Dickens in Heaven

We got the big snow this December and a thoroughly white Christmas. But not many visitors to my little library. It is difficult to find time to read in such a busy month. I was lucky to sneak in my annual Dickens at the last minute. I only had 10 days or so, so I chose the unfinished 200-page
The Mystery of Edwin Drood and absolutely loved it. Then I watched the 2012 2-episode BBC version, and although they left out a few of the great characters I thought their last-minute twists and ending quite acceptably Dickensian. I appreciate them giving this great book a good ending, although in the introduction to my edition G.K. Chesterton said, "What was the mystery of Edwin Drood from Dickens's point of view we shall never know, except perhaps from Dickens in heaven, and then he will very likely have forgotten." Yes, I think that is true of him. I think when we get to heaven, those of us who want to get there (Chesterton and Dickens seemed to want to), we won't be at all about any earthly accomplishments and legacies, just as those were not our focus here on earth. But Dickens's God-given delightful talent and insights into human nature, good and evil, are certainly gifts to us here and now to help us on our way.

Chesterton goes on to discuss the several different scholars' theories concerning the end of this unfinished story, which all sounded stretched to me. Like I said, I liked the BBC ending quite well. Still, as Chesterton wrote, "Dickens is dead, and a number of splendid scenes and startling adventures have died with him. Even if we get the right solution we shall not know that it is right. The tale might have been, and yet it has not been. And I think there is no thought so much calculated to make one doubt death itself, to feel that sublime doubt which has created all religion---the doubt that found death incredible. Edwin Drood may or may not have really died; but surely Dickens did not really die. Surely our real detective liveth and shall appear in the latter days of the earth. For a finished tale may give a man immortality in the light and literary sense; but an unfinished tale suggests another immortality, more necessary and more strange."

Yes, I truly believe in heaven, too. I once wondered if I'd get to meet my favorite authors in heaven . . . Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O' Connor. But on second thought I decided I better let that presumption go. As Lewis writes in The Great Divorce, if we want something other than God and His gifts, we won't even choose to go there, we will choose the other place! And heaven is where I want to go. Once there, if I see them, I see them. If I don't, I don't. And if I do get to meet them, I imagine there will be even bigger and better things to talk about than the books they wrote, perhaps the exciting ideas and principles contained or hinted at within the books they wrote. Won't there be only large minds in heaven, the kind that talk about ideas rather than people and things and events?


Now I can put this book in my little library current collection: Books with Character Names for or in the Titles. (I never put anything in my library that I haven't read.) How many such books can you name off the top of your head? There are more than you may think. My little library filled up fast just from my stock here at home.

Bookworm or Creative Reader? Ask Emerson.

In Classics Club (readings from a huge book list/guide from Homer to Solzhenitsyn, The Lifetime Reading Plan) we write letters to each other about the books. Here's my Classics Club letter on Selected Writings, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

September 1, 2015

Dear Active Souls,

"Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst."

Yes, that’s Emerson, said to be the most quotable epigramist (definition of epigram: quip) in the English language. As I read, I certainly saw this. I underlined lots of his short, astute, quotable quips. I also saw why Emerson’s influence over us has declined. For all his individualism and Americanism and pushing of the envelope and reformer reputation, he’s undeniably and traditionally religious. Without reading him I grew up thinking he was at bit off—"transcendentalist" and all. He does tend to exaggerate and go too far, off into the ether, sometimes. I can see why he was a leader, albeit not of a church, and people glommed onto him. What a way with words!

For the most part, I was pleased to find that he hits morality, the presence of absolutes, and God right on the button. I will read him again.

