https://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2017/09/book-review-alias-grace.html
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Jim Geraghty recommends a "reform" that makes sense...it's sort of what this web site was getting at when we quoted the Bible story about "Not a thread nor a shoe latchet." Is that story (Genesis 14) no longer familiar? It used to be...one of the battle stories boys were supposed to like. The cities of the plain were at war, five kings against four kings. Lot and his family were taken prisoner. Abram, later called Abraham, and his hired men rode in to the rescue, not only of Lot and his family, but of the wicked King of Sodom. The King of Sodom offered Abram money, whatever he wanted from the spoils of war, but Abram didn't want his prophetic/preaching/teaching ministry compromised so he said he wanted "Not a thread nor a shoe latchet, lest you should say 'I have made Abram rich'."
Here in the point of Virginia, we've been told for a long time that everybody else in North America has more money than we have (which is no longer true, if it ever was). For many the measure of a Congressman is how much federal funding he can draw into various public projects, and of course the price of all that funding is that we have to support legislation we neither want nor need. It would be extremely empowering if we started saying, "Not a thread nor a shoe latchet." Or, "Instead of letting outsiders manage 'services for' us, why aren't we encouraging our own young people to provide those services?" Sucking money in from outside of our town, county, or corner of the State is all very well, but there is also something to be said for laying down the vacuum hose now and then and allowing our own money to grow.
Wendy Welch recommends a novel about the high human cost of our National Parks. Some correspondents have, in the past, expressed surprise that parks, lakes, and parkways they know were pried away from people who lived on that land...Grandma Bonnie Peters lived in a lot of places in her eighty-some years, but the town where she put in most of her school years, had friends, and felt "at home" was turned into a lake during her twelfth grade year.
Wendy Welch has a bookstore. Why would a book blog discuss someone else's real bookstore? Aren't all booksellers in competition with each other? That was before Amazon. Many bookstores have their own affiliate accounts to support, but you can always ask them to use a link you see here.
Everyone who went to school in Virginia used to be required to study the biography and collected letters of Robert E. Lee, who was of course a Real Hero and a Perfect Virginia Gentleman, though some of us down here in the point of Virginia aren't as thrilled with his determination to protect Northern Virginia (at our ancestors' expense) as people in Alexandria...well, it was a long time ago, anyway. This web site has recommended General Lee's letters before, too. General Grant, with professional help from a Real Writer, published a long series of memoirs...I'm not claiming to have read those, but I'll get around to it one of these days. Meanwhile, the publisher is proud to announce brisk online sales in a one-volume biography that makes the case that General Grant was at least an interesting character, not just the short guy in the famous picture. A hero? Well, as this web site has noted, General Lee not only shook his hand but endorsed his political campaign. I'd read a single volume about Hiram Ulysses, a.k.a. Ulysses Simpson, Grant.
Tom Hanks (via Goodreads) recommends this history of one of the most useful gadgets ever invented. If you still own one, cherish it; we'll be refurbishing and using them when the Internet's gone. (Keep slowing down my e-mail, Yahoo. I made more money on typewriters.)
Fair disclosure: I have read Jung Chang's Wild Swans, so it was nice to find A.J. Jacobs recommending it too. Family story told as novel, lots of fun facts about China including descriptions of wheat-based Chinese food, long but thoroughly enjoyable read.
Why will you (if you don't already) like these three volumes of memoirs? Because Durrell was one of the world's most charismatic zookeepers, because he was good at painting word pictures, or because his stories are hilarious? I own the first two volumes; I'd like to read the third.
I see one thing not to like about Michael Finkel's book right away. The publisher calls the character (reportedly a real man) a "true hermit." He wasn't. He stole what he needed from other people. You can be a hermit, in spiritual retreat from the busy world, or you can be a thief; not both. So, I'll link to a book by a real hermit (a Jewish-born "Anglican Solitary" who worked urban and foreign missions when younger and became a hermit around retirement age) below. This story of a smart, quirky thief also appeals to me.
Maria Tatar recommends Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, another book I enjoyed and don't mind recommending again. Amazon is showing a new edition with bikini-clad females on the cover. There are beach scenes in the story, but I think the book is better represented by this cover.
"Old" is relative...to your health, or that of the relative you're asking. I had a school friend who'd inherited a disaster gene and was "old," relative to her life expectancy, and made an Elder of her hometown church, at twenty. Most of my relatives below age 80 will allow that 80 is "old," but those over 90 have disagreed (sometimes with themselves) whether "old" starts at 90 or at 100. Here's a 40-year-old sprout with the nerve to write about being "older," apparently in real life, yet, as distinct from cyberspace...well, the publisher says it's funny; I'm sure it is.
Samantha Irby's blog title contains a word this blog's contract bans, but Goodreads readers rated her book high. That cat picture is worth sharing in any case...I love kittens like that. I back off and let'em think they're being as nasty as they wanna be. In a day or two most of them are purring and cuddling.
Science fiction writers who want to send characters through space must read Scott Kelly's memoir, describing what a long space flight was really like. I think we'd better focus on ending population growth on Earth rather than count on people being able to live in space...
