Catching up (again…)

And once again, it’s time to catch up.  This is why I will never be an excellent blogger. 🙂

1) I finished The Grapes of Wrath and really liked it, even though I didn’t really enjoy reading it (does that make sense?  I think I just wasn’t in the reading mood).  I can see why it’s a classic, and I especially enjoyed the style in which Steinbeck wrote the book — particularly the intermediary chapters that were more abstract and poetic than the actual storyline.  The book is sad, that’s for sure.  I hate that the dog got killed.  And I hate the system Steinbeck describes, where the ginormous farms exploit the workers.  It made me understand the importance of unions, at least in a situation like that!  It also made me think about how far removed most Americans are from “the land” today, and how hard it is to make a living as a farmer — and it seems to me that it just shouldn’t be that way.  Should it?

On a lighter note, the name Rosasharn (the way the Joad family pronounces “Rose of Sharon”) never fails to crack me up!  For all of you currently in the “family way,” I recommend that you seriously consider naming your baby girl Rose of Sharon.  Come on, it’s unique, right?

2) I am currently reading Crime and Punishment, and, much to my surprise, loving it!  I usually have a hard time connecting with Russian literature, but this time around I actually look forward to reading it.   I started out reading a hard copy of the book, but as an experiment I downloaded a free copy into the Kindle app on my iPhone, and now I’m reading the book on my iPhone exclusively.  This is my first foray into the world of e-reading.  So far, I’m enjoying it more than I thought I would.  Maybe it’s due to the fact that with my iPhone I can read in bed while Erik is sleeping without using a flashlight…

3) On a non-literary note, a few weeks ago I was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Mission!  Woohoo!  Here I am in my new duds with my bishop, my rector, a fellow deacon, and Erik:

Here I am with my parents, who came out from SoCal for the event:

And here is Melvin, my MIL’s party flamingo, dressed up for the occasion:

And now, back to what I am actually supposed to be doing with my day…

Catching up

Ok, it’s been awhile…  So here’s a bit of catch-up since my last post.

I read and finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  I didn’t like it very much. Not at all.  But I think that if I had studied this book in school, I might have liked it better.  There were moments in the book where the eloquence of the writing swept me away, even in translation.  However, the story is just too sordid and depressing!  I think that’s part of the point — this particular family spirals down and down — but still, it seemed senseless to me.  I would not have wanted to live in this book, that’s for sure!

So after that depressing story, I decided I needed to find something a bit lighter from the BBC list.  So I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which was a lot of fun — although I was reading out of a collection of the whole series (by Douglas Adams), and all of a sudden, the first book was over!  And I wasn’t prepared for it.  My husband is a big fan of the book, and I enjoyed it too — although not enough to join the fan cult or anything.  Adams is clever, no doubt!  And there are some awesome quotes — my husband’s favorite is, “Curiously the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias, as it fell, was, ‘Oh no, not again.’ ”  I also have the tiniest bit of insight into the mind of a friend of mine who alludes to this book in his email address — via the number 42.  Read the book if you don’t get that.


I’m now in the throes of The Grapes of Wrath, and I’m really enjoying it — although I’m not really enjoying reading as much right now as I did a couple of months back.  I’m “slightly” addicted to Grey’s Anatomy…  But anyway, I totally get why The Grapes of Wrath is a classic.  But more on that to come…


In other news, I have given up alcohol for Lent… well, mostly.  I’ve indulged a few times here and there — like tonight (Saturday night almost counts as Sunday, right?) — but mostly in the company of other people.  Tonight I’m sipping bliss Yellow Tail Cabernet — cheap but delicious.  Wine can truly be salve for the soul!  The other thing I’m *trying* to give up (with the Lord’s help) is self-hatred.  Slightly more difficult.


But in a month, I’m going to be ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Mission!!  Crazy!  I would never have guessed that this would be the path I’d end up walking — but I’m excited.  I ordered my first clerical collars the other day — weird!  But I can’t wait to try them on!


So that’s the latest, I think.  My copy of The Grapes of Wrath is already overdue at the library, so I guess I have incentive to finish it soon!

"The Secret History"

I probably would never have read The Secret History if it weren’t on the BBC list.  In fact, the only reason I read it at this stage in my quest is because the library didn’t have some of the other books I was looking for, and I didn’t want to have to add more time to my parking meter.  

