I’ve always wanted to participate in the photo a day project but I haven’t been able to get it together. A colleague’s tweet today reminded me. It’s already dark outside so I wandered around the living room taking pictures of Christmas decorations. Here is today’s entry, a star from my Christmas tree:
I tend to be an occasional photographer so I’m hoping this project will make me a bit more dedicated. I discovered about 40 photos on my camera from the past three months or so.
Since I’m not going to finish another book between now and midnight tomorrow, I can report my book count for 2009: 51. That includes both text and audio. The first book I recorded in LibraryThing was A Secret Rage by Charlaine Harris. And the last was Why We Believe What We Believe by Andrew Newberg. My favorite audio books were The Bartimaeus Trilogy, written by Jonathan Stroud and read by Simon Jones. Just wonderful! You can view the whole list here.
The last book I read was actually My Life in France by Julia Child. Excellent…you can hear her exuberant voice although it sounded like she was sometimes tough on her collaborators.
And the book that will take me into the new year is Scandalmonger by William Safire who died in September. It is set in late 18th century America, which so far seems much like early 21st century America at least in terms of political practice. I’ll use it as a lead in to McCullough’s biography of John Adams, which has been laying around for awhile. It’s dauntingly long and I have watched the series so I haven’t been in a hurry. But I have some time before the semester starts and thought I would tackle it. Then, for fun, I’ll follow up with the mystery I found that features Abigail Adams called The Night Daughter. I found it at a Barnes and Noble in Annapolis, Maryland, during a day-after-Christmas shopping spree with my family. I have a basic understanding of this time period but am looking forward to learning more.
A Christmas gift from a friend may lead to more reading…The Bibliophile’s Devotional has an entry about a book for each day of the year. What a lovely gift!
Happy Reading in 2010!
For the first time in a very long time, I went on a road trip and came home with fewer books. I visited my parents and read and then returned two books to my mother: The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman and Knit Two by Kate Jacobs. The former was a sometimes heart-wrenching, yet somehow amazingly light-hearted, portrait of the family that lived at and ran the Warsaw Zoo at the time of the Blitzkrieg. Very sad…many animals were killed in the initial attack, but the zoo became a hiding place for Jews.
The latter–the sequel to Friday Night Knitting Club, which I also borrowed from my mother–was a good, if quick, read. It seems like there are just one or two too many characters to really keep track of and get to know them all very well. I’m not sorry I read it, and I may borrow the threquel when my Mom’s done with it.
I only came home with one book but it’s a doozy: Inwood’s three-inch History of London. I added it to the pile in the bedroom, not sure when I’ll read it.
One random note: I’m reading a National Geographic Society book called The Age of Chivalry. It is a lively overview that includes a pull out of the Bayeaux Tapestry. The end pages are a schematic of Beaumaris Castle, which is on the Isle of Angelsey in Northern Wales, one of the castles I visited during my trip last year. I got the classic castle picture there…the swan in the mote that you see here. You can view some more pictures, too. And, for fun, you can Create Your Own Tapestry.
I also got plenty of time to listen to audio books since it’s a five or six hour road trip to see my folks. On the way north, I listened to Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. Excellent and perfect for the audio format because you can clearly hear the difference between the narrator’s voice and the voice of Jane Mansfield. The same is true for Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict that I listened to on the way home. Not quite finished so I’ll have to take a walk or ride the bike! Well-narrated books are a combination of a audio-friendly prose accompanied by a pleasing voice.
I started my book group book: Why We Believe What We Believe, thinking I had until after Christmas. But it turns out the meeting is Sunday afternoon. Guess I’ll have to step up the reading schedule but I’m confident I’ll finish.
Since I last posted, I’ve read and listened to three books and made it half way through another…
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene: An interpretation of the Gnostic Gospel. I also read some of the other gospels in The Essential Gnostic Gospels by Alan Jacobs. These were book group selections. Most of the Gnostic Gospels were found at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945. The Gospel of Mary, however, was acquired in Cairo in 1896 as part of a codex that also included the Aprocrypha of John and The Sophia of Jesus Christ. These two were also included in the Nag Hammadi collections. With the exception of two short fragments found at Oxyrhynchus in Northern Egypt, this is the only copy of the Gospel of Mary. The extant text is missing about 10 pages. But what remains is something that is missing from the Bible: the voice of a woman. You can read the Gospel of Mary at the Gnostic Society. They also house the Nag Hammadi library.
