What I Read and Watched in October

I usually have three or four books going at the same time, but for the second half of October, I had six, which made it impossible to finish anything. Earlier in the month I read The Day of Small Things and Jane's Parlor by O. Douglas, which I did not enjoy as much as the first book in the series (The Proper Place). I got these quite cheaply for my Kindle and am not sure why there are no longer links to them at Amazon. (The best Douglas novel, Penny Plain, by the way, is always free.) I read Helen Keller's The Story of My Life while listening along on YouTube. Thomas Ramundo's The Prayer Life You've Always Wanted was simple, but encouraging. 

The books I'm presently reading at a snail's pace are: (1) Dante's Inferno, (2) Six Centuries of Great Poetry, (3) Mansfield Park (audiobook), (4) C.S. Lewis' Letters (Vol II), (5) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome, and (6) Christian Faith in the Old Testament by Cockerill. 

We watched Blue Miracle with Dennis Quaid (2021) and Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson (1995). For some odd reason I love stories of unrequited love and enjoyed suffering along with Colonel Brandon! Come to think of it, that may be why I love most of Jane Austen's novels. Anyone else suffer from that malady?

Blessings,

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot

My husband and I enjoyed the new BBC version of All Creatures Great and Small so much that we decided to read the book out loud to each other. We loved every page of these delightful stories of a rookie veterinarian and the quirky members of his household. Although you'll read more about cow anatomy than you ever wanted to know, you will also laugh (and sometimes cry) through many a chapter. Herriot's love for the land, the people and the animals is richly described on every page. Halfway through the first book, he writes:

How on earth, did I come to be sitting on a high Yorkshire moor in shirt sleeves and wellingtons, smelling vaguely of cows? The change in my outlook had come quite quickly - in fact almost immediately after my arrival in Darrowby. The job had been a godsend in those days of high unemployment, but only, I had thought, a stepping-stone to my real ambition. But everything had switched round, almost in a flash. 

Maybe it was something to do with the incredible sweetness of the air which still took me by surprise when I stepped out into the old wild garden of Skeldale House every morning. Or perhaps the daily piquancy of life in the graceful old house with my gifted but mercurial boss, Siegfried, and his reluctant student brother, Tristan. Or it could be that it was just the realization that treating cows and pigs and sheep and horses had a fascination I had never even suspected.

Probably it was because I hadn't dreamed there was a place like the dales. I hadn't thought it possible that I could spend all my days in a high, clean-blown land where the scent of grass or trees was never far away; and where even in the driving rain of winter I could snuff the air and find the freshness of growing things hidden somewhere in the cold clasp of the wind. Anyway, it had all changed for me and my work consisted now of driving from farm to farm across the roof of England with a growing conviction that I was a privileged person. (p. 246-247)

My husband read the biography, The Real James Herriot, written by his son, which recounted that James was asked by the editors to "spice up" the first book by adding in a few chapters about Helen. I'm glad he did because those were some of the most amusing and endearing chapters in the book. 

I just ordered book two, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and can't wait for it to arrive!

Have you read the books? Watched the series?

Blessings,

C. S. Lewis Quote on Romantic Love

I'm on page 450 of my book of C.S. Lewis' letters and my Kindle tells me I have 164 highlighted passages! I can't recommend this book highly enough. Here are some excerpts from his letter to Daphne Harwood on March 6, 1942. 

My view of being-in-love is that (like everything except God and the Devil) it is better than some things and worse than others. Thus it comes in my scale of values higher than lust, selfishness, or frigidity, but lower than charity or constancy - in fact about on a level with friendship. Like everything (except God and the Devil) it therefore is sometimes opposed to things lower than itself and - in that situation - good; sometimes to things higher than itself and in that situation, bad. Thus being-in-love is a better motive for marriage than, say, worldly advancement, but the intention to obey God's will by entering into an indissoluble partnership in all virtue and mutual charity for the preservation of chastity and the admission of new souls to the chance of eternal life is better even than being-in-love.

