I drank too much alcohol last night, got too little sleep, drank too much coffee at work, am working a double today, and haven't eaten anything since breakfast. What better conditions under which to post? Anyway, I've been catching up on blogs, and for the first time in a while felt like writing something here.

I'd been wanting to read Wives and Daughters for a while, since I like Elizabeth Gaskell despite North and South, but after a friend told me that the BBC adaptation was the cult movie at her school (preferred over "Pride and Prejudice"!), I knew I had to read the book (as well as see the film, if I can find it). I was surprised at how long it took me to get into the novel; for at least the first ten chapters I had to convince myself to keep going in hopes of it getting better. Fortunately it did, and I was fascinated to observe an incredible writing skill unfold before me. Many books include characters that at first seem pleasant and then turn nasty, but my opinions of nearly all the characters in this book changed over the course of reading it. One in particular I found effective because of her resemblance to someone of my acquaintance--she was at first presented as a sweet, kind, gentle governess, whose position in life caused her to be much pitied and sympathized with; clearly, a character that the reader is intended to like. As the novel progressed and her situation began to change, she was slowly revealed to be shockingly self-centered and manipulative--and it came convincingly out of her previous behavior. The heroine went through an opposite transformation, from a rather dull and mealy-mouthed child to a woman who knew herself and stood up for her beliefs despite being constantly beleaguered by those around her.

The plot of this novel was fairly simple and predictable, but that's not why one reads Mrs Gaskell. (If you want plot twists, read Minette Walters!) Like all her novels, this one can be summarized as the development of a girl into a woman, and a look at quiet village life. Molly Gibson is not a great heroine, but she is an interesting one, and the way she deals with the difficult people in her life is admirable.

I apologize to anyone who's been checking my blog lately. I have had barely enough time to check my email, and am not feeling at all inspired to write. I'll post again later on, but for the moment I'm going to withdraw from the blogosphere. TTFN!

See also where it began and other takes on the meme.

I found this meme at Semicolon, and had to spend some time thinking about it before attempting my own. It came out rather suddenly this morning after my shower, and though there's much more I could have said, this is what fell onto the page. Tomorrow I might write a different one.

Where I Am From...

I am from bright hard winter mornings, sun glittering off the snow, thermometer stuck at fifteen below; bundled in snowpants and boots to feed the horse snorting in great white billows, and the poultry eager for fresh hot water to bathe their chilly toes.

I am from wood floors, wood stoves, and red geraniums on sunny afternoons.

I am from homemade bread, handsewn jumpers, and a house open to all.

I am from music, everywhere, several kinds at once: piano, violin, recorder, Bach upstairs and Amy Grant downstairs.

I am from skiing and softball and the patientest teacher; I am from tea parties, doll houses, mud pies, and a long, long childhood.

I am from potlucks and Bible verses and families; I am from drama so deep it consumes.

I am from stacks of library books, and reading till senseless.

I am from Aristotle, Jane Austen, Kierkegaard, and C.S. Lewis; I am from thinking and talking and laughing myself silly.

I am from wonder and worth and warmth; I am from abundance.

My life of leisure is over, thank heaven. I've acquired a second job as a server at the Sweet Oregon Grill, where I hope to work as much as possible and make vats of money. This is unlikely, but we can still hope.

I recently read both Delia Sherman's novels, which I have mixed feelings about. The Porcelain Dove was, I think, the better book, but didn't hold my interest as well and collapsed a bit at the end. As for the other--though I knew Sherman and Ellen Kushner were an item, I didn't realize until I started reading Through a Brazen Mirror that it was considered "queer fiction" (how irritated I am to lose that most excellent word!). Hrmph. My main comment is that if you can't even make homosexuality normal in a fantasy setting (it's YOUR OWN WORLD--you can do whatever you want with it!), I'm not going to be very convinced that it's normal in the real world.

I had other things to talk about, but my brain is too scattered. So I leave you with this highly unsatisfactory post.

I'll have to remember this. It reminds me a lot of the descriptions of birth in Spiritual Midwifery, though without the psychedelic grooviness.

My mind is a whirlpool of thoughts today, brought on a number of things. Every time I visit my mother's new house, I want to stay there out in the country, away from the craziness of this life. And things are really crazy right now, with finances, plans for the future, a new job, etc... But I'm also continuing to chew over the ideas in Beyond the Shadowlands--what a great book. I'll have to jot down the dialogue going through my head as I read, and if it's sharable I'll post it. My brain is getting some much-needed exercise, plus I'm inspired to re-read all of C.S. Lewis' books. Hard to ask for much more from a book!

