Lifehacker points out a post on reading above your comprehension level. The first commenter makes a good point about using Cliff Notes or similar study material to help get through the classics. That reminds me of something my English professor said about some books being difficult to read without help. If you have a group with whom to discuss certain books, you can get more out of them, possibly enjoy them more, than if you read them alone.

Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard links to a last opinion piece written by George McDonald Fraser, author of the brilliant Flashman series, who passed away this week. The more I read about Fraser himself (who also wrote the Michael York/Olver Reed film version of The Three Musketeers, one of my favorite movies), the less guilty I feel about enjoying the Flashman books.

The sex in the Flashman books always embarrassed me. But (it seems to me) the secret of the Flashman stories is that you’re not supposed to like Flashman. He’s a coward and a hypocrite and a goat. But the “flashy” action of his adventures is a medium for conveying a lot of solid information about the whole business of British Colonialism in the 19th Century. And there’s a moral lesson too, it seems to me. Harry Flashman does indeed die “a thousand deaths,” and suffers considerably more than the “idiotic” heroes he disdains, who die with their faces to the enemy.

My plecostomus died today. Or last night. (In case you joined us since my last fish update, we have a fish tank in the library where I work. The plecostomus is an ugly, brown fish which eats scum, and I’ve kept a series of them in the tank, with greater and lesser success). This specimen had lasted a fair amount of time, but he’d gotten fussy lately, liking neither his native algae nor the commercial wafers they sell you to vary his diet. This morning I found him on the floor next to the tank, dried up and stiff like a plastic novelty fish. So the algae will accumulate over the New Year’s break, and I’ll have to buy a replacement soon.



I just finished reading Robinson Crusoe. I ran out of reading material over Christmas, when all the stores and libraries were closed. I’d been watching three versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, as is my Christmas tradition, and there’s a scene in the original book (and in the George C. Scott TV movie) where Ebenezer recalls the books he enjoyed as a boy, and one of them is Robinson Crusoe. I had a copy on my bookshelf (a paperback left behind by a long-ago roommate, stamped as property of “English Resource Center, Bemidji High School”), so I figured I’d go ahead and add it to my reading achievements.

I think it was fairly rare for a bookish boy of my generation to miss reading R.C. I seem to recall trying it once, but it failed to grab me. I have more patience now.

Novels were written differently in the 18th Century (which isn’t surprising. Robinson Crusoe is considered by many the first English novel, so DeFoe was making it up as he went along). Today they teach writers to start with an action scene, to get the reader engaged immediately. Back-story can be added later. DeFoe began in the natural, logical manner that modern writers have to un-learn, by starting at the beginning. Robinson Crusoe tells us more than we really want to know about his birth, education and early life. We’re told from the beginning the chief lesson DeFoe has in mind to teach us—stay at home. Don’t have adventures. Crusoe bewails his youthful folly in insisting on going to sea instead of remaining in York, to be set up in business by his father.

We all know the bulk of the story—the shipwreck, the salvaging of the ship’s supplies by Crusoe, the sole survivor. His years of solitude until he sees a footprint in the sand, and finds a friend in the native he calls Friday, whom he rescues from cannibals. I had been unaware of the shorter exploits before and after the island episode—Crusoe’s early adventures at sea, including slavery in North Africa, and afterwards a harrowing winter journey through Europe on his way home to England. Any competent editor today would have advised the author to leave that stuff out. Or save it for the sequels.

The prose was pretty vivid and engaging in the early 1700s. Today it’s a little tougher to follow, though that’s mostly the fault of our inferior educations. Even so, the story remains compelling, and once I was into it, I turned the pages eagerly.

If you only know the story from a cartoon or a children’s book version, you may not be aware how religious it is. Robinson Crusoe sees himself as living proof of God’s providence in the world, and his story as a series of lessons in faith and trust in God’s plan.

The chief problem with the story, for the modern reader, is its primitive, unself-conscious racism. Although Crusoe bewails the wickedness of his early life, before the shipwreck brought him to repentance, the fact that he was on a slave-hunting expedition at the time of the disaster does not seem to count in his mind as one his sins. Although he has the highest praise for Friday’s courage and character (in one place he judges him a better Christian than he himself is), his assumption seems to be that dark-skinned people (like dogs) are happiest when they are owned by kindly white people.

