This is a Test; It is Only a Test

I've been reading this book, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church by James K.A. Smith, and I've sort of fallen in love with it. It's written for the layman, whatever that means, and for the practitioner, so it's written in language that anyone can understand if they feel like making the effort. There is one work he uses over and over again with which I am unfamiliar...

I'm lost for a moment in looking for the word, and of course, because I am looking for it, it is hopeless that I should actually find it, though I know it occurs the or four times per chapter. Which brings me to the subject of this experiment. I was looking for a quotation I read yesterday. It was a brief statement, seeming to me to sum up my heart-felt belief, and also my dilemma, concerning criticism (or should I say, argumentation?).

If we are going to do justice to postmodernism, our engagement with it needs to be characterized by charity--and charity requires time.

James K.A. Smith says this on page 36, just before he begins to examine Derrida's statement that there is "nothing outside the text" in careful detail, which I have understood from other sources is the only way one should ever read Derrida, that is "carefully and in detail."

On a side note, what the heck are inverted commas? (You'll notice I've just linked to a blog that references inverted commas, but the post isn't about inverted commas. I haven't even read the entire post yet, but I made a snap judgment the other day that I like this girl, so I bookmarked her site, and low and behold, this afternoon something she said springs to mind. Don't you find my randomness irresistible? Now, by the way, I am listening to The Civil Wars.) And how does one acquire them--I mean inverted commas?

Getting to the point, I wanted to find this quote, but in flipping through the pages I just couldn't find it, so I went on Google and did a word search. There's no particular reason why I tend to use Google, only that it is the first search engine that ever springs to mind, and there it is right in my web browser. I am in the habit of using Google products--such as Google Books, which is where I found the quote I was looking for, as well as a large portion of this text.

I was thrilled to find exactly the quotation I was looking for, pleased as well that I could see which page the quotation was on and turn to that very page in the library's copy of the book, and then I saw that I could either copy a link and link the the page, or embed something in my text elsewhere. That's when I got the idea that has unaccountably gotten me writing this afternoon.

What would it mean to embed this link into the text of a blog post? It doesn't help that I don't actually know how to use html, and so cannot work on the same page where the embedding is done. This is an experiment.



What will show up when I press the preview button? Better yet, what will show up when I eventually post it to my blog, as I have now decided to do? Would it actually make better sense for me to just put it in as a link considering that would simplify matters so very much? I won't get to find out until you do.

You have been party to an experiment. Thank you for your patience in following the twists and turns of my curious logic. The word I was looking for earlier was "kerygmatic," kerygama being the Greek word used for preaching of the Gospel used in the New Testament, or so one of the more convenient online dictionaries tell me.

Changes, Shifts, How Odd

I've been reading No More Mondays by Dan Miller and trying to take responsibility for my own life. Well, I've been taking responsibility for years. In fact I never haven't. How do you like that grammatical construction? Sometimes you just need a little coaching, and sometimes it's a matter of combining the right word with the right time. I don't understand why that is, but it is.

I've been receiving good advice for years. I've even been able to give myself some of it. What I have a hard time doing is receiving, not assenting. I can hear what you say; I can agree that you're right. That doesn't mean that I can actually implement it. It doesn't matter how practical the advice. It doesn't matter how badly I need it, or how much I agree that the advice is good. I have taken advice very badly over the years, but not in the way you might think.

So again I say, I've been reading No More Mondays by Dan Miller. Is there anything magical about Dan Miller? No. Does he have the answers to all of life's problems? No. Can I hear him better than I can hear anyone else? No.

But yesterday I asked myself, "What do you like about the way things are right now?" and "What don't you like about the way things are right now, today, right here?"

I like that I am writing. I like that I am continually thinking about how I might write something up or what I might talk about next. I like that I am taking it all more seriously--the movies, the television, the music, the conversations, the books, the games with my husband, and more, e.g. the things I do--and thinking about the meaning that all of these activities and experiences hold. I like that I begin to see a way to live more thoughtfully.

I like that my husband is home with me so much of the time. I like that we have gotten into something of a rhythm, where he gets to work on the projects that matter to him, and we spend large quantities of time together when he isn't working on those projects. I like that I have been able to participate in those projects, even if only to a limited extent. I like that we are beginning to be more unified than ever before.

I like that by the occasional happy accident I actually do get a good meal on the table. I like that I am understanding and enjoying more as I read the Old Testament early every morning, sometimes interspersing it with the New.

I don't like my lack of energy, my inability to exercise, the fact that I haven't been blocking out dedicated periods of time to give my full attention to the children. I don't like that my home is disorganized, and that I haven't managed to get on top of things, even though it has been my desire for a long, long time. These are things I can do something about.

