Friday Links

No Friday recap, I forgot to record what we did this week!  I had a cold and was kind of out of it anyway.  I was sooo tired at the beginning of the week.  And a lot of stuff got cancelled this week too which was nice because did I mention how very tired I was?

Anyway, instead here are things I enjoyed reading this week.

Bad Parenting; Why the Ban Against Communion for Divorced and Remarried Catholics is Unjust.  

I agree with this!  The Church has been so very horrible at catechizing its own children.  For decades now parish religious education and sacramental prep has been abysmal.  The culture took over and the Church, by and large, capitulated.  Well, you reap what you sow.  If you allow people to marry in the Church knowing that they don't know squat about what they are doing, but then get all punitive after the fact. . . . that is not right, not fair, not merciful, not responsible, not loving.    I think Dr. Popcak's proposals are good ones.

Speaking of marriage,  here is a wonderful article about a remarkable marriage surviving beyond all expectation because of Christ, community support and love.

And since Halloween is upon us, here are two Halloween-appropriate tales that are very enjoyable.

First, Sean introduced me to this charming, funny, and clever and surprisingly thought-provoking short cartoon series Over the Garden Wall.  The cartoons are quite short so to watch them all only takes the time a regular length movie would.  Click here is a preview of the series.  Some of the animation is just gorgeous.  Elijah Wood voices one of the main characters.  Christopher Lloyd plays a character too.   The music is fantastic too.

And we've been revisiting Legend of Sleepy Hollow this month.  B was props staff for the community theater presentation last week, and then we all read it for book club this week.  Here is an audio version free on youtube.  

Happy Halloween!  Since I am going to attempt NaNoWriMo, I am not going to be blogging much for the month of November.

NaNoWriMo's coming up!

NaNoWriMo is just a few days away.  I don't have the time or the focus for it, but I feel strongly drawn to at least attempting it.  I have attempted it in the past and never made it through.  This year I am thinking, if I can make it through Lent with giving up stuff, which I have done successfully for many years, why can't I just make it through 30 days writing 1,667 words a day?  It is only a month!   So maybe if I look at it as a sacrificial act. . . . something seems wrong with that line of thinking though.

Here is Suzie Andres giving a pep talk at her local library for her NaNoWriMo group.

I found the little exercise where you write out what you like about a novel vs. what you don't like about a novel to be really interesting.  It got me thinking.

What I like in a novel:

1.  Characters I care about
2.  Characters that seem real, develop over the course of the novel, but are consistent too.
3.  Descriptions that evoke a time or place (unlike Suzie I love a good description of a room!  It is hard to do!)
4.  Novels that make me think
5.  I don't like gratuitous violence, graphic sex or crude language.  However, if the violence is an integral part of the story, if the sex is not graphic but more implied and if the language is just a little crude because it reflects a particular character's personality or something like that, then I am okay with it.  So if the author includes these dangerous elements, it needs to be done adroitly and for very solid reasons.  Otherwise I get turned off.
6.  No existentialism.  I want real meaning.
7.  I enjoy humorous light novels as well as serious, thought provoking novels so it is the telling of the story, not whether it is breezy and uplifting or solemn and deep, that attracts me.
8.  Wit
9.  Beautiful writing - the ability to express things in a captivating way.  I love a good turn of phrase.
10.  A plausible plot.

What I don't like in a novel:
1.  Lots of violence, sex and crude language.
2.  When the author doesn't seem to like the characters, when the characters have ugly souls and there is no sense of redemption.
3.  Authors who deliberately keep me, the reader, from closely identifying with the main character.
4.  Authors who seem angry or are so busy pushing a particular political point so that their agenda intervenes and makes the novel all didactic and two dimensional.  I don't mind novels that teach something, but it needs to be done with finesse and respect for the reader.
5.  When the novel is too plot driven so that the characters are just vehicles for the plot.  Characters should be people!
6.  Plots that don't make sense if you think about them for 2 minutes.
7.  I am not a great fantasy, sci-fi reader.  I appreciate someone who can recreate reality but with deeper insight.  I find fantasy and sci-fi kind of boring for some reason.  It just doesn't hold my interest very well.
8.  I don't like best sellers about criminals and fast-paced plots with grisly violence.
9.  I don't like a lot of best sellers because they tend to reflect the current dysfunctional values of today's society.  I like authors who can transcend that.
10.  Clunky writing.

Saint Paul - Book 50

Saint Paul by Pope Benedict XVI is really a collection of his lectures at the General Audiences from July 2, 2008 - February 4, 2009 in the Vatican declared Year of Paul.  

