Recent reading - 1st quarter 2007

I thought I'd posted something earlier covering the first couple of months of this year, but apparantly not, so I'll do the whole quarter as best I can remember, working roughly from most recent back. (* means I've read it before)

Just finished Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, whose main character is Dirk Gently, private dectective. Excuse me, private holistic detective. It's not as hilarious as his Hitchhiker books and I don't like Gently near as much as Wodehouse's Psmith, but it was still an interesting story and a pleasant read.

I didn't mean to read two books in a row that feature Norse gods, but it was a happy coincidence. Diana Wynne Jones's Eight Days of Luke is about an orphaned boy living with his great-aunt and uncle, and their son and his wife. His home life is pretty unhappy, so naturally this means he'll have some fabulous adventures. Very pleasant read, though Dogsbody is still my favorite DW Jones book.

Fidelity, by Wendell Berry is a collection of short stories I bought when we went down to King College in Bristol to hear him last month, and a very good read. I really haven't read much of his fiction and it's nice having the characters fleshed out a bit more. Berry excels at portraying close family and community relationships - the good, the bad, and the ugly, and yet doing it in such a loving and beautiful way that it makes me long for that kind of life for my own family. It's the kind of life my mom grew up with and has returned to, and it's what we hope to build for our own family, though Mike and I will certainly never enjoy the fruits of it. Our children probably won't enjoy the fulness of it either, but Lord willing, our granchildren will.

Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus was thoroughly confusing in the sense that I had no idea what the doctor was thinking! Why on earth would he sell his soul for a measly twenty-four years? I did not understand his motivation at all. But just after I finished reading it, Mike and I went to hear Wendell Berry read a speech he'd delivered to a conference full of scientists a few months ago, and he explained the story in that speech. The speech was on limits. That we creatures have to submit to limits and it's this rebellion that leads to every problem we have. This, he said, was Dr. Faustus's motivation - he was not content to live within the limits of his own abilities and use his own God-given faculties to serve others, but he desired his own glory - something that could only be obtained by enslaving himself to a supernatural power. His very brief mention of the play helped explain the story, but I think it's something I'll have to read again in another year or two, when my understanding has (hopefully!) matured some.

Life Is a Miracle, also by Wendell Berry is a critique of a book written by an entymologist hoping to reconcile science and the arts - only on science's terms and using its definitions. Berry says that while this is an admirable goal, it simply can't be done because modern science is absolutely wrong about the most fundamental things - it treats all of life as though it were just a big machine, which it most decidedly is not.

Shamela, by Henry Fielding. Fielding absolutely hated Samuel Richardson's Pamela and his parody of it is devastatingly funny. He highlights everything I found wrong with that book - Pamela pretends to be so virtuous but somehow she still manages to put herself in her master's path and behave in a way that's exactly calculated to inflame his passions even more. In Shamela Fielding pretends to have access to the real letters written by this scheming girl to her mother.

In Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding shows how a story intending to highlight a character's virtues should have been written. His characters are much more believable than Richardson's, having typical strengths and weaknesses, though I suspect his characters are meant to be caricatures more than true-to-life people like Jane Austen's characters are. The situations they get into are farcical, but it all fits the tone of the book.

* The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy is still a fave of mine, this being the fourth or fifth time I've read it, but it doesn't hold up to too much scrutiny. It needs to be enjoyed as a fun adventure without looking too closely at the details.

The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel is a collection of short stories by the same author, which I didn't enjoy too much at first until I hit upon the right way to read them. In each, the reader is challenged to figure out which of the characters is really the SP in disguise. They're pretty clever, but again they won't hold up to too close an inquiry into the details or plausibility of events.

Discipline: The Glad Surrender by Elisabeth Elliot. Collection of meditations on surrendering every area of life to the sovereignty and glory of the Lord.

It seems like there were more, but someone has been cleaning up my piles of books and I can't remember what I've been reading without seeing them. Pathetic, but that's one reason why I have this klog - so I can remind myself of what I've read and what I've learned from it.



I've been reading more poetry than usual, too - mainly John Donne, George Herbert, and Wendell Berry.

