April 5-Saturday

Marty asked me to slow down on Silmarillion so he can catch up so I’ll put that on the back burner for awhile.  Hope I don’t forget too much to be able to pick it up again.  It is interesting that Tucker won’t read War and Peace because of the difficulty with all the names of characters and yet can’t understand why Marty and I have trouble with Silmarillion!

We have a meeting at the library on Thursday to discuss Essential Saroyan, a selection of William Saroyan’s best writings. I have about a hundred pages to complete this week’s assignment so that will keep me busy this weekend.   This year is the celebration of Saroyan’s hundredth birthday which is why the Fresno library system is scheduling many events about him.  His writing tends to be quirky but he really captivates the reader with his great love of humanity-all of it in its individual components of one life at a time.  This is one I should read with a notebook at my side to copy down appealing passages.

My two favorite selections so far, “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” and “Seventy Thousand Assyrians” reminded me of Down and Out in Paris and London as all of these bring to life the lives of the “anonymous poor.”  Although none of these are religious writings (and the authors would probably be appalled if someone suggested they were) they should be appealing to Christians because both writers seem to see humanity as Jesus did-as individuals rather than definable groups.  I got the Saroyan book for free from the library so it is legal to consider it a BC book for this month.  I need to be more aggressive this month because I read only 3 BC books in March which was much less than a third of the quarterly total of 16.

April 10-Thursday

I went to the library book discussion about Essential Saroyan this evening.  I was a Johnny-come-lately because I didn’t realize it was happening until 2 meetings had already taken place.  This was the next to last meeting-the last will be April 24.  I read the entire book this past week because I was enjoying it so much, so I was rather disappointed that so many in the group were not enjoying Saroyan-including Ernst, the librarian.  Saroyan was a quirky writer and leaves much up to the reader as far as trying to figure out what “he means” but that is part of the charm.  It is almost like having a dialogue with the writer as you react to what he says.  Most of the discussion tonight was about “Tracy’s Tiger” which was one of my favorites.  The discussion was pretty lively and some of the teenagers who attended contributed quite a bit.  Ernst didn’t care for the story because there was no definite resolution to whether the tiger was real or imaginary.  Others couldn’t figure out what the “meaning” of either the tiger or the story was.  Surprisingly, one of the teenage boys seemed to like the story as much as I did even though there seems to be no definite answer to many of the questions that were raised.  It’s nice to know that there are still young readers who don’t mind working at their reading and don’t need a definitive answer to what it all means.  Maybe he doesn’t watch much television-where all the answers are revealed in either 30 minutes or an hour!  Thinking about the story in retrospect and as a result of the ideas I got from the discussion, I am struck how much the tone and development of the story reminds me of the novel Going after Cacciato. Both stories leave you wondering about what is real and what isn’t in the story.  I wonder if Tim O’Brien ever read Saroyan?

April 26-Saturday

I spent the day playing with librarything.com instead of reading my book.  But I did have a good time adding comments to some of my entries and submitting a couple of reviews.  Now I just have to find time to finish King of the Confessors and The Silmarillion before the end of the month.

Exploring a book by David Whyte called Crossing the Unknown Sea makes me think maybe I could justify using my time off next week after the recital is over to do the reading.  I need to get that book by Whyte.  I loved The Heart Aroused, the book by him that that I bought and read because our friend and former pastor Lowery recommended it to me. (see comments below)

Whyte, David:  The Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America (read 2004; recommended by Lowery Brantley)

David Whyte is a fine writer and this book is a noteworthy contribution to the       literature on how to bring creativity and soul not only into the corporate world, but into each of our lives. The book grew out of work he did as a consultant for many corporations presenting seminars to their personnel to help them become more successful and personally satisfied in their jobs.  In this book he works hard at underscoring the symbolic importance of his literary references to Beowulf, Coleridge and Eliot, among others as he assumes many of his readers might not otherwise be poetically inclined. A Heart Aroused argues very simply that each of us owes it to ourselves to bring courage and passion into our work and into our lives. If we cannot embrace the job with passion, perhaps we are in the wrong job.

