What I'm reading...

Not much. I've made another trip to visit parents in Clifton. Road music: Best of the Righteous Brothers, Yanni In My Time, Schumann Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4, and Juilio Inglesias Tango. That list is almost a definition of eclectic. Miss Mandy Whitepaws, my sheltie, is in love with Juilio and found several of the Righteous Brothers' vocals intriguing. It was a good trip.

But it was not a break from the church library. I spent a lot of time looking at the Highsmith catalog making lists of furnishings and supplies. When I got home I prepared a budget for the coming year. I spent all day yesterday on-line making purchases from Highsmith and from Amazon, http://www.abebooks.com, and http://www.biblio.com. [If you're looking for a rare out-of-print book, give them a try. My first choice is biblio.com because I like the way they manage the orders from a plethora of independent booksellers.] I was really fortunate--or should I say blessed?--to find all but one of the thirty-three books that had to be replaced. Hurricane Ike destroyed four dozen or so others but I elected not to replace them. Given the state of the church library after the storm, the losses were really far fewer than I'd expected.
Other than catalogs I've been reading:

Fiction:
Poole, Ernest: His Family. New York: MacMillan, 1917. Project Gutenberg. Kindle, free download from http://manybooks.net/. The first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for literature. A beautifully crafted story of the interior life and family relationships of a man as he nears the end of his life. In New York at a time of transition (early 20th Century), his three daughters encounter their father, their family, each other, and themselves as three graces, if you will. What does it mean to be woman in the Modern world? How does a woman decide issues of career, marriage, motherhood? Poole examines issues of education, urbanization, war and conscience, and eternal life. A delightful read that is also thought provoking. FICTION 20th CENTURY PULITZER NEW YORK MODERNISM FEMINISIM

Chairside Nibbles:
mostly Kindle sampling for an upcoming reading binge

Bedside Book:
I was slow to make a new selection so I read Gerard Manley Hopkins and finally memorized

That Nature Is a Heraclitian Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection.

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows flaunt forth, then chevy on an air-

built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, wherever an elm arches,

Shivelights and shadowtackle in long lashes lace, lance, and pair.

Delightfully the bright wind boisterous ropes, wrestles, beats earth bare

Of yestertempest's creases; in pool and rut peel parches

Squandering ooze to squeezed dough, crust, dust; stanches, starches

Squadroned masks and manmarks treadmire toil there

Footfretted in it. Million-fuelèd, nature's bonfire burns on.

But quench her bonniest, dearest to her, her clearest-selvèd spark

Man, how fast his firedint, his mark on mind, is gone!

Both are in an unfathomable, all is in an enormous dark

Drowned. O pity and indig nation! Manshape, that shone

Sheer off, disseveral, a star, death blots black out; nor mark

Is any of him at all so stark

But vastness blurs and time beats level. Enough! the Resurrection,

A heart's-clarion! Away grief's gasping, joyless days, dejection.

Across my foundering deck shone

A beacon, an eternal beam. Flesh fade, and mortal trash

Fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash:

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and

This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

Peterson, Eugene H.: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places. A conversation in spiritual theology. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005. Kindle. Can a Kindle book work as bedside reading? Just started but it promises to be informative and inspirational. I remain grateful to Peterson for his Psalms study, How do I answer the God who speaks to me?

SEASONS:
Linn, Dennis; Linn, Sheila Fabricant; Linn, Matthew: Good Goats: healing our image of God. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. vi, 101 p. Next month will finish this book and after our last group discussion I liked this book much better.

Stranger than fiction

We enjoyed a rare movie night at home; we don't make good use of our Netflix subscription. Watched Stranger than Fiction selected purely because Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman are such a superb actors and they do not disappoint. We don't really like Will Ferrell but he was perfectly cast in this movie. Queen Latifah was a delight also. An excellent movie! David said, "It's funny but the three movies that I've found most thought-provoking were all comedies: Joe and the Volcano, Groundhog Day, and now Stranger than Fiction."

I've looked at more books (and done less reading) this past week than in any other week of my life since I've been unpacking and reshelving the church library as we finally get to move back after Hurricane Ike and all the repairs. About 6000 books in 45 or so hours. I was pleased that the damages were much less than I anticipated. I was delighted to come across some of the very lovely books that I had forgotten about and to realize that our church library is really a very strong collection.
I hope folks know that David and I didn't really skip the work day since we've had a number of workdays already the past couple of weeks and we got there at 7:30 a.m. this morning to finish the library and clear the table so that SEASONS could meet there this morning. It was a good session. It's wonderful to have a circle of sisters who truly nurture one another.