I had a bit of difficulty finding the suggested selected writings in The Lifetime Reading Plan all in one place. I started out reading this and that here and there and then liked him so much I wanted one volume I could underline and make notes in. Couldn’t find anything I wanted online so Steve and I made a maiden voyage to the new location for Pioneer Book in Provo. They have really fixed up their musty old used book store. It’s all the rage to place books on shelves in rows according to colors, which is fun to look at but doesn’t make much sense otherwise. They have shelves like that in the front window, blues and reds and whites, and the monstrous main check-out desk is actually made of miscellaneous stacked books which is great. There are nice leather chairs and tables in hidden little reading corners and lots of space on two levels. I was pleased to find a very quaint, old (no date) volume of Emerson for $7.95, hardback, unmarked, smallish, red fabric cover, with a little gold embossed Ralph Waldo Emerson front and center and fleur-de-lis on the binding. Perfect. Most everything was there out of the eight writings suggested. The only things I didn’t read are his essay on Thoreau and English Traits, which I may search out online some time. So I read Nature, The American Scholar, and essays History, Self-Reliance, on Plato, Goethe, and Montaigne. I enjoyed them all very much. He understood the important things. I liked his original-sounding thoughts on the responsibility of self, truth, traveling, writing, prayer, good and evil, God, and childhood.

I thought this idea, relative to the pervasive technology of today was prophetic: "The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good."

More tidbits:
"Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."

"The one thing in the world of value is the active soul . . . the soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or creates . . . In this action is . . . the sound estate of every man." Isn’t our soul the only thing we can take with us?

My little slogan for my little library, Blue Hill Books, is “What we read matters.” I think Emerson would approve. He talks about books being unthinkingly read just because they exist, "Hence, instead of Man Thinking we have the bookworm . . . hence the bibliomanics of all degrees." Sorry to say, this is what happened with Oprah’s bookclub. Yes, she got people reading like crazy, but what and why? Most of the popular literature of today is worthless and nihilistic, I’m afraid. And what does have worth is made over to justify and shore up our unthinking times. Emerson was right: There is creative reading as well as creative writing.

Here is a great one: "Let [man] learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon . . ."

I found a lovely quote for my current writing project, I Learned to Swim in the Ocean, which I may never finish. I want it to be short but I keep adding to it from all these great readings. I often think of my childhood, and am so grateful to my parents for making it such an innocent, secure, and precious time full of experiences and memories I keep learning from: 

Emerson: "The actions and events of our childhood and youth are now matters of calmest observation. They lie like fair pictures in the air."

Thanks Mom and Dad,

Janice

The Magic E

What if you could find buried treasure, not where X marks the spot under the blackest, heaviest, dirtiest dirt, but under the letter E in the dustiest, stuffiest, ancientest library? Sure you’ll only see shelves and shelves of books sandwiched together on their ends, standing and waiting patiently like good soldiers. But chances are an exciting hoarded wealth of a bookishy kind is hidden there filled with the most adventury adventures and the most magical magicalness. I think that is just exactly how Oswald would say it. But let’s start at the beginning.

In England more than a hundred years ago, a lady had been married only a short while when her husband caught the dreaded smallpox. While he was sick his business partner ran away with all his money, which Oswald would describe as a rash and direful act of the most ungentlemanly kind. Seeing that it was up to her to support the family, this lady sat down with a fountain pen (they didn’t leak so badly by then) and paper (which was still relatively expensive), or perhaps at an early typewriter (like a boxy black computer keyboard with high, hard-to push, inky keys that smack letters directly onto paper). She wrote great amounts of poems and articles, anything she could sell, even verses for greeting cards. But it was almost 20 years later that she began writing stories for children unlike any ever written. In 1899 came her first successful book, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, as told by a fictional yet noble and truthful boy named . . . oh, wait, I better not say. Oswald is much too modest.

This author shortened her first name, Edith, to one magical letter: E. She was E. Nesbit. To make up stories for her many books Edith used memories from her own tomboyishy childhood as the youngest of five siblings. Oswald would say that she collected lots more additionally brilliant ideas from the stacks and stacks of A1 books she had read, the both sadish and hilariousest happenings of her own five children, and her own most richful imaginings.

