Dante

The Inferno, Oct 31, 2024

(The rest of The Divine Comedy sometime in November.)

Somehow appropriate timing. Finished while waiting for my laptop to reboot.

Beginning and ending.  A dark night, comes out to see the stars, which leaves me with hope; such a beautiful way to end the trip through hell.

The Inferno is the least interesting of the three books; it's more external and spectacle.  The adjustment to the experience of the afterlife.  (Physical, because it's pilgrimage. I remember walking with an American man in 2005 who was carrying a hardcover copy of the Divine Comedy in his backpack.)

Purgatorio is more introspective, philosophical. It's about love, freewill and misdirection, what leads one astray.  It's about recognition of one's sins, and a desire to atone, to move toward perfection.  As Dante ascends each tier, he becomes lighter. And in the end, God was always waiting for humans to return to Eden. To choose it with our own free will rather than being forced. Love instead of obedience to rules we had no choice over.  Responding to grace.

There's a fire to burn off our sins, the a river to forget the bad we did.  Later there is a river to remember the good we did

I've read both of those 2x in order to go deeper and find more meaning. I've only read Paradiso once, and so I'll only say that as he ascends toward God, as he passes from one level to the next his senses are better able to withstand holiness. 

5 Months On

Mansfield Park does get confusing when there are multiple people in a conversation as it doesn't necessarily follow who's speaking or even identify who is even there all the time.  And there is a lot of conversation in this book, more so than most of the others.  I can't speak for Emma because I haven't read it in recent memory, and I don't remember.

So far this year, in reverse order (and I think I'll change the format):

16)  Much Ado About Nothing - William Shakespeare

    To better understand "Pride and Prejudice."

15)  Peter Pan, A Fantasy in Five Acts - JM Barrie (5/27/24).

        Tragic, all around.  This was the version that was a play.

14)  The White Lady: A Novel, Jacqueline Winspear (5/18/24)

        There are no real winners in war.

13)  Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear, Mosab Abu Toha (5/12/4).

12)  For All of Us, One Today - An Inaugural Poet's Journey - Richard Blanco (5/10/24).

        A librarian put on display for poetry month.  I kept putting it off but ended up really loving it.  He reminded me why art matters, in his stories of how people from all walks of life wrote to him after the event saying they felt seen that day, they finally felt like they belonged.  This was for the second Obama inauguration.  Because of this, I asked to include poetry more in church, among other places.  People need art and poetry and music.

11)  Lost Connections - Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression, and the Unexpected Solution - Johan Hari (5/3/24).

10)  Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (4/25/24.)

        Seriously, have I read this before?  I'm sure I have, but reading it felt like for the first time, I picked out themes and behaviors I hadn't before.

9)  Like, Literally, Dude - Arguing for the Good in Bad English - Valerie Fridland (4/8/24.)

    Fridland is a linguist.  She discusses the history of and why certain words, and vocal tics annoy us, such as with the use of "like" or vocal fry.  I went to get something else, but again, a librarian had put this one out on display, so I checked it out.

8)  No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre (?)

    "Hell is other people."

7)  Alas, Babylon - Pat Frank (3/29/24).

6)  A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle (3/23/24)

    These two were written around the same time: late 1950's, midst of the cold war, post use of nuclear bombs.  Similar sensibility between them, if written for different audiences.

5)  On Our Best Behavior - The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good - Elise Loehnen (3/1/24).

4)  The Creative Act: A Way of Being - Rick Rubin (2/24/24).

3)  Ultra-Processed People. The Science Behind Food that Isn't Food - Chris Van Tulleken. (2/16/24)

2)  The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins (2/2/24).

    He and Dickens were friends.  Similar plot twist in "Tale of Two Cities," and this one.

1)  Agent Running in the Field - John Le Carre (1/20/24.)

Read in 2023

(Edited 8/7/24 - I did, in fact, read at least one more book last autumn, 17. Our Game, by John Le Carre, it was the first of his I read; I found it at the book sale at the "Wallingford Wurst Festival." On the last day all the books were $1.)

 I don't actually know if this is a complete list, 2023 ended in a blur, and I seemed to have been keeping track of things in multiple places.  It's possible I read something between August and December, but perhaps I didn't finish anything.  If the library system ever comes back up and I'm able to look it up, I might see what else, if anything I might've have read.  I remember wanting a third book to go with 15 and 16 on this list, and I think I might have read it.