I don't like that we have so little income. What I do like is how Dan Miller reminds me that this is now. It isn't forever. The fact that my husband is focusing on a project that springs from who he is, who God made him to be...that is a good thing. That's the way it ought to be, and we can wait for a good result. We are free to still wait because God has provided a way for us to do so through the miracle of a savings account that I wouldn't have thought could exist when we spent $6000 to buy a van several years ago. I like that writing is starting to become something I can do, because I'm doing it however imperfectly.

I hate reading self-help books, and as one reviewer of Dan Miller's book shared, the first seven chapters or so of this one are repetitive positive-thinking material that doesn't seem all that productive, but somehow through this coaching that would be oh-so-easy to ignore, my perspective is being subtly altered and cleared.

I think this is a God-thing.

(I hope to review Miller's book in greater detail sometime later, probably after I have finished it.)

Books Brought Home from the Library

They are like orphaned children. I realize that it is a horrible analogy to make, imperfect in so many ways. I say it because, even though in a rush of excitement I brought these books into my home, they probably will be returned to whence they came without my reading them. You never know. Maybe they are more like shoes that will be returned right before the 30 day grace period has ended. Yes, that may be a better comparison, as well as getting me into less trouble than the other.

No More Mondays by Dan Miller has come home to visit its brother, 48 Days to the Work You Love. Both books have been borrowed, each from separate sources. I have read the table of contents for each. I have confirmed with an independent source that No More Mondays is  more likely of the two to be the book for us, as neither my husband nor I intend to seek traditional means of employment. I almost wish we would, even knowing that the security there is to be had with an established business is no more than a false security, but we are better of now as we are.  The waiting builds character. It is an entrance into the faith I talked about in Monday's post. No More Mondays supposedly focuses more on non-traditional modes of employment.

Validity in Interpretation by E.D. Hirsch, Jr., because it caught my eye in the church library once again. The second time I've brought it home; the second time I shall probably pass on reading it. The book draws my eye because of an essay on genre I once read in my Theory of the Novel anthology collected and edited by Michael McKeon. The essay was about genre determination, and the fact that we have to adjust our ideas about genre as we converse and as we read, because we may start out thinking we are having one sort of conversation, only to find out that we are having quite another. As I write this I am imagining this applies to a surrealist novel I read months ago. Surrealist? Shades of Gray by Jasper Fforde? But it also applies to an imagined conversation with my husband in which he thinks we are speaking about feeding the dog, and he thinks we are speaking about feeding the family. I do not understand why Validity in Interpretation shows up in our church library, but I wish to read it anyway. It may provide a counter balance to the theories of Adler and Van Doren about reading which have consumed me recently.

Next to Validity in Interpretation on the library shelves appeared a book called How to Read the Bible as Literature...and Get More Out of It, by someone named Leland Ryken. Philip Yancey has talked about reading the Bible as though it were an adventure story, both in Disappointment With God and The Jesus I Never Knew. The insights he uncovers while reading it this way are insightful, accurate, and charming. I didn't understand a word of Job until Yancey had explained it somewhat to me. Since I am also reading through the books of the law these many mornings as well, and seeing them as I have never seen them before, I am curious to see what Ryken recommends. The other two books I have mentioned have at least been inspected by me. In this book I have only read the cover. Whether it will go beyond that before I take these books back remains to be seen. It isn't as though I had a shortage of things to read.

You can keep up with my reading through GoodReads, a website I have only recently begun to explore.

Book Review, and Three Books on Prayer

I wrote a review of the book The Papa Prayer: The Prayer You've Never Prayed by Larry Crabb on Good Reads on Wednesday morning, even though I read the book two or three years ago now. I'm not generally very good at book reviews these days, saying more about whether I liked the book or not than what the structure of the book was, what the author argued, whether I agreed. My book reviews have been sporadic over the years, inconsistent in their content, even though I was rather good at them in undergrad and grad school. It's as though writing about  a book as part of an assignment were easier than writing about the book in a responsible way for my own use. Make sense? If it doesn't, know it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either. I hope that my work in Adler and Van Doren will cause me to improve.

Years ago a friend of mine gave me a book journal, a lovely little paperback thing she had picked up in California. She told me that I should try to capture my thoughts as best I could, but then I got out of the habit of thinking about books the way I once had, and when I tried to make notes about them in the book I too often felt that I was getting nowhere fast. Again, I hope that as I continue to build this habit of regular writing and careful reading into my life this will change as well. I'd like to fill that lovely little book with ink, the sort of thing I'll want to read in years to come.

I share my review of The Papa Prayer below, with some added details, and perhaps more personal information:

I thought this book was terrific, life changing in fact. My Dad, and another friend of mine disagreed, not that it was life-changing. We didn't discuss it in that way. The disagreement was over whether the book was wonderful or not. She (my friend) said that it seemed to her to be one of those books that revolved around one central idea that could better be expressed in fewer pages. I don't remember what my dad said, but knowing him it may have been something similar. Or perhaps the kind of prayer that Crabb described doesn't fit his relational style. I've advocated elsewhere that we are each of us uniquely made, and that therefore the relationship between God and us will not be uniform. This book contained some things that were bread and meat for me.