Her characters are most often groups of siblings quite like real children: smart, funny, and  full of all sorts of creativeness. Just like children today they relentlessly seek adventure, get hungry at least three times a day, and frequently wish they had more money to spend. Of course they are not at all perfect, but try very hard to be good. Oswald, along with his two sisters and three brothers, even start a club called The Wouldbegoods, the escapades of which always seem to end up in a jumble of comical disastrousness. Try as they might, the children quarrel among themselves and then have to make things right. They invent mischievous messes and then have to tell the awful truth. They think up well-meant but misguided quests and then have to find a way to get home.

Some of E. Nesbit’s stories are about ordinary children having extraordinary adventures in the real world. Imagine finding a burglar in your house, saving a train, and flooding your bedroom in the middle of the night (the latter of which Oswald is hesitant but nobly honest to say was done by his own self in pure innocentishness.) And some of them are about ordinary children having fantastic adventures by accidentally discovering magic. Imagine sprouting wings on your back, traveling back in time to ancient Egypt, and trying to eat invisible food when you’re very hungry. (Oswald wouldn’t know about any of that; it is Robert, Anthea, Cyril, and Jane who would.) But whether her books are about rollicking real-life adventures or incredible fantastical ones, Edith’s storybook children are always made of the realest realness and frightfully funny.

Like many treasures, E. Nesbit’s books are very old. They are also very British. Because of their extreme oldishness and Britishyness (as Oswald would say), if you decide to dig them up, you will come across a few unexplained and unrecognizable words or phrases. For example, you may not know what the author means by tea (an everyday sit-at-the-table between-meal snack), chink (money in your pocket), or jaw (talk too much).  Don’t let that stop you, unless you want to take time to look things up. You don’t have to understand every word to enjoy a story. Besides, you can usually catch on to the meanings of unfamiliar words just by keeping reading.

Everyone likes to try out new books, but the old ones mustn’t be forgotten. They are still around because they have stood the great test of all time. As the clever and perceptive Oswald would put it, these books still sparkle and shine like diamonds and rubies and pearls to the deepest degree of perfect A1-ness. He would recommend with his most enthusiastic energetics that you hurry and find a lurky-looking library for the secret purposes of unearthing a book by E. Nesbit, especially one starring Oswald himself.

Treasures await, only to be dug up, like a sand fairy in a gravel pit, that will make your innermost readingest wishes come true. If you can’t find these books while lurking in your library, take courage! Because these books are old classics, complete texts are available for free online. Just search for E Nesbit. She wrote or contributed to 60 books. 

But that’s not all. There is much much more delightfulness to the magic letter E. Some of the excitingest and most magicalishy books for children are around a half-century old or more, written by authors who have capital Es in their names. There’s E. B. White, Edward Eager, Elizabeth Enright, and Madeleine L’Engle. Some of these authors, including C. S. Lewis and J. K. Rowling, have said that they got some of their gratifyingest, most A-1 inspirationalistic ideas from none other than E. Nesbit, the author with the first magic E. (They didn't say it quite that way, but you-know-who would.)

Here is a booklist of E. Nesbit’s most famous treasures for children:

The Story of the Treasure Seekers (adventures of the Bastables: Dora, Oswald, Dicky,  Alice, Noel, and H.O.)
The Book of Dragons (fantasy stories)
The Wouldbegoods (the Bastables again)
The New Treasure Seekers (more of the Bastables)
Five Children and It (adventures of Robert, Anthea, Cyril, Jane, and their baby brother they call the Lamb)
The Phoenix and the Carpet (sequel to Five Children and It)          
The Story of the Amulet (another sequel to Five Children and It)
The Railway Children (adventures of Roberta, Peter, and Phyllis)
 The Enchanted Castle (adventures of Jerry, Jimmy, and Cathy)  

The Dead of Summer

If you can believe it, I had never read Agatha Christie until quite recently. I mean, she is the world's most translated author, the biggest-selling writer in the world, outdone only by Shakespeare and the Bible! More than a billion copies sold in English and another billion in a hundred foreign languages!

