What I Read and Watched this Summer 2023

We were on the road most of July and didn't watch anything. But in August we settled into our apartment and had a few evenings free to use my Hoopla account. I like Hallmark mysteries but the Darrow and Darrow pilot was a huge disappointment. Not only was it cheesy, the acting and script were embarrassingly bad. The way the case was solved went against one the chief rules of detective fiction: a true mystery must include clues that the reader (or viewer) can see for themselves. The resolution of the mystery cannot come out of nowhere. Secondly was Dog Jack (a true Civil War story), which was also poorly acted and scripted.  On the bright side, we really enjoyed C.S. Lewis: The Most Reluctant Convert, which we watched at a friend's house.

My reading choices paid much bigger dividends. Except for Le Morte d'Arthur, which I ditched after 15 hours (of the 30 hour audiobook), everything else I read in July was good: Thornyhold by Mary Stewart, The Musgraves by D.E. Stevenson, The Truth and Beauty by Klavan, and the vintage novel, The Clue of the Twisted Candle, by Edgar Wallace. In August I enjoyed Deborah Crombie's A Share in Death. Because it was an audiobook, I could not skip over the swearing, but I thought Crombie's prose was exceptionally beautiful. I liked her detective and his sidekick too. Finally, I read Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb, which I loved. (review forthcoming)

All of these titles are reviewed on Goodreads, but I cannot figure out how to link to my reviews with their new configurations.

Blessings,

My Summer Reading - Four Short Reviews

My summer was too busy for blogging (plus I read very little that merited a thoughtfully written blog post.) So here is a quick overview of the fiction I read.

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie: So engrossing, that for two straight days, I kept wishing that whatever activity I was involved in would finish so that I could get back to it. 

Village School by Miss Read: The first of the Fairacre series. I took careful notes of all the village residents (over 30!) so that I could keep everybody straight as I progress through the other 19 novels. So happy to have found 10 of them quite cheaply. (They are already tucked into my "take-back-to-Brazil" stash.) The rest I'll read through digital library loan.

Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein: I nabbed this title at the thrift store because the movie was coming out and the previews looked promising. This is the YA version of The Art of Racing in the Rain. I was surprised at how depressing it was from start to finish - except for the impossible to believe "happy" ending. I regret every hour I spent in this book.

Island of the World by Michael D. O'Brien: An achingly sad and beautiful book. Sometimes Josip’s hardships were overwhelming and I had to put the book down for a few hours, but there was a redemptive thread throughout that kept them from being unbearable. I appreciate the ability of Catholic authors to include suffering in their fiction without facile answers. But I struggled at times to identify with the more mystical elements of Obrien’s book. Still, this is some of the best storytelling you will ever read. Worth every minute I spent in it.

Blessings,

Books I Read in September

I have been trying to give Christian fiction a go this year. I've read 21 titles and only one author, Jamie Langston Turner, succeeded in impressing me. Most were okay but a couple were so dreadful that I've decided to give up the effort to find diamonds among the coals. It's just too much work for too little pay off.

Here's what I read this month:

1) Insight by Deborah Raney (better than most CF)
2) Sixteen Brides (mediocre CF, What can I say? The cover snookered me in.)
3) Paper Roses (horrific CF)
4) Arsene Lupin & Herlock Sholmes by Leblanc (nice little mysteries, free for Kindle)
5) Rules of Murder by Deering (clean mystery/romance, a little too heavy on the romance for me, but very well written, free for Kindle at the moment)
6) Lifted Veil by George Eliot (bleak sci-fi short story, free for Kindle)
7) Crispen's Point  by Reardon (ugh! I'm tired of CF heroines who swoop into town and fix everything)
8) The Age of Innocence by Wharton (definitely not Christian, but more satisfying because of good language and having to wrestle with important ideas WITHOUT simple solutions.)

The only title I reviewed on the blog was Age of Innocence. The others I reviewed at Goodreads.

The Problem with Christian Romance Novels

On very rare occasions I grab a Christian romance novel when I want a quick, light read that will be inoffensive. The problem, however, is that bad writing offends me. Honestly, where are the editors of these books!?!? My most recent attempt was a book about a widow who discovers her husband, a medical doctor, had secretely gambled away their wealth.

She starts a new life with God’s help and meets a wonderful widower and lives happily ever after. There was nothing terribly wrong with the story, but it was supposed to take place in Victorian England and all the dialogue sounded one hundred percent American.

