Happy Friday. Today I saw my doctor, and I was actually eager to see him. Because I was able to show him all the weight I’ve lost (40 lbs. by his figures). It isn’t often a guy my age is able to tell his doctor good things.
Above, Andrew Klavan and Ben Shapiro discuss their 5 favorite movies and books. This clip reinforces my suspicion that Klavan is way, way, smarter than I am.
For some years, I’ve had a water damaged copy of Ogden Nash’s Good Intentions. Here’s a look at a good copy of it; this one has the slip cover too (I hadn’t seen it before).
Yesterday, I found similar red, hardback copies of Many Long Years Ago, a collection of mostly previously published verse from 1931-1945, and The Private Dining Room, new verse published in 1953. I refrained from replacing Good Intentions or buying another volume they had, so you know what that says about me. We don’t need to say it out loud. I also could have purchased one of a couple more recently published anthologies. This is one of them. But, if I do anything, I’d like a set of the five red hardcovers.
Here are a few lines from Many Long Years Ago.
“Who wishes his self-esteem to thrive
Should belong to a girl of almost five.”
“We’ll remind each other it’s smart to be thrifty
And buy our clothes for something-fifty.”
“If turnips were watches they’d make as good eating as turnips.”
Reading: In praise of e-readers and the joy of winning an argument with a print-only reader who has so many books that he loses the ones he has.
How would Jesus advertise? I have a hard time believing Jesus would encourage us to spend millions on advertising his character traits. How many vice is being funded with a Super Bowl ad? But I also have a hard time throwing stones at this.
Does reading change the brain? “When it comes to a cultural trace in the form of literature, we would really like to know whether there is some sort of permanent alteration to the structure of the brain.” They chose Robert Harris’s Pompeii to see if they could detect a small brain change.
Banned Books: Anthony Sacramone has a book challenge for public schools. “Try and get all these at one go onto a public school curriculum (NYC, LA, SF) and see how that goes. I’d love to be proven wrong.”
Mystery: John Wilson reviews another Cameron Winter story, A Strange Habit of Mind, by Andrew Klavan, to be released in a few days.
I’m currently reading a book of history, The Faded Map by Alistair Moffat. It’s about ancient Scotland. In it I found this passage, which is of particular interest when considering the English language, which is spoken by so many of our readers.
Scots Gaelic is not like English, German or any of the Latin-based languages of southern Europe. There is no word for yes or for no. If a Gaelic speaker asks A bheil an t’acras ort? (‘Are you hungry?’), the answers use the verb forms Tha (‘I am’) or Chaneil (‘I am not’). This makes for greater precision and clearer understanding on either side of a question.
In other words, one of my grandfather’s favorites jokes would have been impossible if he’d been a Gael. If somebody asked Grandpa a question of choice, like, “Would you like apple or blueberry pie?” Grandpa would answer, “Yes.” Taking advantage, as you see, of the ambiguity of our English usage. (And possibly getting himself more pie.)
Languages evolve to deal with universal and localized communication problems, but they solve them in different ways. No language is superior to any other.
Except for English, of course. English is the best. Sure, it’s irrational in many ways, but that’s just to keep the riffraff out.
Also, Norwegian is pretty good.
Someone in our house picked up Amazon Prime, which means we’ve watched five episodes of The Rings of Power. If you remember what Lars said about not watching it, those reasons still stand. After the first two shows, I told the rest of my family it was not a Tolkien’s story, but a good fantasy that leaned heavily on Tolkien’s established world. It could have been independent of Middle Earth, but then it wouldn’t have gotten all of the hype, fans of Tolkien wouldn’t have come out of the woodwork to comment, and it wouldn’t have disappointed viewers as badly as it has.
I can’t say I’m in the most disappointed camp yet, though I have my complaints. Straight out of the gate, the writers tell us there was a time without darkness, which I took to mean evil had yet to come into the world, but they follow those words with little Galadriel getting bullied over her toy boat. Then they say, you know why a boat floats and a rock sinks? It’s because a boat has hope and keeps it head up. If the dialogue had maintained that level of inanity for the whole first episode, I would have dropped it, but it improved. Not before arguing that Galadriel, who had bent her life on stamping out Sauron, was in danger of sustaining the evil by seeking it, because if evil isn’t out there, but you think it is, then you could become the very thing you seek.
Those were meta level reasons I said the story wasn’t Tolkienesque, but it still seemed okay as we moved along. Characters weren’t doing stupid things until maybe episode five. A wizard-like character who fell from the sky has not been explained–he’s interesting. The Sylvan elf is the only one fighting at this point and has gotten in some good Legolas moves. The Duran-Elrond storyline is good overall.
But with episode five, things have begun to turn sour. There’s a laughable fighting tutorial that suggests swordmen should fight with their feet, not with their arms. An actor with stage fighting experience has a couple videos in response to this part of the show, in which he explains how actors swing weapons to appear lethally aimed when they aren’t and what the camera must do to make a battle look real.
I could say more, but many others have said many things about this show already. I should just move on with blogroll links.