I've never been a mystery novel fan, I never even read Nancy Drew as a kid. But I happened upon a nice set of three of Christie's best at a favorite discount bookstore back east and decided to try her out. I had enjoyed film versions of these stories and was interested to know if I'd like the novels.I ended up reading them all right in a row: Murder on the Orient Express, And Then There Were None, and The Body in the Library.  I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed them. In British old-school style, Agatha Christie's books are extremely well-written, literary, full of interesting believable characters, underlineable, and so clever they get me every time. I say she's good for keeping one's "little grey cells" on the move. Now she is my go-to for trips or leisure reading. Nice thin small paperback volumes perfect for slipping in purse, pocket, or pouch. If you are lucky you can spot one or two on a thrift store shelf. In fact, I now frequent thrift and used book stores for the sole purpose of unearthing an Agatha Christie.

I asked a lady who runs a local used book store in an old house on our main street if she had any Agatha Christie. I had looked in vain on the many floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with mystery paperbacks. She told me that yes, she sometimes has them, but they are snapped up immediately, and would I like to be on her waiting list? That's how good they still are. Classic detective fiction from a classy lady.

 Christie's main character series creations are Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, and Tommy and Tuppence, the delightful sleuths in many of her stories, although some of her best whodunits stand alone.

So this July, in the dead of a very hot summer, I have filled my LFL with the best murder mysteries, Agatha Christie treasures I have been collecting for the past year, well-loved, dog-eared classics. Try one, you'll like it. Then watch a dramatization---you can find practically endless Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple on Netflix, both series and movies. They are excellent. I think even Agatha, who died in 1976 after a very interesting life and stupendously successful 50-year writing career, would approve.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.  Agatha Christie

How Does Your Library Grow?

I suppose I was a bit late falling in love with books. I don't recall being so very interested in picture books, not even Dr. Seuss or Beatrix Potter, for whom my appreciation grew later in life; of course there weren't so many picture books back then as there are now.  I did love A. A. Milne poems, some of which my mother or grandmother had us memorize as children. ("What is the matter with Mary Jane?") When my book garden did begin to grow, you might say I started small. I was about twelve when I began collecting those miniature hardback gift books trendy in the late 60s, about the size of Beatrix Potter's, most of which were given to me by friends. Charlie Brown  and Snoopy, Joan Walsh Anglund, they are now "worn, befingered little books" (a lovely phrase from Geothe), bearing the prints of many a grandchild.

The seeds of my truly literary book collection first began to sprout when I was in seventh grade reading and acting out parts of Tom Sawyer in English class and a friend apparently gave me a copy because here it is in my hand inscribed by Jan Rolph, a.k.a. Amy Lawrence. We also read Julius Caesar in that class of which I own an ancient copy with my adolescent illustrated "signature" inside the front cover done in the blue ink of the Scheaffer fountain pen I habitually used back then. I think it was in eighth grade that I purchased the copies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy I read and reread, that still grace my shelves today. Twain, Shakespeare, Tolkien. Not a bad start, I'd say.

It was when I became a mother, during my twenties that I remembered all the books my elementary school teachers had read to us, books I dearly wished to introduce to my children, for it was chapter books I first truly loved. I went to library sales and thrift stores; it wasn't how they looked that mattered. I felt like Jay Parini, a poet and professor of English at Middlebury College, in his essay, Other People's Books:"It's not only the physical aspects of books that attract me, of course. In fact, I rarely buy first or elegant editions, however much I like to glance at them; good reading copies, in hardback or a decent paperback, are just fine." Charlotte's Web, The Little Lame Prince, My Father's Dragon, Mr. Popper's Penguins, Stuart Little, Gone-Away Lake, A Wrinkle in Time, Island of the Blue Dolphins, Five Children and It, Tuck Everlasting. I also kept my eye out for used or inexpensive copies of favorites I had chosen from library shelves and read myself throughout my junior high and high school days. A Lantern in Her Hand, Jane Eyre, Tess of the Durbervilles, So Big, David Copperfield, Treasure Island, The Prince and the Pauper, The Once and Future King.  And then I had books from college English classes I kept, such as Shakespeare's Complete Works.