Many descriptive (showing) sentences were followed by unnecessary telling sentences such as this: “I wouldn’t mind weavin’ baskets if I could stay home from school all the time.” Obviously he dislikes school, but the author has to hammer that in with the following phrase: Jeremiah often let it be known that the pursuit of education was low on his list of priorities. This kind of disprespect to the intelligence of the reader rankles me.

I am a Christian who appreciates a story in which the protagonist’s actions are governed by his sincere faith, but I thought that the preachiness of the book was over the top. 

In my younger days I was a big fan of Janette Oke and Gilbert Morris books, but I tired of them when they all started sounding the same. And after swearing them off for a time, I just never could get back into them. The best writer by far in the Christian romance category is Jan Karon. Although her books are not strictly romances, she somehow she broke the formulaic barrier and wrote believable, non-syrupy novels about people of faith (with intelligent sentences to boot!)

What are your thoughts about Christian romance novels? 

Victorian Challenge Wrap-Up

One of my goals for 2013 was to read one Victorian author per month. I read ten authors and had mixed feelings about them. As I wrote earlier, the more obscure novels (even some by well-known authors) have fallen off everyone's radar for the very good reason that they don't hold up over time. These are the last two books I read, neither of which merited a review of its own.

Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales by Juliana Horatio Ewing - While I did not love this book, it did grow on me. In several stories, foolishness is severely punished rather than virtue being rewarded (a little hard on modern sensibilities). Half of the stories were very good and the other half were forgettable. Unfortunately the book starts out with the mediocre tales. The story of the two widow ladies who live at the base of a monastery is a classic which needs to be revisited. I loved the introduction, which is quoted here.

Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems by Matthew Arnold - Arnold was a lover of classical Greek literature and many of his poems have themes relating to those well-known (at the time) stories. But this makes his poetry obscure to most modern readers. Helpful explanatory notes for each poem are in the back of book but were virtually unusable on my Kindle since it’s very difficult to page back and forth.

The tweaked list:
1. George Eliot - Adam Bede - really liked it

2. Wilkie Collins - The Moonstone - liked it but didn't love it
3. Robert Louis Stevenson - The Master of Ballantrae - really enjoyed it
4. Charles Dickens - David Copperfield - really enjoyed it
5. Anne Brontë - Tenant of Wildfell Hall - liked it
6. Margaret Oliphant - The Marriage of Elinor - strongly disliked
7. Charlotte Yonge - The Heir of Redclyffe - didn't make it to this author
8. Mary Louisa Molesworth - The Carved Lions - okay
9. Juliana H. G. Ewing - Fairy Tales - see above
10. Thomas Hardy - A Pair of Blue Eyes - liked it, but didn't love it
11. Matthew Arnold - Sohrab and Rustum and other Poems - see above
12. Anthony Trollope - The Claverings - okay

The Carlingford Chronicles by Margaret Oliphant

Good writers ruin you for mediocre ones. I should never have read George Eliot before picking up Oliphant.

I had written earlier about discovering Margaret Oliphant through G.K. Chesterton's book on Victorian authors. I did not like the first book I tried and followed someone's suggestion to read the Carlingford Chronicles. According to Wikipedia they are loosely related stories which take place in the same city yet involve different clergymen. I was hoping for some Trollope-like insights into clerical life, and was sorely disappointed. Actually, I liked the first book I read, The Rector, but following the Wikipedia list I assumed I had to go back and read Salem Chapel (first in the chronology). Big mistake.

Salem Chapel doesn't fit the description of a prequel to The Rector. In fact, without having read The Rector first I would not have know about the relationship between Lucy Wodehouse and Wentworth that is just hinted at in SC.  This book had none of the lighthearted wit of the second.  In fact, Arthur Vincent, the protagonist, is an insufferable bore. Not only is he too proud to reach out to the simple folk in his parish, he's self-centered, jealous, vengeful, sullen and unbending. Furthermore, this was a typical example of a Victorian "sensation" novel complete with a villain out to ruin a lady's virtue and the subsequent necessity of her having brain fever so no one really knows what happened till she comes out of it. UGH!

The sequels (The Doctor's Family, The Perpetual Curate, Miss Marjoribanks, and Phoebe Junior) are all on my Kindle, but I am not sure I'll be making the effort to read them.