Going backwards then:

16. Consider the Women: A Provocative Guide to the Matriarchs of the Bible, Debbie Blue.  (Haggar, Esther, and Mary.) (12/28/23)

15. The Making of Biblical Womanhood-How the Subjugation of Woman Became Gospel Truth, Beth Allison Barr. (12/20/23)

I read these two because there is a source for why we do what we do, and it's not that it was handed down by God as a given.  I went out and bought a large print Bible around this time, I wanted to find the ones that kept the women in and didn't change the names to men's names.  There were women doing the early church ministry alongside men, but over time and to suit the political aims, their names were either changed to a male version (such as Junia) or the work was diminished (omitting the title of Deaconess.)

14. Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault: Essays from the Grown-up Years, Cathy Guisewite (the creator of the "Cathy" comic.) (8/20/23)

13. Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion, Steve Turner, w/Adam Tepedelen. (No date.)

Kinda' fun to recognize people and places.

12.  Artist.  Yeong-shin Ma, translated by Janet Hong. (7/15/23)

Graphic novel about three friends struggling through life and what changes when one of them makes it big.

11.  The Pilgrimage, Paolo Coelho. (7/4/23)

10.  Gender Queer: A Memoir, Maia Kobabe. (7/4/23)

Graphic novel, banned in places.  There wasn't a target audience or age range listed, maybe that would've helped with the outrage.  The section in question is maybe one page, and honestly, kids are seeing more shocking things on tv and the internet.  Is that an excuse?  No, but maybe it would've helped to name the target audience for it.  A lot of children's/preteen material does list that.  Is it salacious?  No.  If anything, there's a level of depression that was concerning to me.  It's one person's search to figure emself/eir sexuality out, and then how to explain it.  If it helps someone feel less alone, that's probably a good thing.

9.  The Alchemist, A Fable About Following Your Dream, Paolo Coelho. (6/10/23)

8.  Notes on Directing, Frank Hauser and Russell Reich. (No date)

7.  Baggage, Tales From A Fully Packed Life, Alan Cumming. (No date)

6.  Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear, Jinger Duggar Vuolo. (No date)

5.  The Carrying. Poems. Ada Limon. (No date)

4.  Suddenly, Last Summer, Tennessee Williams. (No date)

3.  Dinosaurs, A Novel, Lydia Millet. (No date)

2.  Remarkably Brilliant Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt. (No date)

1.  Rilke's Book of Hours; Love Poems to God.  Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy.  (No date).

Shakespeare

And just when I've come to the conclusion that I never really need to do Shakespeare I come across the book, "Shakespeare The Man who Pays the Rent," a book of a series of conversations that Brendan O'Hea had with Dame Judi Dench regarding her life in Shakespeare.  I'm not quite halfway through, but brilliant. Heaven. Woke me up again.  I actually had just read "Much Ado About Nothing," at least a first go of it, as I'm trying to read classic lit along with related Shakespeare. Also, have started, "Paradise Lost," "Mansfield Park," which has more humor in it, if of the wry variety, than I had remembered, and had been putting it off, and restarted "David Copperfield," which I guess I'll get to in a minute.  But I need to get outside, and I think I'll go see if I can go borrow the John Barton "Playing Shakespeare" videos.

Measuring time

I read somewhere recently about a calculation of how many books you are likely to read in the remainder of your life, based on your current age.  I can't remember what my calculation was, but I can't imagine it being over 2,000, and even 1,000 seems ambitious.  But it brings into focus how much you can read vs how many books are published each year and how many books you'd like to read. And also, if you can't get into a particular book, at what point do you put it back and read something else?  And then also, aside from things we have to do in life, how are we spending our free time, and does it align with our values and the life we tell ourselves we want?

I've only read about five (or is it six?) books so far this year, and it's already March.  Part of that was that I was out of town for a memorial service and then was out for about two weeks with COVID, then COVID redux and had a bunch of library books that I wanted to finish but didn't want to cough and sneeze all over, so refrained until I was no longer testing positive. One of them was almost three weeks late.  They were all long, too.  Now I've restarted "The Power of Myth," Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, and a John le Carre book, "The Tailor of Panama."  Got into him last fall for some reason. Bought it at the thrift store last weekend for something to read on the bus.

I might get to 60 this year...does that make it closer to 500?  What to choose? 

Before the Year Turned Over

I did forget two:

18) Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus.  I realize it's fiction, but there's a reality here that people tend to forget or ignore.

19) Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn. I found the only likeable character to be the female cop, and then perhaps the sister.

And then these two I finished on New Year's Eve.  And no, I still haven't finished "A Christmas Carol."

20) The Premonitions Bureau, a True Account of Death Foretold, Sam Knight.

21) Call Us the Light We Carry, Amanda Gorman.  Poems.  Beautiful.