The trouble arises when poets and others set up this "good" thing as an absolute, which many do. An innocent and well-intentioned emphasis on the importance of being-in-love with one's spouse (i.e. its superiority over lust or ambition as a basis for marriage) is in fact widely twisted into the doctrine that only being-in-love sanctifies marriage and that therefore as soon as you are tired of your spouse you get a divorce. Thus the over-praising of a finite good, the pretense that it is absolute, defeats itself and corrupts the very good it set out to exalt; and what begins by wanting to to beyond the prayer-book idea of marriage ends by reducing marriage to mere concubinage. Treat "Love" as a god and you make it a fiend.

 

Blessings,

Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher

Live Not by Lies, by Rod Dreher, contains some of the same themes spelled out in The Benedict Option (loss of support for Christianity within the culture and the necessity of strong religious communities to sustain it), but LNBL is more hopeful. Yes, the situation in our culture is even worse than when Benedict Option was published five years ago, but in this book Dreher recounts stories of families who survived totalitarian governments (chiefly communist countries in Europe), which show the fruit of faithful perseverance. 

I marked so many passages that it would be impossible to touch on everything. My biggest take-away was understanding how American government has increasingly become totalitarian (what Dreher calls "soft totalitarianism") in the way that it rewards/condones certain behaviors and punishes/cancels "unacceptable" ones. (Cake bakers and florists are just two examples.) 

Today's totalitarianism demands allegiance to a set of progressive beliefs, many of which are incompatible with logic - and certainly with Christianity. Compliance is forced less by the state than by elites who form public opinion, and by private corporations that, thanks to technology, control our lives far more than we would like to admit. (p. 8)

In our therapeutic culture, [no belief in a Higher power and with personal comfort as the primary goal] the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish. (p. 13)

Without Christianity and its belief in the fallibility of human nature, secular progressives tend to rearrange their bigotries and call it righteousness. Christianity teaches that all men and women - not just the wealthy, the powerful, the straight, the white, and all other so-called oppressors - are sinners in need of the Redeemer. All men and women are called to confession and repentance. "Social justice" that projects unrighteousness solely onto particular groups is a perversion of Christian teaching. Reducing the individual to her economic status or her racial, sexual, or gender identity is an anthropological error. It is untrue, and therefore unjust. (p. 64, 65) 

When so much of what is being taught (in schools, on the news, on social media) is untrue, how does one stay grounded in reality? In the chapter called "Families are Resistance Cells", Dreher writes of  a Catholic couple, Václav and Kamila Benda, who were part of the Czech dissident movement in the 1970s. On a personal level they prepared their children to resist the lies of communism by filling their moral imaginations with the good. Kamila read to her children for two to three hours a day. She read them fairy tales, myths, adventure stories.... More than any other novel, though, J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings was the cornerstone of her family's collective imagination. (138)

Finally, Dreher addresses the problem of suffering. He worries that this generation of Americans (including Christians) has become so attached to their comforts that we would submit to government overreach to keep them. A time of painful testing, even persecution, is coming. Lukewarm or shallow Christians will not come through with their faith intact. Christians today must dig deep into the Bible and church tradition and teach themselves how and why today's post-Christian world with its self-centeredness, its quest for happiness and rejection of sacred order and transcendent values, is a rival religion to authentic Christianity. (162)

Even if you don't agree with everything in the book, there are a lot of important ideas to wrestle with in light of ever-decreasing religious freedoms in our present world.

Blessings,

What I Read and Watched in September

I read a nice variety of books this month. I'm enjoying the 100 days of Dante challenge more than I thought I would. It is not easy reading, but the short teaching videos put out by Baylor have been outstanding. Two audiobooks that I enjoyed were Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Pied Piper by Nevil Shute (reviewed here)

The rest of my fiction was pretty light. Least favorite was One Tuesday Morning by Karen Kingsbury (reviewed here). I also read a WWII mystery called Proceed at Will (reviewed here), A Man Called Trent by Louis L'amour (reviewed here), Sarah's Cottage by D. E. Stevenson, and The Proper Place by O. Douglas. (I bought it for $1.99 for Kindle, but can only find the link to the overpriced hard copy.) 