If you've read any of the above titles and can recommend them, please let me know.

Are Schools Anti-Reading?

I have Barbara to thank for pointing out "School is no Place for Readers." It's a lengthy post on how schools push reading fairs and reading logs, but in reality discourge kids from digging deeply into books. Here's a sample quote:

School libraries are filled with computers and the shelves are filled with dreck based on video games, cartoons and movies. It is said that this is the only way to tempt children away from screen to page, but these book impostors are created to foster and capitalize on an appetite for a product. is it likely that "Barbie in a Mermaid Tale," printed out as sixteen pages of dull and disjointed summary, will increase the odds of the child reading Alice in Wonderland or Swallows and Amazons? Whatever the market may cast before consumers, school should not be its enthusiastic accomplice in corrupting the taste and abilities of the young. We must know these things for what they are. The Pokemon Character Guide is not a book, it is a toy. Children ought to have toys, but they should also have books.

The complete article offers lots to ponder.

Five Worst Books for Children

Tim Challies shares this link to an article on the Five Worst Books for Children.  I was not surprised to see The Golden Compass since it was written purposely to turn children's hearts away from God, but the Scott O'Dell title caught me off guard. What do you think?

Is Christian Fiction Improving?

I keep hearing that Christian fiction is getting better, but someone has yet to prove it to me.  Last week I downloaded a Christian mystery novel by a well-known author and was horrified at the terrible plot and mediocre writing.

Tim Challies wrote a post about "The Ultimate Christian Novel" which would be called Cassidy: Amish Vampiress of the Tribulation.  He meant it as a joke, but, honestly, the book I read had an outlandish premise, a wimpy heroine and way too much blood. Sadly, it was not a parody.

So-So Classics

I’m a huge fan of classic literature.  So I’m always a little surprised when I pick up a book that turns out to be bland.  In the last few weeks, three well-known titles have left me cold.

I remember reading the Classics Illustrated comic book of Two Years Before The Mast when I was growing up in Taiwan.   I have since discovered that I prefer the comic book since it highlighted the adventurous moments in the book and left out the gazillions of sailing details.  I can see why the book was a huge success in its time (1830’s) since it gave a vivid picture of life at sea to those who could never experience it.  Richard Henry Dana, a Harvard grad, was an above average writer, but his prose is nothing to write home about.

Then there is Gulliver's Travels, a very long book that begins to wear on you about half way through. I thought the recent movie version was slightly vulgar thanks to Jack Black, but now I find that the book is bawdy enough without any help from Hollywood.  It’s interesting, but, again, not beautifully written.

My foray into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was a disappointment as well.  I liked this book a lot when I first read it 20 years ago, so maybe I’m just getting too old for this stuff. (That doesn’t really make sense considering how much I enjoyed Wind in the Willows recently.)  Anyway, the book had its moments of charm.  The Tin Woodman is endearing:  He knew very well he had no heart and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything.  “You people with hearts,” he said, “have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful.  When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn’t mind so much.” (p. 37)

I was amazed at the book’s introduction that said, The story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”  was written solely to please children of today.  It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and all the heartaches and nightmares are left out.  The book has several scary and gruesome scenes which negate that final statement.

The Wizard of Oz will always be considered a classic because of the movie.  Film critic, John Howard Reid, wrote, The magical qualities of Wizard of Oz are so imaginative that the movie appeals even more to adults than children.  In many respects, it is an American Alice in Wonderland with wonderfully way-out characters engaged in a Through the Looking Glass quest for various holy grails.  These characters and their desires are more than just faithfully transcribed from Baum’s book.  They are actually improved.  (p. 255 in 140 All-Time, Must-See Movies for Film Lovers)

Well, it’s no use whining over semi-interesting books when there are still hundreds of worthwhile books to be discovered.  Onward and upward!

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE classic literature.  Yes, it takes a little more concentration than your average bestselling novel, but it’s always worth it.  Some books are easy to love: Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice for example.  Some take more effort, but pay off in the end.  The Count of Monte Cristo and Middlemarch are titles that come to mind.  Pilgrim’s Progress and The Warden are as comforting to me as teddy bears.  But Don Quixote is a bust.   After 328 pages I was still only mildly interested in the outcome.

