What I'm Reading...

When I start a novel, any novel but especially a good one, I want to read it all the way through from start to finish with as few interruptions as possible, which is of course not at all possible most of the time.  Vacations are an exception.  Earlier this month while on vacation, I indulged in a fiction binge:

Braddon, Mary Elizabeth:  Lady Audley's Secret, Kindle downloaded from  Project Gutenberg.  Braddon (1857-1915) first published her "sensation" novel about bigamy in 1862 and it was a sensation of the popular sort, going through nine editions in the first year.  I was surprised at how much fun it was to read this book--a murder mystery with a bit of romance and family dysfunction.  The character of Robert Audley (the nephew/sleuth) and some of the book's tone remind me a bit of the much later comic novels of P. G. Wodehouse.  A quote re. Lady Audley's relationship with her adult step-daughter:  "There can be no reconciliation where there is no open warfare. There must be a battle, a brave boisterous battle, with pennants waving and cannon roaring, before there can be peaceful treaties and enthusiastic shaking of hands."    Another favorite:  "Sir Michael Audley made that mistake which is very commonly made by easy-going, well-to-do-observers, who have no occasion to look below the surface.  He mistook laziness for incapacity.  The thought because his nephew was idle, he must necessarily be stupid.  He concluded that if Robert did not distinguish himself, it was because he could not.

"He forgot the mute inglorious Miltons, who die voiceless and inarticulate for want of that dogged perseverance, that blind courage, which the poet must possess before he can find a publisher; he forgot the Cromwells, who see the noble vessels of the state floundering upon a sea of confusion ...  and who yet are powerless to get at the helm...  Surely it is a mistake to judge of what a man can do by that which he has done....  The game of life is something like the game of ecarte, and it may be that the very best cards are sometimes left in the pack."

Yonge, Charlotte M.:  The Heir of Redclyffe,  Kindle downloaded from Project Gutenberg, first published in 1853 and the best selling of Yonge's novels, "the most popular novel of the age."  Yonge (1823-1901) used profits from her  books for charity.  Her father told her upon the success of The Heir of Redclyffe "that a lady published for three reasons only: love of praise, love of money, or the wish to do good."  She is sometimes called the novelist of the Oxford Movement and was a life-long Anglican Sunday Schools teacher.   I read this book long ago, probably in imitation of  Jo March in Alcott's  Little Women.  I enjoyed reading it again.  Yonge is  a bit "preachy" even for my taste (despite my complete sympathy with her religious views and, as readers of this blog have undoubtedly noted, my predilection for all things theological) but dear Charlotte does go on and on and on and...  Perhaps that's one more thing I have in common with her.

I've started Wright, N.T.:  Surprised by Hope.  Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Harper-Collins, 2008.  This is the book selected for Sunday Bible study in the Open Door class which I'm reading in a digital edition  on Kindle and I'm hopelessly behind the class in my reading.  I'm greatly enjoying the DVD discussion by N.T. Wright and the discussion questions.   A few years ago I read this author's  The Last Word: Scripture and the Authority of God--Getting Beyond the Bible Wars (2006) and would put it on my short lists of books that made a significant difference in my world view because it finally made clear to me the questions asked by post-modernist thinkers. p. iv "Almost all Christian churches say something in the formularies about how important the Bible is.  Almost all of them have devised ways, some subtle, some less so, of ostentatiously highlighting some parts of the Bible and quietly setting aside other parts."  p. xi "How can what is mostly a narrative text be "authoritative"?  [How can we] "speak of the Bible being in some sense "authoritative" when the Bible itself declares that all authority belongs to the one true God, and that this is now embodied in Jesus himself."  p. 14 "My present point is that these older ways of thinking about the world have left their mark on the study of the Bible, on the way it has been taught... and that these ways of thinking have themselves become discredited in the mainstream culture."  p. 16 "integrity consists not of having no presuppositions but of being aware of what one's presuppositions are and of the obligation to listen to and interact with those who have different ones."  My copy of this book is very heavily highlighted and I recommend it with enthusiasm.  I'm hoping that I will be able to enjoy reading N.T. Wright as much on the Kindle with bookmark/highlight tabs as I did in print with my yellow highlighter in hand.

I continue reading Annie Dillard (previously blogged) and greatly enjoyed revisiting Total Eclipse and An Expedition to the Pole from Teaching a Stone to Talk.  I found her short story The Living a bit odd and disturbing, as Dillard can be.  I'm reading a collection of her works on my Kindle.  Dillard is one of the finest nature writers I've encountered and I greatly enjoy her writing style and her powers of observation.  She makes unexpectedly connections and helps me see how intricately all of life is interwoven.  Interwoven--what a great name for the book I'll never write.

