Toxic books?

Is this for real? It is hard to believe there are people in government who have so little sense of proportion. Have the environmental protection people been smoking something that has addled their brains? They want to ban old books because of minute, and we mean very minute, quantities of lead in old illustrations.

... under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing—at prohibitive expense. Many used-book sellers, consignment stores, Goodwill outlets, and the like have accordingly begun to refuse new donations of pre-1985 volumes, yank existing ones off their shelves, and in some cases discard them en masse.

Because so many children will chew pages from old books.

The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA), passed by Congress last summer after the panic over lead paint on toys from China. Among its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive:

And they aren't talking 1885- they are talking 1985!

A further question is what to do about public libraries, which daily expose children under 12 to pre-1985 editions of Anne of Green Gables, Beatrix Potter, Baden-Powell’s scouting guides, and other deadly hazards. The blogger Design Loft carefully examines some of the costs of CPSIA-proofing pre-1985 library holdings; they are, not surprisingly, utterly prohibitive. The American Library Association spent months warning about the law’s implications, but its concerns fell on deaf ears in Congress (which, in this week’s stimulus bill, refused to consider an amendment by Republican senator Jim DeMint to reform CPSIA). The ALA now apparently intends to take the position that the law does not apply to libraries unless it hears otherwise. One can hardly blame it for this stance, but it’s far from clear that it will prevail.

Aren't there people paid to think of the ramifications of such laws and to suggest reasonable exceptions to laws like this? This is the kind of legislation which makes one agree with Bumble:

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble,… “the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”“

Can we hope and pray that Canada does not fall victim to such foolishness and retains some common sense? But we are prone to such government meddling here as well. The future does not look pretty.

Whatever the future of new media may hold, ours will be a poorer world if we begin to lose (or “sequester” from children) the millions of books published before our own era. They serve as a path into history, literature, and imagination for kids everywhere. They link the generations by enabling parents to pass on the stories and discoveries in which they delighted as children. Their illustrations open up worlds far removed from what kids are likely to see on the video or TV screen. Could we really be on the verge of losing all of this? And if this is what government protection of our kids means, shouldn’t we be thinking instead about protecting our kids from the government?

Art is long

" Life is short but Art is long" - as some ancient Greek said once. This has been taken many ways but one way of looking at the meaning is that while a man (or woman- I am not being sexist here) dies, his art (skill, knowledge) can live on beyond him and others build on the work of those before.

The artist Wyeth died the other day:

The son of famed painter and book illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth gained wealth, acclaim and tremendous popularity. But he chafed under criticism from some experts who regarded him as a facile realist, not an artist but merely an illustrator.


He is not the first artist who is looked down upon because a) he is a realist and b) he is popular.

Some critics dismissed Wyeth's art as that of a mere “regionalist.” Art critic Hilton Kramer was even more direct, once saying, “In my opinion, he can't paint.”

The late J. Carter Brown, who was for many years director of the National Gallery, called such talk “a knee-jerk reaction among intellectuals in this country that if it's popular, it can't be good.”

I can think of Canadian instances- Bateman and Danby for example. Colville may have escaped the sneer but there is this bias, especially recently, for more modern, experiential stuff.

Like this Montreal exhibit which I read about in the Globe and Mail yesterday morning, the same day as the article on Wyeth.

It's one of the few times passing gas in a public presentation probably got murmurs and nods of approval from anybody but the most sophomoric.

But Cloaca No. 5, a mechanized sculpture that reproduces the human digestive system in every stomach-churning detail, gave a little hiss and launched a nose-wrinkling sulphuric barrage a few times yesterday as creator Wim Delvoye explained his creative process.

Cloaca, a towering steel, rubber and glass contraption, is fed twice a day with cafeteria leftovers during the exhibit, which opened Thursday and runs until Valentine's Day at the Université du Québec's art gallery in Montreal.

It processes the food - which includes the Quebec favourite, poutine - and then poops once a day.

"Let's make a bet. Which artist's name and works will be remembered 50 years after his death?

Mr. Delvoye described Cloaca as a reflection on human identity and the creative process.

"It's about all of us," the Belgian artist said in an interview.