I realize some people don't read at all, but this is low for me, I enjoy reading, but have been too distracted to keep my attention in a book over the past year.  This doesn't include all the books I started and didn't finish, or checked out because they seemed interesting, but couldn't motivate myself to start.  Maybe I'll do better this year.

What I've read this year

 Got a couple days to go and hopefully will finish a couple more books, been a hot-cold year as far as reading goes.  Feeling a lot of ennui.  

Starting in January of 2022:

1) The Boy, the mole, the fox and the Horse, Charlie Mackesy

2) Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A. Milne (Illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard)

3)  Citizen-An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine

4)  Fumbling, Kerry Egan (second time reading it, a man suggested it to me in 2005, he was part of my epiphany moment on my first Camino, the God in the small details of my life moment, my other huge moment was in 2019 when the voice in my head changed from angry, blaming, and shaming to saying/ "I love you.")

5)  The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham.  I don't know what came before this book, but I see a slew of dystopian novels taking inspiration from it.  (Yes, there was H.G. Wells, and George Orwell, but whole idea of a pandemic and two widely disparate responses to that event, remind me both Emily St. John Mandell, and Jose Saramago.)

6)  Stella, Takis Wurger.  Fiction, but based on the story of a real woman.  Who would you betray to survive?  And on the part of the narrator, what would you turn a blind eye to when you both lack a solid internal compass and are also drawn to a bright light wanting to be loved?

That was what I read until the end of May, and two of those were read on the first couple of days of January.

7)  Bless the Daughter Raised by a Voice in Her Head, Warsan Shire (poetry)

8)  The Memory Librarian: and Other Stories of Dirty Computer, Janelle Monae (and collaborators).  Really good sci-fi/fantasy debut, and also helped me understand the album more.  The story I originally avoided reading, because it didn't sound interesting, ended up being my favorite in the end.  (I can't look it up, but it's the one with the three kids.)

9)  The Throwback List, Lily Anderson.  I don't know why I picked this up, maybe I wanted escape.  I loved the three main characters!  Didn't really want it to end.  Main character loses her tech job in California suddenly and ends up having to move back to her small Oregon hometown.  On her first night back in her old childhood bedroom, she opens up a diary (?) that had a "to do" list she wrote when she was a teenager and decides without any other prospects to fulfill it.  The first is to tp her neighbor's house, a girl she didn't really get along with at the time, and then finds that her former best friend is now best friends with this woman.  She does fulfill the list, finds a new job in the city, but realizes her life is in the hometown. Ending is ambiguous.

10)  Persuasion, Jane Austen.  I'm pretty sure I also read this one last year, but it's funny that since I've read the book fewer times than I have watched versions on film, I feel like I find things I've forgotten, and it's as if I had not read it before.

11)  A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle.  I read this one last year, too.  I love this book.

12)  Stolen Focus, Johann Hari.  Hari did an experiment on himself, ditching his computer and smartphone (replaced with a Jitterbug phone for emergencies) and went and lived in the Hamptons, I think.  Has to do with our addiction to technology and if there is any solution to that.  He has some suggestions, but also acknowledges the level of privilege he had to be able to take the time away unplugged, and that not everyone can do that.  The most interesting story for me was an interview with a veterinarian who is known for giving anti-anxiety (anti-depressants?) to animals in captivity and his acknowledgment that it's not a cure-all but helps to ease the suffering of having to live in such an unnatural environment.

13)  Fame-Ish: My Life at the Edge of Stardom, Mary Lynn Rajskub.

14)  Coyote Tales, Thomas King (illustrated.  A children's book I read during Native American Heritage Month.)  There are only two stories.  It's adorable.  Like poetry, and plays, children's books really need to be read aloud.  Made me giggle the whole time.

15)  Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandell.  Borrows a bit from "The Glass Hotel," book about time travel.  The first half of the book is set-up for the last half, and each story disconnected until the end.  Unclear to me why Gaspar feels so strongly that he needs to intervene to change the outcome of one of the stories.

16)  This Time Tomorrow, Emma Staub.  Another book about time travel, does it better (though reviews compare it to "The Midnight Library" and find it lacking.)  I haven't read the latter and enjoyed the former.  I like that there are physical consequences, like as with a long-term addiction, that she feels it in her own body.  That she can't change the outcome she most wanted to change, but that she bought herself more time.

17)  Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Edward Albee.  I'm not entirely sure what's going on, but I think the copyright might prevent me from talking about it.

Ooh, not many.  If I finish the last three, I will update.  Happy New Year!