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.”
Does a Decline in Reading Really Matter?
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.
Unplug
I actually did a little shopping the day after Christmas, in part because one of my girl’s presents came with dead batteries and in part because I hoped to save a little on a things the children will enjoy but don’t fit the personal gift model (replacing the back yard swings). I didn’t save anything–well, maybe a little. I bought a couple early birthday gifts. One of my daughters has a birthday in February, and I briefly thought to ask her if she missed a gift at Christmas, but I didn’t want to encourage her to be discontent, especially after she declared this year to be the best Christmas ever (she got Little Debbie Swiss Rolls from her uncle). How could I ask her to think about how the best Christmas ever could be improved by one more gift? I hope her birthday will be the best ever with the large set of Tinkertoys I got her. And a chocolate cake, naturally.
I also had to go out today to return a gift my sweet, sweet wife gave me and was unable to return herself after she learned she could get it from a friend for less. Now I have to correct a problem caused by the return. The store gave us back about $50 more than we deserve. At least, the traffic wasn’t bad.
I received a toolbox for Christmas, but it wasn’t loaded with books, so I’m disappointed. Bill Reichart talks about just such disappointments and other Christmas hangovers and refers to a 1991 book called, Unplug the Christmas Machine: A Complete Guide to Putting Love and Joy Back into the Season.
Christmas report, and The Husband by Koontz
Hope you had a good Christmas. I’ll be celebrating (if anything I do can properly be described by that word) with my family here on Saturday.
So how did I spend the holiday? Mostly shoveling snow, as best I recall. We got another couple inches on Christmas Eve night, and my renter and I cleared that out. Christmas Day snow was predicted to be light, but Mother Nature was in a giving mood, so we got a couple more inches on Christmas Day and overnight. My renter being at work today, I shoveled all that by myself. My neighbor, who generally does our shared driveway with his snowblower, continued his tradition of perfect timing by being out of town. (Traditions mean so much at Christmas, after all.)
But I found time to stretch out on the couch with a book too. (Actually I had little choice after all that snow shoveling.) I read Dean Koontz’ The Husband. Good book. I won’t make this reading report an actual review. I think most of you know (and I’m figuring out by now) what to expect of a Dean Koontz book. He appears to be improving as a writer with the years, from what I can tell, but I wouldn’t rate him as a great novelist. But I’ve discovered that he’s an author I can go to and pretty much count on for a good experience—even a moving experience. The Husband is about a man who’s a husband in two senses. He’s married to a woman he loves, and he also runs a lawn service (which makes him a “husbandman” in the traditional English parlance). He lives a conventional middle class life and is happy in it. So it makes no sense when he gets a call telling him the caller has kidnapped his wife, and wants two million dollars in ransom.
Great story. Not (I think) a typical Dean Koontz thriller in that the supernatural element is almost entirely absent. But the tension never lets up, and the morality is excellent. There’s also some insightful social commentary. Enjoyed it very much.
Christmas Story Director Killed by Drunk Driver
I missed this news from several months ago and heard it again today as part of an immigration discussion. Bob Clark, the director of the popular holiday film A Christmas Story (as well as a variety of silly or stupid movies), was killed by an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk on April 4. I’m not one to call for rounding up all illegal immigrants and kicking them out, but it seems to me basic access points should be enforced. No one here illegally should be allowed to drive, and transportation workers, meaning truck drivers from other countries, should be properly trained on the rules of the road in both countries. Is that not common sense?
Quotations from 2007
The Literary Saloon points out a list of sometimes funny, sometimes nasty quotes from contemporary authors, that is, authors who are not dead yet.
We children at Christmas
I suppose it wasn’t my first Christmas. I would have been about five months old then. And almost certainly not my second either. But it’s one of my earliest memories. A dark winter morning. My father woke me and carried me down the stairs into the living room. And there was a tree decorated with colored lights and glittering ornaments. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. In fact, I’m pretty sure that that was the moment when the category “beautiful” entered my conceptual world. The tree was wonderful in itself. But then he showed me that there were brightly wrapped packages under the tree. Presents! Toys for me! My joy was total, unmarred by philosophy or irony or trauma or experience.
And someday—and fewer years are left between today and that day than now have passed since that first remembered Christmas—my Father will take me, not down the stairs, but up the stairs, through the dark into a place full of lights and color and beauty. And there will be gifts there too, wonderful enough to make me forget all the wrong lessons I’ve learned in the course of sabotaging my own life.
“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:3) We often say that Christmas is for children, but we forget that we are all to be children, when it comes to receiving the Gift.
Merry Christmas.
Keep Silence
“Didn’t know you come to save us, Lord;
to take our sins away.
Our eyes was blind, we couldn’t see,
we didn’t know who You was.”
That’s one of many reasons for all mortal flesh to keep silence.
“Child, for us sinners poor and in the manger,
We would embrace Thee, with love and awe;
Who would not love Thee, loving us so dearly?
O come, let us adore Him . . .”
Merry Christmas.
Atheists Encourage Faith in the Lord
Frank Wilson notes that Philip Pullman was right about C.S. Lewis. He links to an article in the Canadian press by author Michael Coren who says the attacks against Christianity encouraged him to trust Jesus Christ.
What became apparent to me was that the opposition to faith was as unappealing and bland as faith was appealing and thrilling. I read, prayed and thought myself into faith more than 20 years ago. It was gradual but inevitable. Miracles occurred but they need not have. I do not need a miracle to remind me that water quenches my thirst. Christ was there in my life, with me and in me and around me. Atheists showed me the way. God bless the little devils.
A Child of the Snows
Once again I share a Chesterton poem for Christmas. Unfortunately, this year it’s the same poem as last year. This is because of something I learned last night.
I have DVDs of three of the movie versions of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. I have the Sim version (of course), the George C. Scott version, and the musical “Scrooge” with Albert Finney (a little silly, but that’s the function of musicals). It’s my practice to view all three during the Christmas season.
Last night I watched the Scott version, and because it’s relatively faithful to the text, I followed along with my copy of The Annotated Christmas Carol, edited by Michael Patrick Hearn. In Stave Three, there’s a passage that goes, “All this time the chesnuts (sic) and the jug went round and round; and by and bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim….” Hearn says in a footnote here, “Apparently Dickens had no specific carol in mind; no such song has been found in Sandys’ or any other collection. G. K. Chesterton apparently realized this omission; in his Poems (1926) he included a verse, ‘A Child of the Snows,’ which might stand for Tiny Tim’s song until another might be found.”
It goes like this:
A Child of the Snows
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.
And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
Merry Christmas. Glade Jul.