But is it art?

"I think it's art as long as it's in an art museum," Mr. Delvoye said. "If it's in a garage, it's an interesting machine."

The artist said he wanted to make something that was "absurdly unnecessary" and drew inspiration from Charlie Chaplin, oddball cartoonist Rube Goldberg's elaborate and goofy machines, and Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory. ...

And which one was better value for money? Wyeth's Christina's World apparently was originally bought for $1,800.

Laval resident Clemence Bernard wrote to Montreal La Presse, saying she is "revolted" by the exhibit, which she called a "waste of $35,000 of taxpayer money."

But Louise Dery, the director of the university gallery, said it was $30,000 that came out of a Canada Council fund for exchanges of contemporary art. The money is being used to cover shipping costs.

I'm going to go with Wyeth. How about you?

The Globe and Mail's Book Site

A year or so ago the Globe and Mail phoned us up to ask us to renew our subscription which we had let lapse a few years ago. We told them no thank you, there wasn't that much in it that we wanted to read except in the book section, so we only get the Globe and Mail on the weekends. Perhaps we aren't the only ones that have told them that as the G&M have revamped their book section and alleluia, they have put much of it online.

Have just taken a look at it to see if it takes our fancy. First of all we notice it has best seller lists. Handy, but only if you are aware what best seller lists represent. We don't believe for a moment that best seller lists really mean what they pretend. Instead these lists are mainly a measure of publication push - the books the publishers are promoting heavily. And the ploy often works. Still we don't mind looking at the bait with a critical eye.

Joseph Boyden seems very in right now. We see His book Through Black Spruce is on the hard cover fiction list. We read his Three Day Road a while back and although we liked it, we had this nagging feeling he borrowed a lot of his material. I'm afraid that's one of my pet peeves. When authors use material I expect the author to at least make a nod to the source. But that's an aside. On the softcover fiction list we see books by Jodi Picoult and by Khaled Husseini. I wouldn't mind reading Husseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns since The Kite Runner was so good. I've read 3 books from the non-fiction lists which seem to have books that have been around a while. Then there are Canadian lists for those who want to restrict themselves by nationality! The lists by genre are useful too. I see a couple of appealing titles on the mystery list.

But I am less interested in the lists than the reviews and other articles on the site. Having belonged to a book club for several years, I liked the profile of a Montreal Club which has been meeting for 30 years. The Globe says:

This is the first instalment in a new series in which Globe Books will shine a light on Canada's legion of book clubs.

Each month over the course of four Saturdays, we will introduce you to a new club, the book they are reading, their history and traditions, and their verdict about the book.

Gee, maybe they will do a profile of my women's reading group! If I was still in my book group I could write in and tell them which book we were reading. [Mamie take note!] They say there will be an online book club coming and a blog coming too.

Besides the articles and reviews, (they say there will be one every weekday) there are some online "ask the author" sessions lined up. One with Joseph Boyden this week (Didn't I say he was in right now?) but I am more interested in the one with P.D. James, which is scheduled for the week of Jan 24-29th. I'd ask her if it is too late for me to become an author at my age.

There is a video Blurb promoting all the bells and whistles of the site here.
I think I'll be checking in regularly.

Shakespeare?

In the Christian Science Monitor which I sometimes look into ( not often enough) there is an article by Kathryn Streeter on reading Shakespeare. She made it a 2007 New Year's Resolution to read a drama a month. It got me thinking about making a reading, and writing, resolution. Since I no longer belong to a book group it seems a good idea to put some discipline into my reading myself, or at least try to, by setting a reading goal. I don't think it will be Shakespeare, though. And as for writing, there again, I need to set myself a writing goal, otherwise the pages remain blank.

On my trip west I didn't get to write but I did read. I didn't get as much reading time as I hoped on the train trip as there was more socialising than I thought. But I finished two books both by James Lee Burke. My husband enjoys his books so I thought I would try them out. I had already read one of his books before I left, a collection of short stories, under the title Jesus Out to Sea. I found the writing good and the stories gripping so I packed a couple of his other efforts to take with me.

