The Mind Eclectic

It seemed like a good time to again take inventory of the books on my night stand (that is, the books I’m currently in the middle of reading). I had to laugh. This could be one of the most multifarious assortments of books for one person to be reading at the same time ever.

Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin
Ramona and Her Father by Beverly Cleary
Obedience to Authority by Stanley Milgram
Cards on the Table by Agatha Christie
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne Du Maurier


I mean! Could any stack of books be more unlike?

The Voyage of the Beagle is for Classics Club. So far I am pleasantly surprised, although it doesn’t seem to hurt to do some skimming. It’s essentially a travelogue of an early nineteenth century South American sea voyage by an enthusiastic amateur naturalist who colorfully describes everything from the cowboy Gaucho life to octopi to rocky salt caches. I am keeping my humongous atlas and magnifying glass handy so I can see where he is and pick up a little much-needed geography knowledge on this voyage. (Next is Darwin’s On the Origin of Species which I am not real excited about—much as many people insist on still taking his theory as fact, it’s been disproved by the lack of evidence in our now vast fossil record, new technology-based proofs disputing the notion of  a magma-centered earth and deep time, and the discovery of DNA, to name just a few of the many problems. I think Darwin's theory has been and is still used pretty much as an excuse not to believe in God, and yet you need great amounts of blind faith these days to believe in the debunked theory of evolution!)

My kids, grandkids, and I are reading Cleary books this year so I’m starting with the Ramonas. Very funny and cute so far.

The other day I watched the docu-movie Experimenters on Netflix. It was so fascinating I immediately ordered Milgram’s book, Obedience to Authority, which is also fascinating and fits right in with my views. His post-WWII study, although I believe shockingly unethical (no pun intended--they use electric shocks) showed that yes indeed, man is fallen, prone to do the wrong thing, morally lazy, eager to sluff off responsibility for moral and religious beliefs onto any sort of authority-type-looking or acting figure. Sad but true. We have to admit this fact or we won’t strive to overcome it.

With all this assigned and technical reading, I have to read some Agatha Christie. I recently discovered her for myself and can't get enough. She’s always good for some mentally stimulating R&R. And I like anything by Du Maurier. By the way, the short story "The Birds" is way better than the Hitchcock film made from it ( and I usually love Hitchcock movies).

Okay, I have to admit I am stagnated somewhere about a third of the way through Ivanhoe. But I’m determined to finish it just because I'm sorry I've never read it, so there it sits in prime real estate on my night stand.

Oh but there's more. Underneath the above, are two bright green books. One is the biography of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch I’ve been wanting to read. (I've read all of Flannery's stories over and over.) The other is The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley recommended by one of my daughters.

Am I lucky or what? Who could ask for a more varied, interesting, and active internal intellectual life?

The Year for Cleary

Guess what? Beverly Cleary is turning 100 years old this year on April 12! Let’s read her books!

I missed out on Cleary books as a child. I have a few theories as to why this happened. Her first book, Henry Huggins was published in 1955, a year after I was born, so her books were still quite new when I was a young reader but not so new that I wouldn’t have seen them at the library or had them read to me by my very bookish elementary school teachers. Yes, my teachers, especially my third and fifth grade teachers, read lots of books aloud to us, but no Cleary that I can recall. Believe it or not, in the early 60s her books were considered too radical. Were they? Are they still?

I think one reason I didn’t pick Beverly Cleary off the library shelf was that I always turned my nose up at a book that looked as if it were going to be about boring regular life. No, I didn’t read the Little House books or even Nancy Drew. And I didn’t play with Barbie; I played with those little troll dolls with the colored hair that sticks straight up. I discovered that I liked the magical toys and the magical books, such as those by E. Nesbit and Edward Eager and E. B. White, what I came to think of as those magic E authors.

I first read Cleary as an adult when I had reading children of my own and was writing articles and stories for children’s magazines. I think the first one I read was Dear Mr. Henshaw, which won the Newbery award. The first half is laugh-out-loud funny. Humor is definitely her forte. But then it goes oh-so-dark. There are some problems with it, which I have written about on this blog. After that I tried the Ramona books and they hit the spot and probably influenced some of my own magazine stories. I still remember the trouble she had with her owl art project and the time a dog took her shoe on the way to school so she made one out of paper towels from the school rest room. Ha-ha! 


No, my teachers did not read Cleary books to me. They had not yet stood the test of time. Let’s find out if they do, and which ones, a half century later. I’m going to start with the eight Ramona books for girls and then the Henry Huggins for boys, then, if I feel they are worthy classics, put them in my little library in April to celebrate Beverly’s 100th birthday. Clearly, I better get reading Cleary!
   
Here’s a handy booklist to get us started. By the way, I went to the local thrift store and easily found six Cleary books I didn't already have for 75 cents each.

    Henry Huggins, Morrow, 1950 †
    Ellen Tebbits, Morrow, 1951
    Henry and Beezus, Morrow, 1952 †
    Otis Spofford Morrow, 1953
    Henry and Ribsy, Morrow, 1954 †
    Beezus and Ramona, Morrow, 1955 ‡
    Fifteen, Morrow, 1956
    Henry and the Paper Route. Morrow, 1957 †
    The Luckiest Girl, Morrow, 1958
    Jean and Johnny, Morrow, 1959
    The Hullabaloo ABC, Parnassus, 1960
    The Real Hole, Morrow, 1960
    Beaver and Wally, Berkley, 1960
    Here's Beaver!, Berkley, 1961
    Two Dog Biscuits, Morrow, 1961
    Emily's Runaway Imagination, Morrow, 1961
    Henry and the Clubhouse, Morrow, 1962 †
    Sister of the Bride, Morrow, 1963
    Ribsy, Morrow, 1964 †
    The Mouse and the Motorcycle, Morrow, 1965
    The Growing-Up Feet, Morrow, 1967
    Mitch and Amy, Morrow, 1967
    Ramona the Pest, Morrow, 1968 ‡
    Runaway Ralph, Morrow, 1970
    Socks, Morrow, 1973
    Ramona the Brave, Morrow, 1975 ‡
    Ramona and Her Father, Morrow, 1977 ‡
    Ramona and Her Mother, Morrow, 1979 ‡
    Ramona Quimby, Age 8, Morrow, 1981 ‡
    Ralph S. Mouse, Morrow, 1982
    Dear Mr. Henshaw, Morrow, 1983
    Ramona Forever, Morrow, 1984 ‡
    The Ramona Quimby Diary, Morrow, 1984
    Lucky Chuck, Morrow, 1984
    Janet's Thingamajigs, Morrow, 1987
    A Girl from Yamhill, Morrow, 1988
    Muggie Maggie, Morrow, 1990
    Strider, Morrow, 1991
    Petey's Bedtime Story, Morrow, 1993'Bold text'
    My Own Two Feet, Morrow, 1995
    Ramona's World, Morrow, 1999 ‡
    Two Times the Fun (omnibus containing The Real Hole, Two Dog Biscuits, The Growing-Up Feet, and Janet's Thingamajigs), Morrow, 2005

Postscript: I have now read all eight Ramona books. So funny, real, and good. Ramona the Brave is my fave. The three Mouse books are cute, too.