How Books Help Put us Back Together Again

Children's author, Katherine Paterson, reflects on her love for good literature:

And when you close Homer, there are the books of Jane Austen and Joseph Conrad, and great fat volumes of Tolstoy.  There is the Bible, perhaps the most over prescribed and least taken of any.  There is Flannery O’Connor and Anne Tyler.  There is William Shakespeare and Jacob Bronowski.  There is The Yearling and A Tale of Two Cities.  There is The Secret Garden and The Wind in the Willows.  There is Ramona the Brave and Where the Wild Things Are.  I have only begun to name what I especially love.  There are countless others - really good books.  Good or even great because they make the right connections.  They pull together for us a world that is falling apart.  They are the words that integrate us, stretch us, comfort and heal us.  They are the words that mirror the Word of creation, bringing order out of chaos.

(p. 238 from her book of essays The Invisible Child)

Blessings,

A Quiet Neighborhood by George MacDonald

It's been over 25 years since I binged on George MacDonald's adult novels so it was a joy to revisit this favorite author in August. C.S. Lewis said he never wrote anything that wasn't somehow connected to his love of George MacDonald and I enjoyed catching glimpses in this book of ideas that were later fleshed out by Lewis in his own works.

Henry Walton is a young vicar who has been assigned to a new parish. He encounters many wonderful characters and a few despicable ones. Some of his parishioners have been nursing hurts for many years and Walton does his best to point them to Christ who is their Healer. He experiences various successes and failures along the way. The plot is thickened with a few mysteries and a possible love interest. Plus the writing is wonderful.

A description of Mrs. Rogers: Beside him stood his old woman in a portentous bonnet. Beneath the gay yellow ribbons appeared a dusky old wrinkled face with a pair of keen black eyes, where the best beauty - that of lovingkindness - triumphed. 

The vicar reflects on his love for books: I am very fond of books. Do not mistake me. I do not mean that I love reading. I hope I do. But I delight in seeing books about me, books even of which there seems to be no prospect that I shall have time to read a single chapter. I confess that if they are nicely bound, so as to glow and shine in the firelight, I like them ever so much better. I suspect that by the time books (which ought to be loved for the truth that is in them) come to be loved as articles of furniture, the mind has gone through a process which the miser's mind goes through - that of passing from the respect of money because of what it can do, to the love of money because it is money. I have not reached the furniture stage, and I do not think I ever shall. I would rather burn them all. 

There were several passages on the benefits of adversity: How often do we look to God as our last and feeblest resource! We go to Him because we have nowhere else to go. And then we learn that the storms of life have driven us not upon the rocks but into the desired haven. 

The book is based on MacDonald's Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood. Editor Dan Hamilton does a wonderful job of removing some of the excesses of Victorian fiction while at the same time retaining the beautiful language. He divides up the original Annals into three novels of which A Quiet Neighborhood is the first. I look forward to reading the others.

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in August

I dreaded writing this post because I've had another awful reading month (since I have been mostly preparing for my upcoming theology class.) I finished Howard Snyder's Radical Wesley and read half of Roger Olsen's critique of Calvinism, Against Calvinism, but couldn't finish it because it was too snide. The one book I read for pleasure was George MacDonald's The Quiet Neighborhood, which I hope to review soon. 

A bright spot in the month was that I finally heard about The Literary Life podcast. I listened to the first three episodes and also three more recent ones on "Leaf by Niggle" and "On Fairy Stories" (both by Tolkien). I also listened to those two stories (on YouTube) and enjoyed them immensely. Hearing Angelina Stanford talk about the Gospel in Fairy Tales was a real treat.

After a good day of studying, I generally give myself a half an hour of a youtube movie, which came out to 5 movies: The two Signed, Sealed and Delivered movies (To the Altar, The Road Less Traveled) were pretty hokey, but the cast grows on you after a while. And it was amazing to hear one of the characters talk about how he had kept himself for marriage. When was the last time you heard that in a movie??? My favorite flicks were Hallmark mysteries because I enjoy the clean humor combined with an intriguing plot and very little romance. (Murder, She Baked: Deadly Recipe, Mystery 101, and Aurora Teagarden: Dead over Heels.) Although I sometimes make fun of Hallmark movies, I am sad that their channel is going the way of political correctness. 

