Tue 14 Nov 2006
I’m STILL getting a lot of reading done. And tomorrow I get to pick up my glazed stuff at the pottery studio. Yay. Still no word on my most recent interview.
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Book |
Author |
Genre |
Status |
Notes |
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Jane Hamilton |
Fiction |
Finished |
A version of that old story: resilient young woman rises above poverty and suffering to find dignity and meaning. Blah blah. She shouldn’t have married a known psycho, if you ask me. |
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Neal Stevenson |
Science Fiction |
Finished |
As with most Sci-Fi, the set-up takes a really long time. But after 60 pages I got sucked in. Awesome! A computer virus that infects your brain! This guy apparently invented 3-d virtual reality and avatars in 1992 |
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Tobias Wolff |
Memoir |
Finished |
“This sepulchral atmosphere owed a lot ot the presence of Mrs. Taylor herself. She was a tall, stooped woman with deep-set eyes. She sat in her living room all day long and chain-smoked cigarettes and stared out the picture window with an air of unutterable sadness, as if she knew things beyond mortal bearing. Sometimes she would call Taylor over and wrap her long arms around him, then close her eyes and hoarsely whisper, ‘Terence! Terence!’ Eyes still closed, she would turn her head and resolutely push him away.” |
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Richard Shelton |
Creative Nonfiction |
70% |
Now this is a good book about Arizona desert. Cacti, squirrel invasions, water, natives, miners, cowboys, ranchers, shysters, mexicans, mormons, railroads, and unfortunate attempts at “southwestern” Christmas trees. “I have never been injured by an animal in the desert and have been bitten by only one snake– it was in my own kitchen and completely my fault–but I have been attacked and injured by thousands of plants.” |
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John Milton |
Poetry |
Into Book 5 (slowly but surely!) |
Satan’s unheard words to Adam and Eve: “Live while ye may,/Yet happy pair; enjoy, till I return,/ Short pleasures; for long woes are to succeed.” MWA HA HA HAH (I added the evil laugh for effect) |
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Lucia Perillo |
Poetry |
Finished |
Many of her poems are better than mine, but there is something familiar about them. An idiom, a mode, a vocabulary, an approach. She goes on the shelf of “poets to learn from.” |
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Charles Wright |
Poetry |
25% complete |
One of the modern kings of philosophical nature poetry.”Swallows are flying grief-circles over their featherless young.” |
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Donald Barthelme |
Essays and Interviews |
20% complete |
Barthelme’s short story, “The School,” is one of my all-time favorites Here he discusses his philosphy of writing in a witty, at times disingenuous, yet still compelling manner. Take this opening: “Let us suppose that someone is writing a story. From the world of conventional signs he takes an azalea bush, plants it in a pleasant park. He takes a gold pocket watch from the world of conventional signs and places it under the azalea bush. … What happens next? Of course, I don’t know. It’s appropriate to pause and say that a writer is one who, embarking upon a task, does not know what to do.” |
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Wealth, Riches and Money: God’s Biblical Principles of Finance |
Craig Hill and Earl Pitts |
Self Help |
40%– that’s as far as I could get. |
Could not get through this book. The principles are likely sound, though anytime someone draws a complicated diagram and says that it expresses the REAL truth of scripture that no one else has yet hit upon, I get suspicious. I just can’t relate to self-help books. The capitalization and bold facing of important vocabulary words; the little charts with arrows; the constant repetition of self-evident observations. It’s the reading equivalent of eating stale Mike and Ikes all day long. |
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G.E. Ladd |
Theology, Criticism |
25% |
Not the book by him I wanted to read (the other was lost at the library), but interesting and engaging. He discusses the intersection between God’s Word and its human writers, very sensibly. |
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E.B. White |
Children’s Fiction |
Finished |
It’s been awhile since I visited these classics. I didn’t cry when Charlotte died this time, but I did get a few more of the jokes in Stuart Little. Ah, E.B. White! A treasure. |
November 14th, 2006 at 7:59 am
Whoa. That’s some serious Ladd you got there.
The more I think about it, the more I think you’ll dig Volf’s ‘Exclusion and Embrace’.