What I liked best about this book was the form of prayer that Crabb describes. Instead of trying to guess what God wants in any given situation, or demanding what we want from Him, Crabb advocates a form of prayer that becomes a conversation like you'd have with someone who cares about you. You present your own anxieties about a situation before God, tell Him what you're thinking, express your hopes for a particular outcome if you have them, but in so doing relinquish your concerns to Him. I know this isn't a revolutionary concept, but the way that Crabb describes it is immanently useful. For weeks after I read it I was more aware than usual of how much God values my conversations with Him, which in turn made me so much more aware and grateful that He was near.


Richard Foster presents a different view of prayer in a chapter of Celebration of Discipline, which is also valuable, and contrary to this one. Foster says that in intercessory prayer, which is the form he concentrates on in this book, there is no room for praying "Thy will be done." He says that when praying for others we must discern the will of God first, and then pray that in expectation. I don't disagree. I look forward to reading Foster's book, Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home, if I can ever get my hands on a copy. I think the contradiction springs from a difference in focus, and I recommend Foster's view of the subject as well. I also absolutely love With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray, which I read last summer. Andrew Murray's book reads like a devotional, a format that I have historically stayed away from. It's a terrific little book though, delving into scripture and teaching how to pray as Jesus taught and prayed. Each of these books is worth reading. Of the three, Larry Crabb's book moved me more to wonder at the glory and love of God and worship Him than it did claim my intellectual assent, and that is one of the reasons why I liked the books so much.

And now I'm one move closer to learning how to write a useful book review. For those books that I can remember well I now have the opportunity to re-review them, as the website I used to use for organizing my reading is in the process of shutting down. If I can make myself write about plot in the future, I may be able to start reviewing fiction as well, with something more than "I love this book," " I couldn't wait for it to be over but then it got better," and other such uninformative comments.

I tried to compose something about one of my favorite television shows the other day, but I couldn't get very far with it because I wasn't willing to explain the basic plot. It's something I shall have to continue to work on.

Note: I'll go ahead and publish the link below, but know that I have only written a couple of reviews on the goodreads website at this point, because I imported all of my books into their system only Tuesday. Reviews that I had published previously on living social could not be imported, and I had to give star ratings to many books that I had not read in years.


View all my reviews

Kelly LOVES Books

I used to read this blog called Amy Loves Books until the author really started irritating me.  It was a personality issue I think.  But though I decided I didn't like her personally, I admit that I really enjoyed, and was inspired by, her writing.  She must have had something to do with my starting my very own blog.  She was the first ever blogger who I ever followed regularly.  She had an excellent set of posts describing her experience with post-partum depression.

I once commented to her that I thought it was much more interesting to read about what people actually were reading rather than what they would recommend for other to read.  I enjoy reading the occasional trashy novel myself, and I think that fact should humanize me somewhat for those who might be tempted to think I am too serious.  Not that I've read any trashy novels in a while.

I'll tell you what I am reading now, and someday I'll even share what else is on my bookshelf.

I have this awful tendancy to be reading three or four books at once, while simultaneously thinking of six or seven other books I would like to read.  This creates plenty of problems for me.  A typical problem is that I lose track of what in fact I am supposedly reading.

Right now I am reading:

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodges Burnette.  I read this book when I was young (whatever that means), and I knew that I loved it, but I certainly didn't remember why.  I wondered what sort of power such a book might have now that I'm an adult.  The answer is that it is a wonderful, glorious, inspiring book.  It makes me want to have a garden of my own.  It makes me want to spend lots and lots of time outside.  I am troubled slightly by the racism of the period, but I have to lay that aside, because the rest of the book is spledid.  It makes you want to jump rope, and live an exceedingly healthy life.  Perhaps it romanticizes the purity and power of children to make the grown-up world right, but if it does, while I am reading it, I simply do not care.  I ordered the Norton Critical Edition because I wanted access to the historical information, as well as the critical essays, but I cannot promise that I'll read them before my neighbor's book club meets.

(And of course I wonder what we'll read next.  I have The Brothers Karamzov on my shelf, waiting to be read, but I've also borrowed some Walker Percy fiction from Patrick and Alina, and the latest Diana Gabaldon from my neighbor who has the book club.  I want to read Moby Dick eventually.  I'm less into fiction than usual at the moment, however.)