I finished The Tin Roof Blowdown set in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and then polished off another in the Detective David Robicheaux series, written earlier, which is set before Hurricane Katrina, Pegasus Descending. Both were excellent reading, neither too light nor too heavy for reading in airports, planes and trains.

Burke is a deceptive writer, like Stephen King; his work appears to be in the action/crime/mystery genre but I find his work quite profound with a moral sense most of that ilk don't have. His settings in Louisiana are wonderfully described. You can feel the heat and the humidity and the scent of the bayous. His main protagonist David Robicheaux, a Cajun, is a flawed character and much of the action stems from his anger at the lack of justice in the world, and the baggage he carries with him from a troubled past. The plots are twisted and complex but didn't feel artificial. Burke's wide life experience shows in his novels.

I liked the books and I am set to read another in the Robicheaux series, Crusader's Cross, working backwards as it were, as this was written earlier again than the other two I read. It isn't Shakespeare but it is a start.

Books for a trip

Again I haven't posted for a long while. I have been so sporadic it is embarrassing. I can't use the excuse of my daughter's wedding any more as I did last year, but I have been busy.

I signed up for Nanowrimo again this November. I didn't win this time round but I did have a lot of fun attending two write-ins at the coffee shop downtown and I did get 15,000 words down which might be the kernel of a book some day. And I discovered Write or Die which is an invaluable aid to a tongue-tied author in training.

Now we are going to visit my daughter and son in law out west and I am planning what books to take with me. Trip books have to be of a certain type don't you think? Something which will keep me absorbed but that don't require too much deep thought. Something well written but not too mentally challenging. Mysteries are often good. Or perhaps a really interesting biography. Any suggestions? I will need, at a conservative estimate, at least 4 books for the first part of the trip since we will be 3 days on the train going through the Rockies and I can often finish a book in an afternoon. I am so looking forward to that part of the expedition. It should be relaxing and I hope to not only get some reading in but some writing as well.

I don't know if I will be able to post from the train but I may be able to post at different times along the way. That would be fun and perhaps revive the habit of getting my thoughts down here. Getting away from the busy routine of home and group responsibilities should help.

From Deborah

I look in on Deborah Gayapong's blog occasionally and this time when I did I found her promoting her new book The Defilers. It sounds like an interesting book and different than a lot of crime or mystery thrillers on the market. It also has not only a Canadian setting which you might expect from a Canadian author (these days anyway) but also a Nova Scotia setting.

One reviewer summarises the book this way:

Best New Canadian Christian Author Deborah Gyapong delivers a layered spiritual thriller told through the eyes of protagonist Linda Donner, a Mountie who finds herself entangled in a demonic murder, drug, kiddie porn drama spanning the globe. While Linda and her partner, Will, and pastor, David, fight the dark forces that have ensnared the town of South Dare, Linda must also fight her own personal demons and find a faith that was shattered years before by sexual abuse she suffered by a priest.

Fast-paced, authentic, intelligent and engaging with a satisfying ending, I would highly recommend this novel.

The plot deals difficult and unsavory subject matter but the readers who reviewed this felt she dealt with it well. Had to notice though that the fictional place in Nova Scotia is called "South Dare". The protagonist is:

posted to (fictional) Sterling County in rural Nova Scotia. There she encounters the community of South Dare, whose residents wear greasy red and green checked shirts, live in tarpaper shacks with satellite TV dishes, and are afraid of outsiders--especially the police.


Doesn't exactly paint rural NS in a good light and considering the child abuse angle ... could she have been modeling this "community" on south mountian in the Valley? Just a thought. In any case, it is a book I will be looking out for. Should be a worthwhile read.

Resurrected

Gosh, has it been so long since I posted here? Hard to believe. So much has happened. My daughter's marriage to a very nice fellow was the highlight of the past many months and perhaps explains my absence from this House of All Sorts. So much got put on hold while I planned this very special and important event.
And now a new season has started- September is new year for me- so again I will try to resurrect this space for thoughts on my reading and perhaps in the future some writing efforts which have also been put not just on the back burner but off the stove entirely!

The Kindle lights a flame.

After quite a hiatus I am back briefly. I won't be blogging much for another month either since my daughter's marriage is the end of June and I am tied up with that. BUT, I saw this and thought it deserved a post.

