Books this year: a book diary

I always find it a little strange to read something by one of the church fathers, which is probably why I don’t do it very often. There’s always something in them so totally foreign to our present context that it throws me off a little, especially because they believed the same things I believe.

In this book, it’s Athanasius’ arguments against the Jews and Gentiles. He says the Jews should believe that Christ is the Messiah because he so obviously fulfills all the Old Testament prophecies. And he does, but that argument is essentially worthless today. He says the Gentiles should believe because, basically, lots of people are being converted from idol worship - another argument entirely unconvincing to a contemporary audience.

But aside from those sections, which come at the book’s end, I really liked this one. Athanasius asserts throughout the truth that Jesus was fully and totally God, co-equal with the Father and the Spirit, and also fully and totally human. Moreover, he says Jesus had to be both fully God and fully Man in order to save us.

He also hazards a guess at God’s reason for the Incarnation: at the Fall, humans lost the ability to know God directly, and while they could know him through his creation, they tended to worship the creation instead of looking beyond it. Further, the situation was getting worse, and humanity was in danger of, basically, getting so stupid that they would lose the divine part of themselves altogether. Certainly an interesting idea, though it seems to suggest that the Incarnation occurred as a result of the Fall, and I like to think the Incarnation was part of the plan from the very beginning. Probably we’ll never know.

This is definitely worth reading, and it worked well to read it during Advent - it would probably also be good as a Lenten devotional read. I found my copy at a used book store, and it’s probably available from Amazon, but it’s also available free online, right here. Definitely worth your time, especially the first sections.

My wife and mother-in-law got me this book for my birthday a few months ago, both of them fully aware that my reading it would result in drastic changes to our lifestyle. They were both okay with this, citing my unilateral decision to use cloth diapers with Jack, which everyone initially greeted with skepticism, but which has turned out well anyway.

The book chronicles Kingsolver’s family’s year-long experiment in being locavores. They had recently moved from Tuscon to a farm in Virginia; it was a farm Kingsolver’s husband had owned for years, and had been a (somewhat rustic) summer home for the family. For a year, they ate (almost) nothingif they didn’t grow themselves or know the people who grew it. They raised and slaughtered chickens and turkeys, they grew copious amounts of vegetables, they foraged mushrooms, they shopped at farmer’s markets. They even managed to breed turkeys, naturally, by good old-fashioned turkey sex, which is practically unheard of.

It’s an amazing book, a manifesto for not just local eating but real community and family life, with a fair amount of diatribe against industrial agriculture and food production. It has some recipes, and some pieces of practical advice, but it’s not a how book, it’s a why book, and I, for one, am convinced. I’ll go so far as to challenge any of you to read it and not be convinced.

It’s not, however, a legalistic book; the Kingsolver’s didn’t give up coffee or spices, though they bought fair-trade. They couldn’t find locally-produced whole wheat flour,  so they had to buy it elsewhere. After the year ended, they alternated between local and imported wines. It’s not about rules, it’s about giving the finger to the agro-industrial complex and reclaiming the basis of our existence.

We as Americans have long forfeited our responsibility to feed ourselves; we’ve handed over the most fundamental part of our biological lives to giant corporations who only care about profit, not about our health in the short term or the health of the planet in the medium-to-long term. Eating food produced locally, by local people who do care about producing healthy food, and producing it sustainably, is a revolutionary act, a quiet anarchism, a reclamation of something vitally important that we’ve almost lost.

So any step in that direction is a positive step, and most of us are going to have to start small: shopping at farmer’s markets, growing a small backyard garden, forgoing processed pseudo-foods and learning that some things we consider necessities are, in fact, luxuries. It might be hard, but the right thing usually is, and failing to do it will end in disaster.

Lewis was a bachelor most of his life, but at the age of 58 he married Joy Davidman, who was at the time dying of cancer. The cancer went into remission, but eventually came back and killed her, four years later. To cope with his grief, he wrote this book. It’s not at all a typical Lewis book;  it’s written in a stream-of-consciousness style, though the “stream” is a horrible river of pain, grief, and doubt, and somehow filtered into Lewis’ inimitably laid-back prose style.

It is, I think, one of the most emotionally forceful of Lewis’ books; it shook me the same way Till We Have Faces always does. And, like that novel, it’s a book I will read over and over (though I’ll refrain from posting on it again).

I have nothing else to say (again, and so soon), other than read it now if you’ve never read it, and if you’ve read it before, read it again.

Happy endings are rare in the canon of PKD’s novels; even in those where things end up sort of alright for the protagonist(s), life in general is still horrible and depressing. A happy ending loses its impact when everything that precedes it is dark and dsytopian and paranoid. So what if the Allies won WWII in some other reality? The Nazis won here, and life sucks.

Dr. Bloodmoney, though, is actually a hopeful novel, despite the fact that it’s set seven years after a nuclear war has wiped out most of the world’s population and destroyed most man-made infrastructure. People have managed to survive, and have begun re-building civilization. The community which is the focus of the novel has what appears to be a cooperative government, and it has a school.

