What I'm Reading...

This month has been yet another slow reading month.  There have been busy distractions but I think a need for new glasses may be the root of the problem. 

DMP and I have also been making full use of our NetFlix Subscription which means 2 movies of week, which means 2 fewer evenings for reading.  Movies:  Paint Your Wagon, Chronicles of Narnia:  Prince Caspian, The High and the Mighty, High Noon, The Sun Also Rises, Rio Bravo, The Philadelphia Story, Master & Commander.

I have done a couple of "quick and dirty" medical literature reviews:

• macular degeneration for a private client
• Vitamin D
• is there an assoication between urinary tract problems/sugery and myasthenia gravis?

I've skimmed, clipped, filed, and recycled a 2 1/2 foot stack of periodicals.

I've begun transcribing my recipes.

I've been entering books into the church library catalog.

A couple of ideas have grabbed my attention in my lectionary reading and I'm starting to explore these biblical ideas, mostly in Hebrew Scripture:

• staff, the meaning of Aaron's staff in Numbers and it's implications in other passages
• robe, Elijah/Elisha is the source of my current curiosity but it is a recurrent motif

What I'm reading (I include picture links to Amazon where you can browse the book):

Brueggemann, Walter: The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001.  There is hardly a page on which I didn't highlight something.  An extraordinary book!  "The riddle and insight of biblical faith is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings."  p. 56  There is commentary on Psalm 137 p. 62.  "Speech about hope cannt be explanatory and scientifically argumentative; rather it must be lyrical..."  p. 65 "I believe that, rightly embraced, no more subversive or phrophetic idiom can be uttered than the practice of doxology, which sets before us the reality of God, of God right at the center of a scene from which we presumed he had fled." p. 66  "...exile is first of all where our speech has been silenced and God's speech has been banished." p. 69  "Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism." p. 88  "That tradition of radical criticism is about the self-giving emptiness of Jesus...  The emptying is not related to self-negating meditation, for it is a thoroughly political image concerned with the willing surrender of power..." p. 98  "Without the cross, prophetic imagination will likely be as strident and as destructive as that which it criticizes.... Prophetic criticism aims to creat an alternative consciousness with its own rhetoric and field of perception....  This kind of prophetic criticism does not lightly offer alternatives, does not mouth reassurances, and does not provide redemptive social policy.  It knows that only those who mourn can be comforted, and so it first asks about how to mourn seriously and faithfully..." p. 99  "...all functions of the church can and should be prophetic voices that serve to criticize the dominant culture while energizing the faithful....  Thus, the essential question for the church is whether or not its prophetic voice has been co-opted into the culture of the day." p. 125

Peterson, Eugene H.:  A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.  Discipleship in an Instant Society.  2nd edition.  Downers Grover IL:  Intervarsity Press, 2000.  I'm fairly certain I at least scanned the first edition, 1980.  A devotional reading of the Psalms of Ascent, Psalms 120-134.

Fiction: 
Schweizer, Mark:  The Organist Wore Pumps, a liturgical mystery.  SJMP Books, 2010.  Funny!  "It's tradition... when society started, women were not thought of as 'literary'... That's true.  Well, if you don't count Emily Dickinson, Christina Rosetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dorothy Parker, or the Bronte sisters."  See previous posts for more detailed descriptions of these books (Organist is the 8th in the series) which DMP and I both find hilarious.  I include the Amazon links for those who may want to browse but we buy our mysteries at Murder by the Book in Houston. link: Murder by the Book
This is a real bookstore with staff who knows their books and get to know their readers.  I love the $1 shelf at the back where I find treasure.  Unlike DMP, I don't read mysteries, except for the couple of authors who make me laugh.


Poetry:
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett: Sonnets from the Portuguese and other love poems. Illustrated by Adolf Hallman. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1954. My friend, Konny, gave me this book and I've greatly enjoyed reading these poems.   The illustrations are particularly lovely in this gift book edition.  Adolf Hallman, 1893-1968, is a Swedish illustrator; his drawings for this book have the sparse look and muted colors of much Scandinavian art.  I usually look for vintage books like this one at estate sales and used book stores. When I must have it now I use  IOBA   or biblio.com  or abebooks.com or alibris.com   or, yes, Amazon.  When a book is in the public domain (as most books first published prior to 1923 are), it's a good time to read it digitally and this is my favorite starting point:  onlinebooks at U Penn and read EBB now at the poetry foundation.  "We walked beside the sea, After a day which perished silently, Of its own glory..."  "I thank all who have loved me in their hearts, With thanks and love from mine.  Deep thanks to all...  Love that endures, from Life that disappears."