I need to reread this book as I face the changes that Jim’s retirement (and mine?) will bring.  How do we make retirement as fulfilling as work?  Another of his books, Crossing the Unknown Sea, is especially recommended for reading when life changing events such as retirement occur.

Desultory “daily” notes:

March 14-Friday

I had a very busy week and no time for journaling but tonight we are spending our second night in Monterrey and Marty is at the rehearsal dinner so maybe I can spend some time catching up.  We are here for Ty’s wedding tomorrow and staying in the house of one of Marty’s dance friend’s family.  We arrived yesterday evening and went to dinner at Fifi’s on Forest Avenue-just a short ways away from where we are staying with wonderful food, good atmosphere and very nice people.  This morning we lounged around the house because Marty didn’t feel well and wanted to rest before all the activities.  I got a chance to finish my book, The Man Who Was Thursday.  I finished the story last night and today I read the Introduction (it was advised to wait to read this until after you read the book because it revealed most of the plot devices) and the 3 short pieces at the end which were related to the story.  It was a book with lots of Christian ideas and symbolism.  I will have to read it again, this time reading the Introduction first, to really get a good grip on all the points Chesterton is making.

About 4:00 PM we dropped Marty off for his rehearsal and dinner and we went to Cannery Row (the one Steinbeck wrote about) to wine taste at Bargetto tasting room and then had a glass of wine at Taste of Monterrey, a wine tasting room featuring many wineries from the area and a fantastic view since it is on the second floor of the building.  While sitting and looking at the water (where we got to watch 2 otters cavorting in the open bay) we talked with a woman from the area who recommended that we have dinner at Schooners in the Monterey Plaza Hotel at the end of Cannery row.  It was a great recommendation-we had a wonderful meal of halibut and an excellent desert.  All in all we had a very nice and relaxing day and time in the evening to get my journaling is done.  As Pepys would say-”and so to bed.”

I decided took back in Journal 1 where I periodically work at reconstructing my reading life before I started journaling to see if I had included this book–here’s the entry:

Steinbeck, John:  Cannery Row (College & later Reedley Book Group Sept. ‘99)

One of my favorite books that this short lived group read-I think I was the one to suggested it.  Some scenes you just never forget-like Doc and the toads.  This is definitely worth a reread!

Desultory “daily” notes:

March 3, 2008

Today I found this quote for Jim’s Kiwanis Newsletter:

I believe I found the missing link between animal and civilized man. It is us. -Konrad Lorenz, ethologist, Nobel laureate (1903-1989)

I have a copy of Lorenz’s first book, King Solomon’s Ring, so I think that is what I’ll read next for the Book Challenge.  Lorenz was a scientist who spent his career doing close watching of animal behavior, allowing them to live freely in his house and surrounding yards.  I think this should be an interesting as well as entertaining book.  It’s one of the Time/Life Minor Classic selections that I bought in the ‘80’s (as was the Thurber book I read in January).  I’m finally getting around to reading them.

One of those classics I did read at the time I bought them was Kabloona, which was about life among the Inuit’s. Unfortunately, I didn’t keep it when I moved to California.  I’m sorry now because it was very good and I’d like to read it again.  Below is the review of the book which I put in Reading Journal 1–an on going attempt to reconstruct my reading life before I started doing the yearly journals:

De Poncins, Gontran:  Kabloona (Life Among the Inuits) (Time/Life Book-‘80’s) 

In 1941 De Poncins published a memoir telling about the 15 he months spent among the Inuit people of the Arctic. He is initially appalled at their uncivilized lifestyle but eventually morphs from a “Kabloona” (a white man) to an Inuit.  Poncins recreates both the 1930’s world of France and the world of Frozen Canada.