Blessings,

A Quiet Heart - quote by Alexander MacLaren

The quiet heart will be able to fling its whole strength into its work. And that is what troubled hearts never can do, for half their energy is taken up in steadying or quieting themselves, or is dissipated in going after a hundred other things. But when we are wholly engaged in quiet fellowship with Jesus Christ, we have the whole of our energies at our command, and can fling ourselves wholly into our work for Him. 

(I found this lovely quote by Baptist preacher and expositor Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910) while reading his commentary on Ephesians 6.)

Blessings,

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

G.K. Chesterton called Nicholas Nickleby Dickens’ first real novel. The previous three publications had been Sketches by Boz (no hero), the PickwickPapers (older hero), and Oliver Twist (child hero). This was his first novel with a proper and dignified romantic hero; which means, of course, a somewhat chivalrous young donkey. Chesterton's description captures the personality of our young hero perfectly.

Nicholas is a young man who suddenly loses his father and must do his best to provide for his mother and sister. But in order to do so he must overcome the evil machinations of his uncle and his entourage of seedy companions. There were times when I almost despaired of a happy ending, but chapter 64 finally arrived and all was right with the world. I can’t be sure if the tears that pricked my eyes were from happiness or from relief that I finally finished this 731-page tome.

While I liked the book very much, I did not love any of the principal characters. The bad ones were far too bad and the good ones were far too good. Honest, simple John Browdie, a minor character, was my favorite (reminding me of Joe from Great Expectations). He is an uneducated man with an innate sense of right and wrong, but unlike Joe, he has an enormous sense of humor and self-confidence.

I’m working my way through the Dickens’ canon, and though this was not a favorite, I still relished the hilariously drawn lesser characters and the lovely writing. Take this description of Arthur Gride's house: Meagre old chairs and tables, of spare and bony make, and hard and cold as misers’ hearts, were ranged, in grim array, against the gloomy walls; [tall cupboards], grown lank and lantern-jawed in guarding the treasures they enclosed, and tottering, as though from constant fear and dread of thieves, shrunk up in dark corners, whence they cast no shadows on the ground, and seemed to hide and cower from observation. A tall grim clock upon the stairs, with long lean hands and famished face, ticked in cautious whispers… (p. 590)

I like Chesterton’s suggestion to read the novels in order of publication to watch the progression of Dickens' talent. If you read Nicholas Nickleby (or, better yet, listen to Mil Nicholson read it free at Librivox), follow it up with Chesterton’s witty commentary from Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens. (free for Kindle)   

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in July

With my son and his wife visiting from the U.S., there hasn't been much time for reading, but we've watched half a dozen movies. Considering our different tastes, the votes were commonly cast for older family favorites such as the first Star Wars trilogy and the Lord of the Rings extended versions. Star Wars seemed a bit silly after LOTR, but it was still fun. I hadn't seen the Star Wars films for many years and had never seen them with the changes made by George Lucas in the remastered DVDs (released in 2004).

As far as reading goes, I'm halfway through four titles, but finished Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens (review next week) and Linnets and Valerians by Elizabeth Goudge.

The Dickens title was plain hard work, but listening to Mil Nicholson at Librivox helped a lot. Most of Linnets and Valerians was delightful, but the far-reaching effects of the black magic on several of the main characters robbed the book of some of its charm. If I had read it as a fairy tale rather than a middle grade adventure story, it might have been less disturbing.

I watched two Hallmark mysteries: Fixer Upper: Framed for Murder & Chronicle Mysteries: The Deep End. And I enjoyed this 45 minute YouTube video of James Clear summarizing his book Atomic Habits.

Anybody else still in a reading slump? Any good books or movies to recommend?

Blessings,

A Culture of Boredom

In a culture that craves the big, the entertaining, the dramatic, and the shocking, cultivating a life with space for silence and repetition is necessary for sustaining a life of faith. Once a student complained to his professor about having to read Augustine's Confessions. "It's boring," the student whined. "No, it's not," the professor responded. "You're boring." What he meant is that when we gaze at the richness of the gospel and the church and find them dull and uninteresting, it's actually we who have been hollowed out. We have lost our capacity to see wonders where true wonders lie.

(from Tish Harrison Warren's Liturgy of the Ordinary, p. 34)

Blessings,