Preparing for a Feast on Fat Tuesday

While others are preparing to deny themselves something for the next forty days, would you consider joining me in indulging in something extra for Lent?

 Deuteronomy 8:3 tells us, "So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord."

And Jesus repeated that truth in Luke 4:4, " And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God."

Let's sit down each day at a banquet feast prepared for us by the King of kings and LORD of lords, the true manna from heaven, the Living Word, and see how that perfect daily bread enriches our lives.

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God." ~ Colossians 3:16

(I made a schedule for Lenten Bible reading a few years ago, and you're welcome to use it, too! I find that it takes me about an hour - or less - to read the selection for the day.)

 Lenten Bible Reading Plan
Day 1: Genesis
Day 2: Exodus
Day 3: Leviticus, Numbers
Day 4: Deuteronomy
Day 5: Joshua
Day 6: Judges, Ruth
Day 7: I Samuel
Day 8: II Samuel
Day 9: I Kings
Day 10: II Kings
Day 11: I Chronicles
Day 12: II Chronicles
Day 13: Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther
Day 14: Job
Day 15: Psalms, chapters 1 - 75
Day 16: Psalms, chapters 76 - 150
Day 17: Proverbs
Day 18: Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon
Day 19: Isaiah, chapters 1 - 33
Day 20: Isaiah, chapters 34 - 66
Day 21: Jeremiah, chapters 1 - 26
Day 22: Jeremiah, chapters 27 - 52
Day 23: Lamentations
Day 24: Ezekiel, chapters 1 - 24
Day 25: Ezekiel, chapters 25 - 48
Day 26: Daniel
Day 27: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah
Day 28: Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi
Day 29: Matthew
Day 30: Mark
Day 31: Luke
Day 32: John
Day 33: Acts
Day 34: Romans
Day 35: I Corinthians
Day 36: II Corinthians
Day 37: Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians
Day 38: I Thessalonians, II Thessalonians, I Timothy, II Timothy, Titus, Philemon
Day 39: Hebrews, James, I Peter, II Peter, I John, II John, III John
Day 40: Jude, Revelation

In This House of Brede

Rumer Godden's book, In This House of Brede was on my 2010 reading list, although I've been meaning to read it for more than a decade.

This book was full of surprises. It began with successful, middle-aged businesswoman Philippa Talbot deciding to leave all her worldly activities and enter the Benedictine abbey of Brede. The novel covers a span of years, and as it goes, Philippa is less the center of the story, while the other nuns, the abbess, and Brede itself take more of the reader's attention. Although I would not characterize this book as exciting, the story continued to hold my attention, and there were quite a few small mysteries - secrets - that in time were revealed.

I enjoyed it, and would not hesitate to recommend it to others.

Towers in the Mist

Elizabeth Goudge's novel, Towers in the Mist, is a sort of historical fiction depicting a place, rather than a person. The place is Oxford, and the time is the Renaissance - during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This book was one I chose for my reading list for 2010.

The main characters are the Leigh family: Canon Gervais Leigh, his elderly aunt, and the eight Leigh children. The events that take place in the life of the family during a year carry the story and the description of Oxford, but appearances by poets of the time (Philip Sydney, Fulke Greville, and Walter Raleigh) are dexterously woven into the main story, and a stanza or a few lines of poetry mark the beginning of each chapter. Poets whose poems are represented include Thomas Campion, Philip Sydney, Thomas Nashe, Walter Raleigh, Thomas Churchyard, Edmund Spencer, and Robert Southwell.

It was a pleasant book, and was well-written, as so many of Elizabeth Goudge's books are. However, it is not one I'll ever reread, although the poetry did get me ready for National Poetry Month and the 100 classic poems survey at Semicolon.

We the Living

Ayn Rand's We the Living was on my reading list for 2010. It's the first novel Ayn Rand wrote, and I think people presumed it was autobiographical, because she said about it:

"It is as near to an autobiography as I will ever write. The plot is invented, the background is not... The specific events of Kira's life were not mine; her ideas, her convictions, her values, were and are."

