically unsupportable. For example, Jesus is True God as much as God is true God because they are one--hence, a mystery is born.

I pray because I want to know Him.

Swimmin' Dinosaur

2005-10-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

As an aside, scientists may have discovered a new species of dinosaur. It swam. You can read about the discovery at this Yahoo link. What a neat find for a student (if it turns out to be true).

Tom Wolfe Lives, THIS POST IS NOT FOR CHILDREN!!!CONTAINS PROFANITY

2005-10-14T18:32:00.000-07:00

NOT FOR CONSUMPTION BY MINORS

I am Charlotte Simmons is a wonderful, but scary read. Joe, you said I reminded you of Charlotte Simmons. She doesn't do something too terribly foolish does she? Will I still be flattered by your assertion when I've finished the book? Even if I'm not, thank you for recommending it. It's terrific thus far.

I'll post a complete review when I've finished it, but, in the meantime, let me say that, if American higher education is really as Wolfe describes it to be, then the United States is destined for ruin. Perhaps our liberal democracy is destined to crumble as Rome's did. In Locke's Second Treatise, he describes the law of nature as reason. If American Constitutionalism is predicated on a Lockeian view of human nature, and if Wolfe has captured the common experience of college life, then we're in deep doodee. Or, as one of my client's said (in what Wolfe refers to as Fuck Patois): "Fuck, fucking fuckers fucked. Oh, shit, Ms. Sorry."

I'm not nearly as pessimistic as this post makes me sound.

Advertisers Welcome; Penus Enlargements NOT NEEDED

2005-10-11T17:24:00.000-07:00

Why have I suddenly become so popular with spam advertisers?

I very much doubt that those persons who are in need of/desire penus enlargements are interested in reading about my opinions of Tom Wolfe's book: I am Charlotte Simmons, but then again....

I picked the book up in an airport on my way back from a wedding.

Congratulations Nikki and Jackson. Your wedding was beautiful, as were both of you. It was a treat and a delight to be able to see two of the smartest, nicest people that I know both find and enjoy each other so thoroughly, as you two obviously do. Congratulations and Bless you and your marriage.

It was also just wonderful to see my old friends. Thank you for making Bill feel so welcome. We had a marvelous time. Virtually every moment spent in Santa Fe, I was filled with wonder and gratitude. I was incredibly fortunate to become friends with a group of amazing, gifted, and kind people as an undergraduate at St. John's. I miss you all and will treasure the time we spent together over the last week along with all of my fond memories of undergrad.

Ergh! I Hate Tattling!

2005-07-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that there are very few books on this good green earth that I can't compel myself to finish once I've picked them up, but Terry C. Barber's Unlock the Prison Doors (Advantage Inspirational, 2005) is one of them.

The author's sentiment, while laudable, doesn't make up for the fact that the book is in DIRE need of an editor. It's chalk full of pacing issues, misorganization, and tons of grammatical and mechanical issues. I couldn't get past page 30.

The sad thing is, that I suspect the author is probably a good orator--that doesn't, however, make him a good writer. It would be worth his while to invest in some editing and copyediting, as the books disorganization, choppiness, and other style issues distract from what might be noteworthy content. I just wasn't willing to take the time to find out because I had to work too hard to sludge through the first 30 pages.

Maybe I'll try again, but this one's for the birds if you ask me.

If you are interested in being a reviewer, please contact Mind & Media and/or Blogcritics. Mind and Media and Advantage publishers were kind enough to provide me with a free copy of this book in order to write a review about it.

Hi Carly and Joe

2005-07-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

So, it would appear, according to my blog, that I've read nothing of interest and done nothing notable for over a month now; that is, however, absolutely not the case. I've been so consumed with work and moving offices and so on, that my blog has had to go on hiatus. Apologies. So, I hope to post a bunch later this week on books from Mind & Media and a response to some of Joe's questions. Ta Ta for now.

Too Little Time, Too Many Ideas

2005-06-09T18:44:00.000-07:00

I have to write a habeas petition this week. In other words, noooooooo time for much of anything but work; however, I will try to post a couple times this weekend, as I have finished A Thread of Grace, Unlock the Prison Doors, and want to post my response to Joe's earlier questions. Right now Bill is reading The Sparrow to me. I've read it before, but he hasn't (so it's working out well for both of us). Plus, I am listening to the Order of the Phoenix on my way to and from work in order to prepare for the release of the Half-Blood Prince in July; given that my commute is so short, it will probably take me until then to finish the cd of it anyway.

Nevertheless, three books, chosen by Bill and me, arrived from the History Book Club, namely

Gerald Harriss, Shaping the Nation: England 1360-1461 (Oxford Press, 2005). This one examines late medieval English history. It looks like it's full of interesting narratives about things like the Black Death, the Peasants' Revolt, War of the Roses, and so on.
Rosamond McKitterick, Atlas of the Medieval World (Oxford Press, 2004). It looks like it may have some good tidbits in it, but, at first glance, it doesn't look as interesting as I thought it would. Maybe I'll actually have time to read it within the next year.
Thomas Bokenkotter, A Concise History of the Catholic Church, Revised and Expanded Edition (Doubleday, 2004). This history is divided into five parts accompanied by some basic illustrations, and it's a tome. I think I may digest this one in pieces--definitely, not something to be read all at once.

Happy reading...

Books, Books, and More Books

2005-06-01T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on my response to Joe's questions. With everything going on here, it's difficult to focus, and so my response is slow going. On an exciting note, I just got news, yesterday, that two of my dearest friends are getting married in October. Congratulations!

Anyhow, I've decided to pilfer and adapt to my own site something that The Little Professor does on her website: by the week, she lists any new book acquisitions. During the past month or so I've received a number of books, and here's a little tasting of what I've received...

Terry C. Barber, Unlock the Prison Doors (Advantage Inspirational, 2005) from Mind & Media. I'm not sure that it's quite my kind of book, but am looking forward to giving it a try. If you are interested in being a reviewer, please contact Mind & Media and/or Blogcritics.
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair (Penguin Books, 2002). It was recommended by my Maid of Honor (you know who you are), and, as she well knows, I can't pass any book that's even remotely related to Jane Austen or any of Brontes up. It's apparently a mix of genres and involves a literary sleuth of some sort.
Karen Joy Fowler, Jane Austen Book Club (Putnam Berkley Pub. Group, 2004). Are you detecting a pattern? I've been looking for a used copy of this book for a few months, and I've finally given in and purshased a new copy. The title seems pretty self-explanatory. I discovered the author via snippets on the dust-jackets of Mary Doria Russell's books.
Claudio Rendina, The Popes: Histories and Secrets (Seven Locks Press, 2002). Summaries like this one don't usually appeal to me; they end up covering so much ground that they say almost nothing. This one looks more complete. We'll see.
Jane Dunn, Elizabeth and Mary, Cousins, Rival Queens (Knopf, 2005). Elizabeth Tudor and Mary Stuart...need I say more.
Walter Issacson, Ben Franklin: An American Life (Simon and Schuster, 2003) and The Old Farmer's Almanac, Ben Franklin's Alamanac of Wit, Wisdom, & Pratical Advice (Yankee Books, 2003). They came in a double set. One is a biography and the other is a compilation of some of Franklin's actual writings.
Jacqueline Winspear, Jacqueline Winspear: 2 in 1 (Bookspan, 2005). I love historical novels and mysteries, so why not combine both and get a historical mystery? This version contains two novels Massie Dobbs and Birds of Feather both of which involve a female sleuth in post-Great War London.
Plus, I visited the library and picked up a number of books. As I finish them, I'll post a little about each book.

