I suppose I should try to keep in the habit of posting here… but I’m never sure of what to post. Do my posts have a soporific effect? Are they worth the time? And, sighs-I, what should I post about? My life is not thrilling. Now, if I were to write you from a high mountain in Tibet one week and then a British lowland county the next, then things would be different. Because that can’t happen right now, however, I must needs read about the places I wish to see someday. Last week I finished “Bella Tuscany,” the sequel to “Under the Tuscan Sun.” Mayes’ writing was just as luscious, but she (unfortunately) imbibed a bit more in her San Francisco Politically Correct doctrines a bit more than in UtTS. She did have a delicious passage about trying to read in a foreign language, how very difficult that is, and how she now has a greater appreciation for cover art on novels since that is as far as she will get in them.
Last year I read 61 books, an average of five books a month. This was a cheering number. This year has not proved so fruitful yet. I have read a grand total of two books to date. Revealing my gluttonous nature (see the quote the Deputy Headmistress posted today), I am currently working on reading three others:
The New Americans by Michael Barone – I have less than 100 pages left in this, and have no qualms about highly recommending it. It is an excellent look at America’s immigration patterns over the last 150 years. It provides a great deal of data supporting the idea that it’s not the immigration influx that is the problem, that we’re not going through anything new in the history of our country, that it is the way we handle assimilation nowadays that makes it so much more difficult. The way he presents some of his data is redundant, but that’s just a minor annoyance in an otherwise thoughtful and useful book.
The Four Loves by C. S. Lewis – This is a slow read, not because it is dull, but because there is so much to gain from it. Everybody should know how good C. S. Lewis is, so I shan’t attempt praising him more lest I fall prey to using too many exuberant phrases. I simply shall say: Read.
The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer – This is also a “slower” read, as this is an incredibly practical book that has the reader stopping to contemplate what could be done differently in her life. She has come to the depressing conclusion that there are many things that could be done differently. One slight change has been made (a change revealing the reader’s laziness): there is now a vase on the cabinet in the bedroom, a vase awaiting many lovely plants…. once the temperature rises above freezing, that is. And the reader has also spent some time pummeling through her bedroom clearing some space.
[I am well aware that I switched from first to third person above. Do not ask me why, there was no reason to it.]
Today is a day to do many things. I shall be updating my site, am hoping to respond to Thing-One on Keats, really should get a start on geography homework, and see if I can finish “The New Americans.”
*pokes the Gentle Reader.* I am finished now, you may wake up.
5 Comments
Britain doesn’t have provinces!
No, it doesn’t. Too many geography sessions spent on countries that do. *is mortified and goes off to fix it*
(oh! I like the Deputy Headmistress’ idea: “We just put that in there to see if anyone was reading.”)
I read the Hidden Art of Homemaking last year in school. It was very interesting and though-provoking, but I think a ruthless editor would have done it good.;-)
Maybe it’s just me, but I thought it a bit repetitious in spots. However, it did spur me on to many such ‘vase on the dresser’ projects which turned out good in the end, so I guess it accomplishes what it needs to. I just it would make it’s accomplishing a bit more swift and to the point!
HA is somewhat repetitious, but that might be good for me.
Ah so. If that’s why Fa-So-La-La’s desk area has improved so dramatically, then I believe it may be time to quietly insert this title into The Shieldmaiden’s next school term. (ahem)