The background is heartbreaking. Post-revolution Petrograd (and doesn't the very name conjure dreariness, famine, fear, and hatred?), later renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death, does not appear as the cultural and political center of Russia, as it was when it was Saint Petersburg. Life there for Kira and her family, labeled Bourgeosie because her father had been a factory owner, is nearly impossible. Those in power don't allow those who were previously in power to work, to buy things, to live. It's a scary portrait of a totalitarian state, and one that gave me much consternation as I imagined that it would be terribly easy for similar events to happen again - here.

Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead remain my favorite novels by Ayn Rand, but We the Living is a good, shorter novel to read and ponder.

Talking about Detective Fiction

Steve gave me Talking about Detective Fiction by P.D. James for Christmas. It's a small book, but packed with information about a form of fiction at which Mrs. James excels.

She writes:

"So what exactly are we talking about when we use the words 'detective story,' and how does it differ from both the mainstream novel and crime fiction, and how did it all begin?...

"Although the detective story at its highest can also operate on the dangerous edge of things, it is differentiated both from mainstream fiction and from the generality of crime novels by a highly organised (sic) structure and recognised (sic) conventions. What we can expect is a central mysterious crime, usually murder; a closed circle of suspects, each with motive, means, and opportunity for the crime; a detective, either amateur or professional, who comes in like an avenging deity to solve it; and, by the end of the book, a solution which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues inserted in the novel with deceptive cunning but essential fairness."

According to Mrs. James, detective fiction began either in1794 with the publication of Caleb Williams by William Godwin, or in 1868, when Wilkie Collins's novel, The Moonstone, was published.

My favorite part of the book was the chapter on the Golden Age of British detective fiction - the period between World War I and World War II. I loved reading about writers with whom I was familiar (Josephine Tey, Margery Allingham, etc.), but I was very happy to discover other writers unfamiliar to me (Edmund Crispin and Cyril Hare).

She also covered American detective fiction, and her description and analysis of it made me realize why I don't enjoy the stories of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler much - I'm not a fan of the hard-boiled, hard-talking, hard-living detective.

Another great chapter is the one titled "Four Formidable Women." In this chapter the fiction of Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh - four of my favorites - are compared.

This book was a good analysis of detective fiction - and it contained a very nice list of authors whose books I'll try to find. (From my 2010 reading list.)

The American Senator

Anthony Trollope's book, The American Senator was my final selection for my 2009 reading list. It was probably my favorite novel read this year.

The title is a bit misleading. It refers to one of the characters, but not the main character. However, through the eyes of this visiting American senator Trollope is able to gently ridicule some British habits and customs of his day. I think the title was appropriate - the senator's wonder and astonishment provide a good bit of the comedy in the story.

The main story is of a woman, Arabella, looking for a suitable husband. She is ruthless in her quest, yet the reader is also made to feel sorry for her. At the same time, another young woman is trying to avoid marriage to a nice man, suitable for marriage, but not suitable for her.

Trollope deftly weaves the stories together, keeps the reader engaged and amused, and ties it all up neatly in the end.

I love Trollope.

The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change

On my 2009 reading list I accidentally posted the 2nd edition of this book as the one I was to read. My copy of this book by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark and British science writer Nigel Calder is the first edition, The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change.

This was the best non-fiction book I read last year. It's interesting and understandable for the non-scientific lay-person (and it has pictures and graphs!).

From the back cover:

"A deftly written and enjoyable read, The Chilling Stars outlines a brilliant, daring and undoubtedly controversial new theory that will provoke fresh thinking about global warming.

As prize-winning science writer Nigel Calder and climate physicist Henrik Svensmark explain, an interplay of the clouds, the Sun and cosmic rays -- sub-atomic particles from exploded stars -- seems to have more effect on the climate than man-made carbon dioxide.