I'm going to finish reading A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell (I highly recommend Sparrow and Children of God) today, then I'll read Unlock the Prison Doors, and after that I'll return to The Trial of Henry Kissinger (a gift from Joe). I've enjoyed The Trial so far and hope to be able to comment on it next week.

Clay Pigeons

2005-05-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

So, my fiance and I went shooting today with some P.O's, a prosecutor, defense attorneys, and a military intelligence guy. We had a blast. My fiance did quite well with the clay pigeons. We had a wonderful time and enjoyed a beautiful Memorial Day.

Anyhow, I haven't finished The Trial of Henry Kissinger or A Thread of Grace, but I hope to finish both within this week. I'll also post my response to Joe tomorrow.

Movie Mania

2005-05-28T19:16:00.000-07:00

Here's my filler-post in lieu of my post responding to Joe's comments from, I'm embarrassed to say, at least a month ago. I will put up a reponse to Joe's questions and some of his assertions within the next couple days. My apologies for not responding sooner Joe, but we've been really busy here.

Anyhow, I wanted to let you all know that for the first time in a while I am actually looking forward to the release of a number of movies. Feel free to visit the links I've included for information and sneak peaks.

Serenity is due out September 30th. It just had a preview screening this week, and it has gotten, as far as I can tell, stellar reviews across the board. Yipee! I hope it's worth the wait.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is due out November 18th, 2005. I'm also looking forward to the next book due out in the series, namely Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It's being released July 16th, 2005.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is due out December 9th, 2005. I loved this series as a child, and I continue to love it (and other C.S. Lewis works) today. May the movie live up to the books! Please keep your fingers crossed.

"O Lord, oure Lord, thy name how merveillous"

2005-05-25T23:11:00.000-07:00

My fiancé and I are reading Ways of the Christian Mystics. Because he doesn't like to read together—and I love to—we compromise by not reading together very often; though, we often choose to read the same books. As a result, it doesn't come as a great surprise that he sometimes falls asleep when we read together; it's tempting to finish the book without him, but that would defeat the ends of romance and sweetness that our reading together serves (it’s not so romantic when set against the sounds of his snoring). Anyhow, Ways of the Christian Mystics begins with a discussion concerning the history of pilgrimages. It explains that pilgrimages encourage "the spiritual dialogue between man and creation," as the journey to a sacred shrine or place brings them closer to God. Redemption comes from being close to God. Marching quickly through hundreds of years of pilgrimage history, Ways entertains secular and religious folk alike. It shares how Celtic monks traveled to shrines and/or the Holy Land to bring themselves closer to God, and that is when I thought of the Canterbury Tales, specifically the Prioress's Tale. I recalled that the Prioress and many other pilgrims had less transparent motives for their pilgrimages—and, yes, I know the difference between history and fiction.

The Tales begin with the General Prologue where Chaucer introduces all of the pilgrims. The Prioress is described as a gentlewoman, possessing all the etiquette/manners and sympathetic trappings of nobility. She keeps pets, including little dogs, which she feeds scraps from the dinner table. She wears a bangle on her wrist and a brooch/necklace (rather than a rosary, I assume, if rosaries existed yet) that reads "Amor vincit omnia" (the phrase "Love Conquers All" could be evidence of her hypocrisy, and/or symbolize an interest in physical love—sex and motherhood are probably not a terrific obsession for a Prioress). Notably, she doesn't act like a pious nun. In the prologue, she's a coquettish social climber who’s more reminiscent of a woman attempting to maneuver her way through a royal court than a House of God.

The Prologue introduces the idea of an entertaining storytelling contest, and so each character tells a tale. The Prioress tells a violent, sentimental, religious tale that makes listeners weep and turn away in horror. We empathize with the story’s main character, a young child (or, at least, I think we’re supposed to); thus, when she draws parallels between herself and her Tale’s main character, she wants the reader to feel sorry for her as well. The problem: She isn’t an innocent child. So why does she want us to see her as innocent and pitiable?

She sees herself as being childlike and innocent, but she comes across as childish, envious, and unforgiving and merciless. She hasn’t given up worldly possessions and pride; she sports jewelry and wears her habit so that her prominent forehead is exposed. My version of the Tales, in a footnote, indicates that in Chaucer’s time, the prominent forehead indicated status and noble or aristocratic bloodlines. As a Prioress, her pride and materialistic nature would probably have verged on being sinful, but must have been, at the very least, uncharacteristic of a Prioress.

She has abandoned some nonmaterial aspirations by giving up the ability to have her own children and marriage. The difference, though, between The Prioress and her Tale’s main character is that she, unlike he, chooses to give something up for her faith, whereas he has faith without knowledge. (He willingly sings Latin hymns without knowing their meaning, and sings them as he wanders through a Jewry. Notably, he sings the Alma Redemptoris Mater, yet the Prioress always leaves the word Mater out until the young boy has already died and is sprinkled with holy water.) Or, did she? Did the Prioress knowingly give up motherhood for her faith? In other words, does she have faith coupled with knowledge, or, is she like the character in her story, which would mean that she doesn't understand the demands of her own devotion and calling? While she sees herself as being like the boy in her Tale, Chaucer certainly intends parallels between the Prioress and the boy’s mother, the widow, and that may tell us something about how Chaucer sees her to understand her faith.
The Prioress mourns the loss of her own motherhood via the pathos of the widow’s character. The widow cannot locate her son, so she becomes whiny and plaintiff, inadequate, and ultimately has to seek the help of others in order to find (or care for) her child. Ultimately, the Prioress’s behaves the same way when it comes to articulating that for which she has abandoned ordinary motherhood, namely her faith. She even draws attention to the fact that she has faith without knowledge by making fun of the Monk (Shipman’s Tale) for having the exact opposite--knowledge without faith. She apologizes for that weakness, and we are left to draw our own conclusions and compare her weaknesses to the strengths of one of the only other female taletellers, the Wife of Bath. The Prioress is like the widow, namely incapable of caring for her own son (faith), protecting him from the evils of the world, and helpless, because she lacks the knowledge and rationality to do so.