Books proliferated like weeds, as books do. We needed a place to put them. These were early days in our marriage and our first apartment book shelves consisted of stacked orange crates painted bright yellow, just like Helene Hanff had--must have been an early 1970s thing. Then came some boxy modules of dark stained 2X12s my husband crafted that sat on the floor, that our one-year-old could sit herself inside.

As our my-husband-builds-all-our-own-furniture era continued, an entire wall unit made of unfinished 2X6s drilled with holes and held together with pieces of inch-thick dowel came into being. Plenty of space on this rickety structure for both my books and Steve's collection of Beatles LPs.

We finally "splurged" on some free-standing oak shelves but these soon overflowed. We eventually relegated them to the basement and attic when one of our sons-in-law built me a real library in our small front sitting room: two whole walls of built-in custom shelves from floor to ceiling painted sparkling spartan white. One of my quiet joys in life is arranging and rearranging these shelves, going through my books, adding, taking away, browsing, categorizing, regrouping, beautifying, making ever more meaningful. This is my library today, photo taken by my daughter Lili.

Still the garden grows, spreading to every room in the house. In my guest room/office I have shelves of my favorite writing books: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland, The Elements of Style by E. B. White, On Writing Well by William Zinsser. In my bedroom my nightstand constantly overflows with current reading, and a shelf on the wall near my bed displays a small collection of slender volumes I want to keep close to me: Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Humility and Absolute Surrender by Andrew Murray, Born Yesterday, the play by Garson Kanin, Flannery O'Connor's Prayer Journal, One Hundred and One Famous Poems,  James Allen's As a Man Thinketh, The Imitation of Christ, and a ragged 1946 The Return to Religion by Henry C. Link that was my Dad's and bears his beautiful signature.

There are atlases and art books in the living room, especially nice editions of favorites on the mantle, books on culture and politics in Steve's office space, baskets full of picture books in the attic and grandchildren's room, and the old oak shelves in the basement are fast filling up with extra copies of the best books for my Little Free Library.

When I visit someone's home for the first time it is their library I am most interested in, and I love it when visitors to my house are magnetically drawn toward mine. The books people choose to read, collect, and furnish their shelves and coffee tables and mantles with often show what they find valuable or interesting or worthwhile or beautiful or important. In one glance at a person's book collection you may find you have a new friend with whom there are unlimited subjects to discuss.

Parini goes on, "What interests me about other people's books is the nature of their collection. A personal library is an X-ray of the owner's soul. It offers keys to a particular temperament, an intellectual disposition, a way of being in the world. Even how the books are arranged on the shelves deserves notice, even reflection. There is probably no such thing as complete chaos in such arrangements.”

Perhaps my favorite shelves are those filled with books I loved as a girl, and as a young adult, books I continue to reread and  treasure. And then of course I have a shelf piled high with books by my very favorite authors to date: Charlotte Bronte, C. S. Lewis, Flannery O'Connor, and Roger Scruton.  Since I began it in 2006 a good chunk of shelf space is  now packed with volumes collected for my ongoing Lifetime Reading Plan. (See the book by that name by Fadiman and Major.)

I do go through my library periodically and give some away. It has to be an extra or one that I feel has no sentimental value, beauty, or worth at all. But it's not easy. To paraphrase G. K. Chesterton, even bad books have worth, if only to show us why people would write it or why people would read it and think it was good. Often if I feel like discarding a book, I plan to read it again first, just to make sure. On visiting the home library of Anthony Powell, Parini quotes his friend, '"I can't give a book up, if it's a book that meant something to me,"' he said. "I always imagine I'll go back to it one day. I rarely do, but the intention is there, and I get a warm feeling among my books."'

What we love matters. What we read matters. How does your library grow? I hope it's in full bloom.

John Steinbeck: How I got in trouble in college for not being in love with him

I'm a  native Californian. Born in Berkeley. Grew up mostly in the Bay Area. Dad took us on road trips all over. Relatives had a ranch we visited in Napa Valley; I loved everything about it. Honeymooned in Monterey/Carmel. Love to return and visit there anytime I can. But I don't love love love John Steinbeck, who mostly wrote about central and southern California, fate and injustice. Yes, even though he was all the rage when I was in high school, even though he won the Nobel Prize, and even though Grapes of Wrath is the most widely read novel in the world, I don't love him.