In preparation for book group, I bought Elaine Pagels’ The Gnostic Gospels but haven’t had a chance to read it. During book group, I took advantage of the Kindle to purchase two more. I bought Pagels’ Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, which is evidently concerned with Pagels’ own faith and the battle between the Gospels of Thomas and John. I also bought Ron Miller’s The Gospel of Thomas: A Guidebook for Spiritual Practice, recommended by a member of the group. They all look interesting but I just wonder when I am going to read all these books. It is easier to ignore the Kindle books so I’m going to work on the analog books first.
Which simply underscores the fact that I’ve been dealing with digital books almost exclusively for the past few weeks. I’ve been listening to audio books: wonderful recordings of Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus Trilogy. I have finished the first two (The Amulet of Samarkand and The Golem’s Eye) and am almost done with the third. Just terrific…I am using them as an incentive to get some exercise but I’ve also had a couple road trips so I got through them quickly. Next up on the audio list is Confessions of a Jane Austin Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler.
On the Kindle, I’m reading Sharon Kay Penman’s riveting fictional account of a fascinating family: Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their four sons. It’s called Devil’s Brood, and it picks up where Time and Chance and When Christ and His Saints Slept, a book I read several years ago, left off. Penman brings these people to life, and I’m at the part where Henry and Eleanor are beginning to reconcile after their estrangement. She is still a prisoner but in a gilded cage. I was reminded of the scenes in Penman’s Welsh trilogy where she describes the relationship of Llewellyn and Joanna. That series was definitely the impetus for spending time in Wales last year.
Along with Penman, I’m browsing through one of the books I bought at the Harvest Festival, The Age of Chivalry, a book from the National Geographic Society. In includes a fold out of the Bayeux Tapestry.=, the graphic novel version of a momentous historical event.
I dug through the big pile of books in the bedroom and pulled out all the books related to English history:
Penman’s The Sunne in Splendor, the story of Edward IV and Richard II and the War of the Roses. The content goes along with a book on my Kindle, The White Queen, which focuses on Edward’s wife, Elizabeth Woodville. I can’t wait to see how Penman interprets the story of the two princes.
What else is on the list?
Here Was a Man, Norah Lofts
The Rose Without a Thorn, Jean Plaidy
Four Queens: The Provencal Sisters Who Ruled Europe, Nancy Goldstone
The Wives of Henry VIII, Antonia Fraser
And, how could I forget? I did read an analog book: Queen’s Bastard by Robin Maxwell, a fictional story of the son of Elizabeth I and Robin Dudley, Earl of Leicester. It was fun and referenced another book I’ve read by Maxwell: The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn. I bought it in Hay on Wye at the Hay Castle Bookstore.
At church this morning, we did a chanting meditation to Pachelbel’s Canon. All I could think about was this rant from Rob Paravonian:
It felt like it took a long time, but I finally finished The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed. I am a fan of Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant, complex man whose paradoxes demonstrate his humanity. This book spends a lot of time examining those paradoxes.
Because Gordon-Reed refers to the Hemings, Wayles, and Jefferson using their familial relationships (ie, Sally Hemings was Martha Wayles Jefferson’s half sister since both were offspring of John Wayles, Jefferson’s father-in-law) the reader is struck throughout by the fact that these people are all related! And yet the white members seemed to feel no compunction about selling off their relatives. There was this huge black hole in the Southern vision that allowed them to move through their lives without really seeing those relationships.
The book was almost overwhelmingly detailed considering that so much of what she was writing about was speculation. We don’t know why James Hemings committed suicide but Gordon-Reed was able to give an overview of why other enslaved and free blacks did so, at least giving us some insight into what might have motivated James.
One point she makes throughout is that the owners write the history. As she considers the affect of Hemings’s story on Jefferson’s white family, she describes how they, “for the benefit of the historians who they knew would one day come calling, fashioned an image of life at Monticello designed in part to obscure her relevance” (Location 257).