Viva la joblessness!
November 14th, 2006 at 10:46 am
I’m in the throes of such intense envy that it’s bringing tears to my eyes.
Wow.
Why can’t we all live two or three lives at once? Come on, now. Is that SO much to ask??
November 14th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Mike– Yes, I\’m still looking for that Volf book… looks like I\’ll have to get the good Dr. to order it via inter-library loan, since none of the ones I have access to carry it.
Kate– I second your \”two lives at once\” motion. Let\’s start a lobbying group and see if we can\’t get some legislation passed to allow it.
Anybody– if anyone can recommend a good book on handling money both sensibly and morally, please let me know.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:42 am
Hey Erin,
Try Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover & Scott Kay’s Richest Man that Ever Lived — the latter is a little broader and isn’t targeted to specific money strategies. They are both at Barnes & if you can’t stomach either one, let me know. Also, I love to talk about this stuff if you ever have a specific question you want to discuss
November 15th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Thanks, Julie. I’ll check them out. someone just mentioned, arbitrarily, that “richest man” book yesterday at home group. I also have since recalled “Freedom of Simplicity” by Richard Foster, which I haven’t reread for a few years. I’ll give you a call once you’re back from vacation.
November 27th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
What? I was hooked on the first or second page of Snow Crash. Then it did move kind of slowly for a while though.
My lingering question after reading it was: to what extent is the story a (recursive) retelling of the Enki myth? Y.T. and/or Juanita (Ninhursag/Ivanna?) go to the world of the dead (the Raft), seduce and disable Raven (Enki?) so that the rescue party (Hiro) can get in, and they eventually release the nam-shub of Enki which revitalizes the culture by immunizing against the virus. But then at the end nothing matches up…
If the correspondence is there, it’s really cool, kind of like Hamlet’s play within a play or whatever.
One other thing I appreciate is how Stephenson treats different worldviews with sympathy within the novel — you don’t know at the end just what he prefers (but maybe he’s just a noncommittal postmodern agnostic). A refreshing change though from Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, which I also read this summer and is basically a gnostic tract. Yuck.
On money, is it too hokey to recommend Proverbs? Bruce Waltke preaches well about money from Proverbs… you may find his recent commentary on Proverbs helpful too?
On the N.T., I have to recommend anything by N.T. Wright - if you have time to tackle his three huge, scholarly and excellent 600pp+ tomes in the “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series I can lend them to you, or you may want to try The Challenge of Jesus which is the non-scholarly-footnote-filled 202 page version but which I haven’t read…
November 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Hey, Erin ~ I have some goodies for you. I asked my own wise resource for responsibly & “morally” handling finances, and he gave me a book for you called Living Financially free by James L. Paris. He also made a CD of a Mike Bickle teaching entitled “The Kingdom Paradigm of Finances and Business” (which he described as “advanced” principles after the basics are nailed down). He also said that “you can’t go wrong with any of Larry Burkett’s stuff.”
November 28th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Nate– Most Christian finance books seem to be based on Proverbs, so no, I wouldn’t say it’s cheesy to suggest! TX
For Snow Crash, I think it is a re-telling. Juanita in particular seems to see herself as the new incarnation of that goddess/rescuer, and it makes sense that there would be different characters in the story that would express different characteristics of the heroes. Hiro also becomes more like that librarian guy that got killed, as the story goes along, so that’s another character dyad (along with yt/juanita). But though the storytelling parallels are interesting, the mythology itself kind of dragged the story down.
I haven’t picked up N.T. Wright since college. Once I get through Ladd and Volf I will revisit.
Karen– thanks for the leads!
November 29th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Good points about Snow Crash. I suppose Raven/Enzo are kind of another dyad. The 3 ring binder is the “me” or software that greases the wheels of all the sub-societies but enslaves the brainless rule-followers, but Enzo, the Enki of the society, subverts this by basing the Mafia on personal commitments, “the only way to prevent it from becoming a self-sustaining ideology”. Does that make any sense?
December 1st, 2006 at 10:50 pm
Hey, Erin ~ The book & CD are not leads, they’re actual items for YOU to KEEP. Silly.