But I’m glad I had the chance to read this novel by Donna Tartt (yes, that really is the correct spelling of her last name).  The Secret History is part mystery novel, part thriller, set in the world of a small East coast college.  The main characters are all members of an exclusive classical Greek class, and much of the novel reads like a Greek tragedy — which made me realize that a working knowledge of Koine Greek still leaves one lacking in knowledge of the classical world.

In the Prologue to the book, the reader learns that one of the main characters is murdered by the others in his group of friends.  The rest of the book unravels the mystery of how this murder came about, and what effects that act had on this group of people.  Fascinating characters, interesting plot, engagingly told — that’s my summary of The Secret History.  Now if only I had time to brush up my knowledge of the Aeneid…

Thank Heaven for Border Collies

“Chewy” is ready to play!

I finished Atonement this morning.  It was very, very sad… After I finished, I lay on the couch for a few minutes with my arm draped over the edge, petting our border collie, Chewy.  Dogs are great comfort sometimes, although Chewy is much better at accepting attention than administering comfort.  I was still glad to have a cuddly, furry animal close by when I finished the book.

My experience reading Atonement was heavily colored by my experience seeing the movie — which is one of the reasons I generally don’t like seeing a movie version until after I’ve read the book.  I enjoyed the movie — but I’m not sure whether or not I “liked” the book.  It is certainly well-written and beautifully evocative, even powerful at times.  It definitely evoked strong emotions in me as I read it, particularly at the very end.

My favorite part of the book was Part I, which is the part that occurs before the tragic event for which Briony, one of the main characters, later tries to atone.  The first part of the novel is set in a British estate in the 1930s, and the description drips with sunshine and sultry days.  Much of this part is spent developing characters — which helped me understand the story much better than I understood it after watching the movie.

Side note: it bothers me when someone tries to make a movie out of a book that relies heavily on psychology and description of inner thoughts and motivations.  I think that usually in these cases the movie fails to convey aspects of character and “action” that are crucial to the storyline — it just doesn’t work!  That’s my opinion about movies made from Henry James or Edith Wharton novels, and to some extent about the movie version of Atonement.  I didn’t really understand why Briony acts the way she does towards Robbie until I read the book.  Ok, rant over.

I got a bit bored in the second part of the book, which focuses on Robbie and the infantry’s retreat in France.  Maybe I just don’t like reading about war.  Maybe I just get tired of reading about atrocities, or feel a bit emotionally manipulated.  I don’t know.  But after finishing the book, I understand why the author spends so much time on this section — and it breaks my heart.

Ok, SPOILER alert in this paragraph.  You have now been warned.  I think the main reason I’m not sure if I “liked” this book is because I found it so heartbreaking.  Basically, in the very last chapter, the narrator (whom we discover is an elderly Briony) reveals that the “happy ending” to Robbie and Cecelia’s relationship, which we read about in the previous chapter, was her own narrative invention.   Robbie died in France.  Cecelia died, heartbroken, in a bombing.  And Briony lacked the courage to go see her sister.  And so, at the end of the book we discover that everything we’ve read up to that point is actually Briony’s own narrative, her attempt to atone for the wrong she caused.  Even as I write that summary, I’m tearing up — it’s so tragic.  Tragic to think of Cecelia and Robbie, their lives ruined just when their hopes were highest, just when they had found each other.  Tragic to think of Briony carrying the weight of her error/lies with her for the rest of her life, with no real hope for atonement, only an endless attempt through her writing.  This tragedy is too heavy for me.

Perhaps that’s why I cannot say that I “like” Atonement — reading it hurts too much. There is too much tragedy here — and, paradoxically, too much beauty.

When you’re recovering from surgery…

… you finish books quickly!

Image from a movie adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984

I feel a bit like I flew through 1984 — which surprised me, since I didn’t really expect to like it.  But I loved it.  And I hated it, at the same time.  As you can probably tell, 1984 provoked strong emotions in me.  I got caught up into Winston’s life as he struggled to control his every flicker of emotion and thought so as not to be found out by Big Brother, and went about his job of basically changing the past all the while struggling to conceal his knowledge that he knew on some level the whole thing was a fraud.  I loved the opening to the novel — Winston’s purchase of the journal with creamy white pages, an act of treason.

I was captivated by the middle part of the novel, Winston’s relationship with Julia.  Few books have evoked for me such a sense of paradise in the midst of ugliness and danger.  I, like Winston, wished that period could have lasted forever.