Studies in Words by C.S. Lewis.  This book is pure linguistics, and I think I've been working on it for a month already.  Honestly it's a bit beyond my comprehension, but it is an enjoyable experience reading some of Lewis's non-religious critical work.  The book is all about the meanings of words, and the ways that they have been used over time.  There's a difference between a word's meaning sometimes and the authorial meaning.  Lewis also indicates something he calls the dangerous meaning of a word, which is a meaning recognized by current readers that was unlikely to exist in the author's time, and the meaning with which a word is most likely to be misimbued. (This sort of writing perhaps makes me sound like an overeducated snob, but it is true that I am interested in such things, and reading this book has awakened me to the treachery of redefining words according to their accepted meanings.  It also makes me realize that I don't always truly know what a word means,even if I have used it a hundred times.)

(I have to go on facebook to see what else I am meant to be reading just now.  And this is one of the reasons why I keep a record on Visual Bookshelf.)

Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard.  This is a wonderful book and I am absolutely in love with it.  Kierkegaard looks at the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in the book of Genesis from every possible angle, and in this book he discusses the nature of faith.  I picked the book up because I have this question about what the scriptures mean when they refer to fear of the Lord.  I don't know whether Fear and Trembling will answer that question or not, but it does talk about what it means to live this life in faith, a subject with which I happen to be confronted immediately.  I have a question now, which I asked my husband just the other night.  Does appropriate fear of the Lord preclude fearing His works, or actions?  If anyone reading this has an answer to this question I would be grateful.

Esther: It's Tough Being a Woman, which is a Bible Study by Beth Moore. I've never before done a Beth Moore Bible study, so this is quite a  new experience for me.  A friend invited me to participate in one being held at First United Methodist downtown, and I agreed for several reasons. I like how Beth Moore takes an inductive study method, and breaks it down (or slows it down) into manageable parts for the lay reader.  This far (in week 1) I have enjoyed doing the study immensely, though I have never yet attended a Bible Study meeting at First United Methodist, for reasons of children's health, and even though I don't always agree with Moore's points of emphasis.  I borrowed an Esther commentary from my brother-in-law Wednesday night to supplement the study.

Unofficially I am also reading How to Study Your Bible by Kay Arthur, God Calling by "the two listeners" and publised by A.T. Russell, and I'm studying Esther and Hebrews (for Sunday School) on my own using The Inductive International Study Bible, in which the guiding materials were provided by Kay Arthur.  I've been doing lots and lots of spiritual reading and study recently, and today I found out one of the reasons why, which I may share with my readers ("if any," to quote one of my son Isaac's favorite movies, "The Wizard of Oz.") eventually.  Besides this I am trying to finish my reading of the Bible, and re-read the New Testament by the end of the year.

This is not like me normally, I swear.  There is so much I want to learn, which is a subject I will embark upon at a later date.  For now, Michael is waiting for me to watch a particular program with him before bed.

More excuses, books, and the reason why I don't have any readers anymore

I just noticed the total number of posts I have published to this blog. Just over three hundred in almost two years, and that's including posts that were comprised of pictures only, or excuses about why I wasn't posting. I guess you could say (and I probably have already) that it is emblematic of my stage in life. Parker is almost three. Isaac is a week away from turning seven months old. It's a good stage, but it keeps me from writing--almost anything.

I finished Walker Percy's Signposts in a Strange Land two or three days ago. It's a collection of his essays on numerous topics, and it was great. I have to comment that I probably wouldn't have gotten through the entire thing if it weren't for an obligation to certain friends who were reading it too--but I think that's the neat thing about reading in community: exposure to books you might not choose to read on your own, the opportunity to ask questions and discuss matters of interest with others who share a similar (though never identical) reading experience, and the chance to push forward with something you know is worthwhile even when the reading isn't clearly motivating in and of itself. I remember our friend John K. saying that you have to read things you don't understand before you can begin to understand them. The Walker Percy wasn't the easiest reading, and I probably understood maybe 30% of it, but I'm already planning for the time when I can read it again, knowing that next time I will understand more of it.

Right now I am working my way through Paul Elie's The Life you Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage. I'm having a rough time with it. He is writing the stories of four people: Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy. It's been hard for me so far because I have only been able to read it in snatches, he intertwines these four histories according to a pattern that hasn't emerged for me, and because so far he has focused mainly on Day and Merton, while O'Connor and Percy are the ones I really care about. I suppose that Elie's emphasis is less literary than I had expected. I'm also uncomfortable with the socialism/communism that was so important to Day, so that has presented some difficulty too. It is also true that my memory has become so bad that I have difficulty picking up Merton's story in the midst of Day's.

The most recent item that has interested me about Percy is his connection with Mark van Doren. It's silly that, having read nothing by van Doren, my interest is engaged because of the portrayal of his character in a movie, Quiz Show.