This conclusion stems from Svensmark's research at the Danish National Space Center which has recently shown that cosmic rays play an unsuspected role in making our everyday clouds. And during the last 100 years cosmic rays became scarcer because unusually vigorous action by the Sun batted many of them away. Fewer cosmic rays meant fewer clouds and a warmer world.

The theory, simply put here but explained in fascinating detail in the book, emerges at a time of intense public and political debate about climate change. Motivated only by their concern that science must be trustworthy, Svensmark and Calder invite their readers to put aside their preconceptions about man-made global warming and look afresh at the role of Nature in this hottest of world issues."

I read this book the first week in December, then saw this article in The Telegraph while the Copenhagen climate summit was going on. It made me even happier that I'd decided to read The Chilling Stars.

Did I mention that this was my favorite non-fiction book this year? I'm recommending it to everyone as a must-read.

A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World

In A Splendor of Letters, Nicholas Basbanes completes the trilogy he began with A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, and continued in Patience & Fortitude: A Roving Chronicle of Book People, Book Places, and Book Culture.

This book emphasizes books and libraries - their history and their destruction. He also writes of the history and how of electronic books. It would be nice to find out what he thinks of the current e-books, as his information on them is a bit dated (2003).

I was very interested in an e-book idea he learned about from Joseph M. Jacobson, an MIT professor.

"Unlike other reading machines that have flooded the market to decidedly mixed reviews, Jacobson's e-book will have the look, heft, and feel of an authentic codex. Unlike the others, which display their text on a single solid surface, Jacobson intends that his device will have a series of paper-like 'substrates' bound inside actual covers, creating what in essence are gatherings of resilient computer screens that have the appearance of conventional pages."

Maybe I could be persuaded to try an e-book like that.

First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps

First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps by Victor H. Krulak was on my 2009 reading list.

It's a brief, very readable history of the USMC, with more emphasis on the struggles the Marine Corps has faced to survive as a separate military entity than on the early years. Krulak gives an insider's view of the various attempts by the other branches of service to absorb or eradicate the Marines, but his writing isn't whiny or full of fault-finding.

Made me proud of my Marines.

1700

1700 by Maureen Waller was on my 2009 reading list. I read it, but I did not like it. It was nothing like London 1945.

Nasty, brutish, and short. That about sums up life in London in 1700. Immorality and excesses of every kind imaginable contributed to disease and crime. At the end of the book I was amazed to think that anyone survived such a cesspool long enough to father successive generations. It was a very depressing book.

If you want to read a book by Maureen Waller, skip this one and read London 1945 instead.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Elizabeth McCracken's memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination was on my 2009 reading list. I read it back in the summer and enjoyed it.

Yes, it's a sad book. The writer met a man, married him, lived happily, got pregnant - and the baby was stillborn. That's sad. But her thoughts and actions made sense, and she wrote well. Thankfully, it is not a long book. Otherwise it might be too hard to read.

I was glad to find out that she's since had two more children, and they are alive and well.

...and in with the new

Reading List for 2010

Here are my dozen must-reads for the year. I know I'll read more than 12 books this year, but limiting myself to only one per month as a book I have to read gives me a lot of latitude to read other books I hear of and see recommended by others, or those I happen upon serendipitously, while still giving me an illusion of discipline in my reading habits.

I like this quote from Samuel Johnson:

"A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good."

So here is my task-reading:


1. I received P.D. James's latest book, Talking about Detective Fiction for Christmas. Looks like it will be interesting, though I'm hoping she'll soon write another mystery featuring Adam Dalgliesh.



2. Steve and I decided to give all the older children books by Ayn Rand for Christmas. Each child, from Tom to David, received his or her own copies of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, Anthem, and We the Living. As I was wrapping the books, I realized I had never read We the Living, so I plan to read it this year.



3. The library discarded some books by Elizabeth Goudge, so I scooped up an armload and brought them home. Two I'd read as a child. Four I'd read in the past decade. One I have not read: Towers in the Mist.