What I'm reading...

Still working on my annual review of medical literature re. scleroderma.

Doing some reading about the kidney and its various disorders.


Still catching up on my periodicals:

From Much ado about nothing, The Economist, Vol. 392, No. 8639, July 11th, 2009. A book review of Nothing: A very short introduction by Frank Close, Oxford U. Press, 2009. "Does anything remain when everything is taken away?... Big Bang... Where did all this stuff come from? Science says that it came from quantum fluctuations in the void.... Mr. Close surveys 3,000 years of thinking to arrive at the modern solution... The answer is nothing." I like both physics and metaphysics so I'll probably take a closer look at this book which is due out in the USA next month. Based on the review, the modern solution of nothingness closely approaches the Zen solution. In my reading and practice (which is no longer Zen) I've found those unexplained "quantum fluctuations in the void" to be a less poetic way to phrase the Judeo-Christian solution, "In the beginning, the Spirit of God moved across the face of the deep." The answer is not nothing" but rather The One out whose being {I AM} flows all that has being.


Fiction:

Fforde, Jasper: Thursday Next First among Sequels. New York: Penguin, 2007. Not the first sequel but the fifth book in this delightful series: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, Something Rotten, First Among Sequels. {There is also a companion series, The Nursery Crime series which I do not read: The Big Over Easy, The Fourth Bear.} Quote, p.52: "Reading, I had learned, was as creative a process as writing, sometimes more so. When we read of the dying rays of the setting sun or the boom and swish of the incoming tide, we should reserve as much praise for ourselves as for the author. After all, the reader is doing all the work--the writer might have died long ago."

Schweizer, Mark: The Diva Wore Diamonds: a liturgical mystery. Hopkinsville KY: St. James Music Press, 2009. 159 p. illustrator: Jim Hunt. Hip, hip, hooray! The slipcase didn't mean the end of the series. This is the seventh book featuring an Episcopal choir director who is also a small town chief of police and a wanna be writer who channels Raymond Chandler... The usual delightful read and a good laugh when I needed one. The series in order: The Alto Wore Tweed, The Baritone Wore Chiffon, The Tenor Wore Tapshoes, The Soprano wore Falsettos, The Bass Wore Scales, The Mezzo Wore Mink. Visit the link, not only for the liturgical mysteries but also because St. James Music Press is a serious press offering really superb church music and you can listen to practically everything in their catalog. http://www.sjmpbooks.com/ MYSTERY EPISCOPAL CHURCH POLITICS SMALL TOWN ROMANCE 21st Century

Bedside Book, just finished and have not yet selected another:

Andreach, Robert J.: Studies in Structure: Stages in the spiritual life in four modern authors: Gerarad Manley Hopkins, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane. London: Burns & Oates, 1964, Fordham University Press. This is an exceedingly odd book; it is less literary criticism and more an analysis of stages in spirituality in the works of these authors referring to Dante, St. Augustine, and St. John of the Cross as sources. I enjoyed this fresh viewpoint and I enjoyed revisiting those writers which I rarely read voluntarily e.g. Joyce and Crane. During my college years, when I was first reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I threw the book across the room {A real no-no for a librarian.} in disgust at what I thought was "really screwed up color imagery." Andreach explains that Joyce has consciously "inverted" the stages of spiritual life. At least now I understand why I have never liked Joyce nor Crane nor really most of the Modern writers. Quote from section on Hart Crane, p. 118: "The more he seeks among the particulars of a debased society, the more his spiritual consciousness in diminished."

Chairside Nibbles:

Patten, Robert L.: George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art. Volume1: 1792-1835. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. Kindle BIOGRAPHY ARTIST ILLUSTRATOR 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century This award winning biography by one of my English literature professors from Rice University is proving a most enjoyable re-read. One of Patten's strong points as a professor was rooting the literature in the history, the sociology, and the culture of the time, He offers rich details in a very readable frame. With my new interest in book illustration it is even more interesting to me now than it was on my first reading some years ago. Since I'm spending much time in my chair of late, this reading may take quite a long while.