She also tries to help the reader see things from Sally’s point of view despite having nothing in her own words. For instance, she spends a fair amount of time discussing why neither James nor Sally Hemings chose to stay in France even though all they had to do was petition the French court. Her paragraph on understanding love is one of the best in the book:
Love has been many things throughout history: the simple comfort of the familiar, having a person to know and being known by that person in return; a connection born of shared experiences, an irrational joy in another’s presence; a particular calming influence that one member of the couple may exert on the other, or that they both provide to one another. A combination of all these and myriad other things can go into making one person wish to stay tied to another. Anyone who is not in the couple–that is, everyone else in the world–will not understand precisely how or why it works for two people (Location 6612).
In other words…we simply can’t know or judge what happened except by recognizing that we are doing so without complete understanding. Later, as she questions aloud for the reader why neither James nor Sally contacted abolitionists when they were in Philadelphia, she cautions again about making judgments based on our own experiences. She writes, “One should resist the temptation to say that when a person does not make the choice one would have made, that person must have been forced or tricked into it or deny that he had any choice at all” (Location 8983).
I found the story of Sally’s sister Mary particularly illustrative of the paradoxical nature of these relationships in the 18th century. Mary had been leased to Thomas Bell, a business owner in Charlottesville. The two developed a relationship that included children. Eventually, Bell bought Mary and they lived together in the town. He never freed her in his lifetime and Gordon-Reed suggests this is because he could use slavery as a cover for their activities. The law would have prohibited them marrying if he did free her. But as we’ve seen, Southerners turned a blind eye to relationships between white male owners and black female slaves. Gordon-Reed writes, “Slavery provided a ‘polite’ cover for what would otherwise be illegal fornication” (Location 7425). She quotes RTW Duke, who lived in Charlottesville at the same time as Hemings’s and Bell’s grandchildren. He describes the morality of the time as “easy” in relationship to what people did and how people reacted to their actions. Duke said, “No on paid attention to a man’s method of living” (Location 7382).
I was surprised by this revelation, as Gordon-Reed thought we would. She writes:
Eighteenth-century people like Bell, Hemings, Jefferson, and their neighbors fit the popular conception neither of the Puritans nor of the later Victorians, though there is often a tendency to read the perceived values of one society forward and the other backward to cover the people who lived in the interim. There were standards of behavior, as there are in every period, but the era of Bell, Jefferson, and Hemings was practical–more libertarian–about the ways of human beings and sex” (Location 7387).
Once again, the historian reminds us that we can’t judge history by our own time.
But Gordon-Reed did use history to comment, often somewhat wryly, on our own time. One of my favorites related to “pro-family legislators.” Jefferson’s obsession with developing the United States had a negative impact on both the black and white members of his family:
Much as he spoke of his family as the center of his universe, he, like many public men before and after him, arranged his life so that he spent large amounts of time away from his family doing what he thought was the real business of his life (Location 11664).
The book was well worth reading, if a bit dense at points. Gordon-Reed has done her due diligence. Yet, she still manages to tell a compelling story.
With my book group’s next meeting looming on Sunday, I finally picked up Switching to Goddess by Jeri Studebaker. I found myself alternating between being irritated by her somewhat flippant, often silly-sounding tone and being impressed by the way she was really saying that the Emperor (that is contemporary religions) really don’t have any clothes. I really got tired of the references to “snooty snobby bully boys” to refer to the gods of contemporary religions. But her tone allowed her to attack prevailing ideas without sounding too shrill and much of what she had to say about the negative influences of religions rang true to me. She was making a well-reasoned and researched argument which I think suffered in its message because of her tone. And, while I agree that we need to move away from the more war-like focus on religions and I really agree with much of what she has to say about living in small, sustainable communities, but I’m not sure her notions of getting these religions to “switch” to the Goddess is realistic in light of research into adopting innovations. I think she would probably argue that this isn’t an innovation since we are actually re-adopting something that we carry with us from our ancestors.