I'm also reading, at last, and absolutely, On the Road by Jack Kerouac. It seems particularly appropriate now because my brother, Andrew, is currently on the road. Not like Kerouac, but still, he is out there. Other more compelling reasons to read it: a passing interest in the beat poets that I never pursued, the recent Mark Helprin nove (Freddy and Fredericka) evoking Kerouac in passages, and more importantly, the recommendation of a cousin, who once described his religion on Facebook as Christian Buddhism.

After writing all of the preceding this morning, I also picked up The Rise and Fall of English: Reconstructing English as a Discipline, by Robert Scholes, while feeding the baby. I couldn't help myself. There it has sat on my bedstand for a couple of months, and Facebook says that I am reading it. I wanted to pick it up and see which essay I was on. Unfortunately I've only barely made it to the second, and of that I hardly remember what I have read. I do remember one thing however. I remember Scholes contention that professors should still be intensely concerned with truth, and yet according to my memory I don't know what he means by that. I don't remember his discussion of truth comporting with my own understanding of it.

An Old Post, Never Before Published

The reason why I haven't been blogging recently (This is how it goes):

I'm pregnant, and when I am pregnant I have trouble stringing words together. Maybe I'll get together a paragraph in my head while I'm supposed to be working on something else, but then I'll start to write it, and... There's an interruption of some sort, or I can't get it to work the way I want it to. It happens over and over again until I finally decide that I'm not going to do this for a while.

In graduate school just before Parker was born my inability to write proved disastrous. Three papers due at the end of the semester--the one I turned in to my Black Women's Metaphysical Fiction professor was total crap. I couldn't come up with anything interesting to write about, and what I finally did write about was incoherent and possibly offensive without any sort of redeeming usefulness. Seriously. I've tended to feel like an outsider a lot of times in the past and tried to write about being disappointingly marginalized by Ntozake Shange's expressed intent concerning the play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf.

The paper I turned in for my Shakespeare class that semester, I don't even want to think about, and to this day I turn over and over in my mind possibilities for completing that incomplete earned in Theory of the Novel because I simply couldn't do anything with it. The incomplete haunts me because as long as it exists I damage my chances of ever being able to go back to Graduate School, even though by now I don't know whether or not I really want to go.

At this point I've said way more than I meant to say when I'm supposed to be posting pictures. Anyway here's a post I started at the beginning of May, and so instead of throwing it away, I'm posting it here, almost eight months late:

Parker slept late this morning, which turned out to be a good way to start the day. Especially since I wasn't in the mood to put anything away last night; so there were toys to redistribute, dishes to add to the dishwasher, and others needing personal attention. He atypically slept through one and a half showers, giving me the opportunity to do some devotional reading. I'm slowly and inconsistently working my way through Devotional Classics edited by Richard Foster and James Bryan Smith. Today's selection was from Jonathan Edwards, and I confess that it did not get the attention it deserved. Maybe I'll have better success with comprehension tomorrow.

Parker has lately become a hugger and a cuddler and a climber and a talker. He doesn't blab, blab, blab away all day, but he is saying more and more words.

I've emailed two different people blog worthy material this morning, so I'll lay aside the guilt I feel at not revisiting those subjects afresh, and reproduce what I have already written here.

The first item I considered blog-worthy on May 2, 2008 was a story about how pregnancy hormones affect the mental faculty:

Two coffee cups. One has residue from yesterday's coffee because I found it this morning under my bed. The other has been freshly used then rinsed because I've decided to make a cup of tea. Which cup do you think I chose to put the tea bag and hot water in?

My used-to-be perfectly-good brain says, make sure you use the right cup. My perfectly-good brain does not say, put the old cup in the dishwasher before you do this. Thankfully the tea tastes okay anyway, and Parker is temporarily placated. Unfortunately I just realized that I forgot to put a bib on him, so he has oatmeal down his shirt.

Honestly, I no longer remember what the other blog-worthy post was meant to be.

Optimism/Pessimism

I really liked the question Tina asked the other day. What makes one person generally pessimistic, leading them to worry, and what makes another person generally optimistic such that they rarely worry about anything at all? According to the magazines guilt seems to go right along with being a mom. I would extrapolate that to mean that worry also goes right along with being a mom, but that isn't really a satisfactory explanation.

I think it has to do with personality, not that Myers-Briggs has a category to explain worry. I don't know; it might. I think I associate optimism with the sanguin or phlegmatic temperment, while pessimism I would associate with the melancholy or choleric temperment. Really, I have no idea what I'm talking about.

My intellect tells me that worry is a totally nonproductive emotion. (Is worry and emotion, like happiness or frustration?) However, it also tells me everything that can and may go wrong. I default toward trying to be prepared for the worst as a way of staving off disappointment. Why do I expect things to go wrong? Because the world is broken. These days I just try to remember what is really important (thanks to Larry Crabb and The PAPA Prayer), and that is that I avoid replacing God with anything else as the "first thing" in my life. As such, I can talk to Him about the little things that matter to me, and yet realize that even if those things go wrong (like losing my calendar, seeing my comfortable if wild yard being destroyed) I don't have to let them ruin my day. That is a very good thing.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Already

It was the last day of kindergarten, and we were allowed to bring the unused supplies that we had purchased at the beginning of the year home with us. It was a light brown gum eraser, never used. It's edges were perfectly square, the shape of it rectangular. It was perfect, it was beautiful, and I was in love with it.