Anne Lamott...I don't need to introduce her to many people! If you missed the first couple times I said it: if you like the way I write, you'll love the way Anne Lamott writes. New book by her? Run don't walk.
Some people who buy books from me in real life ask for more "Westerns." Some of the guys at the National Review can relate. They recommend this collection. The picture's not showing up very clearly for me...it's The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard.
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| This link should give NRO-guys their commission. |
C.S. Lewis took a crack at the classic problem of reconciling the two ways Christians have traditionally understood pain: as a natural effect of various natural causes, or as an experience that may sometimes have spiritual value. Some translations of his book used his metaphor, "Pain can become God's megaphone," for their titles. Contrary to what some correspondents may think, I agree that pain can become God's megaphone, though I suspect I would have disagreed with Lewis about the probability either that people will learn anything from pain more "spiritual" than things like "Handling red-hot objects really messes up the skin," or, consequently, that God has any particular use for the pain most people feel.
Lewis was suspiciously compassionate about homosexuality when it was still a crime in England, not just because one of his long-term friends was "gay," but...you can read what he confessed to that friend, here. I think his pre-Christian attitudes toward corporal punishment, which were literally pounded into him by his society, are a separate branch on the same tree with his willingness to believe that pain was God's megaphone. That he was physically abused and bullied into accepting physical abuse as a teaching method doesn't invalidate his belief that people learn from pain; it does suggest that he was more optimistic about the frequency of people's learning anything good from pain than the facts may justify.
Someone Out There wants to see more in praise of the late, great Terry Pratchett. The Discworld novels aren't classic fantasies, aren't science fiction....some of them are simple, kid-friendly, funny stories that adults happen to enjoy too, and some of them are very grown-up (never "adult" in the crasser sense, though) and thought-provoking. All of them that I've read are extremely funny, though full of dare-to-be-trendy anti-Christian wisecracks. Different printings have different jacket designs and even this late volume, Volume 33, has been reprinted in half a dozen different forms.
+Ruth Cox (and Valentino) recommend the classic Beautiful Joe...let's see how this web site can handle that Amazon link...
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| The dog wasn't as handsome as Valentino; that's the point, or one of them. |
A correspondent mentions Dorothy Sayers' Strong Poison, the one of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels where Wimsey defends the suspect he marries a few volumes later. I think I've read, and think I own, all the Wimsey novels. They've been highly recommended by lovers of detective stories for a long time; they even appeal to people who, like me, don't particularly care for detective stories. In contrast to some other series' detectives and suspects that are presented strictly as playing pieces in the game of solving the mystery, Sayers put so much loving (Christian loving, although her characters aren't religious) care into developing Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane as characters that some critics have suggested they were the children she wished she'd had.
I was too young to appreciate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn during his lifetime. I'm not, now. Jim Geraghty shared this link to a book of his that I've not read yet:
Mudpie recommends Sandi Ward's Astonishing Thing, chick-lit from the cat's point of view:
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| Click here to buy it from Mudpie's Human. |
Now, about hermits...down at the end of the alphabet comes Anna Zilboorg, Virginia's best known knitter. Well, she wasn't born a Virginian any more than she was born a knitter. She wasn't born a Christian, either, and after becoming a Christian she had other ministries, involving an urban group house and travel overseas, before "retiring" to a solitary life in southwestern Virginia. She became a sort of heroine of mine after telling Alexis Xenakis that, when brats in a supermarket whispered that she "looks like a witch," she growled "I am a witch!"--while receiving a stipend from the Anglican church as a solitary artist/writer. She also told Xenakis, in the same interview, that while the serious desert hermits of the early church lived alone in retreat from worldly society, they were never barred from receiving or even becoming occasional visitors, so being a solitary artist was not incompatible with displaying her gorgeous yarns and knits and even autographing her books at Stitches Fair. Being a hermit means living alone, praying a lot, working a lot, not socializing much; it does not mean turning against people or stealing their things. In fact, contacts in her sponsoring church tell me, in order to be recognized as a "solitary" Religious Person you have to be doing some sort of solitary scholarly or creative work that churchgoers respect as a ministry. Real hermits don't have to punch a time clock or chatter on coffee breaks, they can communicate with their customers and co-workers by mail, but they Are Doing Real Jobs. Not only are they forbidden to steal; the Christian kind aren't even allowed to beg.
That's her newest book, the one that's on my Wish List, but while we're here, why not mention the book of hers that has more than paid for itself. These hats go in and out of fashion. They were all originally knitted in vivid Eastern European color combinations, which look good next to high-contrast, black-haired, fair-skinned Eastern European faces. If you don't want strangers to eye your hat and smile, there's no rule against knitting plainer versions in black and white, or in team colors to wear at a game. I've made some plain-and-fancy versions--instead of red, blue, purple, and gold, say, knit one in black merino, white mohair, pale grey silk, and silver lurex. Whether knitted in two colors or can-I-work-in-twenty-different-scraps, they sell. (And yes, people in Washington wear those pentagons.)
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