Encore

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

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

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

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

Bibliolicious

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

Doesn't everyong love Benjamin Britten?

Catching Up

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

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

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

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

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

100 Greatest What?

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.