I do like the feel, the ambience, the ranchiness of his books set in CA. I can relate. And I think he wrote many very nice descriptive paragraphs. I think he definitely could write. But I don't think he was totally consistent. His self-edit button was missing. He writes along and then suddenly there's a really bad, out-of-place phrase or sentence, a preachiness or gushiness or oversentimentality. And, much worse, for all his careful observing, I don't think he had anything of any value to actually say. No solutions. No wisdom. Just dark cynisism and dreary hopelessness in the end. Many think there is nothing wrong with that, but I do. In short, he often comes across as a frustrated secular humanist (who strangely borrows his titles from the Bible), a know-it-all who hasn't thought things through or come to terms with reality, and a well-intended moralist with no sure foundation for his beliefs. Bitterness and intellectual dishonesty does stop one's progress, and I think for all Steinbeck's enthusiasm he got hung up somewhere in there.

Boy, did I get in trouble when I shared these thoughts in a paper when I returned to school several years ago in Utah. My English professor, who had previously acted quite friendly toward me (perhaps because we were about the same middle age), was incensed. Sitting at her desk in her office she pretty much called me a stupid hick. (Excuse me, I was born in Berkeley, California.) Even though she made clear that our papers on East of Eden could show any opinion, even if it disagreed with her opinion, as long as that opinion was backed up with text from the book which I most certainly did, she gave me what I considered an unfair grade (I think it was a B something) and suggested I read a certain other student's paper (which apparently she agreed with) for some enlightenment! And another exclamation point!

I think the poor woman was completely smitten with the man. I noticed we weren't friends anymore after that, and also because when called upon I had something the least bit critical and discerning to say about Toni Morrison; she really hated me then. But I still got an A in her class---she had no choice. By the way, the East of Eden movie is way better than the book ( I wrote a short paper on that too), which is never a good thing.

I just reread Of Mice and Men and The Red Pony (what's with the supposedly regular little boy who loves to maim and kill little animals???) and The Pearl to see if I wanted them on my list of good short books. Still have the same opinion. Some of it is very good, but not always consistently good (where was his editor?) Here's an example of a short paragraph from Of Mice and Men that stopped my reading:

"As it happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment."

Oh, you mean time stood still? It bugs me when authors too obviously wax verbose. This is called jargon.

He also likes to shock the reader, for no good reason. I think the only book he wrote I really like is Travels with Charley, which I read as a teen and then again recently. Lots of good descriptions, and yes some melancholy, but without the editorial jabs and existential whining.

I think my paper, "Steinbeck's East of Eden: Between a Church and a Whorehouse," (check it out) was pretty darn good, given the assignment. Sadly, the best word I can find to describe his work as a whole, is nonexcellent, at least in the most important ways. He was a faithless malcontent and his writing sometimes feels dated, generally oversentimental, and caustically bitter. That's my opinion.

Really Short, Really Good Books

Rainy day? Convalescing? Road trip or plane ride? Stressed out and need distracting? Have an hour or two to kill? Fat book too daunting at the moment? Need a skinny book for your little purse? Want a small feeling of accomplishment? Like a masterpiece in one gulp? In the mood to read a famous book in one, maybe two, sittings?

Try reading a really short, really good book. Or play. Or short book of short stories.

I'm filling my little library with good short reads this spring, all worth reading and rereading, all under 200 pages (sometimes depending on the edition). By the way the short books lists I've come across, in my opinion, are not very good---a lot of worthless or what I call nonexcellent books listed as if they are of equal value with some that are really good, which bugs me. So I made up my own, from Confucius to O'Connor. Like a cook who tries out all the recipes she shares, I never put anything in my tiny library that I haven't read and found worthwhile myself.