4. In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden is another library discard. I have a paperback copy I've been meaning to read, but this hardcover edition will be easier to read while knitting!



5. Marvin Olasky recommended Michael Jones's book, Leningrad: State of Siege and I got a copy through PaperBackSwap last year. I think it will pair nicely with We the Living.




6. Last year Steve and I spent a few days at a resort patterned after Addison Mizner's style of architecture. Since then I've wanted to learn more about him and his influence on the architecture of southern Florida. I found this book, The Legendary Mizners, by Alva Johnston, and I think it will satisfy my curiosity.




7. Touted as what one reads after finishing all of Jane Austen's works, The Semi-Attached Couple by Emily Eden looks interesting, and was written around the same time as Anthony Trollope's novels. Trollope's books always make great reading, and I'm hoping to be pleased with this book, too.




8. I've read and re-read all of Barbara Pym's novels, and Elizabeth Taylor has been favorably compared to Pym. I think she's worth trying, so I'll be reading In a Summer Season.




9. Somewhere I read that Georgette Heyer was not as nice as her heroines. I bought Jane Aiken Hodge's biography of Heyer, The Private World of Georgette Heyer, several years ago, but have been too timid to read it - and have my illusions dashed to pieces. This year I'm reading it and living with the consequences.



10. I know very little about physics, but I read that Richard Feynman made physics accessible for the layman. If "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" is any good, you can bet my children will be reading it as part of their curriculum in the future.



11. I love novels by Anthony Trollope, but The West Indies and The Spanish Main will be the first travelogue/non-fiction book by him that I will read.



12. One of my English professors at Auburn University was educated at Vanderbilt and was greatly influenced by Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, and Donald Davidson. Because of Dr. Allen, I can't pass up anything by any of the Southern Agrarians, so when the library put this book in the discard pile I got it and will read it this year. My copy is titled Attack on Leviathan: Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States.

Out with the old...

Here's the list of books I read in 2009:

January
Dewey:The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World - Vicki Myron
Murder in Miniature - Margaret Grace
A Cure for Dreams - Kaye Gibbons
Nathan Coulter - Wendell Berry
What's So Great about Christianity? - Dinesh D'Sousa
Fidelity - Wendell Berry
Death by Cashmere - Sally Goldbaum
The Castle in the Attic - Elizabeth Winthrop
Thai Die - Monica Ferris
Bath Tangle - Georgette Heyer
Andy Catlett: Early Travels - Wendell Berry

February
Enquiry - Dick Francis
The Memory of Old Jack - Wendell Berry
Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World - Rebecca Manley Pippert
Emil and the Detectives - Erich Kastner
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can't Make Him Think - Ray Comfort
An Irish Country Doctor - Patrick Taylor
A World Lost - Wendell Berry

March
The Reason for God - Timothy Keller
Espresso Tales - Alexander McCall Smith
Love Over Scotland - Alexander McCall Smith
The Wild Birds - Wendell Berry
The World According to Bertie - Alexander McCall Smith
The Antioch Effect - Ken Hemphill
Remembering - Wendell Berry
That Distant Land - Wendell Berry
Paths of Glory - Jeffrey Archer

April
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - David Wroblewski
Death of a Witch - M.C. Beaton
Real Education - Charles Murray
The Beach Street Knitting and Yarn Society - Gil MacNeil
Teatime for the Traditionally Built - Alexander McCall Smith

May
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Mighty Queens of Freeville - Amy Dickinson
Natural Elements - Richard Mason
Waiting for the Weekend - Witold Rybczynski
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - Jamie Ford
The Servants' Quarters - Lynn Freed
These Old Shades - Georgette Heyer
My Spy: Memoir of a CIA Wife - Bina Cady Kiyonaga
The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton

June
Because the Time is Near - John MacArthur
Dropped Dead Stitch - Maggie Sefton
Knit Two - Kate Jacobs
The Lost Quilter - Jennifer Chiaverini
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese
The Angel's Game - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