My father drove me home that day. Full of joy I said to him, "Look at this gum eraser."

"A gum eraser!" he exclaimed, sinking his teeth into it. I cried and cried.

When I buy a new book, if the quality of the paper and its formatting is good, I am awed by the perfection of its pages. The crisp angle of its corners is my delight. I am loathe to do anything that would mar the perfection of its cover.

After a book has been read, if its pages have become creased, its spine bent, or there are paper lines across its cover, a different sort of bedraggled beauty is revealed. Books that have been read by many have a different beauty of their own. Use is a good thing, creases and lines a mark of honor, because it means that an object's purposes have been fulfilled.

There is little worse than purposes unfulfilled.

My Home in Lit

Brief moments of self-deprecating humor often appeal to me in the reading of non-fiction. This seems to be a hallmark of so many British authors, as I think Peter Elbow pointed out in one of his essays on composition.

Since I finished reading Orthodoxy over the weekend, and received my copy of Devotional Classics through the mail from Amazon, I decided to pick up Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis as my next continuous non-fiction read. I will revisit Larry Crabb's The Papa Prayer, and Piper's Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ later. (Devotional Classics is not meant as a continuous read; it is made to be read in fits and starts, and the very first selection in the text is from Mere Christianity. Thus my progression to Lewis.)

I was reading through the introduction to Reflection on the Psalms this morning, in which Lewis remarks, "There are some enlightened and progressive old gentlemen...whom no courtesy can propitiate and no modesty disarm. But then I dare say I am a much more annoying person than I know (8)."

Joss Whedon and Literature

Some of you know that I've been watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on-line recently. I'm watching Buffy because 1) it suddenly became available to me, 2) I just about adore Joss Whedon, especially his series Firefly, and 3) I've always had a thing for vampire stories. This last reveals a deep seated interest in evil, which is related to an overwhelming sense of gratitude when I consider what dark possibilities I have been rescued from. Anyway, back to the point of the post.

It struck me as I watched the first season's finale how much Buffy's character resembles Mina Harker of Bram Stoker's novel. Here's why. In Bram Stoker's novel, Mina is surrounded by men who love her, who would do anything to rescue her from the evil for which she has become prey. It is a sacrificial love, not merely a romantic one as defined by our contemporary culture (though sacrifice is certainly a romantic ideal). The scene that brought on the comparison?

Angel: Are you in love with her?

Xander: Aren't you?

Okay, to give you a bit of context, these two men who love Buffy are underground, rushing to the scene of potential torment to save her, though we know going in that Buffy herself will do the bulk of the saving. They both certainly have romantic feelings for the girl, but I interpret these two lines rhetorically rather than literally. It is as though Xander were saying, you and I know her, therefore we have no choice but to love her. The same would seem to have been true of Mina Harker.

Still Slogging My Way Through *Orthodoxy*

I've been reading Chesterton's Orthodoxy since October, and while I've really enjoyed the book, it's taken me about four months to attempt reading the last chapter. I seem to be terminally stuck.

For one thing, this is not a book you can read in gigantic gulps. There have been moments when I've been tempted to read a second chapter after finishing a first, and each and every time this has proven to be a mistake. Too much thinking is required. I'll make it through four or five pages of that second chapter, and then realize that I've no idea what I've just read, and this is rarely a good realization when it's a book you are reading voluntarily. I admit, I didn't understand much of what I read in Eagleton's Literary Theory, but that was a different sort of voluntary reading.

Michael recommends, quite sensibly, that I not choose such high intensity reading just before it's time to go to bed. This is why I never could have made it in graduate school. I've just about decided that I'm not the right kind of intellectual.

Curious Forms

While I'm not interested enough at this point to do the research myself, I wonder if any of you can enlighten me concerning this:

A friend loaned me a murder mystery by a British author in which the word "orientate" was used several times. I complained about this at the time. This morning I saw an episode of an old British televsion show called Waiting for God, which is about retirees living in a retirement home, and the "orientate" form was used there as well. Is this a distinctly British usage, or, if you're a linguist, is it something even more particular than that?

Reference? Can I Get a Reference, Please?

It bothers me that novelists occasionally will quote other writers without indicating where the quotation comes from. I'm not talking about quotations that preceed text necessarily, although it's nice to have sources for those as well, rather I'm talking about quotations appearing within the text. (Stephen King is very good about identifying his liftings, I've noticed.)