A few lines from Wendell Berry:

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

from A Timbered Choir

I've given up on Seeds of Deception. I was going to be diligent and at least skim through the rest of the book, but I just couldn't. Rob Waller, Mind and Media's Reviewer of the Week, was kinder than I was, but still said about the same things. It's just not very good! However, I've started on my next book, and it is excellent. Of course, it's hard not to be excellent when you're talking about C.S. Lewis, but I'm sure there are those who could manage it.

Wayne Martindale is a scholar who's spent years studying and teaching on Lewis, and has written a lucid, intelligent book called Beyond the Shadowlands, about Lewis's views of heaven and hell. This is something not talked about much, since no one can claim to have true knowledge of the subject, but as I read this book I'm realizing how important it is for Christians to know. There are so many people who have no concept of heaven and hell, picturing the former as eternity spent sitting on clouds and strumming harps, and the latter a fiery pit with pitch-forked demons. Frankly, neither image is particularly appealling or particularly distressing. We need to look forward to heaven with yearning and cringe from the thought of hell, and we need to be able to inform non-Christians about these things as well. Lewis had amazing insights about the after-life, often using mythology to illustrate his point, and Martindale does an excellent job of gathering the information into one place and elucidating on it. I know I need to hurry up and finish it so I can get on to the next book, but I want to savor every word and give myself time to think about the ideas. There've been precious few books on my nightstand lately that have given me food for thought, and this is a welcome change. Highly recommended.

After talking with Jack about midwife and doula training, I decided to go to the library and pick up a couple of books on the subject. Bad idea. As if the biological clock weren't ALREADY in overdrive! Last week I read Catherine Taylor's Giving Birth, and while the first part made me mad, I loved the second part and have been freaking Odious out by occasionally sighing about how much I want a baby. Taylor is a journalist who decided to research natural childbirth after becoming pregnant with her second child, and shadowed a number of different midwives in order to write a book to inform women of their options. Having been born at home myself, I've always had a definite opinion on the subject, and am tremendously grateful to my mother for making my first experience in the world a wonderful one, and for creating an immediate strong bond between us. I think it's one of the reasons that my family is so intimate! It's unfortunate that most women don't know how safe natural home birth is, and how much more pleasant and fulfilling than a drugged, induced hospital birth. I got very angry reading the first part of this book, as she describes her experience with nurse-midwives and the birthing center in a hospital--I suppose it's better than most hospital births, but for women expecting traditional midwife care it would be greatly disappointing. In the second part, however, she trains to be a doula, attends several home births, and finally decides to give birth at home herself. It's wonderful and inspiring and I can't wait.

In honor of National Poetry Month, a few lines from one of my favorite poets:

Myself unholy, from myself unholy
To the sweet living of my friends I look--
Eye-greeting doves bright-counter to the rook,
Fresh brooks to salt sand-teasing waters shoaly:--
And they are purer, but alas! not solely
The unquestion'd readings of a blotless book.
And so my trust confused, struck, and shook
Yields to the sultry siege of melancholy.
He has a sin of mine, he its near brother,
Knowing them well I can but see the fall.
This fault in one I found, that in another:
And so, though each have one while I have all,
No better serves me now save best; no other,
Save Christ; to Christ I look, on Christ I call.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

His rhythm is beautiful--perfect for reading aloud. I've loved his work ever since sitting in on a senior oral exam at St. John's and being amazed that a whole 25-page essay could be written on one poem.

Catching up on blogs after only a weekend away is quite a task! I guess I'm not quite so dedicated a blogger as some... But I had a lovely weekend, marred only by Odious's absence--thanks to a scheduling snafu at work, he was unable to join me and our friends in Seattle on a delightful trip to Victoria. I'd decided when we moved here that I was not about to waste my proximity to another country again--it's most appalling, I think, that despite being hours away from Mexico for 7 years, I never took the time to visit that country. So, now I can add Canada to my short list, and will certainly return at the soonest opportunity.