July
Village School - Miss Read
Village Diary - Miss Read
Storm in the Village - Miss Read
Miss Clare Remembers - Miss Read
The Enemy Within - Kris Lundgaard

August
Ripping Things to Do - Jane Brocket
Home Safe - Elizabeth Berg
Fishing for Gold - Karni Perez
Over the Gate - Miss Read
Village Christmas - Miss Read
The Fairacre Festival - Miss Read
Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer - Jane Brocket
The White Robin - Miss Read

September
Editions and Impressions - Nicholas Basbanes
Three Cheers, Secret Seven - Enid Blyton
Patterns in the Sand - Sally Goldenbaum
The Wednesday Wars - Gary D. Schmidt
Tyler's Row - Miss Read
Uncle Sam's Plantation - Star Parker
Losing Mum and Pup - Christopher Buckley
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination - Elizabeth McCracken

October
There Goes the Bride - M.C. Beaton
Fatally Flaky - Diane Mott Davidson
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - Alan Bradley
Quench the Lamp - Alice Taylor
Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age - Arthur Herman
The Clockwork Twin - Walter Brooks
My Friends, the Miss Boyds - Jane Duncan

November
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals - Gillian Gill
Captains Courageous - Rudyard Kipling
1700 - Maureen Waller
Rereadings - Anne Fadiman, editor
End the Fed - Ron Paul
The Lost Art of Gratitude - Alexander McCall Smith

December
Dead Men Don't Crochet - Betty Hechtman
The American Senator - Anthony Trollope
The Chilling Stars - Nigel Calder and Henrik Svensmark
First to Fight - Victor Krulak
Even Money - Dick Francis and Felix Francis
SuperFreakonomics - Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
La's Orchestra Saves the World - Alexander McCall Smith
A Rumpole Christmas - John Mortimer
The Pioneer Woman Cooks - Ree Drummond
In the President's Secret Service - Ronald Kessler
Family Album - Penelope Lively
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
100 Cupboards - N.D. Wilson
A Splendor of Letters - Nicholas Basbanes

Fishing for Gold: The Story of Alabama's Catfish Industry

I found Karni Perez's book, Fishing for Gold: The Story of Alabama's Catfish Industry by accident while browsing PaperBackSwap one day. I requested it and put it on my 2009 reading list.

It is an interesting and thorough history, and I recognized some of the names of the people who pioneered the industry in Alabama, and those at Auburn University whose research aided the farmers. Would anyone else read this book? I don't know. I'm not a fisherman, nor am I a farmer, but the book really was more of a story than a compilation of data. It reminded me of Wendell Berry's fiction.

From the chapter, Reflections:

"Alabama's catfish industry has some unique qualities. For one, it is family-based. Alabama's farms are operated typically by the farmers rather than by hired managers. Farmers and family do much of the work themselves. This has strengthened the Alabama industry because the farmers care about their work and about making it succeed."

"...[T]he farmers want to continue living in a rural environment, on the land that, in many cases, has belonged to their family in a tradition of farming... Consider, for example, what one West Alabama farmer expresses: 'I loved the site where the ponds were built. I liked being down there. We were on a running creek with a little sand on it. I'd grown up in the prairie, and I was fascinated with the site. And I've always loved water, so I liked the idea of these vast areas of water. Back then, a ten-acre pond was a tremendous body of water, and I loved seeing that.' "

"Farmers working the land on which they live develop a knowledge of the land and a relationship with it, a feeling for the natural conditions... [A]n experienced farmer can probably walk out of the house in the morning, smell the air, and know how much his fish are going to eat. Living in rural areas, they also possess an independence and resourcefulness that comes from having dealt with and solved all kinds of problems on the farm from day to day."