Bookcases: “We’re so enamored of digital technology we often presume its superiority; worse, we sometimes forget its alternatives even qualify as technologies.” Joel Miller recommends a bookcase as the most underrated user interface we have.
Coffee: Artist Alyssa Ennis paints detailed architecture and landmarks of Northeast Ohio using pencils and coffee. Her dad sculpts wildlife models from wood.
Liberty: Peter Mommsen writes about our love of liberty, fear of commitment, and the freedom found in making good vows. “I soon discovered that being bound [by a vow] didn’t feel like a loss of liberty. On the contrary, once the step had been taken, paralyzing daydreams about other possible life paths disappeared . . .”
Libraries: The Palafoxiana Library in Puebla, Mexico is the oldest public library in the Americas. “On the first floor, there are more than 11,000 Bibles, religious documents and theological texts. The second level is dedicated to the relationship between God and people — chronicles of religious orders and the lives of saints — and the third contains books on physics, mathematics, botany, language, architecture, even carpentry.” (via Arts Journal)
Photo: Springfield Library, Springfield, Massachusetts. 1984. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
Reading: Where do you like to read? A hammock, a couch, an overstuffed chair? At a desk, on a bench, or while walking somewhere? The chair in the photo above would suit me well for firmness and lighting.
I feel I can’t read in half of my house without falling asleep, and while it would be easy to blame my age now, I don’t think that has been the reason for my fatigue or maybe mental laziness before now. I am a poor, distracted, uncompelled reader for the most part. No one will learn of my literary habits in the coming years and find in them a pattern to follow.
Historic Novels: Some books are not comfort reads. Gina Dalfonzo says she had trouble sleeping after reading The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell. It’s a novel about Lucrezia de’ Medici, the wife of Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, who died at age 16, and is remembered mainly as the subject of Robert Browning’s, “My Last Duchess.”
That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Saith the Duke with every indication that he suspected his Duchess of infidelity or perhaps, more vaguely, unworthiness.
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Jotting Notes: Patrick Kurp has a few small notes in his Bible of 60 years. They don’t reveal much.
What is she holding? The woman in this 1860s painting by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller has all the appearances of holding a smartphone.
Nobel Prize: French author Annie Ernaux has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash
Steve Donoghue thinks very few people read books voluntarily or walk around hoping to tell someone else about it.
“I can’t help but think the situation was made a whole lot worse by the world-wide proliferation of those intensely addictive distraction-devices called cell phones. If bookworms were rare in the pre-Internet days, I can only think they’re even rarer now that it’s possible to watch funny cat videos 24 hours a day.”
He goes on to talk about the industry.
No matter where they are in the world, when someone refers to the Queen, they almost always mean Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.
This photo of the young queen hangs in Nottingham’s Council House (Lee Haywood/Flickr).
A photo from the coronation in June 1953 is in this BBC photo essay of her life.
C.S. Lewis watched Elizabeth’s coronation on TV and wrote this in a letter:
. . . the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. . . .
The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be his vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if he said, “In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.”
C.S. Lewis on the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (via Mindy Belz)
Celebrities: “But over time, it seemed, the fallen leaders managed to accrue immense social power without true proximity. They cultivated an image of spiritual importance while distancing themselves from embodied, in-person means of knowing and being known.” Gina Dalfonzo reviews Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church by Katelyn Beaty.
A Writer’s Regrets: A.N. Wilson, who has published over 40 novels and other books, has released a memoir. He “says that he cannot believe that the ‘young fogey’ of the 1970s and 1980s, dapper, elegantly suited, was him. He describes himself as thrustingly ambitious, full of himself and unfaithful not only to his wife but to his own better nature.”
Stolen Books: Joel Miller has a roundup of stolen book news, such as the Gospel manuscript that was taken during WWI and how Bibles were a common stolen good when he worked at a bookstore in California.
“Growing up, I often heard that the medieval church used to chain up Bibles so average people couldn’t read it. It’s a common myth. The reality is that illiteracy was the norm, average people had better things to do than read, and books were only chained to keep clerics, monks, and visiting scholars from stealing valuable property—or reading in the latrine.”
Religious History: “. . . the more you got to know the men, the more human did they become, for better or worse; you were more concerned to find out why they thought as they did than to prove it was wrong.”
Photo: 7-Up Building, Portland, Oregon. 1976. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
I try to be gentle on my books. I don’t crack the spine, if I can avoid it. I try to avoid dog-earring pages like I did with the last book I read (carrying it to work in a backpack roughed it up). On the other hand, I don’t mind writing notes or marking sentences in the margin. I will do this in any book if I think I’ll return to a passage later or feel piqued enough to comment. I try to use a pencil though, so anything can be erased later.
I’m thinking of these things after watching Elliot Brooks talk through reading habits that divide people.
Feature News: I think I’ve told you before that all of World’s podcasts are excellent. I listen to all of them. A new one, Doubletake, tells one feature story per 35-minute episode, and the stories have been fairly diverse. The first episode focuses on Brandon Young and being a clean comedian. The second episode tells the story of a doctor who left Canada to avoid being forced to euthanize someone. The third episode talks about abortions performed at a Christian hospital in Illinois.
