We are not unique.

I have just discovered that my family's cult movie is also someone else's cult movie. This is very hard to believe.

I've been reading a memoir (you will laugh when you learn that it's called Truck: A Love Story) by Michael Perry, about his life in a small Wisconsin town, the rebuilding of a '51 International pickup, planting a vegetable garden, going on book tours, and his budding relationship with a woman he meets at a book signing. On their second date, they watch a movie at Anneliese's house, and afterward spend some time chatting about movies they both like, pleased to find their taste is similar.

"Then she says she and her sisters and her mother can recite every line in What's Up, Doc?..."

I had to check to make sure that I wasn't actually related to this woman! Someone else in the world has A), HEARD of this movie, 2), recognized its brilliance, and D), watched it so many times that it is engraved into their brains forever. Yikes.

As far as the rest of the book goes, I enjoyed it enough to request his other two memoirs at the library, although his tone is a little too "Look how witty, interesting, and liberal I am despite living in Hot-Dish Ville" for my taste. Though I didn't totally understand all the details of rebuilding the pickup, neither did he, but it was fun anyway. And I liked his descriptions of planning, starting, planting, and harvesting a garden (currently being deep in that activity myself), as well as his cooking adventures. He sounds like a neat guy, if overly inclined to convince you of that fact, and I wouldn't mind attending one of the firemen's BBQs to shoot the breeze with him and his friends.

Sam's Wish List

Poinsettia and the Fire Fighters, Felicia Bond
I Spy series
The Lord Is My Shepherd, illustrated by Tasha Tudor
My Very First Mother Goose, Iona Opie and Rosemary Wells
The Sleeping Beauty, Trina Schart Hyman
any books about diggers

Somebody asked me recently if I still had time to read while raising a toddler and running a farm. My answer was, Yes, and I also find time for breathing.

I've been reading a lot of farming/real food/back-to-the-land books lately; it's inspiring to get other perspectives on the lifestyle I've chosen, and fun to compare our progress with that of other folks. Right now I'm enjoying Rural Renaissance, which is somewhat unusual in this category because of the authors' unflagging enthusiasm. While I appreciate the reality of disillusionment and mistakes, it's much more motivational to read about success! John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist have had their share of mistakes and mishaps, but they write cheerfully and zealously of their experiences with green living.

Elizabeth Goudge is also still appearing regularly on my nightstand, although I've gone through nearly all the library's holdings. Guess it's time for a Powell's wish list! I've finished off Robertson Davies, too, except for a one or two odd titles--I still like the Cornish trilogy best, although the Salterton trilogy is a close second.

I'm also reading lots and lots of Frances, Max and Ruby, Alfie, and Madeline--Sam is as insatiable as his parents. I'm pleased, of course, but a little tired of reading aloud--never my favorite pastime. Well, at this rate it won't be long before he can read to himself, and any siblings that come along.

So my mom comes into the house yesterday morning and hands me a padded envelope. "You got giant microbes in the mail!" she says brightly.

I look at the envelope. Sure enough, the return address says "Giant Microbes". Huh.

I tear it open and peek inside to see an unidentifiable yellowish lump. I don't really want to touch it, but I pull it out gingerly. Well, would you look at that. It's... a stuffed bookworm. Isn't that... nice.

I look back inside the envelope. No note. Just the stuffed bookworm.

My mom says, "Do you think your mother-in-law could have sent it to you?"

I say, "No, I really can't imagine anyone but Mr. and Mrs. Peculiar sending me something like this."

Then I notice the invoice taped to the front of the envelope. Yes, my dear, thoughtful friends have sent me a birthday gift. Isn't that... nice.

In a later email Peculiar blames Mrs, and says I should be thankful they chose the bookworm and not one of the other options. Again I say, Huh.

More on the subject of self-sacrifice--a Methodist song quoted in Robertson Davies's Murther and Walking Spirits:

There's an excellent rule
I have learned in life's school,
And I'm ready to set it before you.
When you're heavy at heart
And your world falls apart,
Do not pity yourself, I implore you.
No, up with your chin,
Meet bad luck with a grin,
And try this infallible trick:
It never will fail you,
Whatever may ail you--
DO SOMETHING FOR SOMEBODY QUICK!

OH--
Do something for somebody quick,
It will banish your cares in a tick
Don't fret about you
There's a Good Deed to do--
DO SOMETHING FOR SOMEBODY QUICK!