(This next part struck me as something with which Wendell Berry would agree.)
"Second, Alabama's industry is also community-based. Fish production, processing, and sales all take place generally in the same communities. The farmers tend to live within a close area and see each other frequently. Most appear to be active in their communities. Often they are friends, go to church together, go to school functions together, play ball together, and watch their children play ball together. Members of the small farming communities generally know much of what their neighbors are doing. Researchers have found that word-of-mouth is a primary way in which ideas and information travel in agrarian communities, and when a farmer made money with his ponds or increased his acreage, the word spread quickly."

"Benefits occur when an industry is anchored solidly within a community. One such benefit is the informal resolution of conflicts and problems that might otherwise be disruptive and destructive to both the industry and the community. Years of associating with each other as peers in a variety of contexts tends to result in a certain level of trust."

These Old Shades

One of the books on my reading list for 2009 was a novel by Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades.

Unlike previous novels by Heyer that I've read, this one was set in France, rather than England. It involves a dissipated duke, intent on revenge, and a case of mistaken - or possibly, changed - identity. I found it somewhat similar to some of Shakespeare's comedies with touch of Pygmalion.

Good diversionary reading for summer.

Waiting for the Weekend

I chose Waiting for the Weekend by Witold Rybczynski as the April book for my 2009 reading list.

While I did start reading it in April, I just now finished it. It was not as gripping as several other of Mr. Rybczynski's books that I've read and it took me a few chapters of reading before I was really interested in the subject matter: the weekend. Leisure time isn't a subject one generally wants to spend much time or energy contemplating, unless one is planning the activities for the weekend - and that's where the book gets interesting.

What I take for granted was not always in existence. The two-day weekend of Saturday and Sunday is a very recent innovation. Various nations and cultures throughout history have had holidays, festival days, and religious celebrations, but typically those particular days had their own rules and activities. The idea of a day or days to what one wants - or choose to do nothing - is modern and was helped into being by a confluence of several things - at least, Rybczynski makes a good argument for them: the Industrial Revolution; labor unions; the automobile as personal transportation; and solitary reading.

"The privatization of reading has been called one of the major cultural developments of the early modern era. It was also a milestone in the history of leisure. Solitary reading is the ideal vehicle for individual leisure. The reader can do something--or nothing. He can pick up one book or another. He sets the pace, reading uninterruptedly or leafing through a book at random, letting his imagination free to make what connections it will. Reading requires long periods of calm--at the comfortable rate of two hundred words a minute, it takes about fifteen hours to complete a typical novel. Reflection, contemplation, privacy, and solitude are associated with reading books. And withdrawal. Both withdrawal from the world around one, from the cares of everyday life, and withdrawal into oneself."

This book ended better than it began - sort of like the weekend after the work-week.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski was one of the books on my reading list for this year. I bought the book when it was first published, but hesitated to read it because of reviews I'd read and remarks by friends who had read it. Thankfully, no one spoiled the story for me, but having heard that it was a "disturbing" book, I decided to wait until I felt very cheerful to read it.

I should not have worried. It is a well-written, interesting story-- one that was hard to put down. I won't give away the plot, and I'd recommend to anyone else that you don't read the dust-jacket or any summaries in order to fully enjoy the book.

My overwhelming thoughts after finishing reading it were that bitterness, selfishness, and a need for revenge can destroy any chance of contentment and happiness in the life of an individual. Kindness and goodness may not bring material rewards, but they still are what makes a life that matters both to an individual and to others.

Reading list for G20 leaders

Courtesy of the Telegraph :

An alternative reading list.

The comments are full of good reading suggestions for those leaders and politicians, too.

A World Lost

I read Wendell Berry's book, A World Lost last month, got busy, and forgot to post anything about it.

It's a good thing this novel is a short one. It was sad and mysterious, but the sadness wasn't lightened nor was the mystery solved in the end. I probably could not have finished it had it been a longer book, as I found the story emotionally demanding.

This story is about Andy Catlett's Uncle Andrew and Andy's recollection of Andrew and the day he was murdered. Andy's feelings for his uncle are intertwined with his emotions at leaving behind the innocence of childhood.