“Of course, the pro-abortion nurses on the floor are mad at me [for speaking up], but I never expected the pro-life nurses to be mad at me.”
You can listen to these on their website or through your podcatcher.
Reading: Joel Miller asks, “Do you know the difference between a carrot and a caret? Family forms a key ingredient in Anne Fadiman’s essay collection, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, as do plagiarism, writing in books, eating books, and proofreading—hence the carrot/caret reference. Fadiman’s 18 essays range over all aspects of bookish living, including some truly strange. Did, for instance, Sir Walter Scott really shoot down a crow and jot a note with its blood to ensure he remembered a sentence he’d been stuck on?”
Independence Day: August 24 is Ukraine’s Independence Day. Here’s a celebration video from last year with English subtitles. Slava Ukraini.
This month a high school English teacher quit her job in response to the enforcement of a new Oklahoma state law on teaching controversial subjects. School officials instructed their teachers to cover up or remove books from their classrooms whose “titles might ‘elicit challenges'” to the law. If a teacher could reasonably defend a book, it wouldn’t have to be covered up or removed.
Summer Boismier had 500 books in her classroom and covered up all of them with paper and the note “Books the State Doesn’t Want You to Read.” She printed a QR code for students to get easy access to the Brooklyn Public Library’s “Books Unbanned” program, which decries the challenges that have been made to teens reading books written by Black or LGB-etc. authors.
What books does this program recommend?
“As part of the initiative, the library will also make a selection of frequently challenged books available with no holds or wait times for all BPL cardholders. The books include: Black Flamingo by Dean Atta, Tomboy by Liz Prince, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison.”
Is this what Boismier had on her shelves? Were school officials fine with this library before Oklahoma HB1775 was passed?
Looking at the language of the law, these books would not be a problem unless they were required reading. They certainly weren’t banned. Moreover, if the principal and school board allowed such books in the classroom, they were definitely not banned.
What the law forbids is a teacher or course instructing students in such ideas as racial inferiority, discrimination, and inherent oppression. It attempts to prevent students from believing they should discriminate against their peers on the basis of race or sex and that due to their category in society they are inherently oppressed or oppressors.
The intent of this law is completely lost on some librarians and teachers who seem to think their discriminatory judgment cannot be challenged by anyone. A challenge to one book is seen as a challenge to all books.
With my limited knowledge of the books named above, I’m going to suggest Toni Morrison’s novel is the most valuable and least objectionable. Her writing and themes are marvelous, but you can see in this report out of St. Louis reasons The Bluest Eye would be challenged for teenagers. I’m confident some of what’s referred to here is difficult to read and would be better read by those college-aged and older.
It’d be safe to bet The Bluest Eye was in Boismier’s lending library, but was every other book of the “Books Unbanned” type? No Moby Dick or Paradise Lost? No Great Expectations? Was there a collection of poems by Gwendolyn Brooks? (She talks about her most famous poem and objections to it in a recording from the Academy of American Poets.)
All of the books in that classroom couldn’t have been problematic according to the school’s interpretation of the law. The real problem is how they got into the school in the first place.
Amazon’s Middle Earth series, The Rings of Power, will begin September 1 and run into October. I don’t know much about it, but I hope to enjoy it if we still have a Prime membership (which seems to come and go regularly of late).
Because of the series, I intend to read The Silmarillion soon. I know I read about half of it before, but I don’t remember where I stopped. One of the chapters, perhaps thirteen, dragged on about geography about as warmly as a fifth-grade social studies text. I aim to push past those parts and enjoy the stories beyond them.
I don’t know if I will attempt to blog about the series if I’m able to watch it near the release days. I probably wouldn’t have enough thoughts to share.
Crime or Punishment? A Dostoevsky enthusiast categorizes all of the famous author’s novels and novellas into must-reads, read-afters, and only for other enthusiasts.
Notes from Underground, Poor Folk, and The Brothers Karamazov are among the must-reads. The Double and The Gambler are on the list for reading after the must-reads. Uncle’s Dream and The Permanent Husband are only for the most dedicated readers.
“I won’t be exaggerating,” she says, “when I say [The Brothers Karamazov] brought me back from abyss. It might not work the same way [for you as] it did for me, but there is an obvious need for more people to read and understand the beautiful intricacies of life and its fallacies, to love life in its entirety.”
Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?
“Notes from Underground,” Fyodor Dostoevsky
On Death: R.L. Stevenson wrote, “[A]fter a certain distance, every step we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through.”
Social Media: “How teens use social media often drives how everyone uses social media.” YouTube is the most-used social media platform and the second most-used search engine.
Online Fiction: “China is producing and consuming the largest amount of web fiction in the world, with an estimated 20 million full-time, part-time, and dabbling writers. The grind is hard, and the conditions can be exploitative, but those who do it are on the vanguard of a reading revolution.” (via Literary Saloon)
For Love of a Hero: Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero), performed by The Choral Scholars of University College, Dublin.
Photo: March Mobil Gas, Mount Clemens, Michigan. 1986. John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008), Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