Not the most poetic of sentiments, perhaps, but solid advice nonetheless. My own grumbles disappear much more quickly when buried in a good housecleaning or read-aloud session or meal preparation or other such deed that benefits someone else more than it does me. (And before anyone dismisses me as too priggish to live, I'll just say that it's not often that I remember to do something for somebody quick!)

I've made another rediscovery, this time with Robertson Davies. After dashing my way through a library booksale, I found myself the possessor of three of his novels; they turned out to be the Salterton trilogy, but not knowing this at first, I read them in reverse order. Fortunately they stood the test, and I enjoyed them immensely: Tempest-Tost, Leaven of Malice, and A Mixture of Frailties. Then I found the one mentioned above at the library, which turned out to be one of the strangest books I've ever read. It began (I really don't think this counts as a spoiler, since it was the first sentence) with the protagonist being murdered; his ghost then went on to view a series of films starring his ancestors. I'm still not exactly sure what to make of it, but I did read the whole thing. Now I'm revisiting The Rebel Angels, which is as delightful and odd as I remember it.

There's something about summer that tempts me even more than usual to lounge about all day and immerse myself in reading--something in which I cannot indulge anymore. I've been trying to avoid potato-chip books, like mysteries and fantasy, because once I start I don't want to do anything else, and get very cross when reality (the boy, the farm, etc) intrudes. During our vacation in Minnesota, I thought I'd satisfied myself with British detectives and magical adventures, but of course I was wrong.

My downfall? Rediscovering Elizabeth Goudge. I've loved The Little White Horse ever since reading it as a child, but though I read several of her other books, I was too young for them at the time. Now, I find, I adore them. She writes simple stories, but her prose is beautifully poetic, and she has realized that all conflict in life stems from the search for God. She's the only novelist I've read who writes about Christians without writing about Christianity, if you know what I mean. Rather, she writes about the everyday life of human beings who, as human beings, cannot escape their innate spirituality. It's lovely and inspiring and impossible to put down.

A common theme that I've noticed in her novels is the necessity of sacrifice. She describes it eloquently in The Bird in the Tree, as young David considers his grandmother's principles:

...her generation and his felt so differently about the truth. Her generation had built from without inwards, had put the reality of law and tradition above the reality of personal feeling, but his built from within outwards, the truth of personal feeling must come first; when there was no longer reality in a union, smash the union; never mind what laws were broken or what lives were crippled; live the truth.

But what is the truth? Later on his grandmother explains,

...if truth is the creation of perfection then it is action and has nothing to do with feeling. And the nearest we can get to creating perfection in this world is to create good for the greatest number, for the community or the family, not just for ourselves; to create for ourselves only means misery and confusion for everybody... It is far more truthful to act what we should feel if the community is to be well served rather than behave as we actually do feel in our selfish private feelings.

Modern psychology tells us to "take care of yourself first"; make sure your own needs are met before expending precious energy on others. But we are incapable of making ourselves happy--we give ourselves what we want, not what we need, and grow ever more dissatisfied and narcissistic. It's only when we forget ourselves in wholehearted service to our families and communities that we can feel content.

All sorts of sacrifices await us throughout our lives. They may be huge or seemingly insignificant, but each one brings us closer to Christ. My challenge now is sacrificing my desire to read for hours; to enjoy Elizabeth Goudge in small amounts instead of gorging myself all at once.

What is it about memes that's so irresistible? And I'm always a sucker for book lists--so fun to check off all the ones I've read... This one's from Voracious Reader.

Consider yourself tagged if you are reading this. When you post your list on your blog, please track back to mine (or leave a comment) so that I can read your lists too.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your tbr list [I could not get Blogger to underline, so I've put quotation marks instead].


Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina*
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion*
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose*
Don Quixote *
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary*
The Odyssey*
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair*
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma*
"The Blind Assassin"
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway*
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales [Although I may not have read them all yet...I'm not sure]
The Historian
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch*
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula*
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible*
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse*
Tess of the D’Urbervilles*
Oliver Twist*
Gulliver’s Travels*
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince*
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter*
"Eats, Shoots & Leaves"
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita*
Persuasion*
Northanger Abbey*
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid*
Watership Down*
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
"In Cold Blood"
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield*
The Three Musketeers*

What a weird list! Most of the ones I haven't read I've never even heard of--Cloud Atlas?!?