This book is a beautiful, clear, profound and accessible study of the life and theology of St. Paul.  Each lecture explores a theme.  The first goes into the religious and cultural environment Paul would have known and lived in.    Another lecture is about his dramatic conversion.   The lectures go on to explore his relationship with the other Apostles, his relationship with the historic Jesus, his developing Christology, his developing of the idea of justification, his foundational understanding of the sacraments, his pastoral letters and finally his death.

I mostly read this slender book (only 131 pages) in the morning as a meditation.  Sometime I could read a whole chapter in one sitting but other times I would only read a page or two and that would be enough food for thought for that day.  Pope Benedict is such a good teacher.  He writes in a humble, reasonable, logical way.  Underneath everything is joy and hope.  My copy is a hard bound one but I sort of wished it wasn't.  If it had been paperback I would have been underlining and writing in the margins, which I think would have done me good.  But I couldn't let myself do it in such a pretty little hardbound volume.

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Black Mischief - Book 49

What an ugly cover!  My edition had a sort of an Art Deco look to it which was far nicer!

Black Mischief is a satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh of Brideshead Revisited fame.  Waugh apparently wrote two types of novels:  scathing satire and 'Catholic" novels that explored themes of the faith.  Black Mischief is definitely a satire.  It is quite dark and unrelenting and at times hysterically funny.  Waugh has an impeccable writing style.   He skewers everyone in this novel.

The novel was published in 1932 and is set in the imaginary African country of Azaria.  While it does have some racist elements, given that it was written by a British white guy in the 1930s about Africa, because Waugh takes no prisoners in his send up of the folly of man, he actually is harshest on the British themselves, it seemed to me.  In other words, he's being so mean to everybody, you hardly notice the racist bits!

It was an entertaining read and an interesting glimpse into the British colonial mindset and all that was wrong with it.  I read Waugh's book Scoop , a couple years ago.  I can't find my review of it, nor is it listed in any of my 52 Books pages.  I remember writing the review though.  I read it because I was focusing on reading classic humor books and I'd looked up lists of the funniest novels and Scoop kept turning up.  It is very similar to Black Mischief in that it is set in a fictional African (or maybe middle Eastern) country where things are just as absurd.  It is about the adventures of a man mistakenly forced into a journalist's job overseas.  Scoop, in my dim memory,  has more of a British white supremacist feel to it and the satire got tiresome to me.  I might not have ever quite finished the book, but just skimmed to the end of it.  Anyway, for some reason I found Black Mischief more palatable.  It might be that I wasn't expecting one of the funniest books, so I didn't have any high expectations. It might also be that I had just finished The Blue Nile and all the happenings going on in Black Mischief had a familiar ring to them.  Waugh was satirizing many events that actually happened.

While the satire is amusing, I found it a bit depressing too.  Not one character in the book is worthwhile.  The author jeers at them all.  So while it was a funny book that had me laughing and then gasping at the wickedness in turn, I couldn't keep up a steady diet of this sort of thing without becoming even more cynical than I am about the state of humankind.

For more book reviews, Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

Friday Recap - 10/22

Monday:
Woke at 4 with headache - went away by 8 though.
Got kids up late
Saint:  Blessed Paul VI
Element:  Calcium
Cursive practice
Copy work:  quote from Midsummer Night's Dream about being little but fierce!
S - math homework
B - watched beginning of lecture on Intro to Geometric proofs; worked 3 one-step and  2 two-step algebra problems to brush up on her algebra.
S - worked on some Latin
Read history and did note taking sheets
Read some Lord of the World
Went grocery shopping
While gone B did a lot of work - her science and her Latin and practiced voice
S did science
S had physical training
made potato cheese soup
Got B to rehearsal

Tuesday:
I forgot to record this day.  I know S and B did history in a.m. and then took a quiz in history class later.  Both said they thought they did well.
Trying to read Lord of the World but not getting far.
B to rehearsal

Wednesday:
Forgot to record this day too.  We did math, Latin, S and B had speech class. B gave her speech.  Voice and bass lessons.
B to rehearsal

Thursday:
Another bath headache.  What the heck!  This bothered me most of the day.
S did math and driver's ed.  He had sent in an on line job application earlier in the week.  He went over to park and it looks like he got the job.  It's to be an attendant at the winter light show the park hosts every Christmas time.  He has to fill out forms and return.  Hopefully tomorrow or Saturday.  The light show opens 11/13.
B did some Geometry with J in a.m.
Went to Aquinas but headache was bothering me.  Managed to mentor Latin 1 and 2.
B  babysat there.
B to rehearsal.  This is opening night.  Josh went to see the play.  Said it was good.  He is picking her up too.  Going to be a late night.