Because she lacks a rational understanding of faith, and is at the same time attempting to explain what faith is, she tells a violent, gruesome, anti-Semitic Tale. At the end of that tale, she asks for mercy for herself, sinners, and her listeners, but she doesn't appreciate the paradox between asking for mercy, wearing the Amor vincit omnia, and being so blatantly vindictive. The choice is either (1) the prioress understands the paradox of mercy and the violence in her tale, or (2) that she doesn’t realize her own vindictiveness. It's hard to imagine what she believes that phrase means in light of the story she tells, but it seems she’s genuinely clueless as to her hypocrisy.

Aside from not living the phrase “Love Conquers All,” her faith without knowledge keeps her from grasping the fullness of the Virgin Mary (that she is the mother of a man in the flesh and of the divine). In other words, she doesn't reconcile the earthly nature of motherhood with the heavenly nature of being God's mother. Although laudable to empathize with Mary’s motherhood, faith loses meaning without an understanding of being “The Mother” as well. Instead of seeing herself as a strong protector of the innocent and of the faithful, she sees herself as an infant, drawing parallels between herself and a young boy. Yet, she isn’t an infant, she’s a woman.

As a Prioress, she would have had authority over young women and some responsibility for teaching “the faith.” Would a story about a young boy having his throat slit to the bone by Jews bring young women closer to God, would it entertain a party of pilgrims? Hm. Maybe she did join the pilgrimage to have a “spiritual dialogue between man and creation,” but the Prioress will always be a pilgrim, perpetually struggling to reconcile her calling with her loss of motherhood. She has faith in the redeemer but uttering the complete phrase Oh Loving Mother of the Redeemer will never come easily. Faith without knowledge still seems to leave the Prioress in a dark place where mercy falls on only those with her sort of faith, and Love does not conquer fear and longing.

So, in the end is faith enough? I hope so, but the Tale isn’t very encouraging.

I really put too many different things into this, but it'll have to do.

If I Could Wish Upon A Star

2005-05-21T23:03:00.000-07:00

I found a wonderful bit of news at Susiepie's site. On December 9th, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe opens in movie theaters. Check out the trailer. I'm so excited. C.S. Lewis' books amaze me. The trailer looks great. I know where I'll be on December 9th.

By the way, the Chaucer post will be up tomorrow. Sorry for the delay. I've been reviewing investigation information and techniques for child abuse cases and trying to refamiliarize myself with Spanish. Both have proven more time consuming than I had anticipated.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Was There Ever Any Doubt?

2005-05-17T17:00:00.000-07:00

I'm not suprised with the outcome of this quiz, but it's results are somewhat misleading. Tests like this have to be limited and predictable to give "the right" outcome, but that means that they attempt to make grey areas black and white. Maybe it's just because this one was about politics?

I'll be posting on Chaucer and the Ways of the Christian Mystics later today.

Your Political Profile

Overall: 80% Conservative, 20% Liberal

Social Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Ethics: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

How Liberal / Conservative Are You?

Got Books?

2005-05-16T19:31:00.000-07:00

While browsing blogs, I found an old book meme post at The Little Professor.

Some have called this a Great Books list. That statement is misleading to the extent that "Great Book" generally indicates being in the Western/Eastern Canon; since it takes a good 100 years to be considered old enough for the canon, and some books on the list were published as recently as 20 years ago, this isn't a Great Books list in the strictest sense.

The point is to take every book on the list below and italicize, CAPS, or bold those titles that you've read.

Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

I'm an Addict

2005-05-12T21:45:00.000-07:00

I guess there are worse things to be addicted to than internet quizzes.

My mind may be like a computer, but I fear it may be an Apple IIC.

You Are Incredibly Logical

(You got 100% of the questions right)

Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic

You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.

A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!

How Logical Are You?

"...handsome, clever, and rich..."

2005-05-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

Once again I haven't read as much as I've wanted nor as quickly as I've wanted to read it. Bill and I have been consumed with house-related chores, and we spent Mother's Day catching up on HBO's Deadwood episodes.

But, I did come across a very entertaining website via another blog earlier today. At EnglishSpace, I found this. One of our cats is named Jane Austen and I have a bumper sticker that reads "I'd rather be reading Jane Austen," so you can imagine how fond I am of her. I delighted in finding that the site also makes reference to a Gothic novelist, Matthew Lewis (Monk) who's credited with being the last of the rationalist Gothic novelists. Monk was suprisingly hypersexual--I was taken aback by many of its scenes--and graphically violent; it was a tasty little morsel (definitely not for children), but who doesn't enjoy the occasional guilty pleasure? Anyway, the site is fun and has great links to other Jane Austen and Gothic novel sites.

P.S. The quotation that forms the title for this post must be one of the finest first sentences ever, and it happens to be Austen's beginning to Emma.

2005-05-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

I'm not ready to post a review/summary of The Trial of Henry Kissinger, so instead I offer you something that made me grin.

Which "Saved By The Bell" Character Are You?

Am I dating myself with this one? I still don't know how I ended up being Zack. I was the epitomy, the embodiment of nerd in school. Plus, I'm not a guy!

Rape or Patricide

2005-05-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

Years ago, my highschool ethics teacher, who also happened to be my school's vice principal, once complained about how awful John Grisham was for starting A Time to Kill with a violent rape scene of a prepubescent black girl. The gist being, that he was startled and disgusted. At the time, I thought "Whatever, I liked that movie." What a brat, right?

Now, after having read Jordan Tracks, I understand why he felt as he did. Jordan Tracks by Stephen Wise, which is actually a decent book, starts with a patricide. And, that beginning almost kept me from reading the book. Gore does not scare me (couldn't be a criminal defense attorney, or own half the books I do if it did), and violence in books or movies doesn't necessarily offend me. I felt cheated. It cheapened the book, but I continued reading and am glad I did. Though the book's cover is amateurish, and it has some typos, a few mechanical and grammatical errors, and some pacing problems, the story is entertaining and thoughtful.

Wise skillfully constructs a cast of small-town characters, capturing their common--as in everday--experiences, their shared joys and griefs, and their quiet moments. He describes such mundane and grimy details about where and how the characters earn their livings (at a turkey factory), that you feel dirty and tired on their behalves. The descriptions of their meals...in a word: YUM! "Christa's chocolate pie" YUM! His characters' world is tangible, you share in their experiences, and, therefore, you share in their journeys.

His characters contemplate God's existence, love, and the nature of guilt. Some wallow amidst a sea of grief and are rescued by God. They hear and see their lives in the context of a larger mystery while others seemingly drown and not because God isn't there for them, but because they aren't listening to his ever-present voice. Eventually, even the hopeless or doubting hear his whisper.

At times, the dialogue couldn't keep up with the strengths of the story. Soliloquies intended to convey religious fervor verged on awkward pedagogy. The author softens the effect a little by commenting on a character's ability to preach, but that doesn't alleviate the discomfiting situation that is oft repeated. I hope that it is the book, and not me. Maybe I'm uncomfortable with speaking loudly about God.