The picture is not at all utopian, of course. Communities are fairly isolated, owing to the descruction of infrastructure and the difficulty of travel, and are more willing to steal from neighboring communities than work with them. Also, they are insular, distrusting any outsiders. The Army, where it survives, is naturally corrupt. There is racial prejudice - against both blacks and “war darkies,” people disfigured by radiation - and against phocomeli and “funny people” - mutants, children conceived after the bombs fell. And common animals have mutated and become uncomfortably intelligent.

But life goes on, and the two threats to the new civilization - Dr. Bloodmoney and Hoppy Harrington - are defeated.  The book ends on a decidedly positive note, which really confuses me. How am I supposed to take it? Is it really a statement of belief in mankind’s ability to persevere in the face of disaster? And if it is, did Dick think that was an admirable quality? Or is the whole thing actually cynical and ironic - Dick saying, “Even nuclear war won’t stop people from being petty and selfish”? I don’t know. But it was a good read, anyway.

This book (or “these books” - it’s two separate, though related, cycles of poems) is among the most difficult I’ve ever read. To begin with, it’s about the Arthurian legends, or the Matter of Britain, as Williams puts it - a subject about which I know very little. It’s full of Williams’ theology of co-inherence and substitution, which I have a fair grasp on, but it’s expressed differently here than in Descent Into Hell or Descent of the Dove. Also, the poems were written by Williams, who’s just difficult, period.

The first cycle, Taliessin Through Logres, is by far the more difficult. It’s composed of 24 poems, which deal -so far as I can tell, and I know I’m missing a lot - with Lancelot becoming a beast after wounding King Pelles, his fathering Galahad, Galahad’s later arrival at Camelot, and his eventual recovery of the Grail from Carbonek and subsequent redemption of his father.

The second cycle is more narrative, and is mostly concerned with Taliessin - his pagan upbringing, journey to Byzantium and conversion to Christianity, and life as Arthur’s court poet. It’s more narrative, but it is by no means a complete narrative, and there are plenty of those wonderful, strange, mind-boggling digressions that one either loves or hates about Williams.

I really have nothing else to say. Someday, when I have the time and inclination, I’ll read it again, slower, taking lots of notes. And then, maybe, I’ll be able to take it off the shelf and read it just for the joy of reading it. Someday.

I was given this book by my friend Nathan for Christmas last year. Ken was also given this book for Christmas, by his father, and despite allegations to the contrary, I feel this was merely coincidence. It’s a small volume, containing four essays, which I will address individually.

The first, “Why I Write,” was interesting but not compelling. I find writers writing about writing somewhat tedious, and this essay, though better than, say, Forster’s Aspects of the Novel, was still not nearly the manifesto the title might lead you to expect.

“The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” was excellent, despite the fact the Orwell was totally wrong in predicting that England would lose WWII if it didn’t turn Socialist, and that right quick. There is a great deal in his condemnation of the English government - as well as those of Hitler and Stalin - that is still (sadly) relevant today. On the other hand, his belief that nationalized socialism is the answer to all problems is laughably naive - as he himself must have realized before he wrote 1984.

The third essay, “A Hanging,” is about, well, a hanging - one that Orwell witnessed while stationed as an Imperial officer in Burma. It seemed, to me, out of place - while it displayed Orwell’s knack for direct and powerful storytelling, I think his “Shooting an Elephant” would have fit better with the overtly political tone of this volume. It was, though, a rather jarring reflection on how foreign and appalling death really is to us, and the lengths we’ll go to to avoid it.

The final essay, “Politics and the English Language,” is superb. It doesn’t make me quite as paranoid about my writing as it did Ken, but it does set the standard fairly high. It’s inspiring - it’s like a call for truth and clarity in a sea of meaningless drivel. The book is worth buying for this essay alone - or you can read it here, for free.

This is a great little book to carry around, if you’re the kind of person who carries books around, and an excellent introduction to Orwell, if you know nothing about him but Animal Farm and/or 1984. And Mr. Orwell is a man well worth knowing.

Reading The Island of the Day Before brought this book to mind; I’d read it once before, when I was 14 or so, but had never gotten around to re-reading it. But after Eco, this book was back in the “what will I read next?” hopper, and its number finally came up.

While the book is ostensibly about John Harrison, the “lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time,” as the subtitle calls him,  it devotes a fair amount of time to Harrison’s main competition for the Longitude Prize: the lunar method and the astronomers who supported it.

Longitude used to be more or less impossible to determine at sea, which meant that ship captains only had a very rough idea of where they were on a given latitude - and the results were often disastrous. As European powers came to have empires based on sea travel after, say, 1600 (the year the British East India Company was formed), the problem of determining longitude at sea accurately became an increasingly pressing one. Most governments offered substantial prizes to anyone who could come up with a method, and there was, naturally, lots of international espionage as well. The empire that solved the problem first would have a huge advantage on the seas.