"When I opened the door my father and Cousin Thelma quit talking. Cousin Thelma smiled at me and said, 'Hello, Andy, my sweet.'

My father smiled at me too, but he did not say anything. He stood, held out his hand to me, and I took it. He led me out into the hall and up the stairs.

And I remember how terribly I did not want to go. I had come out of the great free outdoor world of my childhood--the world in which, in my childish fantasies, I hoped someday to be a man. But my father, even more than my mother with her peach switch, was the messenger of another world, in which, as I unwillingly knew, I was already involved in expectation and obligation, difficulty and sorrow. It was as if I knew this even from my father's smile, from the very touch of his hand. Later I would understand how surely even then he had begun to lead me to some of the world's truest pleasures, but I was far from such understanding then."

In the rest of the book, Andy gives details about Uncle Andrew - his life and his relationship with the rest of the Catletts and others in Hargrave and Port William. Andrew appeared to be a kind of hard-living ne'er-do-well who didn't do much. His story was dark and subtly destructive. Yet Andy and Wheeler loved him.

Although Andy does not resolve to his satisfaction the reason for Andrew's death, nor the answer to his own question, "What manner of man was he?" he does come up with a way to soothe himself:

"Remembering, I suppose, the best days of my childhood, I used to think I wanted most of all to be happy--by which I meant to be here and to be undistracted. If I were here and undistracted, I thought, I would be at home.

But now I have been here a fair amount of time, and slowly I have learned that my true home is not just this place but is also that company of immortals with whom I have lived here day by day. I live in their love, and I know something of the cost. Sometimes in the darkness of my own shadow I know that I could not see at all were it not for this old injury of love and grief, this little flickering lamp that I have watched beside all these years."

What's So Great about Christianity?

What's So Great about Christianity? by Dinesh D'Souza was the first book on my reading list for this year.

Mr. D'Souza states his purpose clearly in the preface:


"Taking as my foil the anti-religious arguments of prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and the others, in this book I will demonstrate the following:

1. Christianity is the main foundation of Western civilization, the root of our most cherished values.
2. The latest discoveries of modern science support the Christian claim that there is a divine being who created the universe.
3. Darwin's theory of evolution, far from undermining the evidence for supernatural design, actually strengthens it.
4. There is nothing in science that makes miracles impossible.
5. It is reasonable to have faith.
6. Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the mass murders of history.
7. Atheism is motivated not by reason but by a kind of cowardly moral escapism.

I end this book by showing what is unique about Christianity and how our lives change if we become Christians."


And here are a couple of paragraphs that stood out for me:

"The aversion to religion and the embrace of atheism becomes especially baffling when you consider that, on the face of it, atheism is a dismal ideology. Many atheists like to portray themselves as noble figures venturing into the cold night, raging against the dying of the light, and facing the pointlessness of it all. This strikes me as a bit of a pose, and an inauthentic and slightly comic one at that. As Michael Novak observes, if there is no God, what is there to rage at? Is it brave to spit in the face of a volcano or a tidal wave? Natural forces are neither good not evil; they just are. So where does heroism come in if atheists are merely taking the world as it is?"

"My conclusion is that contrary to popular belief, atheism is not primarily an intellectual revolt, it is a moral revolt. Atheists don't find God invisible so much as objectionable. They aren't adjusting their desires to the truth, but rather the truth to fit their desires. This is something we can all identify with. It is a temptation even for believers. We want to be saved as long as we are not saved from our sins. We are quite willing to be saved from a whole host of social evils, from poverty to disease to war. But we want to leave untouched the personal evils, such as selfishness and lechery and pride. We need spiritual healing, but we do not want it. Like a supervisory parent, God gets in our way. This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of sin and depravity. The atheist seeks to get rid of moral judgement by getting rid of the judge."


This is an excellent book for any Christian wanting to marshal his arguments before conversing with skeptics. I think this is also good reading for high school students, especially those preparing for college.