My affection for Diana Wynne Jones got me started on Donne - one of his poems is the key to a problem in one of her novels, and she has a character who quotes or alludes to him regularly. He points out such details that I would never notice - but have been noticing them myself since reading this poem, "The Crosse":

Since Christ embrac'd the Crosse it selfe, dare I
His image, th'image of His Cross, deny?
Would I have profit by the sacrifice,
And dare the chosen Altar to despise?
It bore all other sinnes, but is it fit
That it should beare the sinne of scorning it?
Who from the picture would avert his eye,
How would he flye his paines, who there did dye?
From mee no Pulpit, nor misgrounded law,
Nor scandall taken, shall this Crosse withdraw,
It shall not, for it cannot; for the losse
Of this Crosse were to mee another Crosse.
Better were worse, for no affliction,
No Crosse is so extreme, as to have none;
Who can blot out the Crosse, which th'instrument
Of God dew'd on mee in the Sacrament?
Who can deny mee power, and liberty
To stretch mine arms, and mine owne Crosse to be?
Swimme, and at every stroake thou art thy Crosse,
The Mast and yard make one, where seas do tosse.
Looke downe, thou spiest out Crosses in small things;
Looke up, thou seest birds rais'd on crossed wings;
All the Globes frame, and spheares, is nothing else
But the Meridians crossing Parallels.
Materiall Crosses then, good physicke bee,
But yet spirituall have chiefe dignity.
These for extracted chemique medicine serve,
And cure much better, and as well preserve.
Then are you your own physicke, or need none,
When Still'd or purg'd by tribulation.
For when that Crosse ungrudg'd unto you stickes,
Then are you to yourselfe a Crucifixe.
As perchance, Carvers do not faces make:
But that away, which hid them there, do take.
Let Crosses, soe, take what hid Christ in thee,
And be his image, or not his, but hee.
But, as oft Alchemists doe coyners prove,
So may a selfe-despising, get selfe-love.
And then as worst surfets, of best meates bee,
Soe is pride, issued from humility,
For, 'tis no child, but monster; therefore Crosse
Your joy in crosses, else, 'tis double losse,
And crosse thy senses, else, both they, and thou
Must perish soone, and to destruction bowe.
For if the'eye seeke good objects, and will take
No crosse from bad, wee cannot 'scape a snake.
So with harsh, hard, sowre, stinking, crosse the rest,
Make them indifferent; call nothing best.
But most the eye needs crossing, that can rome,
And move; To th'other th'objects must come home.
And crosse thy heart; for that in man alone
Pants downewards, and hath palpitation.
Crosse those dejections, when it downeward tends,
And when it to forbidden heights pretends.
And as the braine through bony walls doth vent
By sutures, which a Crosses forme present,
So when thy braine workes, ere thou utter it,
Crosse and correct concupiscence of witt.
Be covetous of Crosses; let none fall;
Crosse no man else, but crosse thyself in all.
Then doth the Crosse of Christ work faithfully
Within our hearts, when wee love harmlessly
The Crosses pictures much, and with more care
That Crosses children, which our Crosses are.

George Herbert just seemed like a good idea - like one of those poets well educated folks are supposed to read, so I bought him, and boy am I glad. This is my favorite, so far:

LENT
Welcome deare feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authoritie,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church sayes, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.

The humble soul compos'd of love and fear
Begins at home, and layes the burden there,
When doctrines disagree.
He sayes, in things which use hath justly got,
I am a scandall to the Church, and not
The Church is so to me.

True Christians should be glad of an occasion
To use their temperance, seeking no evasion,
When good is seasonable;
Unlesse Authoritie, which should increase
The obligation in us, make it lesse,
And Power it self disable.

Besides the cleannesse of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fulnesse there are sluttish fumes,
Sowre exhalations, and dishonest rheumes,
Revenging the delight.

Then those same pendant profits, which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodnesse of the deed.
Neither ought other mens abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.

It 's true, we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Savior's purity;
Yet are bid, Be holy ev'n as he.
In both let 's do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn, and take me by the hand, and more
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast
As may our faults control:
That ev'ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlor; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

Wendell Berry, is of course, on my list because I've been reading his essays and have just begun reading his fiction. When we heard him speak at King Colleg last month, I picked two of his poetry books, Given, a collection published just a couple of years ago, and A Timbered Choir, a collection of Sabbath meditations written over the course of many years and published in 1998. It's all under copyright, so I guess I can't post a whole poem, but for a taste, I'll post the last two verses of the second poem from 1979:

The mind that comes to rest is tended
In ways that it cannont intend:
Is borne, preserved, and comprehended
By what it cannot comprehend.

Your Sabbath, Lord, thus keeps us by
Your will, not ours. And it is fit
Our only choice should be to die
Into that rest, or out of it.

For Scripture reading, I've been following the Daily Office, Year 1, in my private devotions, but not consistently.

In our morning time, at the beginning of the year, the kids and I were reading the Psalms of the day, five a day, but after Lent we began reading the epistles of Paul. Our practice was to read through one entire book in a sitting on Monday, each person reading a large passage before passing to the next. The rest of the week, we read through the book again, stopping for commentary or questions on occasion. Some of the books we read completely through each day, but some we spent so much time in discussion that we only read all the way through in one sitting on the Monday. Now we're reading the Gospel according to Luke, planning to be through it by Ascension Day, after which we'll read Acts. So far we've covered:

all of the Psalms and most of the Proverbs
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
I Thessalonians