Wise sure isn't. I think that may be part of why I liked the story, and am touched that the last sentence in the book is about happiness, and the last word in the book is "sound."

Wise certainly reminded me of how important it is to listen and bear witness to the Lord.

***DISCLAIMER: Mind and Media provided Jordan Tracks to me and its other Exclusive Reviewers. We received the books free of charge as a gift from the Publisher who donated the books. If you are interested in being a reviewer, please contact Mind and Media with your inquiries. Feel free to let them know that you heard about them from me! I LOVE free books.***

No habla ingles? I do!

2005-05-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, in an effort to brush up on my spanish and learn some legaleese I bought a course used by the government to train diplomatic personnel. I give it a thumbs up! It's entertaining and fast-paced. Soon I'll be able to communicate something useful to nonenglish-speaking clients (I start at the firm in about a month--yipee!). I'll be able to say, "You have a 5th Amendment right to remain silent, or that's a violation of your Constitutional...." in no time. I wouldn't recommend the course for anyone who has a difficult time picking up other languages, because it would likely be too challenging and quick-paced.

I hope to post on, at least, Chaucer's Cantebury Tales, The Jordan Tracks, and Ways of the Christian Mystics later this week.

Hi Joe. I promise to respond to your comments soon. Do you want me to do it in a post or by email? I'd prefer to post, but I'll let you decide. By the way, I want to make you a jazz cd. Do you know whether you might like vocal or instrumental jazz better?

Blog Wars

2005-04-27T20:38:00.000-07:00

Well, now that a battle has been waged.

The other day a free book arrived from Mind & Media. YIPEE! I decided to delay posting a review until I had more readers. That's finally happened. As a result, I haven't been reading as much or posting regularly. Instead, I've been spending time registering at traffic sites and adding codes to my blog page. There's so much out there in the blog world that it can actually be quite a struggle to build an audience quickly.

Well, now that I've momentarily won a battle for readers, back to my beloved books...

Why Benedict? and I Don't Mean Eggs

2005-04-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

After a Theology class I decided to browse blogs, and, while I was browsing, I came across one that discusses the appointment of Cardinal Ratzinger as Pope. The Gun-Toting Liberal lists snippets from other blogs concerning the Pope's appointment and accompanying comments of his own. In my class, I had the pleasure of speaking with someone who worked for Pope Benedict XVI during the early '90's, and, during our discussion, we speculated as to why he had taken the name Benedict--as opposed to, say, John Paul III.

But first let me dispel some incredible misinformation about the Pope's personal history and character. I got a lot of my information from Jewish publications. Pope Benedict XVI was the son of an anti-Nazi police officer. He deserted the German military. The Pope's membership in Hitler Youth was compulsory and short-lived. He actively saught not having to be part of the HY and got a dispensation from involvment based on his pursuit of religious studies. He personally attempted to strengthen the bond between Jews and Catholics/christians alongside Pope John Paul II by helping to prepare Memory and Reconcilation, and he has stated that it saddens him when any person uses portions of the Bible to justify anti-semitism.

The current Pope is conservative. That's not suprising seeing as he was Pope John Paul II's closest confidant, or, as Anne of Green Gables would say, they were kindred spirits, and Pope John Paul was conservative. They worked as a team, and therefore shared at least some similar prayers for the church. For instance, they both wanted to heal the schism between the Catholic and Orthodox churches.

Anyway, back to why he might have taken the name Benedict. Apparently, Pope Benedict XVI is quite the scholar. Until present, Pope Benedict XIV had been acknowledged as the greatest scholar among the popes. Our current Pope is fluent in ten languages and proficient in even more. When asked, years ago, whether he wanted to be Pope, he said no because he didn't want to do administrative work anymore. He craved time to write the "many books" he had in his head. His idea of fun was to gather his current and previous doctoral students, take a trip to a cabin in the mountains, and stay there discussing subject-matter like salvation or grace around food and a fire.

Pope Benedict XIV was conservative when it came to liturgical matters. Given that the emphasis of Pope Benedict XVI's homily at Pope John Paul's funeral Mass was the importance of the Eucharist (or liturgy), he's quite conservative about liturgical matters. Furthermore, Bendict XIV exerted tremendous efforts to strengthen relations with the Eastern Church, and he was succcesful with a number of Eastern Churches. Also, Pope Bendict XV worked to bridge the enormous gap between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Churches. Given that the current Pope has spent a lot of time attempting to strengthen/repair the Catholic Church's relationship with Jews and the Eastern Orthodox (especially the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church), that's another common bond the Benedicts appear to share.

As concerns Pope Benedict XV, he was Pope during World War I. He was a consummate diplomate and advocated for peace. He indicated that he was concerned with "the death of Europe" due to, one would assume, it's disrespect for life as evidenced by the War. Now, the parallels between that Pope and the current one could be read in a couple of different ways: first, the Vatican has stated that it doesn't agree with the war in Iraq because it doesn't believe that the criteria for a Just War have been met and second, the Vatican has acknowledged that the spirtual life of the church has been dying in Europe--largely because a pervasive culture of death there. In fact, as far as a I know, the current Pope has already made it his mission to revive the spirtual life of Europeans. Thus, I would say that the second parallel is pretty definite, and the first parallel may or may not be there. Time will tell.

It's unfair to say that he wont have time to do great things, or that he is somehow an interim Pope. Vatican II was convened by Pope John XXII, who was only Pope for 5 years. His legacy speaks for itself. There is no limit to what Pope Benedict XVI may acheive.

Pray for us!

Lanuguage

2005-04-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

40% Yankee

15% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

This isn't strictly book-related, but I do find it interesting an somewhat related to writing in general. If an author were writing a piece that included characters who spoke specific regional dialects, including American ones, then it would be important to have a good ear for lingual variations. In films, one can vary a given character's accent, but in order to write the variation, one would have to know vocab differences between regions. I'm guessing I got 5% upper midwestern for having said that Toilet Papering was TP'ing.

I'm waiting for the rest of The Inheirtance

2005-04-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

I always feel arrogant dissecting a book, but here we go again anyway.

Christopher Paolini's Eragon was pleasant but a little cliched, and, while it is an amazing piece from such a young writer, an underlying immaturity bled through the story. Let me be specific: it was written by a teenager, it seems like it was written by a young (in terms of experience, not age) writer, but it doesn't necessarily seem like it was written by someone as young as Paolini actually was. If you got that, then you can get Kant.

Paolini possesses a wonderful understanding of language, and that enables him to construct full and beautiful descriptions of Eragon's world; however, a fabulous description, poorly timed, loses efficiacy. At times, it was like watching a film where the director went a little nutty with slow-motion movement and made all his action sequences slow-motion scenes.

Secondly, there was one area in which Paolini's understanding of language failed him: the tags for dialogue verged on the ridiculous. He obviously used a thesaurus in order to find a g-zillion variations for the word "said." I know you're not supposed to use the "said" after every character's statement, but that's because it can be distracting. On the other hand, avoiding "said" by using every known variation of the word "said" is distracting too. The dialogue just wasn't rich in the same way that the narrative portions of the book were.