And as previously blogged  I'm reading through everything by Carlyn G. Heilbrun who will undoubtedly merit a blog dedicated solely to her one day.  I recently finished The Last Gift of Time. Life Beyond Sixty. This author gives voice to my thoughts and I know no other author (who did not live in the 19th Century) who mirrors by interior life and thoughts so well.  p.2  "...aging might be gain rather than loss, and... the impersonation of youth was unlikely to provide the second span of womanhood with meaning and purpose."   p.4 "Perhaps I am one of those who are born... blessed with the gift of eternal old age."  p. 35 "As Sartre said, not to choose is to have already chosen.  The major danger in one's sixties--so I came to feel--is to be trapped in one's body and one's habits, not to recognize those supposedly sedate years as the time to discover new choices and to act upon them."  p. 120 "What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be."  p. 137 "To find unmet friends, one must be a reader, and not an infrequent one.... Reading--like those more frivolous lifelong pursuits, singing in tune, or diving, or roller-blading--is either an early acquired passion or not:  there is no in-between about it, no catching up in one's later years."   and p. 182 "Life seemed simpler because I was young and simple."  p. 150 quoting Samuel Johnson:  "the enduring elegance of female friendship." ...perfectly describes the relationship of a woman reader with a woman writer whose work she has encompassed, reread, and delighted in."  Thank you to my "unmet friends for that "enduring elegance:  Jane Austen, Evelyn Whitaker, Elizabeth Barret Browning, Grace Livingstone Hill, Beatrix Potter, Christina Rossetti,  Annie Dillard and, yes, Elaine Showalter and Carolyn G. Heilbrun.


I finished the second of the poetry books DMP gave me for Christmas last year.  Gluck, Louise: Averno.  New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux,  2006.  She is an excellent poet and I'll probably keep  this book on the shelf and may reread it in a year or two but it was much to dependent on the Persephone myth to be quite my cup of tea.  full text available at the floating library

I'll close this month's reading list with another quote from Carolyn G. Heilbrun (p. 182): 
"True sadness which is not nostalgia can, I have found, be dispelled by reading: by that same literature which seemed, in my youth, to hold both excitement, wisdom, and all I could discover of truth; and by today's newly perceptive books.  Lifelong readers continue to read, finding in books... the means to enjoy life or to endure it." 

What I'm reading...

In a recent post, I said that I don't read mysteries but anyone looking over my reading list would see that I do.   Previous posts have included books by

• Mark Schweizer (my blogs) 
• William J. Palmer (my blog)
• Jasper Fforde (my blog)
• C. J. Sansom (my blog)

I  read mysteries if they have been recommended by someone who knows what I like to read (usually DMP) and I'll read a second by an author who appeals to my sense of humor or offers me a view into  history or who feeds me literary tidbits.  Since DMP must go to Murder by the Book, now celebrating their 30th anniversary, at least twice a month, I come across such books rather frequently.  I've indulged in a fiction binge of several mysteries:

Maron, Margaret:  Rituals of the Season. New York:  Warner, 2005.  This is one of the later books in the series which began with The Bootlegger's Daughter and DMP thought I'd enjoy the chapter heading quotations from Florence Hartley's The Ladies Book of Etiquette, 1873, which may be read on-line at the Open Library.  Two quotes:  "Many believe that politeness is but a mask worn in the world to conceal bad passions and impulses, and to make a show of possessing virtues not really existing in the heart; thus, that politeness is merely hypocrisy and dissimulation.  Do not believe this; be certain that those who profess such a doctrine are themselves practising the deceit they condemn so much...  True politeness is the language of a good heart."  "Among well-bred persons, every conversation is considered in a measure confidential...."    DMP's timing was great since I'd just read a Hartley quote in the Ph.D. thesis of Sonya Sawyer Fritz.  A bit of Maron's humor from p. 36:  "So what is the difference between a spinster and a old maid?" "Well, as Doris would've said if Herman hadn't stopped her, a spinster ain't never been married.  But an old maid ain't never been married ner nothing." DMP was correct; I did enjoy Maron's mystery and may have the chance  to read her again (I'll certainly scan her chapter headings) since he acquired most of the out-of-print earlier books by asking me to find them for him.  I used abebooks.com, one of my favorite sources, and was able to order from two vendors that I have used frequently:  owl books and seashellbooks.com.