If you’ve read G.K. Chesterton’s definition of a true fairy tale, you know that a good tale describes a sane hero in a world gone mad (with witches or dragons or what have you.)  Heroes are “brave, full of faith, reasonable, respect their parents, keep their word, rescue one kind of people and defy another kind, etc.” (quoted in Tremendous Trifles)

Quixote is described as a man with “an invincible heart and stupendous courage,” but the problem is that even though he is honorable, he is also insane.  And he doesn’t defy the right kind of people.  He defies windmills and folks who have done no wrong.  Most people know the story of the windmills because it’s one of the first in the book.   Maybe they read no farther because the dozens of additional stories are never quite as interesting.  Not only is Quixote’s ongoing silliness annoying, the story-lines (of mistaken identities and plots to get him home again) all begin to sound the same.  Cervantes must have recognized this because every once in a while he throws in an episode involving star-crossed lovers to regain the reader’s attention.   These were the only bright spots in the book for me.

I believe that classics endure for darn good reasons.  And I am willing to be proven wrong about this book.  However, since the purpose of my blog is to encourage the reading of the world’s greatest literature, I implore my readers to begin with some other book, one that will ignite rather than extinguish their passion for the best books.

Jane Austen Blues

I often say that Anthony Trollope ruined me for lesser books.  After completing one of his novels, I often struggle to find something else to read that measures up to his superior writing.  Now that I’ve finished Mansfield Park, I am having the same dilemma.   I’ve picked up and put down four different books today.  It’s not the quality of the books themselves because all of them come highly recommended.  It’s just that after the decorous behavior of Miss Price and the word precision of Miss Austen, everything else seems tawdry.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was too gritty.  Bud, Not Buddy too sad.  White Fang too bloody. Even the highly touted One Thousand Gifts came off as histrionic.  Obviously, I need some kind of therapy. Cyrano de Bergerac may be just the ticket.

Watch for the Light - Readings for Advent and Christmas

As I’ve stated before, I prefer to write about books I can heartily recommend and rarely mention books that I dislike.  However, I feel that the cover of Watch for the Light is deceptive and might fool you (as it did me) into thinking that it contains thoughtful, well-written, and inspiring meditations for Advent.

With names like C.S. Lewis, Philip Yancey, Madeleine L’Engle and Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the cover, I expected, at the least, that the book would be orthodox.  It didn’t take long, though, to realize that most of the writers were extremely liberal in their theology.   

William Stringfellow wrote of the “political character of Advent” while John Howard Yoder wrote of Mary’s Magnificat as “a revolutionary battle cry.”  Furthermore, the people walking in darkness (Isaiah 9:2) are not walking in the darkness of sin, according to Jürgen Moltmann, but are crying out for their human rights.  Dorothee Soelle wrote that the sick people in the Gospel of Luke had been made sick by political oppression and economic plunder.  Sadly, the book manages to squeeze sin and salvation into the very narrow molds of poverty and justice.

While I enjoyed the entries by John Donne, Brennan Manning and C.S. Lewis, the other chapters were too militant to be encouraging or inspiring.

Books I Didn't Finish

I think long and hard before picking up a book to read. My free time is precious and I want to make sure I’m using it wisely. Since I choose my books carefully, I rarely pick up one that I don’t finish. But this year I’ve made a few miscalculations.

The Book of God by Walter Wangerin came highly recommended. Wangerin is a gifted writer whose books have blessed me in the past, but I only made it to page 300 of this bible-as-a-novel before I gave it up. I love any book that gives fresh understanding of the Bible and I am not opposed to paraphrases. The problem with this one was that I found it uninspiring. Instead of focusing on God, I found myself reading each story with an eye to how I would have re-written it for better flow. My attention was directed toward word choices more often than toward eternal truths. Because I was giving it too much time with too little nourishment in return, I put it aside.

Sometimes when a classic doesn’t interest me much, I’ll get the audio version, a painless way to become familiar with it. Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne was just such a book. Yet in spite of the excellent narrator (3^rd version at Librivox) and the intriguing opening chapters, the middle of the book dragged so much that I felt I couldn’t sacrifice any more time to it.

I have read only positive reviews of Diary of a Provincial Lady by E.M. Delafield so I was very surprised at my dislike for it. Yes, it’s British and witty, but those qualities weren’t enough to salvage it for me. I love beautiful prose and the truncated sentences almost sent me into a panic.