Despite two of our party possessing passports still under our maiden names (one of which--not mine--was also 4 years expired!), we crossed the border with no problems and caught the ferry from Tsawwassen in good time. I may, at some point, post photos, but they are not developed as yet. The trip through the islands was calm and beautiful, and views of the rugged remote forests and mossy coasts put me immediately in mind of Charles de Lint--he describes just this sort of country in Memory and Dream and The Wild Wood . Once in Victoria, we eventually found our hostel on the Esquimalt peninsula, and knew ourselves blessed. It's an old house on the water, and could easily have been an expensive B&B with its lovely grounds and charming private rooms, but fortunately for us, the owner (who also works as a clown along with her companion Spike the Wonder Dog) has kept it shockingly inexpensive and inviting to the impecunious. Some of those latter seem to have made the place their semi-permanent home, which only adds to its charm--we chatted with three men, and others appeared out of the woodwork during our stay. One of my favorite things was the trampoline in the backyard, but the treehouse, canoes and kayaks, three dogs, two cats, chickens, rabbits, and guinea pigs were awesome too. And, after a good night's sleep, we investigated the mysterous "office" and found it to be a cosy little kitchen with a dining table set for breakfast. While chatting with the owner about her upcoming gigs, we feasted on cereal, toast, yoghurt, a delectable fruit salad, oj, coffee, and tea, all off beautiful china on a real tablecloth. Yes, this was a hostel--a far cry from the barracks of London and Paris!

Though I could have easily spent the entire weekend at the hostel, we had a wonderful time poking about Victoria, dining at both the city's vegan restaurants (the joys of Orthodox Lent!), which were actually quite good; enjoying live music (Peter, Paul, and Mary with a Celtic flair) in a pub; buying goodies from Roger's Chocolates; and wandering along the waterfront. We also spent a long time in the Maritime Museum, which turned out to be much more fascinating than I might have expected. The best part was the first section, which covered local history and the history of shipping in Canada--amazingly interesting, with lots of placards that were well-written and full of history. Since I hadn't had much time to read, I found myself devouring the words of the said placards--maybe why I enjoyed it so much... But it made me realize that not only do I know nothing about Canada (other than the two facts unknown to my companions, viz., that the country has a prime minister rather than a president, and that it is part of the British Commonwealth), but I know so little of world history! There's so much to know, and after reading How the Irish Saved Civilization, I'm realizing how everything is connected, and one small action may have huge consequences over the course of time. So now I'm inspired to read history and get myself eddicated. I think I'll start with that Stephen Ambrose book about Lewis and Clark, which I've been meaning to read since we moved here.

I'm mad at Eleanor Cameron. I was really enjoying The Court of the Stone Children until I decided to look up the French artist Jean Louis Baptiste Chrysostome who features greatly in the novel. After twenty minutes on the Internet, I was forced to admit that he does not exist--she made him up! It makes me so mad because I loved the descriptions of his paintings and really wanted to see them to help me appreciate the story. It's just like A.S. Byatt's trick in Possession. Well, it was a good book anyway--a story of a little girl who wants to be "something in a museum" (a curator), and whose love of things from the past helps her to solve a two hundred-year-old mystery.

Personality Disorder Test Results Paranoid || 10% Schizoid |||||||||||||||| 66% Schizotypal |||||||||||||| 58% Antisocial |||||||||||| 50% Borderline |||||| 22% Histrionic |||||| 30% Narcissistic |||||||||||| 46% Avoidant |||||| 26% Dependent |||||||||| 34% Obsessive-Compulsive |||||||||||||||| 66%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Huh. This actually seems pretty accurate, after reading the descriptions of the disorders, although I definitely don't think I'm schizotypal. Schizoid and OCD, though...

Via Badaunt

UPDATE: Odious also took this test, but decided not to post his results as they were... um... rather more extreme than mine. Oh, the shock.

After watching the new Bollywood film "Bride and Prejudice" (an excellent movie), I was inspired to check out from the library the work of two Indian authors, Jhumpa Lahiri and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. Though the former has apparently won some award or other, I found her short story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, greatly inferior to all the books I've read by the latter. Divakaruni possesses the knack of creating rich stories and sympathetic characters while evoking culture and heritage and country in her style. Of the two books I just read, Sister of My Heart and its sequel The Vine of Desire, I liked the first one best even though it was clearly intended to have a sequel. The story follows the relationship between Anju and Sudha, girl cousins raised in the same house and so close they are more like twins in their intuition and intimacy. As they grow older the bond between them necessarily changes with experiences, but love, tragedy, secrets, husbands, pregnancy, and a move to America cannot keep them apart. I loved Sudha and the core of strength she possessed that kept her from compromising herself when she saw how harmful it could be, and I wished Anju had learned from her instead of retreating into victim-mode. Together the two books provided an interesting portrait of people who allow things in life to change them and people who change themselves.