Would I recommend the book? Sure…her introduction to the history of Goddess worship and her overview of various peaceful communities was as lively as any I’ve read. Much of the other well-known books about the Goddess are older, written during more angry feminist era. Studebaker is firmly placed in the 21st century and her comments about global warming and climate change touch the contemporary world in a way that other books I’ve read have not. For Studebaker, there is a feminist element but her larger concerns are with the world. She also directly addresses the recent flurry of books calling for the end of religion in general (ie, Sam Harris and Richards Dawkins), suggesting that it would be easier to get people to switch religions rather than abandon it altogether.
And now for something completely different…my sister recommended Jonathan Stroud’s The Amulet of Samarkand, the first book in the Bartimaeus Trilogy. I listened to it and absolutely loved it! Simon Jones, the narrator, was properly snarky as Bartimaeus the djinni and alternately scared, proud, and confident as Nathaniel. It’s officially a kids’ book but I think younger readers would miss the ironic voice and sly political commentary of the setting in a world where all the major leaders are powerful magicians. I’m eager to get started on Book 2, The Golem’s Eye.
Now, it’s back to The Hemingses of Monticello. I’m enjoying the book but had to take a break so I could be prepared for book group…
I learned two things yesterday:
1. My husband doesn’t read this blog.
2. Even the linen closet isn’t safe.
I learned these at the same time when, sparring a bit over books, he told me he had discovered the books in the linen closet. I replied that I had wondered if he read my blog. He looked a little confused. No, he said, I needed toilet paper.
So, I had to explain that I had overflowed all the available spaces and had moved on to the linen closet in the hopes that he would not look there and that I was sorry I was hogging the toilet paper.
But the up side is that we are in the midst of planning a new home and I’m going to get a library complete with a wall of books to which I can attach a rolling ladder like this one. It’s like the one in Becoming Jane that I just saw in Pennsylvania. If I didn’t already have books to read, I’d add rereading Austen to the list.
I finished Dee Brown’s The Fetterman Massacre in a day or so. Amazing detail of the months leading up to the event itself and lots of heavy foreshadowing about who would die. It is really a snapshot of life on the edge of civilization and I just can’t believe that women and children went along! I’m not sure I would be willing in endure that hardship for sort of murky reasons. They had a much greater faith in themselves and their country than we do now. It was a dangerous faith that led to the destruction of the Native Americans whose own faith in their culture also contributed to the downfall. Two conflicting world views clashed in those lonely places. In a way, it reminded me of Hadrian’s Wall, by William Deitrich, which described a similar moment in a far distant continent.
And now, it is back to The Hemingses of Monticello by Annette Gordon. Jefferson is in Paris and sending for his youngest daughter who will arrive with Sally Hemings. When I taught middle school, we read a book about a supposed child of the two named Harriet. It was called Wolf By the Ears by Ann Rinaldi. It filled in, at least fictionally, some of the things that Gordon can’t tell us: what it was like to be owned by a blood relative and how it felt to have to decide between the two races.
Another long weekend, this time with my old English-teaching colleagues. It’s nice to spend a few days with equally addicted book lovers and readers. My hostess and I make our annual pilgrimage to what I would probably say is my favorite book store: Baldwin’s Book Barn near West Chester, Pennsylvania.
I walked away with several treasures, including a second, but rare, printing of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence. This purchase was a direct result of the book to which I was listening on my trip up: The Tomb of the Golden Bird by Elizabeth Peters. Peters’ book is set during the season in Egypt when Tut was discovered. She gives some description of the political scene including the creation of Iraq. I wanted to learn more and Lawrence seemed like a good place to start despite the issues with his perspective.
What else is in my paper bag?
By the way, if you’re looking for good audio books, the Elizabeth Peters’ mysteries are terrific with Barbara Rosenblatt as the narrator.
Now, we’re off to the movies…my hostess is kindly seeing Julie & Julia again so I can see it for the first time.
Some women sneak clothes into the house. I sneak books. Remember that pledge I made just three weeks ago not to buy any more books? Well, that was the day before Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol got automatically delivered to my Kindle. But maybe the Kindle doesn’t count as the book doesn’t take up any space. And space really is the problem.
