Committed to Memory by John Hollander

I have been a poetry lover since the Fourth Grade when our teacher had us write and illustrate our own poem books. Unfortunately I was raised in a generation that was not required to memorize any poetry in school. As a homeschooling mom, I read poetry to my children (one or two poems before every bedtime story) in the hopes that they would not grow up as deficient as I was.

For years I’ve wished for a book that would put some of the “Poems I Should Have Memorized” in one place. Committed to Memory sounded like just the ticket. After all, its subtitle is “100 Best Poems to Memorize”. Silly me, I assumed it meant “best-loved” poems (as in, poems that most people know and love.) Instead it contained a hundred poems, half well-known and half obscure.

The editor said the selections were chosen for good rhyming (as an aid to memorization) and for length (not too long nor too short). That criteria may have made them more memorize-able, but definitely not more lovable. Not only were many of these poems unfamiliar, most were difficult to understand. And many were downright gloomy.

Luckily for me, my friend Carol at Magistramater just wrote a post about another poetry book, The  Top 500 Poems, that sounds promising. 

The Divine Yes by E. Stanley Jones

Since God recently said “No” to something we really wanted to happen, I was intrigued by the title of this book. Jones, a friend and contemporary of Mahatma Gandhi, was a Methodist missionary in India for many years.

This was Jones’ last book, written after a debilitating stroke. In spite of the fact that he could barely walk or talk, he praised God for sparing him. I cannot afford to be anything but grateful that He thought enough of me to give me this period at the end of my life to be a proof that what I’ve spoken about all my life – the unshakable Kingdom and the unchanging Person. (p. 85)

Jones continually reminds the reader that nothing that happens in a Christian’s life is for nothing. He writes, Pagans waste their pain. They don’t come out to anything, no dividend. But when it is divine pain, like the pain of the Cross, it is not wasted pain, but contributive pain – like the pains of a mother in childbirth. (p. 132)

Much of The Divine Yes was an encouragement to my heart so it’s hard to limit quotes, but here is just one more treasure:

Some people think if you come to Christ you surrender to being cancelled out. Cancelled? All you think and act and are become heightened by the heightened contact… It is the same surrender that ink makes to the author… It is the same surrender that a wire makes to a dynamo. Unattached, it has no light or power, but surrendered to the dynamo, it throbs with light and power . When you surrender to Jesus Christ, a plus is added to all you do and think and are. You do the things you can’t do and are a person you couldn’t be otherwise. (p. 61)

Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope

Anybody who has read my blog for any length of time knows that I love Anthony Trollope. He had me hooked when I first read The Small House at Allington and reeled me in for good with The Warden. I have read all of the Barsetshire and Palliser Chronicles (six volumes each). Some were better than others, but all were pleasing.

I had mixed feelings about Rachel Ray. First, this book was more of a straight love story than the others which may be a plus to most people, but I enjoy plots with a little more complexity. Second, although Rachel was a lovely young woman, I was frustrated by her lack of gumption. When her sweetheart was denied her, she basically wilted away. All of my favorite heroines suffer the loss of love (Jane Eyre, Anne Elliot, Elizabeth Bennett), but they persevere and live fruitful lives until their faithfulness is rewarded.

Third, I read the first half of the book with the vague feeling that something was missing. On page 275 I laughed out loud and then realized that Trollope’s wit had been absent in most of the previous pages. I always contend that his books can be dry, but that the witticisms keep you going. In the case of this book, you don’t get much pay off till the second half. If you’ve never read Trollope, this is definitely not the book to start with, but if you’re already a fan, you may be interested in the different style of this novel.

Newer Librivox Recordings

LearnOutLoud.com has added 1,000 new Librivox recordings to its library. I skimmed the over 700 titles in the literature category and added the following to my listening list for 2010. Keep in mind that I automatically delete any books that have terrible readers so I plan to complete only half of these books. I'll let you know how they sound.

The Aeneid by Virgil

Ayala's Angel by Trollope - good

Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare by Nesbit - DNF. (Shakespeare without the beauty).

Brazilian Tales

A Brief History of England by Beers

Castles in the Air by Baroness Orczy  This reader had a nice voice, but English is not his first language.

Daniel Deronda by George Eliott - fairly good reader, VERY long

Day Boy and Night Girl by George MacDonald - This was okay, not my favorite of MacDonald's works

Deephaven by Sarah Orne Jewett - did not finish (due to story if I recall, not the reader)

From the Temple - poems of George Herbert

Holy War by John Bunyan

Literary Tastes: How to Form Them by Bennett

Little Lord Fauntleroy by Burnett - reader was okay, story was a bit syrupy

A Short History of England by G.K. Chesterton

Crazy Love by Francis Chan

I was hoping Crazy Love would be like a love letter from God. (After all, the subtitle is "Overwhelmed by a Relentless God.") And, yes, Chan starts the book by talking about God’s amazing love, but the gist of the book is what our response to that love should be.