This morning, I decided to drop down to my local coffee establishment for a breakfast of coffee, eggs, and some morning reading. ...I had a lot of new things, and pre-coffee I’m not up to making decisions, so I just brought several things to read: Peter Kramer’s Against Depression; Marianne Williamson’s The Age of Miracles; Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao; and for a little more rigorous reading of Buddhism I brought The Dhammapada, D.T. Suzuki’s Manual on Zen Buddhism, Steve Hagen’s Meditation Now or Never, and Buddhism Is Not What You Think — great title, that — the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain; Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Musashi’s Book of Five Rings; a couple of novels; some books on Ruby and Python programming; the most recent issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Second Treatise of Government; John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty; Paradise Lost, Shakespeare’s Sonnets; and some Larry Niven.

“What, in a wheelbarrow?” you’re thinking? No, in my Kindle. Of course, it’s only about 30 percent full.

It's an e- book and it sounds interesting. It is about the size of a pocket book and less than a pound in weight which feels about right for carrying with you in your bag. It may be a bit hard to get used to but I wouldn't mind trying. Imagine taking a whole library with you to the dentist's or doctor's office.
It will come down to content ( how much will be available) and cost. Those small amounts can add up. Still I think this might fly and I can only guess that the next generations of the device will be improved. Can you remember your first computer and how things have changed? So I agree with Charlie:

The future of these things is bright, though. First of all, the price is sure to drop; electronics always does. Soon, a lot of schools will be ordering texts that can be delivered as e-books — Metro State in Denver already does. And, as publishing is more and more divorced from the costs of physically producing the physical books, it’s sure to change the publishing industry — no more advances, but no more big barriers to publication, either.


Remember you read it here first.

The Power of Now

A friend of mine suggested I read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I picked it up a while ago and had it there on my bedside stack and finally picked it up recently to read. I am glad I did. It has come at time when I am feeling a number of pressures and this book helps.

The one idea of the book, a very compelling idea, is that the past is not real - it is past and the future isn't real - it hasn't happened yet. The only reality is the present moment and yet we spend almost all our time thinking about either the past or the future and in so doing we never really ARE, never really live. The NOW, the author tells us, does not require thinking and in order to truly live we should control our thinking, our mind, instead of letting it control us. We should become a watcher, separating ourselves from our thoughts, recognising them as part of an unreal creation different from the real being we are. Our being in the now detaches us from suffering, pain, anger and brings peace and joy in life.

I have a little trouble with that subordination of the mind to feeling. I am not a feely sort of person and have a great deal of respect for a keen mind. And yet, and yet, I see the value in this idea. Easier to think about than to practice, though. That's the irony. I think about it but I am not supposed to, I am supposed to feel the present and not think so much.

Eckhart Tolle has other books which I will want to read as well but I want to reread this one first. I have to pay more attention to his practical advice, how to learn that stillness between the past and the future - the presence that removes time and "without time no suffering, no negativity can survive."
I still want to read "Winters Tale" which I read about and posted about a week or so ago. I may get to the bookstore tomorrow.

I must read this

My next book should be this one, based on this review.

A deeply consequential, wonder-filled, grand quest for truth, the book revels in beauty, honor and the silent grace of winter. It has a flying white horse; overpoweringly tender love; breathtaking vistas; swoon-inducing language worthy of Blake, Whitman and, yes, Shakespeare; hard-souled villains; bridges that span time as well as rivers; the most profound and passionate city-as-character construct ever put to paper; hilarity and courage and illumination and memory conjoined; great tragedy and messianic fire and impassible storms and a white cloud wall prophesied to turn pure gold.

Sounds wonderful and I am ready for such a book. I feel I need such a book.

So Winter’s Tale is Harry Potter for grown-ups, C.S. Lewis for agnostics, Tolkien for the fully matriculated, García Márquez for everyone. Equally a man’s book and a woman’s book, a towering achievement most writers would cut off an arm to write, easily the age’s most optimistic serious work, it has the gravitas and the heft of a hydroelectric turbine, rumbling deep in your fundament and shooting magnetized electrons into your ether.

