31 October

In honour of this month containing thirty-one days, I accordingly bought thirty-one books at our library's annual book sale. I have written out lists of books here before, but it occurs to me now that this might be terribly boring. But I'm too excited about having got them to refrain from listing anyway. If you are Terribly Bored, then I give you permission to skip this entry. But then you wouldn't know what I'd got, would you? And it is wonderful! Just look:

1. Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe (all hardback unless specified)
2. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
3. Selected Prose and Poetry, Kipling
4. The Outline of History, H. G. Wells (four volumes)
5. My Antonia, Willa Cather (paperback)
6. O Pioneers!, Willa Cather (paperback)
7. Complete Poems and Selected Letters, John Keats
8. Selected Poems, Essays, and Letters, Shelley
9. Wordsworth's Poetical Works
10. Selected Poetry, W.B. Yeats (paperback)
11. Barchester Towers, Trollope
12. Barchester Towers, Trollope (yes, I bought two. I now own three copies of this book!)
13. Popular Quotations for All Uses
14. The Monticello Cook Book
15. The Large Catechism, Martin Luther
16. Letters of Henry Adams, 1838-1891
17. Victorian & Later English Poets
18. English Romantic Poets
19. Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections with a Bibliography
20. Lives of Poets, Samuel Johnson (two volumes; including Dryden, Milton, Blackmore, &c.)
21. A Treasury of the World's Greatest Diaries (including Sir Walter Scott, Davy Crockett, Queen Victoria, Anne Frank, and Henry James)
22. Letter of J.R.R. Tolkien, compiled and edited by Humphrey Carpenter
23. Children's Book of Knowledge (twenty volume set)
24. The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler
25. The History of Tom Jones, Henry Fielding
26. Joseph Andrews, Henry Fielding (paperback)
27. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
28. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
29. Richard Feverel, George Meredith
30. Selected Works of Alexander Pope
31. Tristram Shandy, Laurence Sterne

Isn't that great?! I was so excited to bring them all home! I just have to find a space for them now. I don't think they'll all fit in my current shelving system. *sigh* What a problem to have!

I wish I could tell you that I did the same thing with reading; that I read thirty-one books this month, but I didn't. I did get a fair number read though, mostly from my dystopian list. I won't list them all here--that would be list overload, I think! Here are the ones which struck me as worth reading again, or recommending to someone else:
-Captains Courageous, Rudyard Kipling. This is a good boy-book, and I enjoyed it very much.
-So Much More, Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin. I read this at R & C's. I had already heard much of the material before, but it was good to hear again why God gave us fathers and what we are to do with them.
-Getting Serious About Getting Married, Debbie Maken. My favourite book this month, by far. Not celibate? = Get Married!
-Stories of the Old Dominion, John Esten Cooke. Yes! I finally finished reading it! I learned a lot from this book: I learned that I am ignorant, and I wish I weren't.

I ended up reading quite a bit more this month than the last few months combined, but it was mostly library reading, which I've decided to call 'Russian Roulette Reading'. The term has the advantage of alliteration. Feel free to use it whenever you can work it into conversation. Where was I? Oh, yes... You just never know what you're going to get. And I have to say, I am a tad bit disappointed in today's dystopian authors. I've read some 20-odd books and I can only recommend five of the authors. Two of those with reservations. Definitely disappointing. And Dystopia isn't the only genre suffering from lack of creative thinking and good writing. All I can think is, we'd better get started writing. We have some work to do.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build--but not I build; no, but strain,
Time's eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

I return.

It's good to be home in my nice, clean, heated house. R & C are doing very well, and E is quite entertaining. She says 'uh-oh', 'hot', and 'more'. She also has words for drink and thank you, but they don't sound anything like 'drink' or 'thank you', so they're hard to represent here. The church is back on it's feet, too, so things are looking up. It was a nice visit. I can't wait to go back!

In other news, My Friend Tami is getting married! Huzzah!

And I was reading an interview of Kemper Crabb today. You can find it here: http://www.kempercrabb.net/articles.html# . Click on 'Harry Potter Interview'. Kemper Crabb is a priest in the Episcopalian church, a musician, and a very intelligent man. This is the best apology for Harry Potter I've heard yet. Here's an excerpt:

'...I suppose I like the books because they promote witchcraft and magic, and I figure they will turn millions of innocent children into slavering tools of Satan.'

Just kidding! Here's a good one:

'I do think Christians don't know how to read well, although we should be the ones who do know how since the Book that God gave us invited all of these artistic principles and genres that are employed in Scripture, whether it's poetry, apocalyptic literature, narratives, epistolary forms, etc. We are hampered in our reading of Scripture and general literature because we don't place value in those things. Most Christians are functional pragmatists anyway; they want a technique, their own form of magic, some kind of quick fix even in their faith life. It is that same attitude that rules how they read Scripture, and how they read literature. That is one of the reasons the Church is an absolute zero integer in its influence on the cultural world presently, except for the few Christians who know differently. Consequently, the pagans rule the realm of the arts at this time because the Church thinks they know better.'

But this one's my favourite:

'Jenni: How should a Christian read the Harry Potter books?

Kemper: I suggest English.'

To be a book-collector is to combine the worst characteristics of a dope fiend with those of a miser.

(Quote by Robertson Davies)

This post is merely a list, or rather a group of lists, based upon one of my life mottoes, as quoted in the title.

My recent conquests:
1. Read:
(In September)
- The Diamond Age, by Neil Stephenson
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, by Philip K. Dick
- The Flying Inn, by G.K. Chesterton
- The Hundred Secret Senses, by Amy Tan
- Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

2. Purchased:
By C.S. Lewis- Present Concerns, a collection of essays; Narrative Poems, huzzah!; and Perelandra. All in paperback, I regret to say.
The Warden and Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope, in one volume. Hardback.
Lilith, by George MacDonald, with an introduction by C.S. Lewis Paperback.
Two pocket-sized books of verse: 1. Milton and 2. Selections from Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats.
And an eight-volume set of Dickens. Hardback!
In volumes one and two: Oliver Twist,
In vols. two and three: A Tale of Two Cities,
In vols. four and five: Pickwick Papers,
In vols. six, seven, and eight: David Copperfield, and
In vol. eight: A Christmas Carol.
So you can see the whole set is very confusing. The best part is the set was only eight dollars.

And two other things which are completely non-germane:
1. Really Raw Honey is simply wonderful.
2. I'm going to visit R & C for a week with mon pere et ma mere. We're leaving on Friday morning, quite early. I'll be sure to write when I'm back and let you all know how the visit went.

I'm sorry if I post too many lists. I know I am supposed to be writing, and lists don't count for that. I promise I'll do better next time...