Further, the dialogue was stitled at times because the scenes were too staged and predictable. The plot and charcters were almost too familiar. I'm actually a really big proponent of predictability in stories. Familiarity is comforting, and archetypal characters are easier to understand because we know them so well. For instance, I love Oedipus in Oedipus Rex. He's about as preditable as you can get, but his story is so engaging. Everytime I read it, I read it hoping the ending is going to be different (No. I am not insane), but, of course, the moment you read it's first paragraph you know it wont end well. It starts:

My children, latest-born wards of old Cadmus,
why do you sit before me like this with wreathed branches of suppliants, while
the city reeks with incense, [5] rings with prayers for health and cries of
woe? I thought it unbefitting, my children, to hear these things from the mouths
of others, and have come here myself, I, Oedipus
renowned by all. Tell me, then, venerable old man--since it is proper that you
[10] speak for these--in what mood you sit here, one of fear or of desire?
Be sure that I will gladly give you all my help. I would be hard-hearted indeed
if I did not pity such suppliants as these.

Why, then, did Eragon's predictability bother me? The dramatic irony in Eragon is false. I wont betray any of the stories "secrets". If you start the book, you'll be able to guess them soon enough. (Please forgive me if I'm really off my rocker. I read the book a while ago.) Because of the way that the story is written, the "hero" seems to know what his fate is, and anytime that the author asserts that he doesn't, the assertion seems disingenuous. Whereas in Oedipus, the "hero" genuinely doesn't know his fate, and even though you want him to, even though you feel like he should know, you fully understand and believe that he just doesn't see it (that's an "in joke" for people who know the Oedipus story) . There just doesn't seem to be a real inner turmoil for Eragon. Yes, he's trying to discover his fate, but he seems like he already knows what it is and isn't struggling against it. He's just along for the ride all over the Alagaesia country-side.

Yes, I know that comparing a Greek tragedy to a fantasy novel is like comparing apples and oranges. Oh well.

It was fun and easy to read, and I'm definitely interested in seeing where Paolini is headed. It was a solid start to what may be a great trilogy. Maybe I'm in a bad mood or just didn't read the book with the right frame of mind. I did enjoy the book, I just have an intuition that Paolini is capable of a lot more.

Book Lists of Many Shapes and Sizes

2005-03-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, my mom asked me to order some books for her via the Internet. I decided to check out what deals my Book Club was running and discovered that they had one that would enable me to order a few books for myself as well; however, I'm so accustomed to purusing bookshelves, thumbing through thousands of titles, for finds that I didn't have any ideas about what I might like. Plus, I've recently taken trips to used-book bookstores and had my most immediate book needs met, so I decided to take a look at my favorite links and blogs to see what other people were reading.

That's when I discovered an interesting confluence of themes in my life, namely lists. Not only did I need to create a list for my book club, but friends have been asking me what my favorite books are, and I've also been intending to post a wish list for quite some time. For some reason, memes concerning book lists seem to have become a popular subject among blogs and especially book-related blogs (go figure). You can see an example of how quickly a list can become a meme at The Little Bookroom.

The meme featured at The Little Bookroom asks which authors one has read ten or more books by. Here's my list:

L.M. Montgomery
Louisa May Alcott's (pretty close to ten if not ten)
C.S. Lewis
Jane Austen (it will be ten once I read her letters
Plato
Patricia Cornwell
Roald Dahl
William Shakespeare
Robert Graves (sometimes I feel like he's a drug--I feel like I have to read him and them I'm angry that I have afterwards)
Euripides
Aristotle
Can I count the Bronte sisters all together?
Robert Browning
Edgar Allen Poe
Marguerite Duras

Well on the way to ten?
A.S. Byatt
The Bronte sisters (if combined--It's not fair, I know.)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Muriel Spark
Theodore Dreiser

The list simply made me realize that I wished many of these authors had written more!

On my search to find things I'd like to read, I found an interesting meme, called The One Book List. Apparently, over twenty years ago, an individual put out a call for forming a list of the most beloved books, and The One Book List resulted. The list began with about a hundred selections and has grown to well over six hundred books. Now, that's a list to occupy even the most of avid of book readers. In my search for book recommendations, I also found The List of Bests and Great Book Lists.

It was interesting to see what makes the cut and what doesn't. It also gave me more direction in selecting future reads because I realize which books I have appreciated the most, and, seeing other peoples book lists, reminds me of books that I've intended to read but have put aside in favor of others. Perhaps, as I have with old friends, it's time for me to return to those I've neglected in favor of the more novel (yes, I know that's a terrible pun).

On another note, the combination of other people's lists and my own encouraged me to buy more books! Here's my bookshelf, that is, a list of my book wants/wishes (to name a few). Now, though I have the list at Powells, that's not my only wish list or where I'll necessarily buy my books. The expense of my book buying practices could rival the cost of a mild drug habit, so I search out the best prices I can find. I'm looking into Amazon, Daedulus, used bookstores, local bookfairs, and so on. The Powells list is just a way for me to organize my own wish list. (It's much more efficient than my trying to remember titles or writing them down on little scraps of paper that find there way into another dimension--probably the same one where half of my socks end up when I wash them.)

I was baptized!

2005-03-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

On a personal note: I was baptized at my church's Easter Vigil, and I believe that I have finally experienced the profound joy of Easter. Though I wish I hadn't had a heinous headcold when I stepped into that chilly holy water, I'm glad that I stopped equivocating or prevaricating and finally "took the plunge" so to speak. It has most certainly changed me and strengthened my belief in the sanctity of innocent life.

Please Stop Terri Schiavo's Suffering

2005-03-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

I know this has nothing to do with books, that are normal fare on my blog, but, I feel so strongly, that I have to digress from my usual book diatribes. Please excuse my typos.

Terri Schiavo's case troubles me on many levels. Firstly, I think that the fate that a Florida judge has mandated for Terri amounts to state-sanctioned murder. Secondly, what the Congress has done, though compassionate (and I would have a difficult time not doing the same thing) amounts to what may become federal interference with state law. So, I want Terri to be saved, but I'd also like to preserve state's rights over the long term. The latter concern must be dealt with at another time because the first concerns a matter of life and death.

I'm not going to list all the reasons that Terri's life should be preserved, I'll leave that up to the sites run on Terri's behalf, such as Terrisfight or Blogs for Terri. I'm just going to post a letter that I sent to much of the Florida Senate, some of its House members, and some of the representatives from my own state. I do so in order to encourage people to send letters of their own to their representatives, and for those that disagree, to open up a dialogue about it. If a dialogue opens up, then maybe representatives can create a law that would protect indivduals from suffering the same fate in the future. If state's pass their own laws with regard to elder and disabled care that address this sort of situation, like a law that requires written evidence of a desire to die by starvation, then that might keep us from suffering the same fate and from future arguements over state's rights.