If our civilization survives, we will venerate this beautiful, ringing masterpiece of a novel hundreds of years from now. I dare you, whoever and whatever you are, to read it and not be moved.

I can hardly wait.

A great book, a great movie - Atonement

On Friday we saw the movie Atonement.

As this was one of the best books I have read in the past few years (and the other -Saturday was by the same author, Ian McEwan) I was anxious to see it. As always when attending a movie based on a book, I wondered whether it would do credit to the writing or whether it would disappoint. It did not disappoint.

It amazes me, thinking about it, how the author managed to create the mood, delineate the characters - and not only in snapshots but as evolving beings that grow and mature through time- and how he managed to get a complex message across without preaching but with that tender treatment that is so necessary to open the reader's mind to it.

The movie captures almost all of this. The visuals show the WWI era in England needed for the story through well chosen settings, costumes and vignettes. The casting is wonderful although the actors were mostly unknown to me, except for Vanessa Redgrave who has a cameo at the end. They all do a tremendous job. Especially the young Briony. The tensions are well displayed not only in the dialogue but in their body language, and in their little mannerisms. The twists of the plot are nicely eked out in the subtle replaying of events through different characters' eyes (a technique used in the book). The reality hidden under the surface dawns slowly as it would in real life for the characters involved (although having read the book, and knowing more than I should, this suspense was spoiled somewhat for me)


And the sound track! Wonderful. At one point we hear a group of men at Dunkirk singing the hymn "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind" (to the tune Repton) one familiar to me. It was so moving; it seemed to so accurately express the yearning of the men for home and all that was good and dear to them and which must have seemed so far away at that moment as they were in retreat, near defeat on the Beach.

I love the almost frantic typing that the movie begins with and which recurs at points throughout the movie. The book the movie is based on is about writing. It is about childhood and the loss of innocence. It is about how we create worlds in our mind that only over time we see as fantasies, our own constructions, not God's truth. As Briony says about her manuscript " it's about something I saw... and I thought I understood but I didn't". Ah, how true that is of all of us. Blind to our own ignorance. It is well named as it is about atonement. It reminds us how flawed we are and how we have such hubris and how we cause such pain. The story of Atonement was Briony's guilt and awareness of her faults put on paper. It was her attempt to fix the injustices of the world on paper, trying to put it right. Isn't this what many writers are trying to do? Recreate the world.

With an excellent book there is a good chance for an excellent movie in the right hands. And the movie Atonement deserves to be called a triumph.

What's Next

I'm reading Michael Crichton's book NEXT. Crichton always takes some scientific "news" and then asks the question that Stephen King advises writers to start with, that is "what if...". What comes after the what if of course is up to the author and makes or breaks the book. In this one Crichton asks - what if genetic "advances" got out of control, or are they already out of control. What if a genetic "advance" was accidentally found which allowed humans to modify violent or unreliable behaviour such as addiction and was exploited by various interests and what if other genetic experiments allowed transgenic modification of primates such as chimps or parrots which allowed them to learn human language and other "human" skills. And along the way we learn about theft of body parts, strange genetic diseases, patenting of human genomes, stem cell research and other concerns of the biotech business.

I always enjoy Crichton's books and this one is no exception. I always learn so much. The reader reviews for this one weren't all that good; fans were disappointed and said it didn't live up to previous efforts, others said it was too segmented, jumping around from character to character, following different storylines which then intersect, so they found it hard to follow. Some called it "middling" Crichton.

I am just over half way through and I might agree that this isn't his best book but the quality is not so low that I would not recommend it if you like this kind of book. The author does jump around a lot and I usually don't like that but perhaps I am getting used to it as a technique, or maybe it just suits the kind of story he is trying to tell. The book is punctuated with seemingly true excerpts from various media - print, internet etc.- about various biotech research results. One for example- supposedly from the BBC- reports on experts in Germany who suggest that blondes will become extinct by 2022. " Scientists say too few people now carry the gene for blondes to last much longer." Another of these pseudo reports is about transgenic species - a cactus which grows hair, or a butterfly with two different wings - displayed by artists as art or genetically modifed fluorescing fish marketed under the brand name " glofish" as a pet . All too believeable given the proximity these items are to what we read in our morning newspapers or in Discover magazine. It is hard in fact to distinguish which parts are true and which are fiction. As one reviewer said:

It’s tempting to stop and look up each of the genetic, legal and ethical aberrations described here in order to see how wild a strain of science fiction is afoot. Save a step. Just believe this: Oddity after oddity in “Next” checks out, and many are replays of real events. “This novel is fiction, except for the parts that aren’t,” Mr. Crichton writes, greatly understating the book’s scary legitimacy.