It’s been years since I read “Kabloona” and I don’t remember the specifics of the book.  What I do remember is the basic humanity of the people, the hard life they lived, and the culture shock between my life and theirs. I remember the book forcing me to question my idea of “progress,” “civility,” and “modern man”. Books such as Kabloona and Mutant Message Down Under, a story by Marlo Morgan about living with aborigines, tell us more about our roots as a species than many of the great thinkers and philosophers, whose only reference is modern man, are able to do. (Kabloona has the advantage of being a true story, describing the lives of actual people while it is happening.) When you read books like these you pause and reflect, trying to discern what it means to be “human.”   I remember being surprised that we “civilized” people have more in common with “primitive” people than appears on the surface.

The story dives deep into the interior life of the author as much as it details an ethnographic examination of (primitive) Inuit life. The myths and values of the Eskimos contrast sharply with the bourgeois morals of a gentleman of Paris. For example, in Eskimo culture, there is little concept of private property…that’s why an Eskimo man will let you borrow his wife or a snow knife. (I did wonder how the wife felt about that concept!)  Language in the arctic is fascinating.  A polar bear is HE WHO HAS NO SHADOW. There are more than a hundred words for “snow.”

Far away in the cold desolate Arctic, author Grontran De Poncins learns what it means to be human. This is a romance, a classic reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe and a terrific read!

March 7, 2008

Well, at least I’m doing a better job journaling this month than I did in February but I’m not getting as much reading completed-possibly because I’m trying to read too many things at once!  Yesterday when I had an entire afternoon and evening to read I couldn’t stay awake.  Even after sleeping most of that time away I still had a better and longer night’s sleep than I have had all week.

Melinda called today and, among a bunch of other things, recommended a mystery series she is reading by Jacqueline Winspear about a detective in the 1920’s named Maisie Dobbs.  I looked them up on the library web site and lo and behold Reedley has a copy of it and it was checked in so I ran down to get it this afternoon.  But I’m trying not to start it until I finish the 3 other library books I’m reading-Knots and Crosses by Ian Rankin (I’m having trouble sticking to this one, even with only 100 more pages to read!), A Higher Purpose: Profiles in Presidential Courage by Thomas J. Whalen (Jim’s grandmother’s maiden name), and Poet’s Corner by John Lithgow (I will probably buy this one when the ban is off-I have it on CD but not the book).  I also need to finish King Solomon’s Ring for the Book Challenge.

The book about the presidents I checked out on a whim on Wednesday because one of the chapter about Chester A. Arthur with whom I share a birthday.  I had always been a little ashamed of him but according to Whalen, although he was a pretty scummy politician up to the time he became president, when Garfield was assassinated he was a remarkably good president.  He not only rose to the occasion and eschewed all political chicanery but he sacrificed his political future by following Garfield’s agenda (which before Garfield’s death he had continually tried to undermine) and pushed through congress the first Civil Service reform bill to stop government jobs being given out in return for political favors.  The Pendleton Act which he rammed through set up the Civil Service Commission and required that applicants for federal jobs must pass a test to be considered and when they were placed in jobs the job was stable; when new political appointees accepted posts that supervised worker they could not fire them in order to give the jobs to their friends.  Since my husband is a research scientist for the USDA, we are grateful to Chester A Arthur and Jim and I  will drink a toast to him on our shared birthday in October.  There are 8 other presidents profiled in this book and I think I will go ahead and read at least some of the rest of the stories.

March 8, 2008

Now back to the Time/Life Books that I purchased about 25 years ago!  I read two of them soon after I bought them:  Kabloona which I mentioned earlier and which I no longer have, unfortunately, and Disraeli by Andre Maurois which I have summarized in Reading Journal 1 and still own.  Last month I read Lanterns and Lances by James Thurber and this month I’m reading King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Lorenz, which is a wonderful book about his work as an ethologist (one who studies animal behavior).  It is delightful to read and an in depth study of animal behavior at the same time.  I have five other Time/Life books:

The Forest and the Sea by Marston Bates, subtitled-A Look at the Economy of Nature and the Ecology of Man with an introduction by Loren Eisley.  I seem to be on a “naturalist” kick this year!