In one sense, the solution to the problem is easy: you merely have to know what time it is at your home port (or some other arbitrary zero meridian), determine what time it is where you are (which was easy enough), and convert the difference into degrees of longitude, which could then be converted to miles, depending on your latitude. The problem was keeping track of what the “home” time was out on the ocean - a problem Harrison eventually solved with a brilliant and revolutionary watch. If you want to know more, go read the book.

I found this book entirely by accident; it passed through my hands at work for some reason (a problem with the call number, maybe) and caught my eye. A few minutes’ perusal settled the matter, and I checked it out the day I finished The Year of Living Biblically.

It was originally a series of three lectures given at Brown University in 1923, and deals with its subject in that casual-but-still-intellectual style that great lecturers have. It is both informative and enjoyable, which is no mean feat, given the subject matter.

Each of the three lectures deals with a separate aspect of early (c.1100 to 1400) universities: institutions, instruction and professors, and students. The picture he paints of each is necessarily somewhat sketchy, given the sometimes spotty nature of source materials, but still well and vividly drawn.

I learned a few interesting things from this book. First, that colleges were originally formed as guilds of professors, designed with the intention of keeping students out, and the first degrees were certificates of admission to the college of professors. Second, that universities were originally “homeless” - they met in houses or rented rooms or church basements - and the first buildings associated with them were basically dorms, “colleges” for students too poor to live elsewhere. Lastly, that most scholars have always been rude to their professors, rowdy, violent, drunken, and lecherous. Also, there was a whole genre of manuals for scholars devoted to the art of writing letters requesting cash or other “necessaries.” Some things never change, I suppose.

I read an article about this book by the author when it first came out; it was basically a shortened version of the introduction and a summary of his experiences following a dozen and a half Old Testament laws. It was an intriguing article; it made me want to read the book. And so, when my mom got a copy, I borrowed it as soon as she was done reading it and wedged it onto my list between Notes From Underground and whatever it is I’m reading next.

It was a good book - funny, entertaining, informative (Jacobs’ last book was The Know-It-All, for which he read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica), occasionally though-provoking - but it felt, well, kind of shallow.

I really hate to say that: while he wasn’t a militant atheist, he was a totally secular New Yorker who voluntarily followed the Law as literally as he could. That meant, among other things, growing an awesome beard, wearing all white, not touching women (or his wife one week out of every month), and not lying (or trying very hard not to lie). He also talked to all sorts of Biblical literalists, Jewish and Christian, and did so with an open mind, and doesn’t take any cheap shots at believers it easy to take cheap shots at (for example: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Karaite Jews, the people who run the Creation Museum, the Amish, and a snake-handler). And he spent an entire year of his life like this. It feels unnecessarily mean, even a little spiteful, to say that the chronicle of that year is shallow, because it’s like a personal attack on the author, who seems like a genuinely nice guy.

And yet,  it feels pretty shallow. He came through still agnostic, though a “reverent agnostic.” I get the impression that he approached this “year of biblical living” the same way he approached reading the entire Encyclopaedia Brittanica - as something that might change you, but because it was an experience, and not because it was something transcendent that would utterly re-make your life.

Despite all that, it was definitely worth reading, and it’s one of the few books I’ve read so far this year which I’d recommend to anyone, without reservations or qualifications. So go find a copy, and then read it. You won’t be sorry.

The sentence which best encapsulates this novel doesn’t occur until almost the very end. Having spent the bulk of the second part (which is itself 80% of the book) recounting a particularly shameful and pivotal incident from his younger days, the narrator says:

“…telling  long tales about how I have shirked away my life through moral degeneration in my corner, through isolation from society, through loss of contact with anything alive, through vanity and malice in my underground, is really quite uninteresting. A novel requires a hero, and here there’s a deliberate collection of all the traits for an antihero.”

This novel is the fictional memoir of a person who has retreated so far into himself that he can no longer see anything but his own small, miserable bitterness (the sort of person Hell is populated with in Lewis’ The Great Divorce). It is, therefore, less than pleasant to read: it’s full of sound and fury, hatred of others and hatred of self.

I’m having a hard time deciding how I feel about this book. Certainly Dostoevsky has done an excellent job portraying a certain type of person, and so part of me admires the book on that count. On the other hand, it’s very Russian, and I have a hard time getting into that groove. I read (most of) Turgenev’s Sketches from a Hunter’s Album for a Russian history class, and I had the same problem: the content was interesting, but the style was somewhat off-putting. It was definitely better than The Stranger, and covers much of the same ground; though the “existential crisis”of the Underground Man is actually a crisis, whereas Meursault’s crisis is just a really bad case of ennui.

I suppose it made me want to read more Dostoevsky, but it also made clear to me that it’s going to be work, and I’d better be in the mood for a difficult read.