But why, Winston!  Why couldn’t you have just let well enough alone and kept on hiding your vibrant life with Julia from Big Brother for as long as you could!  It was inevitable, I suppose — that in this world of 1984, no true human happiness — no true humanness — is allowed to last for long.

The last part of the book, I hated.  I hated it because I was meant to hate it — it was ugly and painful and dehumanizing.  And yet, it was the right ending for this disutopia.  And the ending of the book — absolutely brilliant!  If you haven’t read the book yet, I won’t spoil it for you.

One thing that struck me as I read the book was the concept of being able to change the past by changing all historical documents.  In 1984, the party is able to make it as if a person had never existed, simply by going back and erasing any written record of them having existed.  One of the running motifs of the book is that Oceania (the country in which Winston lives) is always at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia, and an ally with the other superpower.  However, every few years, they switch — if they had been at war with Eastasia, now they’re at war with Eurasia.  AND they’re supposed to have always been at war with so-and-so, because the party cannot admit of change or mistake.  That would be weakness.  So, every few years they literally go back and reprint newspapers, books, etc. that refer to the war in order to reflect the current state of things.  They destroy all the old copies and print new copies.  In such a world, it’s hard to know what is “true” and what is “historical.”

Imagine if George Orwell had been writing these days, after the rise of the internet!  Talk about easy to eradicate the past!  It makes me really, really glad that 1984 is fictional…

On a side note, apparently my subconscious was quite taken with this book as well: a few nights ago I had a dream in which I was trying to maintain a relationship with someone without Big Brother finding out!

Surgery and Cold Comfort Farm

A few days ago, I had surgery: nasal septoplasty and turbinate resection, to be exact.  I know, very glamorous.  It went well — I ended up not even having to stay in the hospital overnight — although I am definitely feeling wiped out!  Too wiped out to do much other than watch TV, sleep, and read a bit.

Photo courtesy of Erik Rosengren

I did, however, finish another book on the List: Cold Comfort Farm.  I’d been looking forward to this one, having seen the movie with some good friends.  It’s one of their favorite movies, and I liked it too.

The upstanding citizens of Cold Comfort Farm…

I enjoyed the book even more than the movie (surprise, surprise).  It is hilarious!  It’s intended as a parody of some popular books at the time (1930s), as well as classics such as Wuthering Heights.

Stella Gibbons’ style is not exactly subtle — which is part of the book’s charm.  A character named Aunt Ada Doom?  The Starkadder clan in general?  Cattle named Graceless, Feckless, Aimless, and Pointless, and a bull named Big Business?  Hilarious.

So in case you couldn’t tell, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of Cold Comfort Farm, every overwrought metaphor, every paragraph dripping with cloying prose… Get the picture?

Next up: 1984 by George Orwell.  Apparently Big Brother is watching…

Back from vacation with another book in the can…

Erik and I joined my family for a post-Christmas vacation in Arizona.  Now if you’re like most people, hearing “Arizona” conjures up images of cactus, desert, rattlesnakes, etc.  Well, where we go in Arizona is in the mountains, with pine forest, creeks, and elk —  Christopher Creek, Arizona, to be exact.  Population approximately 100.  Elevation around 6000 ft.

The first full day we were at our cabin, it started snowing… and it kept snowing.  And kept snowing.  And two feet of snow later, we were officially snowed in!  Unlike Chicago, queen of snow-plowed cities, Christopher Creek is not exactly equipped to handle massive amounts of snow.  So, our plans for hiking were foiled for a few days, replaced by some sledding, raiding my grandparents’ house for proper snow gear, and lots of reading by the fire.

As a result, I finished another book from my list: A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving.  It was an interesting book, and I’m glad I read it — although I feel no urgent need to read it again.  I ended up almost hating the title character by the time I was half-way through the book.  I’m not entirely sure why it’s considered a classic — although there are definitely some unforgettable characters.  I also found the running theological themes interesting… although I’m not sure Irving actually broke new ground in that area.

I ran out of reading material up at the cabin, so I mooched from Erik (read and finished Gang Leader for a Day — very interesting read) and from the cabin stock (reread part of Wuthering Heights).  Yesterday, I went to the library and got three books from the list.  I’m starting with Cold Comfort Farm, and so far I’m loving it!