The letter I sent is as follows:

I implore you to thoughtfully consider any legislation that would help
Terri Schiavo and others with similar health conditions, namely the
severely retarded, disabled, and/or elderly. Terri and many others
have not given informed consent to death by starvation.

Terri, as a devout Catholic, may or may not have wanted
extraordinary measures to be used in order to prolong her life, but it's
doubtful that she would willingly consent to death by starvation. Her
family, those who know her best, have assured the justice system and public
of as much. Yet, a Florida state judge is taking the word of an adulter,
who has physically and emotionally harmed his wife, who has lied to the
court in order to receive money (i.e., he did not live up to his assurances
that he would provide his "wife" with the best physical therapy and tests
available), and who has not demonstrated a devotion to Terri and any of her
needs. Terri fights to live, or she would have died either as a result of
the first "incident" that incapacitated her, or her having consequently
being denied physical therapy, advanced treatments, and antibiotics
for sicknesses.

If Terri is permitted to
die by starvation, her murder will set an awful trend. Her
murder would set a precedent for permitting United States citizens to rid
themselves of the disabled in the name of "carrying out their
wishes." But, this would be nothing more than a ruse for getting rid of
those who demand a great deal from the rest of us in terms of physical
and emotional care.

If Terri were a
family pet, she would be treated more kindly, and her husband could be
prosecuted for the sort of neglect and deprivation that he and a judge have
advocated and finally ordered for Terri. Please help and care for Terri
where her husband and the justice system has not. Terri IS
still human.

Please honor her life and her desire to live by
giving a voice to her wishes and a right that is constitutionally
protected, the right to live.

That's the best I could muster. The subpoenas sent by Congress were the best that they could muster. And, I fear that nothing short of the Florida state judge reversing himself, that is, a miracle, will be enough to save Terri from a painful, cruel death.

The End of the Affair

2005-03-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

A few years ago I saw a movie called The End of the Affair, and I remember that at that time I liked it. And, a couple weeks ago, my wonderful fiance indulged my love of books, some would call it an obsession, and took me to an enormous used book store in Manhattan, namely The Strand. The Strand boasts 18 miles of books, and, even after having been there for an hour and a half (I say we were only there for under an hour and he says we were there for two, so I'm compromising), I probably didn't even rummage through 1% of their books. Though I didn't really make my way through that many of their stacks--I'm giddy even remembering what it was like to be there--I still returned from Manhattan with scores of books, including Graham Greene's End of the Affair. As soon as I read the synopsis on the book's back cover I realized the movie had been adapted from Graham Greene's novel.

Every once in a while I come across a book that speaks to what it means to be human, a story that glimpses into the soul. Greene's novel is one of those pieces. The novel is almost autobiographical. It's like Greene wrestled with the darkest and brightest portions of his own nature, and this book resulted. If you like to mix your daily dose of philosophy and religion with fiction, then this book's it. The story captures one man's relationship with the God he wants to deny. It's just brilliant! It's way to fresh on the brain for me to write anything useful about it right now.

While I found certain stylistic aspects of it to be troubling, e.g., inconsistent transitions from chapter to chapter and portions of the ending too convenient, I loved this book. It' such a fine piece of fiction that it makes me wonder whether the author intended bumpy transitions in certain places, i.e., whether they have some sort of hidden meaning that I'm not getting.

It really was a wonderful read. I don't want to say too much about the ending, but I'll say this: certain aspects of the ending weren't ambiguous enough. The book captured how futile it is to deny God's existence, because he wont deny your's. I think that the reader, the "believer," would have felt this at a personal level even more than he already does if certain aspects of the ending had been more ambiguous. The reader would have felt a push/pull between rational explanations and religious explanations if specific portions of the ending a more open explanation. Geez this is hard to explain without giving away the book. I'll stop here.

By the way, I've realized that I should have written about the Da Vinci Code as well as Angels and Demons. I still haven't read the Code, but I find everyone's buying into it's being historical silly. Angels and Demons wasn't a great book--it was a fun beach book--but society's response to it and/or other pieces of literature that incorporate some historical facts startles me. The reason it startles me: people think fiction is fact. Why? Why is there such a complete lack of common sense or basic knowledge of history that makes it possible for people to read something like the Code or see something like the Gangs of New York and think that they're seeing something that really happened? Don't be a duncical reader (that's what I tell myself when I read something that calls itself a documentary or says it's adapted from or based on history).

Firstly, one of the first few pages in Dan Brown's book is entilted "Facts." It states that essentially all the rituals, pieces of artwork, and so on have been meticulously researched and are true. In response, many have published responses to the novel, such as Breaking the Da Vinci Code and the myriad of other books listed by Faithfulreader.com. Though Faithfulreader.com takes issue with Brown's book because of it's open hostility to Catholicism and Christianity, I take issue with it's readers, not it's author. People? What's next? Why are you so willing to believe tripe? Why are people so willing to believe the worst about western civilization and religion? And, more importantly, why are people so ill informed? (On the upside, at least people are reading (they're just not thinking). Is that too mean?)

Now, some people have probably been spoonfed nonsense by iconoclastic teaching professionals that belong to an especially ill-informed school of idealogues; however, regardless of the malebolge that certain schools offer up as a "approved" education, don't we owe it to ourselves to seek out the truth? I'm sure there are a lot of good history books out there, but I would recommend Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong as a great place to start. If anyone can think of any others, please let me know. I'm always looking for a good read.

Anyway, back to my wonderful pile of books. Eragon is just around the corner. I promise not to rant again for quite a while.

Project Runway Finale

2005-02-26T11:10:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't written about the tv show Project Runway--I haven't written about any tv show for that matter--on my blog before, but my fiance and I have been avid fans of series. So, I have to permit myself a little comment on its finale. We both thought that Kara would win. Then, after seeing the first half of the finale, my fiance thought that Kara would win whereas I thought it would be Jay. Jay did end up winning, but the judges seemed to have agonized over choosing between them.

I was trying to come up with a way of explaining why I thought they chose Jay. I think I have a good explanation: Jay's designs seemed much more trend setting whereas Kara Saun's seemed a lot more in the now. I think if they went with someone who's doing what people want today, she might have won. Instead, I think they must have really focused on what people will want tomorrow. Her show was very sort of couture for couture. Jay's looked really couture, but it was hip at the same time. Jay's line will set trends whereas Kara's is part of trend which has already been set.

I TAKE IT BACK!

2005-02-24T20:07:00.000-08:00

Ok, you can't even imagine the number of emails that I've gotten from my friends about my Neil Gaimon related post. I wrote a brief paragraph about his Coraline. I give up.