There should be something for everybody in this very eclectic list:

The Story of My Life, Helen Keller
Animal Farm, George Orwell
Billy Budd, Herman Melville
Pudd'nhead Wilson, Mark Twain
Tom Sawyer Abroad, Mark Twain
The Call of the Wild, Jack London
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas
The Bridge of San Luis Rey, Thornton Wilder
The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
Wide Blood, Flannery O'Connor
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
A Bad Beginning, Lemony Snicket
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Anthem, Ayn Rand
The Invisible Man, H.G. Wells
Mama's Bank Account, Kathryn Forbes
The Fiddler of the Reels and Other Stories, Thomas Hardy
Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
What Every Woman Knows, J.M. Barrie
84 Charing Cross Road, Helen Hanff
Night, Elie Wiesel
Two Old Women, Velma Wallis
Daisy Miller, Henry James
The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis
The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis
The Secret Country of C. S. Lewis, Anne Arnott
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
The Secret Sharer, Joseph Conrad
Missing May, Cynthia Rylant
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, Rudyard Kipling
Hamlet, Shakespeare
Twelfth Night, Shakespeare
Dubliners, James Joyce
Tristan and Iseult, Rosemary Sutcliff
The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
The Trial, Franz Kafka
The Analects, Confucius
Selected Canterbury Tales, Chaucer
The Prince, Machiavelli
Beowulf

Hmm. Which one shall I pick first? How about a book a day? Don't you wish?

You Know, For Kids!

One summer I read began reading a book aloud to my grandsons Jeffy and Ethan who live close by. Every time I visited them we read a chapter. We chose Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary. It starts out so cute and funny and totally kid-appropriate. The class is reading a book about dogs and the boy writes, "We licked it." Ha-ha-ha., laugh Jeffy and Ethan. The boy reads the same book, Ways to Amuse a Dog, over and over, and every year he writes a book report on it. Jeffy chuckles.  Then the boy's favorite author writes a new book, Moose on Toast and Ethan practically rolls on the floor in hysterics.The biggest problems in the story are how the family has moved and how somebody keeps stealing the yummy stuff out of the boy's lunch. Then about 1/3 of the way through the book, the story turns dark and heavy. The boys sees that his parents don't love each other anymore, the dad is never there, they are getting a divorce, the dad never calls or writes to his son. We're sitting there reading and I feel Jeffy (age 8) start inching away. "What's the matter, Jeffy? Is it too sad?" "Yeah," says Jeffy. "I don't like when daddies are like that." After some weeks leaving the book alone we decided to finish it to see if it ended happy but it didn't, just a little up in the air. I know it won the Newbery but it's not my favorite. Ramona got to have a normal childhood even with some troubles, but Leigh Botts's was just too troublesome for Jeffy. 

I guess moderny children's authors think they have to reflect the world as it is, not as it should be. Wouldn't want anybody to feel left out, right? Wrong. Literature that merely reflects life is no fit guide for it, so says Flannery O'Connor.

Not many summers ago I decided to reread some books I loved when I was nine or ten, books by Elizabeth Enright. I wondered if I would still love them. And I did. It was a wonderful experience. Yes, in the Melendy family series the children have lost their mother (before the story begins) and World War II is going on, and in one book they meet a boy who is being raised by his mean adult cousin who dies in a fire. But these are not the things the children worry about except in child ways, such as they love their nanny/housekeeper lady as much as a grandma and their dad is gone a lot helping with the war and is their hero, and the family ends up adopting the orphan boy. They keep themselves busy and creative, as in putting on plays and collecting junk to help the war effort. And oh, the adventures they have, mostly outdoors. In other words, despite life as it is they get to be normal children. They aren't weighed down with adult problems. The books are absolutely beautifully written and the content age-appropriate. There are lots of references to classic literature and music and nature and traditional values. (Some details are dated but still work in context.) I don't think anybody is reading these books anymore.
The Melendy family series consists of: The Saturdays, The Four-Story Mistake, Then There Were Five, and A Spiderweb for Two. Enright won the Newbery for Thimble Summer. My fifth grade teacher read Gone-Away Lake to us. And then there's Return to Gone-Away. My favorites are Spiderweb and Gone-Away Lake. It has been a refreshing treat to reread these lovely books. (The above charming illustration is  by E.E. from Then There Were Five. She was also an artist.)