Unfortunately, not everything I want to read or think I want to read is available on the Kindle. Plus, I harbor a real love for books themselves and the bookstores where they live. I love browsing bookstores, particularly ones with overflowing shelves and hand written reviews. The bricks and mortar experience is just different from buying online, which for me is a much more directive process. I go to Amazon to buy a particular book that I want to read. Thus, the pre-order for The Lost Symbol. And, I appreciate Amazon’s suggestions based on my buying habits.
But, in book stores, I encounter books that aren’t part of an algorithm. Books I didn’t think about looking for because I didn’t know they existed or, if I did, hadn’t thought about reading. Books that Amazon would have never suggested because they don’t make any kind of digital sense. Books in book stores are in their native environment, pushing up against each other, organized in a haphazard analog way that can never be as neat and tidy as an online database and thus opens immense possibilities.
I knew I would probably have to avoid bookstores if I was going to keep my pledge. And, I have plenty of books to read before the end of the year anyway and the beginning of the pile in the bedroom so I figured I was going to be OK. I am reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which I purchased before the pledge. I have a book to read for book group at the end of the month called Switching to Goddess by Jeri Lyn Studebaker that I had also purchased before the pledge. (Did I mention it was a feminist book group?) I also sort of accidentally bought Olive Kitteredge as I showed off my Kindle to someone. (“That’s what you get for showing off,” I can hear my mother say.) And, a friend recommended The Hemingses of Monticello, which I also bought on Kindle. So, plenty of books already in my possession and no book stores on the horizon.
All seemed well. Until last Friday afternoon. I spent this past weekend at my parents’ retirement community. They were having their fall festival and I was going up to help out with several events. Here’s what I didn’t know: as part of the fall festival, they have a huge used book sale. Boxes and boxes of used hard backs and paper backs that were only vaguely organized. A book browser’s dream. I must admit that I only thought about my pledge for about 30 seconds. OK, maybe not even that. All of a sudden, there was a book in my hand: National Geographic’s The Age of Chivalry. I don’t remember the second one or the third. And, while I believe there was an individual price for the books, I opted for the bag of books for five dollars scheme. I even had my own bag…at least for the first go round. It seems that the book sale opens the day before the actual festival, on Friday afternoon. So, I got an early look and pulled in some treasures including another National Geographic on the Renaissance. It made sense to have the set, right? I managed to get about eight books in my bag, I think.
On Saturday, I was determined to avoid the book sale, but it turns out that breakfast was served directly behind the sale and I had to walk past the long tables with their inviting cardboard boxes to get my croissant and coffee (which to my horror was decaf…that’s all they serve in retirement communities, it seems). My shift didn’t start until 9 AM so I found myself with an hour to kill and my undercaffeinated senses made me more vulnerable than usual, I think…well, I think you know the rest. Another 8 or 9 books found their way into a bag. I vowed that I was done buying books. But, then my sister arrived. We hit up the used clothes and then, just to be sociable, I accompanied her to the book sale. And, of course, I didn’t want her to feel bad about buying books so I bought a few more. Anything for my sister.
All in all I bought 30 books in those three trips! Mostly hard backs and ranging from And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts’ early history of AIDS to Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, which I don’t think I’ve ever read. There are two PD James mysteries from two different series. Two last minute purchases included a paperback collection of Winston Churchill’s history of World War II and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy.
Here’s the problem. I simply don’t have any more shelf space. The 50 books for next year are stacked precariously in the bed room. The other shelves that line several walls in two rooms already have two layers of books. What to do? Aaah…a place my husband never ventures: the linen closet in my bathroom. I live in a tiny house that, miraculously, has two full baths, which means I get a closet all to myself. Some quick rearranging of sheets and towels, and most of the books disappeared without a trace. I put Churchill and Pullman on the shelf on the back of the bed since most of the books that had been there are on project pile. It occurred to me that I was well on my way into 2011 with these new additions. And, as I drove along the turnpike on my way home, I passed several bulletin boards warning about 2012. The pressure is on: which books do I want to read before the world ends? Reading time suddenly takes on a very serious edge, doesn’t it?