Friday:
S to math tutor
Let B sleep in.
didn't get to Natural law
Read a little of Lord of the World
Mass
Lunch
Met with friends to discuss a tiny bit of LotW, decide on the book club discussion (Legend of Sleepy Hollow) and walk in the park for an hour on this beautiful day.  Unfortunately, my headache came back
B to her show.  Rick picked her up at 9:30
I fell asleep before I could listen to Will's radio show.  Darn.  Apparently he had on his friend who plays bluegrass so well.

This past week was rough.  I had three different headaches on three different days, I didn't stick to my meal plan, and a lot of stuff didn't get done.  BUT, it looks like S got a job. He'll be a seasonal worker  His first job.  So that is a wonderful thing.  And B was properties staff for the crew of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. She was out every night this week.  Tonight Rick and I are going out to dinner (S might come too) and then seeing the show.

Reading The Bible

A couple of weeks ago, I was reading something and it had a quote from Lamentations.  And it occurred to me that I didn't really know the book of Lamentations, so I flipped to it and started reading.  I read it all in one sitting.  Maybe it took me 30 minutes.  It is a long poem bewailing the fate of Jerusalem, who has been destroyed by her enemies and her people killed or scattered into exile.  The poem at turns praises God and recounts Israel's faithlessness  At other times it begs God for forgiveness, talks of his wrath and ends on a real downer note, stating maybe this time God's people have sinned beyond forgiveness.

Anyway, what surprised me was that it didn't take very long to read it!  So then I started to toy with the idea of reading the Bible all the way through.  Now I have read books of the Bible before.  I took both Old and New Testament way back in college.  I was in a study of the Psalms many years ago and another study of Revelation.  And even further back I was in Small Faith group two parishes ago and I know we studied a couple of books, though I can not recall which ones at all.  And I know I've done a couple other studies too.  But I have decided to start anew and just do my own thing.  I am counting the ones that I recall that I've read fairly recently.  I know I studied the book of Job with Josh when he was either 11th or 12th grade.  I know I read through Luke a couple years ago using the Navarre Scripture study series.  So I am counting those.

Today though I did something kind of silly.  I looked up a list of all the 73 books of the Catholic Bible in order from shortest to longest.  Yes.  I am going to read them starting with the shortest and going to the longest.  Here's the link.    Anyway, today, while sitting outside Becky's voice lesson and Sean's bass lesson (each 30 minutes) I managed to read 1 John, 2, John, 3 John, Jude and Philomen.  None of these are very long, but they are very interesting because they reveal so much about the early church.

So!  Job, Luke, Lamentations, 1, 2, 3 John, Jude and Philomen.  That's 8!  So only 65 more to go!  I am crossing them off as I go on a new page called Reading Through the Bible.

Joining the Classics Club

Gray-haired and with glasses, I am working my way through some major tomes!

I am joining the Classics Club.  I've been hovering around its periphery for years now, being devoted to the Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge.  But now I've decided to take the plunge and join.  One of the requirements is to list at least 50 books I plan to read.  So here is my very ambitious plan!

50 Classics I’d like to read before I am 60:

1.     The Bible

2.     Anabasis by Xenophon

3.     Herodotus

4.     Plutarch’s Lives (Dryden)

5.     Oedipus Trilogy

6.     The City of God

7.     Metamorphoses by Ovid

8.     The Consolation of Philosophy

9.     Summa Theologica

10. Interior Castle

11. Pensees by Pascal

12. The Life of Johnson

13. The Faerie Queen

14. Democracy in America

15. Apologia Pro Vita Sua

16. The Intellectual Life

17. Nicomachean Ethics

18. Rhetoric

19. Shakespeare (as much as I can!)

20. Utopia

21. War and Peace (I have tried but never gotten into it)

22. Crime and Punishment (ditto)

23. The Story of Art by Gombrich

24. Civilization by Kenneth Clark

25. Life of Moses (Gregory of Nyssa)

26. Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

27. The Practice of the Presence of God

28. The Tenant of Wildfeld Hall

29. Out of Africa (this would be a reread)

30. West with the Night

31. Divine Comedy (I’ve read Inferno but not the other two books)

32. The Betrothed

33. Things Fall Apart

34. Frankenstein

35. Mythology by Edith Hamilton

36. Fiction by Borges (He wrote mostly short stories)

37. Wise Blood

38. The Wasteland by T. S. Eliot

39. The Moviegoer

40. Winesburg, Ohio

41. Go Tell It On the Mountain

42. Up From Slavery

43. Silent Spring

44. The Road to Wigan Pier

45. A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wallstonecraft

46. Hildegard of Bingen (Collection of her writings)

47. Margery Kempe (memoirs, I think)

48. Kathleen Thompson Norris (novelist)

49. Kathleen Norris (poet/religious books)

50. Helena by Evelyn Waugh