Nightstands that Gather No Dust

When I find out a person likes to read I always ask them what they are reading or have read lately, don't you? We can quickly learn a lot about each other that way. I was surprised when an acquaintance at the gym asked me that question the other day and off the top of my head I said Faust, wondering if he'd even know . . . and he piped up, "Ah, the universal man." Wow!

If he'd had more time he would have gotten an earful. Probably like you, I'm usually reading several books simultaneously. And probably like you, I try to keep my nightstand neat, but it's always cluttered. The upside is that the books change so often they don't gather much dust, right?

I don't usually get to share my current complete list with anybody, much less an acquaintance at the gym. There wouldn't be time! Hence, I've decided to post my eclectic monthly collections here, along with mini-mini reviews.

On My Nightstand January 2015

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson---where has this been all my life? GREAT and disturbing
The Clocks by Agatha Christie---perfect for my trip to Denver
American Documents--- NO doubt that America was founded for a moral, Christian people 
Faust by Geothe---a few gems but I liked Marlowe's better 
Dying to Meet You by the Klises---funny and clever as usual

At least those are the ones I finished during the month. Now

cluttering my nightstand (and every other surface in the house) are books I'm in the middle of, including The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien (one volume edition), The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton, Boy by Roald Dahl, Selections from The Federalist, Selected Poetry by William Blake, The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry, The Complete Tales and Stories by Hans Christian Andersen. In addition, I keep handy my scriptures, The Habit of Being (letters of Flannery O'Connor), the PIG Guide to English and American Literature by Elizabeth Kantor, The Lifetime Reading Plan by Fadiman and Major, 25 Books Every Christian Should Read, and Reading the Classics with C. S. Lewis which are books I am always reading or studying or referring to.

As always I'm hoping there will be an entirely new list (of books I've finished reading) next month.Here's wishing there's no dust on your nightstand!

Mrs. Love and The Hobbit

It was the 1960s and yes, my sixth grade teacher's name was Mrs. Love. She was soft-spoken, tall and beautiful, with a broad ready smile that lit up her face like sunshine, a face crowned with a halo of golden chin-length hair. Halfway through the school year she invited me to join the class’s elite literature group that met periodically at the back of the room at a low round table. I loved reading---my favorite authors were E. Nesbit, Elizabeth Enright, Madeleine L'Engle, and Edward Eager (I thought you had to have a capital E in your name to write good books)---and the very words literature group sparkled like stars. But I knew that the four kids in the group were the smartest in the whole class and I hesitated. One was my friend Delight (yes, that is her name) who always got straight A's and another was a boy everyone called The Walking Encyclopedia (he grew up to own a rare book store in New York City). It was Mrs. Love’s gentle encouragement---she lived up to her name--- that helped me overcome the intimidation I felt and I tentatively took my seat at the sacrosanct table like a humble worshiper at a shrine. We studied Louis Untermeyer's poem collection in which we were introduced to bits of Shakespeare, Longfellow, Dickinson, Carroll, Hopkins, Keats, and Blake. The book was illustrated by Joan Walsh Anglund, whose wide-faced black-eyed children I liked to copy.

Then we read The Hobbit and painted a mural of the Shire in the school hallway.  It was heaven. Delight and I went on to read The Lord of the Rings trilogy twice through during junior high. I happen to be reading it again now for the first time since then; I still own my original paperback copies. We just finished watching the movies again (extended versions this time) and I wanted to see how close they stay to the books. Well done, I'd say! Eternal truths abound! Thank you Mrs. Love for introducing J.R.R. Tolkien to me!

The books we read when we first fell in love with books often become our lifelong favorites. I only hope kids today choose some of the true classics. I've just filled my Blue Hill  Books free library  with a new collection called Young at Heart, youth classics for all ages. I've been rereading these classics and always find them well worth it, even better than ever!