Just as we are loved extravagantly and unconditionally, we are to love God and others with the same relentless passion. This includes wholehearted - and sometimes difficult - obedience. I wanted a shot in the arm, but instead I got a kick in the pants. I must say, I was glad for the wakeup call.

Here are some great quotes:

Both worry and stress reek of arrogance. Basically, these two behaviors communicate that it’s okay to sin and not trust God because the stuff in my life is somehow exceptional. (p.42)

Our greatest fear as individuals and as a church should not be a failure but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter. (p. 93, quoting Tim Kizziar)

If life is a river, then pursuing Christ requires swimming upstream. When we stop swimming, or actively following Him, we automatically begin to be swept downstream. (p. 95)

As long as we are pursuing Him, we are satisfied in Him. It is when we stop actively loving Him that we find ourselves restless and gravitating toward other means of fulfillment. (p. 104)

Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan

Jack Murnighan, professor of medieval and renaissance literature at Duke University, is passionate about the classics and is eager to make his readers feel the same.

To appeal to a modern day audience (and to avoid the stereotype that classics are for “squares”) Beowulf on the Beach uses slang and ribald language to entertain his audience. It also includes a “What’s sexy” section in each chapter to entice reluctant readers. Frankly, I skipped over most of those tidbits. The few I read convinced me I was definitely NOT interested in several of the recommended books.

So I was more than a little surprised at his love for some decidedly “Christian” texts. Although clueless about most of the Bible (he says biblical writers wrote the New Testament to counterbalance the evils of the Old), he loves its rich language. His favorite classic of all time is Milton’s Paradise Lost and he is not afraid to gush over it:

Paradise Lost becomes really amazing at the moment you enter into awe. You should feel struck, feel wondrous, be utterly blown away by what Milton’s pulling off. I don’t care if you don’t agree with a single tenet of his philosophy – I barely do – you still have to delight in the fervor, the mind, and the utter mastery of technique behind Paradise Lost. Not only does it have the most ambitious story of any narrative in English, it’s the most methodical line by line. It’s breathtaking. (p. 144)

In spite of his infectious enthusiasm for the classics, he did not convince me to read all of his favorite authors. When he described Virginia Woolf’s writings as “controlled stylistic epilepsy”, I was less interested than ever. Nevertheless, I intend to read at least a dozen of his other recommendations.

A few of his choice comments:

On George Eliot: There are smart novels, there are smarter novels, and then there’s Middlemarch. (p. 246)

On Hemingway: It might be that no writer since the author of Genesis has been so terse and yet so powerful. He is the undisputed master of the simple sentence. (p. 304)

On Moby Dick: Yes, the humor might be trapped in five hundred pages of what can seem like the Encyclopedia Britannica of whaling, but trust me, it’s there. It was meant to be there, and once you get Melville’s sense of humor, Moby Dick becomes the classic it really is, and the best novel ever written by an American. (p. 196)

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.

I think I first saw this book on the 100 Writers of Faith list. Although I struggle to enjoy science fiction, I decided to give it a try because it grapples with theological issues. Locus magazine has voted A Canticle for Leibowitz the best all-time science fiction novel THREE times and I thought that ought to count for something.

The story opens in the desert of the Western United States 600 years after a nuclear holocaust. The survivors decide to save the world from another “Flame Deluge” by killing all scientists who could create further nuclear weapons. This led to the eradication of all educated people (and books) through a movement called “The Great Simplification”. A small order of monks (the Albertian Order of Leibowitz) took it upon themselves to preserve the few remaining printed documents.

I was not sure if I liked this book at first. Its three sections did not flow together very well. (Later I read that Miller joined three separate novellas by re-writing some parts to make them more cohesive.) Frequent use of Latin phrases also added to its choppiness and one scene at the end of the book was downright weird.

BUT as I began writing my post and reviewing the quotes that I’d copied down, I realized why people love this book. Miller’s insights into the themes of suffering, euthanasia, original sin, and the purpose of knowledge will take your breath away. None of the three sections end happily; yet somehow you retain a wisp of hope. Of course, I liked the fact that the Church played a part in the possibility of redemption, but this is not a “preachy” book. The religious folks are divided between the God-fearing and the power hungry – just as they are in real life.

Here is a sample of Miller’s impressive writing style:

The sun blazed its midday heat upon the parched land, laying its anathema on all moist things. (p.16)

On death: There was tedium of repeated days and repeated seasons; then there were aches and pains, finally, Extreme Unction, and a moment of blackness at the end – or at the beginning, rather. (p.84)

A world smug in its illiteracy (p.96)

Euthanasia: The false god of expedient mercy (p.302)

“If I thought I had such a thing as a soul…I might agree with you.” Abbot Zerchi smiled thinly. “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily. (p.281)