One in the can…

Well, I finished Catch 22!  And I’m glad I did — it turned out to be a much better (and different) book than I anticipated.  When I began to read it, I thought it was basically just going to be a funny book.  I also found it incredibly confusing, keeping track of Major this and General that and who the heck is ex-PFC Wintergreen again?  However, as I continued to read and got deeper into the book, I discovered that this is anything but a superficially funny book.  There are characters who seemed funny at first, whom I came to hate by the end of the book (Milo Minderbender especially).  There are scenes so horrible that they practically made me sick, particularly because they are so shockingly juxtaposed to some of the humorous scenes in the book.

Catch 22 is a book that caught me off guard — and I think that’s exactly what Joseph Heller intended.

Next up: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

BBC Book Challenge

I have always loved to read.  In fact, I won my very first trophy when I was still homeschooled — kindergarden or first grade, maybe — for reading over 10,000 pages in a certain amount of time.  My parents often read to my brother and me before bed, classics such as “Robert the Rose Horse” and “Goodnight Moon,” along with the Bernstein bears and my personal favorite, “Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb” (“Dum ditty dum ditty dum dum dum!”).  When I got a little older, my mom still made the effort to read with me.  I remember reading through the Chronicles of Narnia together, Tuck Everlasting, a Wrinkle in Time, the Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.  I also remember that I got so caught up in the Hobbit (while still in elementary school), that I “cheated” and read ahead without her…  I just couldn’t wait to find out what happened!

Eventually, of course, I got too old to be read to — but my love of reading remained.  Literature classes were always my favorite classes, and I relished the opportunity to read fun books as part of class!  I fell in love with Cry, the Beloved Country, Hamlet, Pride and Prejudice, All Quiet on the Western Front, Lord of the Flies, Great Expectations, even The Old Man and the Sea.  And, of course, outside of class I read for fun:  Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys stories, a lot of Agatha Christie novels, the Babysitters Club books, later Dorothy Sayers, other mysteries, plus reading my favorites over and over and over… (yes, I wore out my copy of The Lord of the Rings).

Now some of you Facebook fiends might remember the BBC Book Challenge that appeared in many people’s notes a few weeks ago.  The notes listed 100 books of which the BBC thinks most people will only have read about 6, and it asked people to look through the list and highlight which ones they’d read (discussions appeared other places too: check out this link as an example).  When I first saw the notes, I’d read a little over 40 of the books — woohoo!

However, I was captivated by this list of books I haven’t yet read.  In fact, since the lists were first published, I’ve read two more of the listed books (The Handmaid’s Tale and Brave New World).  So, I’ve been thinking…  why not just work my way through the rest of the books?  I love fiction — no non-fiction to deal with here, thankfully — and I love finding new things to read, so why not go for it?

So I’m going to go for it.  Today, I begin my quest to finish all 100 books on the list.  My next project: Catch 22.  I’ve started it, but never gotten into it.  So here goes nothing!

In case you’re curious, here’s the complete list — the ones I’ve not read are in black, the ones I’ve read are in grey:

1. Pride and Prejudice
2. The Lord of the Rings
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling  
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee  
6. The Bible –
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurie
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaet Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold X
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Inferno – Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables — Victor Hugo

Excusing vs. Forgiving

As part of one of my classes, I am reading a great, great book: Peacemaking Women: Biblical Hope for Resolving Conflict. I admit, when I first saw the title, I thought (in my sarcastic voice), “Great, a fluffy book that’s going to drive me crazy and be all sentimental.” However, from the moment I opened the book, I was captured. The book goes much deeper than simply, “Let’s just all get along” – it talks about conflicts with God, conflicts with others, and conflicts within (like shame, fear and depression). It also draws in Scripture in such a way that it hits home in very practical ways. I sense that the Lord is actually going to use this book in my life in a deep way…

Here’s one quote that struck me as I was reading a chapter on Forgiveness this morning:

“… Excusing somebody is not the same thing as forgiving her. Too often, even in the church, we are taught to excuse others rather than to forgive. Have you ever heard (or said) something like this: ‘Yes, she wronged me, but she was going through a really hard time and I really wasn’t there for her–so I forgive her.’ This is not forgiving; it is excusing. Excusing says, ‘On the basis of some external criteria, I release you.’ True biblical forgiveness says, ‘On the basis of God’s forgiving me for my sin, I forgive you.’ … Excusing does not last. Forgiveness lasts forever.”~Tara Klena Barthel & Judy Dabler, Peacemaking Women: Biblical Hope for Resolving Conflict (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 114.~