I like Mother Earth News a lot. It's practical, useful, and inspiring, and it encourages individuals to change the world by starting in their own homes. Hence I'm disturbed when an article seems to contradict the purpose of the magazine with a statement like this:

...the environment has lost some of its sizzle as an electoral issue. The biggest issues in the last election appear to have been terrorism, the Iraq war, abortion, affordable health care and gay marriage. Although anyone looking back on this election 100 years form now will see climate disruption as vastly more important than any of these issues, few people voted in 2004 on the basis of climate policies or any other environmental issues. April/May 2005

Besides being impossible to prove, it's unrealistic--let's fix the whole world first, then worry about the problems right here at home, in our hearts and our families. I'm quick to agree that our planet is in trouble (though perhaps not as dire as one might be led to think), but so is our society, and claiming that one issue is greater than the other could be catastrophic. What's the use of saving the earth if we neglect the children of God? Do we really care more about the baby whales than the baby humans?

Environmentalism is important--the slaughter of innocents should no more occur in the wild than it should in abortion clinics--and at this point we probably do need loud-mouthed leaders for the cause, but they shouldn't try to emphasize one issue by scoffing at the others. What Mother Earth News tries to do is tremendously effective when it works, and that is to teach people to live their individual lives as if they were as important as the entire world. God requires us to be good stewards of every aspect of our lives--we can't neglect one thing in favor of another.

Once again I learn that not everyone can be a writer--or a good writer, at least--no matter how interesting the story to be told. I picked up On the Wing hopeful of a captivating narrative about falcons, but sadly Alan Tennant doesn't possess the knack for such an endeavor. His story is an unusual one, and I enjoyed reading about his travels, but he made the mistake of keeping too close to the actual experiences. There was no plot, no over-arcing connection to bind the adventures together. My editing fingers always start to itch when I read something like this that could have been so much better!

Yet I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading the book. Alan Tennant is a falcon research who spent several months following the migratory route of falcons from Texas to Alaska, and then back down to South America. It's a fascinating adventure as he and his pilot rattle across the country in a plane rather like the Millenium Falcon--they cross borders semi-legally, make emergency landings in the jungle, fly through a raptor "freeway", and are ecstatic every moment that the radio transmitter beeps and keeps them on the trail of the falcons. I couldn't bring myself to care much about his on-again off-again relationship with his long-suffering girlfriend, and the book ends on a note more bitter than sweet, but it was certainly worth reading--as is most anything about falcons.

Lars Walker says what I've been thinking about literature, and tried to express in my post on Virginia Woolf.

I found this meme at The Library of Babel, who in turn found it at The Little Professor. Which authors have you read ten or more books by?

L.M. Montgomery (she's the winning author on our bookshelves for number of books we own by one person--it's something like 25)
Charles de Lint (he's in 2nd or 3rd, vying with James Branch Cabell)
Louisa May Alcott
C.S. Lewis
Agatha Christie
Ellis Peters/Edith Pargeter
Charles Dickens
Jane Austen (if you count absolutely everything she wrote, including juvenilia and letters, I think that's somewhere around ten)
Plato
Ruth Rendell
Tamora Pierce
Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm
Maud Hart Lovelace
Beverly Cleary
Patricia Wrede
Elizabeth Peters
Patricia McKillip
Roald Dahl
E. Nesbit
Laura Ingalls Wilder
William Shakespeare
Madeleine L'Engle
Gladys Taber
A.S. Byatt
Robin McKinley
Elizabeth George
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Marguerite Henry
Walter Farley
Connie Willis
P.G. Wodehouse

That's all I can come up with for now, though I'm not including the various authors of Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, etc. It's not as long a list as I would've expected, but of course, there are the authors who I would read ten books by if they'd written that many (yeah, Brontes, I'm talkin' to you).

You may have noticed the Mind and Media logo on my sidebar, just below the links--yes, I am an EXCLUSIVE REVIEWER. That's right. Ahem. Anyway, Mind and Media is a new business intended to help promote Christian authors via the blogging world, as well as being, in my understanding, a bit of an experiment to show how much of an impact blogs can have on advertising. I came across it either on Brandywine Books or a subsequent link, and thought it sounded like fun--get free books, talk about them on the blog, and, of course, become an EXCLUSIVE REVIEWER.