Three Came Home by Agnes Newton Keith-a memoir of her time of captivity in a Japanese internment camp in Borneo during WWII.  This will be a difficult read at least emotionally but I think it is important to remember.

The Big Sky by A.B. Guthrie-a fictional account about a mountain man in the Rockies in the 19^th century.  I remember my Dad talking about this book when I was a child and I will finally read it.  I wish I had done so before Dad died so we could have talked about it together.

Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier-a book of short stories featuring the weird and the bizarre that is highly recommended by Michael Dirda (so it can’t be bad!).  I do wonder if I had any idea of what it was when I bought it but it will be good for me to stretch my reading into unexplored areas!  Of course, I did read some Shirley Jackson in my past life and I think she might fit into the weird and bizarre category.  Maybe I should look her up again!

The Natural by Bernard Malamud-a story about a baseball player in the early part of the 20^th century that was made into a movie in the latter part of the 20^th century.  This one is at Marty’s house.  I ought to read it someday.

I am having a good time exploring my personal library during this time of not being able buy books.  I also enjoy exploring the public library.  Hopefully, I am developing good habits that will keep my book buying urges in better control, purchasing only those books that are good enough to keep and reading them as I purchase.

March 9, 2008

Well, I couldn’t wait to start Maisie Dobbs. I finished King Solomon’s Ring Friday night so last night (Saturday) I started Maisie. I read 2/3’s of it before I went to bed. This afternoon I finished it. Melinda was right—I do like it!

Today she sent me another recommendation—Out of the Deep I Cry by Julia Spencer-Fleming. I looked it up on Fantastic Fiction and found out it is the third book in a mystery series about a female Episcopal Priest who is also a “detective.” I ordered the first one in the series from the library , In the Bleak Midwinter, when I ordered the second in the Maisie Dobbs series, Birds of a Feather. I’d better be careful or I will be reading more out of the public library than out of my library!

I won’t have any trouble reaching the goal Tucker set. I’ve already read nearly 3,000 of the required 3,500 pages to be read by June 30^th, but I would like to read at least 10,000 pages by the end of this year. I just have too many good books that need reading and that at one time or another I wanted to read badly enough to buy. I have 2 Josephine Tey mysteries that I haven’t read yet and 3 more to buy when the book ban is off so it’s not as if I can’t find good mysteries in my library.

I am being tempted on many sides, however. The book section in today’s paper (on Sundays we get about 1/8^th of a page for books if we get any at all!) reviewed two mysteries that I want to read. One was the newest J.D. Robb, Strangers in Death, which I won’t get to this year because it’s something like number 27 and I think I’m ready for number 9 next. However, the end of the review made me think that maybe I don’t need to be embarrassed by my enthusiasm for these books. The reviewer said: Best for: Anyone who enjoys lively writing. If you’re hesitant to dive into the Eve Dallas books because the prolific Roberts also writes romance novels, get over it. The characters are compelling, the plot suspenseful and the sci-fi twist is an added dimension.

That about sums it up for me. I really don’t care at all for Nora Roberts’ books but her alter ego writes very well!

The other book reviewed was The Anatomy of Deception by Lawrence Goldstone. This is an author with which I am not familiar and I don’t know what else he has written, but this one sounds intriguing. The following is the entire review:

The history: In the late 1800’s, patients who entered a hospital were more likely to die than get better. But medicine was on the brink of a spurt of advances, brought about partly by the work of men like University of Pennsylvania Professor William Osler, who fought against the idea that autopsy was ghoulish, and the first chief of surgery at Johns Hopkins, Dr. William Halsted.

The mystery: The body of a young woman is brought in, and Dr. Osler looks stunned and abruptly ends his autopsy teaching session. When the woman’s body disappears and a fellow physician is poisoned, young Dr. Carroll is faced with a moral medical and forensic dilemma.

Best for: Will appeal mostly to readers who enjoy historical novels or have an interest in medical history.

For me: I like both, so I figure this will be my cup of tea if it’s well written. I’ll have to research it. (nb–it got pretty good reviews on librarything.com so I will check it out soon.)