I often say that really good writers have ruined me for the average ones. Once exposed to banquet tables of sumptuous words and unforgettable characters, it’s very difficult to be satisfied with fast food. I blame it on Trollope!

The Search for Delicious by Natalie Babbitt

Frankly, I set myself up for disappointment with this book. Natalie Babbitt’s other book, Tuck Everlasting, was one of the most powerful and beautifully-written books that I’ve ever read. Therefore my expectations were pretty high for The Search for Delicious and it couldn’t quite live up to them. It seemed a little too contrived and silly (a whole kingdom going to war over favorite foods? A mermaid saves the day?) And don’t think that I found it hard to swallow because I disdain fairy tales. I was raised on them and have read them to my kids with zeal. But my tastes run more to Edith Nesbit (The Book of Dragons) and George MacDonald (The Light Princess and the The Princess and Curdie stories) because of the British wit, good writing and layers of meaning.

By the way, if you’ve only seen the movie version of Tuck, you have no idea of the richness of Babbitt’s story. I was furious with Disney for turning such a profound book into a teen romance. While I’m on the subject of insightful books, here are some other fiction books that have knocked the wind out of me with their depth of perception:

1) Fahrenheit 451 (You’ve got to read this if you love words/books/ideas.)
2) Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge (Goudge is an extraordinary writer who deals with moral themes yet never preaches at you. The main love story in this book didn’t interest me much, but one of the lesser characters was a man who loved nothing more than to sit in his cozy library of books. He gave it up to reach out to needy people and I’ve been challenged to follow his example ever since. And he wasn’t even a “real” person!)
3) A Higher Call by Harold Bell Wright (The heroine of this book would not marry her pastor boyfriend because she wanted to actively serve God and not just “play church”). Very significant for me since I have been a part of the church all my life.
4) The Giver by Lowry is another one that I’ve mentioned before about the importance of pain. Who would have thought you could write a book like that in our comfort-obsessed culture and get away with it?!

Happy reading!

The Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver Goldsmith

I picked up “tiny” Vicar just after finishing “mammoth” Middlemarch thinking it would be an easy read. Vaguely I seemed to recollect that Goldsmith’s book was on my list of “classics I want to read some day”. But as I read I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why it would be considered a classic. It certainly wasn’t in the sense that Leland Ryken describes them: “a work whose excellence as literature and whose importance to western culture are indisputable.”

The language was not singularly beautiful nor were the characters richly developed. In fact, the calamities and coincidences in the book were so unbelievable that I had to force myself to finish it. The only “true moment” in the book is when the vicar is put in prison for debt and is jeered at by the prisoners for trying to preach to them. Now THAT I could believe! Even his eventual winning of their affection was credible. The rest was just too bad (or too good depending on the story’s timeline) to be true.

On a more positive note, I’m including some great quotes from another reader of worthwhile books, Mandi at 200books.com (now defunct). Highlighted sections are my emphasis. On “Day 52” she wrote:

Reading Dante reminds me of the thoughts that I’ve had over time about really great classic literature. C.S. Lewis once said about The Wind in the Willows that it wasn’t a book you judged; it judges you. And that is how I feel about the greats like Dante, Augustine, and Homer. We modern Americans are eager to judge but not so eager to be judged. We dismiss everything from Shakespeare to Virgil as “not all it’s cracked up to” or we claim that things like truffles or escargot don’t taste as good as others claim. The one thing we never seem to consider is that the fault may lie with us…It is high time we started to acknowledge our betters and a good place to begin is with the classics.

On “Day 63” she wrote: I’m enjoying these satirical novels [by Evelyn Waugh] but nagging at the back of my mind are two things. One: they’re not as funny as Wodehouse and two: they’re not beautiful. This is all fairly amorphous in my mind but bear with me as I sort these thoughts out. My taste in novels is generally for pleasant or rich ones. I enjoy a tragic story but not a bleak one. Wuthering Heights good. 1984 bad. I don’t mind happy endings no matter how unfashionable they may be in literary circles, although a happy ending alone is not enough to content me. I can bear with deus ex machina without complaining but poorly composed prose and shallowness drive me nuts. Wholesomeness pleases me but Goody-Two-Shoes will send me up the wall. I can handle the preachy-ness of Little Woman but Elsie Dinsmore makes me gag!

Mandi, I couldn’t agree with you more!