SEASONS:

Linn, Dennis; Linn, Sheila Fabricant; Linn, Matthew: Good Goats: healing our image of God. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. vi, 101 p. I'm finding the Linns to be difficult authors. I agree with most of their conclusions but I find their arguments to be shallow and repetitive. Their attack in this month's reading was on St. Anselm's view of the atonement struck me as a bit insulting to both Anselm and God. I am, as always, enjoying the discussion with the circle of sisters. FEMININITY OF GOD JUDGEMENT DAY HELL DOCTRINE 20th Century

Anselm of Canterbury who in the Preface to the Proslogion wrote, "I have written the little work that follows... in the role of one who strives to raise his mind to the contemplation of God and one who seeks to understand what he believes.
I acknowledge, Lord, and I give thanks that you have created your image in me, so that I may remember you, think of you, love you. But this image is so obliterated and worn away by wickedness, it is so obscured by the smoke of sins, that it cannot do what it was created to do, unless you renew and reform it. I am not attempting, O Lord, to penetrate your loftiness, for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it, but I desire in some measure to understand your truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this too I believe, that "unless I believe, I shall not understand." (Isa. 7:9) . " For more information visit these links: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/141.html

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/anselm-intro.html

What I'm Reading

Fiction Binge:

Schweizer, Mark: The Mezzo Wore Mink: a liturgical mystery. Hopkinsville KY: St. James Music Press, 2008. 191 p. illustrator: Jim Hunt. I don't read mysteries but I do make exceptions. Schweizer's six books featuring an Episopal choir director who is also a small town chief of police and a wanna be writer who channels Raymond Chandler... Well, what more can I say. Laugh out loud funny! Unfortunately the slip case issued with this book probably marks the end of the series. Perfect for a cold, rainy day. Read every word including the added material and adverts on the frontis. This is one you'll either lover or hate. The series in order: The Alto Wore Tweed, The Baritone Wore Chiffon, The Tenor Wore Tapshoes, The Soprano wore Falsettos, The Bass Wore Scales, The Mezzo Wore Mink. MYSTERY EPISCOPAL CHURCH POLITICS SMALL TOWN ROMANCE 20th Century

Rolls, Elizabeth: His Lady Mistress. free download link from Kindle Daily Post, Tue. March 10, 2009 in celebration of Harlquin's 60th anniversary. This is a Harlequin Historical Romance, "a bodice ripper." ROMANCE HARLEQUIN ORCZY Several decades ago I was badly addicted to paperback romances; since I could read the shorter ones in under 2.5 hours, I read about 3 each and every week. I eventually tired of the genre as I do all formulaic ficition. Since I've been studying a lot of 19th and early 20th Century novels written by women, I found this reading of a current romance novel quite interesting. Except for the mandatory three erotic scenes in the 21st Century version and the diminishment of vocabulary and syntax, this novel is much the same as the earliest romance novels. I wonder if Rolls use of "Blakeney" is a conscious allusion to Emmuska Orczy's Pimpernel.

Bedside Book:

Mariani, Paul L.: Gerard Manley Hopkins: A life. New York: Viking, the Penguin Group, 2008. 496 p. includes index BIOGRAPHY POETS CATHOLIC OXFORD 19th Century 21st Century Hopkins has been my favorite poet since I discovered him during my freshman year at Rice Univerisity. I like Marianni's writing very much; superb shaping of excerpts from poems, journals, letters into a very readable text. One of the best accounts of Hopkins life I have read. A gift from David on my 60th brithday.

Chairside Nibbles:

Yonge, Charolotte M. (ed.): Gold Dust: a collection of golden counsels for the santification of daily life. New York: Thomas Whittaker n.d.. 165 p. DEVOTION 19th Century

Kindle:

Radcliffe, Ann: The Mysteries of Udolpho. A Project Gutenberg Book first published in 1794. This is the book everyone is reading and talking about in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey. FICTION 18th Century

Kindle:

Patten, Robert L.: George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art. Volume1: 1792-1835. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. BIOGRAPHY ARTIST ILLUSTRATOR 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century This award winning biography by one of my English literature professors from Rice University is proving a most enjoyable re-read. One of Patten's strong points as a professor was rooting the literature in the history, the sociology, and the culture of the time, He offers rich details in a very readable frame. With my new interest in book illustration it is even more interesting to me now than it was on my first reading some years ago.