Two non-fiction titles were Matthew Henry's commentary on Song of Solomon (review here) and an abridged Journal of John Wesley (reviewed here) 

My favorite book of the month was All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot, reviewed here.

I found several Hallmark mysteries on YouTube. Sweet Revenge is the latest in the Hannah Swenson "Murder, She Baked" mysteries and is definitely the funniest of them all. Mystery 101: Deadly History and two Aurora Teagarden mysteries rounded up the list. 

Blessings,

Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

John Howard is a 70 year old Englishman in need of a rest. He travels to a village in France, never dreaming that war would soon be arriving at his doorstep. As he seeks to return to England, he is asked by another couple in the inn to take their two children with him. He reluctantly agrees, knowing he is too old for the task, but not willing to leave the children where they will be in any danger. Like the Pied Piper of the original story, Howard accumulates other needy children along the way. 

How he gets them through Nazi-occupied France makes Pied Piper a hair-raising tale, but what struck me most about the story was the small graces that were extended to him and the children along the way. Along with incidents of sickness, hunger, and  stolen luggage, there are also moments when they were given a meal, a hayloft to sleep in, or a broken down pram in which to carry their few belongings. Just as the responsibility of caring for all these children of various ages and nationalities becomes overwhelming, Howard encounters a young woman who insists on coming with him to help. 

The story of his faithful, honorable, self-giving love for the children would have been a good enough story in itself, but the addition of Nicole, adds a beautiful element to the story. Not only does she help with the children, the two of them help each other grieve various losses. 

This is a lovely, lovely story that I look forward to revisiting in the future. My experience was greatly enhanced by the narrator of my audio book, David Rintoul, who not only spoke French beautifully, but also did a bang-up job with voices of the women and children.  

This is my first Nevile Shute novel and I'm a bit afraid to try another since his other books have very mixed reviews (except for A Town Like Alice, which appears to be a classic). Have you read him? Do you have a favorite?

P.S. I found two movie versions on YouTube but neither do the book justice. The 1942 version makes John out to be a buffoon (which he definitely is not), but the other actors were very good; the Peter O'Toole version was better, but not great. Read the book!

Blessings,

How to Get Started Reading Dante

When I heard about the 100 Days of Dante challenge, I knew it would give me the motivation to approach his daunting classic, The Divine Comedy. I read three books beforehand to provide background, but without having read the actual text, they were not as helpful as I had hoped. I still felt lost as I began reading The Inferno (book one of three). Since I pride myself in having developed literary muscle through the years, I was dismayed that it was still a struggle to understand what was happening. 

At first I listened to the short lectures given by Dante scholars from Baylor before reading each canto, but realized that I had no idea what they were talking about. I floundered a bit before deciding to read the assigned (short) canto before AND after listening to the teaching video. That meant that I had to spend 20 to 30 minutes on each canto (just three times a a week if you are following the 100 Days with Dante schedule). Searching and comparing translations, and finding one that worked for me, also made a huge difference. Listening while reading was also helpful. (There are many free audio versions on YouTube.)

I will not say that I am still understanding everything perfectly, but I'm glad for all the resources available that act as training wheels for the uninitiated like me. The passion that the Baylor profs have for Dante is contagious. 

Regarding translations... Because I live in Brazil, I could only do comparisons using Kindle samples. That eliminated some respected translations such as Dorothy Sayers' and Anthony Esolen's because no Kindle samples were available. The most readable classic translation was by poet John Ciardi, but I thought it odd that he did not include the best line from Canto 1 (line 39 about God's Divine Love being the creative force of the universe). He left out that idea all together even though it is clearly there in the Italian. (I only know that because it is similar to Portuguese!)

The digital versions I liked the most (clear without dumbed-down language) were by Clive James, Robert Durling, and Gerald J. Davis. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow has a version that's free, which isn't too difficult if you are used to King James' English. Ironically, I ended up using Ciardi because I found an inexpensive set of his Comedia in English here in Brazil. His introductory commentary and footnotes have been extremely helpful.

Anyone else read Dante? Are you reading along with the 100 Days challenge? Any more tips?

Blessings,