Which means, sadly, that this book will probably not be read by anybody except scholars for a while. Perhaps the day will come when we’ll have gotten past the race thing sufficiently to be able to evaluate a book like this in the context of its own culture and time. Because it’s an important classic, and a very good story with a large “footprint” in English-speaking culture.

Sherry has a good, long list of kid-lit books for group reading, sorted by theme or topic, such as “Aspiring pianists,” “Best friend moves away,” “Dad skips out or is missing,” and “Girls pursuing popularity.”

Scott comments on an article in the New Yorker which appears to argue for reading as one might argue for taking vitamins. Can’t you see it’s better for us all? You really ought to read your books. Scott says, “I’m not really all that bothered by the idea that reading will one day perhaps be confined to a ‘reading class,’ primarily because, as far as literature is concerned, it more or less already is. Thus, those of us who read works of literature on a regular basis, who don’t even necessarily read ‘for pleasure’ but out of a deeply felt need that makes it seem impossible to us that reading might someday disappear, are no doubt even now practicing what seems to non-readers an ‘arcane hobby.'”

In the end, let those who want to read, read what they want, and stop whining about it.

Max Magee has a long list of books from readers throughout the Internets (or is that Internex?) for 2007. He says, “A lucky reader is one surrounded by many other readers.” So if you’re looking for a collection of book recommendations, look no further than The Millions Blog.

I don’t have much for you tonight. I’ve been feeling sub-par since last Friday. I have a bad sore throat (moderated by Ibuprofen), and I feel run down. Flu? There’s no temperature (Seems like I never do run a temperature, no matter how bad I feel. I’m beginning to wonder if I have a defective thermometer). I’m proud to say, however, that I got the majority of my Christmas shopping done on Saturday, in spite of this handicap. (It’s true. I am a genius. Or else I’m past caring. One of those.) Sunday I spent on the couch with a couple books.

One was Forever Odd, the middle book of the three Dean Koontz’ Odd Thomas adventures published so far. Very good, moving and gripping, like the others. I noted a theological problem with the afterlife as Koontz describes it, though. Odd tells us that damned souls generally depart for Hell immediately after death. The ghosts whom he encounters and tries to help on their way are, for the most part, “good” people who have unfinished business, or are too attached to their loved ones, or are afraid of their reception in Heaven. Odd’s message to them seems to be that they’ll be welcomed by God because they’re good.

This is lousy theology. The Cross is nowhere to be seen.

I suppose that if Koontz (who is, I believe, a Catholic) had employed better theology, he’d have ended up writing “Christian fiction” which would have reached only a limited audience, though. I think there’s an element of allegory in the Odd Thomas books, instead of straight doctrine.

Still, it bothered me a little. Liked the book anyway.

I also read A Time to Hunt, another book in Stephen Hunter’s Bob Lee Swagger series. Like all of them it’s fascinating, richly researched, vivid in its action and characterizations, and satisfying all around.

The books don’t bear much thinking about all at once, though. Bob Lee and his father Earl, also hero of several of Hunter’s books, seem to be falling victim to the terrible doom of the heroes of action TV series—they have more death-defying adventures than can be comfortably believed in, in the aggregate. Earl, for instance, was murdered at a fairly young age, but Hunter has given him so many big adventures that it appears he must have had about one a month all through his short adulthood.

Bob Lee has lived longer than his dad, but he’s around 60 now, and pretty shot up. I hope he can handle all the blood and thunder his author’s still got planned for him.

Another amusing thing about the Swagger Saga is that the stories aren’t consistent with each other. Hunter cheerfully contradicts things he said in other books, and doesn’t apologize for it.

Just like a newspaper man.

They sure are good books, though.

And now, the couch beckons me.

But I’ve got to get started on the Christmas cards.

Harrison Scott Key points out an article on how teachers can distance themselves from those who have not read, say Keats and Donne, repeatedly with analysis, forgetting what it was like to read their poetry for the first time.

Peter Suderman blogs, “The difficulty with reading these days is not that there is too little being written, or that no one is doing it, or even that no one is doing it well. It’s that there’s too much to read, too much to process. We are not short for words. We are drowning in them.”