I know literature lovers always take themselves and their opinions quite seriously and I should have known that you Gaimon lovers wouldn't appreciate my opinion. So, I'll say this: I was probably too harsh in my rejection/critique of Coraline. I'll admitt that I didn't actively dislike it, but that it simply failed to engage me at the time that I read it, and I'll give it another try. Plus, I think I wrote about liking the Sandman series. P.S. If you would like more information concerning graphic novels especially Ray Bradbury sci-fi etc., you might like to read The Best of Ray Bradbury: The Graphic Novel

For God's sake you all are taking my blog quite seriously. I appreciate the attention and am slightly wigged out by it. At least that means you're reading it at all, which I can't seem to get my own parents to do. Anyway, for more info concerning Gaimon, visit http://www.neilgaiman.com/ for info about this author.

By the way, I just read Graham Greene's End of the Affair, and I was blown away by it. More to come on that note!

Leonardo da Vinci copied Brunelleschi's machines! You may be asking, "Who the hell is Brunelleschi?"

2005-02-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been reading The Feud that Sparked the Renaissance and was amazed to find that some machines commonly atttributed to the inventor Leonardo da Vinci were actually invented by an artist from Florence, namely Filippo Brunelleschi, who was an architect, goldsmith, inventor, artist, and so on. While this information is probably quite commonly known, it came as a great suprise to me.

I have so much to write of and so little time to do it!

Ode to Boggle

2005-02-09T14:15:00.000-08:00

Boggle is one of the best games ever! I remember playing it while away at college, and I'd forgotten how much fun it could be. Just a couple days ago I found a website that has a Boggle knockoff called Spellbound at www.spogg.com. It's not exactly like Boggle, but it's pretty close. For those of you that have played Boggle, you'll understand my one complaint about the knockoff game--that is, that it requires clicking each letter in by mouse rather than being able to type in letters to form words. It's still fun, and, in the absence of knowing other Boggle players, it's better than not playing at all. I haven't found a letter limit either which is nice because so many other Boggle game variations wont take longer words.

On the wedding planning front, may I say: Thank God one only has to plan once. Talk about expensive! There are so many details to a wedding. Though it may sound like I'm not enjoying the process, I am actually, especially the process of getting baptized and preparing for Lent. I want to get married in the church, and I can't do that unless I'm baptized. Today, for the first time ever I participated in an Ash Wednesday Mass. It was moving. And, I appreciate that with each day my understanding of marriage and my desire to be married is growing because my relationship with God is growing.

Having adequate time to read religious materials and attend Mass has been a great help. Plus, the Rite of Christian Initiation class has been fun for the most part. There is one participate who asks really bad questions (yes, there is such a thing as a dumb question) and demands a lot of attention and that slows the class down and makes it more awkward than it needs to be, but other than that it's been quite interesting. I still don't entirely understand Original Sin or the Immaculate Conception (Mary's having been born without sin). Anybody have an explanation?

I read the Handbook for Today's Catholic, and while it has some beautiful passages, including those on Formation of a Correct Conscience and Baptism: New Life and Ways of Living, it hasn't provided adequate answers to many of my questions. I found the following passage particularly moving:

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon
himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to
do what is good and to avoid evil, tells him inwardly at the right moment:
do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.
His dignity lies in observing this law, and by it he will be judged. His
conscience is man's most secret core, and his sanctuary. There he is alone with
God whose voice echoes in his depths (p. 38).

I think it's one of many beautiful passages in a short but intellectually hefty book. It's like the cliff notes to the Catholic Catechism book. Some of the passages contain language that sounds like Aristotilean and in other instances very Platonic philosophy--neato! I don't feel like it provides full explanations for everything "Catholic," like the Immaculate Conception or Original Sin, but it's a good start.

The nice thing about being on vacation is that I have the chance to read and write alot. I finished Dan Brown's Demons and Angels (no I don't read just "religious-related books"), enjoying it for what it was. It was a basic beach book--fun but light. I do commend the author for meticulously weaving the credible with the unreal, creating a fun explanation of real historical events and architecture. I did find portions of the book's end to be a bit trite and overly predictable. It has made me think that I might like historical fiction. Any suggestions?

I've also been reading books about wedding planning. May I just say that I haven't found a super useful one yet. Most of them have titles like Budget Wedding, How to Plan a Dream Wedding on a Small Budget. They've been useless. They give advice like invite fewer people--duh! Of course the smaller the wedding party, the less expensive it will be. Anyway, Miss Manners on Painfully Proper Weddings by Judith Martin was good for basic wedding etiquette most of which I already know or would have guessed. I'm sure there's a great wedding planning book out there but I haven't found it yet.

On a different note, I have to admit that though I've been reading alot, I had to set aside Voucher Wars by Clint Bolick because it was reading like a bullet point memo to me. I'll go back to it, but I needed a break from it. Instead of that I've been reading other law related material and working on becoming a Guardian ad litem for children. Plus, I'm preparing a piece about law school to submit to a literary agent. I've had good feedback from attorneys and nonattorneys that have read it, so now I have to take that next step and see what an agent thinks about it. I also have an idea for a children's story-don't know when I'll find time to work on it though.

Anyway, back to looking at a book titled Impressionist Roses in order to prepare for spring gardening, reading The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels, another Lemony Snickett installment...and listening to my Bob Schneider cd. Ooh, plus I should send my Valentines.

Winter Has Finally Arrived but it Feels like Spit Not A Blanket

2005-01-13T08:04:00.000-08:00

Winter has arrivedish. It's funny, but I would actually prefer to have some snow right now to this spitty rain stuff. I usually like rain, but not in January. I've lived here for going on four years now and this is the first year that we haven't had multiple snow storms by January. We haven't had any snow yet this year. But on the upside our fridge is being replaced. I take back anything mean I've said about Best Buy, but I'll reserve any praise until after we receive a working fridge. We need one that doesn't make strange loud noises, fail to make ice, isn't dented along the doors, and doesn't leak water from the bottom.

I never realized how expensive and hard it was to find bookcases. Either people never sell the bookcases they have or no one buys bookcases because I can't find any in the used furniture stores around town. I'll just have to keep looking and hope to find some gems at spring garage sales because my book collection just keeps on growing. We actually have a room in our house devoted solely to books I love having them all in one place. For years they've been divided between storage, my parents' houses, my apartment and so on that's why I suddenly need to find more shelves for them all. At some point the plan is to organize them by subject and author. I simply look forward to the time when they wont have to be stacked against the wall. Not having enough book cases does really make us look quite bohemian though.

Our having too many books to begin with doesn't, however, keep me from accumulating more of them and visiting the library as well. Today I visited the library before going to the gym. I came home with a stack of wedding and business etiquette books (not exactly mind altering fare but necessary nonetheless). I also put myself on the waiting list for Lemony Snickett's A Series of Unfornate Events, V. 6-8. I've read the first few and had fun with them. They weren't nearly as interesting or intense as the Harry Potter series. Maybe that's because the characters don't really grow or age with every book. The plot is as predictable as the characters. I think the series is exactly what it set out to be: fun. I'd like to read Eragon about which I've heard good things too. Concerning children's books...