I'm planning to read and re-read the non-fiction books by one of my favorite authors, Carolyn G. Heilbrun, and thought that I'd start with three of the Kate Fansler mysteries which were first published under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross:

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  In the Last Analysis.  New York:  Fawcett Books, 1964.  "I didn't say I objected to Freud... I said I objected to what Joyce called freudful errors--all those nonsensical conclusions leaped to by people with no reticence and less mind." p. 1 "She had learned as a college teacher that if one simplified what one wished to say, one falsified it.  It was  possible only to say what one meant, as clearly as possible." p. 8  "...there's only one test for discovering what you really want:  it consists in what you have."  p. 159  "He probably thought I was writing a novel and he answered my question in the most long-winded and technical way possible.  But then doctors are always indulging either in incoherence or oversimplification--if you want my opinion, I don't think they even understand each other."  p. 209
• 
  
  Poetic Justice.  New York: Fawcett Books, 1970.  Filled with delicious W.H. Auden quotations and an excellent depiction of university life during my undergraduate years and some feminist issues.  "unready to die... but already at the stage when one starts to dislike the young."  p. 3  "I have nothing against young people--apart from the fact that they are arrogant, spoiled, discourteous, incapable of compromise, and unaware of the cost of everything they want to destroy....  I prefer those whom life has had time to season."  p. 41    Kate to Reed:  "You... are my greatest accomplishment.  I have achieved the apotheosis of womanhood.  To have earned a Ph.D., taught reasonably well, written books, traveled, been a friend and a lover--these are mere evasions of my appointed role in life:  to lead a man to the altar.  You are my sacrifice to the goddess of middle-class morality..." p. 107  "It may serve, in these frantic days of relevance, to remind you of the importance of the useless."  p. 110  "When formality went from life, meaning went too.  People always yowl about form without meaning, but what turns out to be impossible is meaning without form.  Which is why I'm a teacher of literature and keep ranting on about structure."  p. 133  "...'the only earthly joys are those we are free to choose--like solitude, your college, certain marriages.'  'And what about unearthly joys?' 'Ah, those, if we are fortunate, choose us.  Like grace.  Like talent.'" p. 135
• 
  
  The Theban Mysteries.  New York: Avon Books, 1971. Antigone, dodging the draft, and an  up-scale New York girls' school.  "No one pretends anything any more, which I suppose is a good thing, although I can't help sometimes feeling that the constant expression of emotion in itself becomes the cause of the emotion which is expressed."  p. 12  "What is troubling... is that he is rude, unwashed, inconsiderate, filled to the brim with slogans, and outrageously simplistic.  Alas, he also right."  p. 25   "Nothing ages more quickly than the absolutely up-to-date....  the latest in everything, age[s] like a woman who has had her face lifted:  there is not even character to set off the ravages of time." p. 27  "There is nothing so uncomfortable as seeing both sides of the question."  p. 89  "For myself, I've discovered that when I ask myself what I should do I always tumble into confusion.  The only clear question is to ask oneself what one wants to do.... It sounds like [self-indulgence] certainly, but oddly enough, it isn't.  The 'should' people are really indulging themselves by never finding out what they want.  It has taken me many years to learn that discovering what one wants if the true beginning of a spiritual journey."  p. 125

The Auden quotes in Poetic Justice are probably what inspired me to grab my well-worn Pocket Book of Modern Verse, edited by Oscar Williams, for bedside reading, all 628 pages.  I have a few favorites but, by and large, I am out of sympathy with Moderns:  "Terrence, this is stupid stuff..."  A.E. Houseman.  Found a smile and an apt description of the Parliament (Rice's NCAA Bulletin Board):  "...owls raving--Solemnities not easy to withstand... The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale.  These were all lies, though they matched the time..."   Robert Graves.  My final reading for this paperback with it's yellowed, brittle pages--some falling out--and it's broken spine. I kept it far longer than necessary for sentimental reasons:  Larry McMurtry taught my section of English 100 at Rice and this little book is where I met and got to know:  Auden, Thomas Hardy as a poet rather than a novelist, Houseman, Dylan Thomas, William Butler Yeats, and Gerard Manley Hopkins.  I'm considering a replacement. 

I'm finally returning Peterson, Eugene H.: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. Discipleship in an Instant Society. 2nd edition. Downers Grover IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000, to my Psalms study shelf.  This a very rich book offering commentary on the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134.  Many quotes from this book will one day be added to my Psalms notes but this one is worthy of mention here:  "Those who parade the rhetoric of liberation but scorn the wisdom of service do not lead people into the glorious liberty of the children of God but into a cramped and covetous squalor."

SEASONS:

David Eagleman:   Sum: Forty tales from the Afterlives.  New York:  Vintage Books, 2009.  The author majored in British and American literature at Rice before  earning a Ph.D. in neuroscience.  A funny, thoughtful delight which is less about Afterlives than about our perceptions of life.  A couple of quotations:  "She was always leery of apostates, those who rejected the particulars of their religion in search of something that seemed more truthful.   She disliked them because they seemed the most likely to float a correct guess."  "...your memory has spent a lifetime manufacturing small myths to keep your life story consistent with who you thought you were.  You have committed to a coherent narrative, misremembering little details and decisions and sequences of events....  you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality."

So many books; so little time.