I mean nothing against Jan Karon, mind you, but here is an example from A Light in the Window that I asked my mother to find for me over the weekend:

"We are not necessarily doubting," said C.S. Lewis, "that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
(240)

I really like this quote, but haven't read the book it was taken from. Is this from The Problem of Pain?

While I'm thinking about it, I thought it funny/odd/sinister that there is a character on Lost this season named Charlotte Staples Lewis.

Does Diaper Changing Violate Some Sort of Ancient Patriarchal Ideal?

I just finished reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. I think it is interesting that while I greatly enjoyed his 44 Scotland Street Series, I haven't particularly liked any of his other books that I have read. I wonder why this is?

I'm not saying The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency wasn't good. It was. And I probably will continue to read books in this series. However I found early in the book that I fundamentally objected to a white man writing in the first person as an Botswanian woman, no matter how much time said gentleman has spent living in Africa. I think this is probably an unjust objection, but there it is. I also have a problem with the continual shifting of perspective that takes place within the book. McCall Smith writes both in the first person, as many different characters, and in the omniscient voice throughout the text, as he did in 44 Scotland Street, but here I find this troubling, whereas in the former I did not. I think that I am just being really, really picky here.

I found the following amusing. At one point near the end of the text a character reflects on his disengagement from the new ways of doing things. "Some women actually expect their husbands to change their babies nappies," he considers, with great discomfort. I am very happy to say that my husband has never, ever complained about having to change Parker's diapers, which he has done on numerous occasions. What a good man he is, too.

Oh, For the Love of Books Set in Scotland

I just finished the third book in Alexander McCall Smith's series, 44 Scotland Street, and find that at some point I shall have to purchase the series to keep on my own shelves. These books are full of interesting material, so much of which I'll have to go back and re-read, digest, and ponder. They would make great book club material if I ever make my way to being involved in a book club.

Here's an excerpt which I consider one of the most beautiful/truly romantic things I have read since the end of Diana Gabaldon's The Fiery Cross, or Mama Day by Gloria Naylor:

He looked at her and thought: I have found myself in you. Bless you. And then he thought: what a strange, old-fashioned thing to think. Bless you. But what other way was there of saying that you wanted only good for somebody, that you wanted the world to be kind to her, to cherish her? Only old-fashioned words would do for that (Love Over Scotland, 338).

The book itself is not a romance, lest you get the wrong impression. The first two volumes at least were published serially in The Scotsman. I don't know that about this last one because the author's note at the beginning didn't mention it. It's really about Edinburgh, and the people who live there.

It's funny, I can't say much about McCall Smith's other work because I haven't experienced much of it yet. I will go ahead and say that I read Portuguese Irregular Verbs and didn't really care for it. I started The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I will return to, but haven't yet made it past the first chapter. I'm going to try The Sunday Philosophy Club, starting in just a few minutes, Parker willing. These are each first books in separate series, so while I am experiencing the author's work in breadth, I don't know what to make of it as a whole yet.

On another note, I love it when books I'm reading reference other books I have read and enjoyed. Love Over Scotland references The End of the Affair at one point in the mind of one of it's characters, which is the first book I ever read by Graham Greene. (Some of his books I love and some of them I don't care for. The End of the Affair is one of the ones I love.)

I don't mean to give the impression, with the title of this post, that all of the novel's mentioned herein are set in Scotland, although I realize that is exactly what is implied. Only two of the McCall Smith series are, as well as the Gabaldon. The Naylor is set on an imaginary island off the coast of Georgia, and the Greene is set in England if I remember correctly.

Furious with T(uscaloosa) P(ublic) L(ibrary)

I can hardly stand it, and so I thought I might find catharsis by posting my feelings in the matter.

Last week I borrowed three movies from the Public Library. All three films were for Parker's benefit, so that I could see something other than Jonah: A Veggie Tales Movie during his waking hours.

Now some of you may not know this about me yet, but I hate fines and interest payments of every sort, mortgage payments excluded. I can't stand them, and as such I always make great effort to get things turned in on time.

This week it just didn't work out. I forgot to return the movies on Tuesday, but I told Michael it would be okay as long as we got them in by opening the next day. One of the movies, which we hadn't watched, didn't get picked up to return, and since we had spent the entire day with our car in the shop and neither of us felt like getting out in the cold by the end of the day, the leftover film was returned the next day. In my mind only one of the movies was going to be counted against us as late.

So I went to the library this afternoon thinking I'd have to pay a small fine, something along the lines of $1.40. Boy was I wrong.

$8.00!!!!

$2.00 per movie per day. Now, historically I have only rarely turned anything in to the library that wasn't on time, and I don't believe I had ever held a film out too long. Films are only available to be borrowed for 7 days at a time with no opportunity to renew.