So I got my first book the other day. I'm supposed to post a logo of it, but can't figure out the HTML yet--maybe later. It's called Seeds of Destruction: Planting Destruction of America's Children, written and self-published by Georgiana Preskar and available from Amazon. First of all, the subtitle has got to go. It doesn't make much sense, and sounds as the author's goal is to destroy America's children, when in fact she's crying out against that destruction by society. Secondly, I'm beginning to realize that it simply isn't true that anyone can be a writer. Setting aside the issue of simple sentences and poor punctuation, there are people who just don't know how to tell a story. Ms. Preskar begins the book with an introduction that seems to lay a good foundation with the information that her town was just another quiet town until one man made national news by trying to get rid of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Great, thought I, so she's going to start here and show how our society is corrupted by these small actions. Then the first couple of chapters describe her and her husband's desperate grief when their son leaves for college. Besides being thrown off course, I found it disturbing that her son living 20 minutes away dragged her into such devastation and aimlessness. Maybe I'll understand when I'm a parent...

So far I've skimmed through nine chapters of the book. While I do agree with her general view that society is corrupting children, she needs at the very least a good editor (the book was edited by her family), or ideally a ghost writer. She doesn't know how to focus or create an argument, so each chapter leads to a new tangent and fresh rant on Nazis, homosexuality, TV violence--it's too much. I'm disappointed, because it sounded like an interesting book, but we'll see if things improve as I continue to read.

I should also mention that Mind and Media would like to have as many bloggers involved as possible, so visit the website if you're interested in receiving free books!

Sherry of Semicolon has asked if Virginia Woolf is indeed a militant feminist and hence to be avoided, or if she should take her daughter's advice and read her books. Now, in my somewhat vague mind militant feminism has something to do with bra-burning, so I'm not quite sure how to answer the question... I always take a book with me to work, since there is usually some down time where I haven't anything else to do. The servers, if they're not too busy either, will often come up and ask what I'm reading, and one guy in particular is always very interested. After a phase in which I'd brought in Elizabeth Gaskell, Virginia Woolf, and various other women authors, he asked if I ever read anything written by a man or if I was a feminist. Well, of course I read things written by men, but I didn't really know how to answer him either, partly because I find such labels limiting. Hence my highly articulate response: "Uh...I don't know." Another server standing nearby asked, "Well, do you shave your legs?" "Heavens, no!" said I promptly. She turned to the first server. "She's a feminist." This is the long way of saying I don't really know what a feminist is. I believe in the equality of human rights for everyone--men, women, children--and I think all three have been subjected to injustice over the course of history. If I'd lived--I was going to say during the time of suffrage, but really any time before now, I would certainly have joined in the women's rights movement, and I'm glad to live in a time when I can vote and get a job and support myself if necessary. On the other hand, I don't really want a career or success--just a family and quiet home life. But I think that's the goal of feminism, to give women that choice.

Virginia Woolf was concerned about the role of women in society. She gives examples of the common view of the time throughout all her novels, but I think most shockingly in The Voyage Out. I'd have to speak up too if I heard a real person say what Mr Dalloway does, in reference to suffragists picketing Parliament: "Nobody can condemn the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has the right to vote in England!" To make it worse, his wife agrees with him. Woolf found it imperative to reveal this idea of women as inferior, and call, in her own way, for equality. She does not claim that men and women are the same, but that they deserve equal basic human rights and acknowledgement.

That said, there's much more to her books than the subject of women's rights, just as there's much more to Dickens than the issue of poverty. I think all authors have some sort of social commentary woven into their writing--it's part of literature and part of life. We can learn so much from fiction that is more difficult to learn from philosophy and theology texts; after all, Jesus knew what he was doing when he told parables. But Virginia Woolf also has much to say, as I mentioned in my previous post, on the progression of life and thought within a seeking mind. Her writing makes me feel more myself than most other books, and more aware of my thought process, growth, and femininity; furthermore, like Jane Austen, I feel her effect on my own writing style. For these things I value her, as well as for her sparkling prose and rich characters.

I just discovered Vita Sackville-West, who is similar to Virginia Woolf (they were friends) in her writing and subject matter. Rebecca West and Willa Cather are also excellent authors of the period.