After reading a version of Aesop's Fables illustrated by Heidi Holder, I realized that I'm really beginning to love pencil and watercolor drawings. This book was beautifully illustrated. I found it in a used bookstore and it was well worth a few dollars. I loved the subtlety of the illustrations; they were soft and dreamlike. This book made me reminisce about the story the Wind and the Willows and the beautiful illustrations that often accompany that story. The illustrator's love of animals is evident from the renderings. I really enjoyed all of the illustrations, especially Country Mouse, City Mouse, Marriage of the Sun, and the Cock and the Jewel. I think that I also like the drawings because they feel familiar to me. Did I have this book or a similar one as a child? Or is there something about the tales or drawings that are familiar to the human conscience? That explanation sounds far too Jungian for my tastes.

On the writing, I would have liked an introduction about the history of the fables and why the particular ones in this book were chosen to be included instead of others, but other than that the book isn't lacking. The fables that most appealed to me were Country Mouse, City Mouse (For those of you that know my sweetie moved from the Big Apple to be with me, you'll understand why this story was especially touching) and Laden Ass. It's a pretty book. Standard ethics fables.

The Wit of Oscar Wilde was ok. It was a compilation of things he said or wrote. It was a decent book but only because it encouraged me to read some of his original writings themselves. Beyond that, it's simply a book full of witty but disjointed and sometimes contradictive statements about love, marriage, money, and so on. I have the feeling that Wilde was a not a very happy person. His Portrait of Dorian Gray didn't exactly paint the picture of a comfortable, well-adjusted author. Not a keeper. I've recorded the names of the pieces I want to read: An Ideal Husband etc.
I enjoyed Unnatural Fire by Fidelis Morgan but it wasn't nearly as good as it's sequel The Rival Queens. I read them in the wrong order because I found the first one after the second at a book sale. The situations in this one weren't nearly as memorable and the characters were not nearly as engaging. I'm glad I read the second one first or I might not have gotten to the second--better--one.

The characters were not realistically foolish. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but the story was too much like the common comedy of manners. The characters were just too dense. Furthermore, with the exception of a character named Betty all the characters that die during the course of the story really don't illicit any emotional response from the reader. In other words, their deaths result in nothing more than a dull thud. The apparent villains are not attractive and are gravely flawed. The villain isn't a fallen hero at all. The place and voice of the story were lacking the same delicious quality that the second book has. It wasn't easy to laugh, nor were the descriptions of period London as well wrought. I'm only tempted to keep it because I'm rather fond of the author's second book.

Wow. Talk about a serious mindbender. If you think you're good at puzzles and riddles, then you need to read The Exeter Book of Riddles translated by Kevin Crossley-Holland. This took me a long time to read because I tried to figure out all the riddles. They were nearly impossible. It definitely made me miss my friends at St. John's. We could have made a dent in them more quickly with a group effort. It's at these times that I miss you most acutely.
I am not a fan of comics. Maybe that's because I didn't grow up reading them, or maybe I'm just too uptight, but my fiance says I should try to read a few just for kicks. I'm not so sure. After reading a highly praised "comic" book that felt kind of flat it's hard for me to jump on the comic book band wagon. It's really a children's book by a notorious comic book author. I know people raved about Neil Gaimon's Coraline (especially people who loved the Sandman series--which I do like), but I didn't like it. Coraline is little like Van Allsburg's books (like The Garden of Abdul Gasazi or The Mysteries of Harris Burdick) but it isn't as inspired.

The characters were dark as was the whole story wrapped within a story plot, but the ending was anticlimatic. At least the style and language of the story were clear. It felt like the story wanted to be a more complex adult novel or a children's book with more illustrations. It clumsily follows on the heals of C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, but this remained too simple and too dark throughout. It wasn't magical. I might take a look at some of his other stuff, but I wont rush out to do it.

I HATE LAWYER jokes! I hate them not because they're antilawyer but because most of them aren't funny. My father LOVES to give me jokes about lawyers. I think he believes they help us bond because he tells them, and I am one (i.e., I am a lawyer, not a joke). The Best Lawyer Jokes Ever is probably the best one he's given me so far. I actually read every joke in it. I can tell it wasn't too bad because I can still remember some of the jokes well enough to retell them. My personal fav' is the one about the associate who chooses hell after interviews in heaven and hell. I'll keep the book for a little while so that whenever I begin to take my profession too seriously I'll be able to crack it open and come back down to earth. Plus, my ability to recount lawyer jokes will make my dad happy.
DO NOT read A Child Called It by Dave Pelzer unless you are A: Doing a study about severe instances of child abuse, B: Feeling really really sorry for yourself without a good reason, or C: aren't appreciating (by appreciating I mean that you're down right rude and ungrateful toward them) the fantastic parents God gave you. Calling the story in this book sad is like making the understatement of the millenium. I thought the story would be about triumph over poor circumstances--and it was for the last few pages--but it was so awful getting there. What Dave Pelzer endured was unimaginable. My first response was to think that he was lying because it pains me to believe that any person, let alone a child, could be put through what he lived through. Maybe I'm just a vengeful person, but because he was only removed from his home and his abusers were not tried in criminal court, I felt like he was not vindicated. That's probably part of why he wrote the book--to have his day in court so to speak. I wanted his parents, both of them, to be punished. I wanted his siblings to be removed from the home too (but they weren't). Plus, to distance myself from the horror of the story I want to know what pschological disorder caused his mother's behavior. Even though I want to know what happened to him once he escaped the brutal treatment by his family, I really don't think I can take the follow up book.
On to another brutal story...The Company: Portrait of a Murder was depressing. It was sort of a like a coed version of Lord of the Flies. It is based on a true story. It was an ok read, great for nautical vocabulary building. There's something simply inarticulable that made me disklike this novel. Maybe I felt that it was too heavyhanded in some places and too light in others? I can't think of one memorable sentence in the whole entire book, but I can think of scenes that haunt me. It's definitely a book I would hide from children (if I had any) until they were, oh I don't know?, married. It was, admittedly, well-written. If the author tackled a slightly less violent story, then I might take a look at his other novels. It's rather funny that I don't tend to like these sorts of well-written stories with intensely violent scenes in them since my professional focus tends to be domestic violence and sex crimes cases.
Hollywood Interrupted by Andrew Breitbart and Mark Ebner was ok. After finishing it, I was certainly frothing at the mouth about "Hollywood lefties," but I didn't find the book terribly memorable. It was a quick and easy read, but it didn't really tell me anything that I didn't already know or suspect. I suppose it did give me some specific imformation around which to form arguments and it did give me some good websites to visit for related information, like famousidiot.com and so on. I have a number of the websites tabbed under favorites on my computer. I'll gladly return the book to my mother who loaned it to me. It wasn't really a book. It was more like a really long magazine article.

Well, now I'm off to work on crossstitch and read the Voucher Wars.