I understand that there have to be fees, and I understand that these fees have inflated along with everything else, but $8:00! This afternoon I was prepared to check out two DVDs and a VHS, but when I found out how much I would have to pay I decided against it.

I don't think I'll be using the Public Library much longer. That's an extreme reaction I suppose, but I find those fees offensive. Besides, our Public Library is woefully inadequate. If you've ever tried to do research through the library's catalogue you'll know how difficult it is to navigate to find what you need, and so many of the books I'm looking for simply are not there.

On the other hand, I'm not sure what alternatives are available. I can borrow from people I know, or I can buy books at the store and online, but once I've turned in the books that I currently have checked out, I may not use the Public Library any more.

***Two hours later***

Jim was over at the house tonight and inadvertently convinced me that I simply cannot give up the library. He brought over this lecture series from The Learning Company, which is interesting because I just got their catalogue in the mail yesterday. I cannot give up the library.

What I can give up is borrowing movies from the library. Jim informs me that they carry the heaviest fines, so probably if I limit myself to books, and possibly audio media, anyway--things that I can checkout for three weeks at a time and renew once, I should be fine. That's good to know. A fee schedule is available on the library's website, www.tuscaloosa-library.org. I need to take a look at it because I've been warned about board books as well.

Dillard Writes Such Beautiful Sentences About Plain Things

I have gotten Annie Dillard's novel The Living from the library exactly twice. Both times I have attempted to read it, and both times my attempts have failed. This last time I said to Michael, "I really want to read this book but I just can't. Her sentences are beautiful. She's a wonderful writer, but she goes into these high levels of detail about things that just aren't interesting to me. I scan through the pages looking for dialogue and there is very little." Michael suggested that if I really wanted to read it perhaps I should treat it like a technical exercise. Read to discover how she composes and punctuates such wonderful sentences.

I'll give you the example I gave Michael a few nights ago. You might need to read this sentence out loud to notice how wonderfully balanced it is:

"One November night after a supper of dried salmon and potatoes, the Fishburns sat in the Rushes' dark cabin drinking coffee made from burnt toast."

There is a short story appearing in The Annie Dillard Reader, the events occur at some point in the novel. I enjoyed the short story very much, even though it isn't the sort of fiction I would typically read. I think that if I really were a serious reader I would persist through all the detail of the novel, but alas, I am not really a serious reader. Maybe next time I take the book out of the library I will make even more headway.

Two Reasons for Difficulty in a Social Setting

I'm reading a book right now that I was given for Christmas, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen. The book is really a conventional romance novel with a familiar plot, but it does have some descriptive touches, along with a few quirks, that are more unusual. The point of this post, however, is to quote a passage that, while not particularly original, is one with which I strongly identify:

"Claire felt a familiar anxiousness, or maybe it was a learned anxiousness... Claire didn't socialize when she worked--she communicated. She said what needed to be said or she didn't say anything at all. Unfortunately, this didn't translate well into a social setting. It made her seem rude and standoffish, when it was only a sincere and desperate effort not to do or say anything foolish (203)."

This goes along well (as well as contrasting nicely) with a statement Elizabeth Bennett makes to Mr. Darcy, as they dance and the Netherfield Ball in Pride and Prejudice, that I have often attempted quoting:

"We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity...(221 in my copy of the complete novels)."

Rise and Fall by Evelyn Waugh

I finished the book this morning. Paul Featherstone languished in prison for a while along with several of his pals. Prendergast, who Waugh describes as a modern churchman who believes in nothing in particular, meets a gruesome end as his head is removed by an inmate in the prison where Paul first serves time as a white slaver, and by the end of the story Paul has made his way back to the beginning.

There are some moments in the text that must mean something. Paul enjoys his confinement, and his consideration of that information is certainly interesting. A narrator breaks in somewhere halfway through the book and explains that Paul isn't a hero, that in fact he is no more than a ghost of himself while the events of the novel are taking place.

Any Evelyn Waugh fanatics out there want to share with me their insight?

This afternoon I considered moving on to some more lighthearted reading in the genre of the mystery novel. I've seen several episodes of Bones on the Fox Network that have been interesting, which leaves me tempted to try one of Kathy Reich's novels. Carol O'Connol has a new Kathy Mallory out that I haven't read yet that I saw in the bookstore this afternoon. At the same time two independent parties have recommended Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which I also saw at the bookstore this afternoon.

Any one of those, gruesome as two of them may be, has to be lighter hearted than anything by Evelyn Waugh, but I find that I enjoy Catholic authors so much. I read The Heart of the Matter long ago when I was first getting started with Graham Green, and said to Michael that it certainly was a Catholic novel. Why do you guess would I find such work so compelling? According to several of the essays in Yancy's collection More Than Words many Christian authors find themselves first attracted to the Episcopal Church, then find themselves inexorably drawn into Roman Catholicism. Any ideas on why this may be?