And he's right because I did want to bring the book down to my computer and look up some of these things, to check which of these startling scientific practices are really of the present rather than the future.

Yes, the characters are a bit one dimensional and not very lovable (except for Gerard the telltale parrot) but I do want to find out how they end up.

A movie I won't miss

That is Atonement. The book is still in my top ten list of best books and I MUST see how it is interpreted on film. I like very much the website promoting the movie which I have linked above. It seems to set the mood very well which bodes well, I think, for the movie. Some good clips, too, without giving anything away.

2008 blog resolution

I haven't done very well keeping up with this blog have I ? So should I bother making a resolution? I guess it can't hurt. But perhaps I should be more specific than just saying I will post more often here than I did last year. I should say I will post at least once a week. That perhaps is something to aim for although I would hope to do better than that.

I got a couple of books as gifts for Christmas one of which I almost finished. The book I started to read was "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid. It is about Antigua which I thought would be interesting as we spent some time in Caribbean and the first chapter was, I thought, charming in an acidic way.

However, as I went on I became more and more disappointed; it turned into a rant against the perpetual sins of colonial times (The blame is never ending. The ills placed at the colonial doorstep seem to persist even though the British have long gone). The author has too much of an agenda, in my view. She could have said the same things more convincingly and with better effect had she kept it more balanced. I didn't finish it and will not keep it.

The other one I got in my stocking was Next by Michael Crichton which I look forward very much to reading it although some readers' reviews are full of disappointment. Tonight would be a good night to start it.

I hadn't started that one because I also dipped into books I bought for my so (significant other, ie. my husband!). The first one I finished quickly as it was a very easy read, though worthwhile. The Man who Forgot how to read by Howard Engel (the author of the Benny Cooperman mysteries) is about the author's experiences in having a stroke and being left unable to read (though he was still able to write!) As a writer and a reader (and since my husband did have a mini-stroke a couple of years ago which affected his short term memory somewhat, I thought this book would be of interest to both of us and it was. I had enjoyed reading a couple of Engel's Cooperman mysteries so was happy to learn he could still write and it was fascinating to learn of how he learned to cope with this rather rare brain disfunction.

The other book, which I have only read a bit of, is Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks
This too is about brain function, delving into musical skills and love of music and it's relation to brain function.

Oliver Sacks's compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people--from a man who is struck by lightning and suddenly inspired to become a pianist at the age of forty-two, to an entire group of children with Williams syndrome who are hypermusical from birth; from people with "amusia," to whom a symphony sounds like the clattering of pots and pans, to a man whose memory spans only seven seconds--for everything but music.

Our exquisite sensitivity to music can sometimes go wrong: Sacks explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right: Sacks describes how music can animate people with Parkinson's disease who cannot otherwise move, give words to stroke patients who cannot otherwise speak, and calm and organize people whose memories are ravaged by Alzheimer's or amnesia.

Music is irresistible, haunting, and unforgettable, and in Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks tells us why.

My husband loves to play guitar and he sings in a barbershop chorus where one of the members had a stroke which affected his speech badly but which did not at all affect his singing! So this book is of interest also and I look forward to getting back at it (as soon as my husband is through with it!!!)

So there is my work cut out for me for a while.

Old Books

After my recent post on The Maul and the Pear Tree I came across this article which relates to my thoughts on history and its meaning for the reader.

Neil Postman writes,

There is no escaping ourselves. The human dilemma is as it always has been, and it is a delusion to believe that the future will render irrelevant what we know and have long known about ourselves but find it convenient to forget.

In quoting this passage from Postman’s Building a Bridge to the Eighteenth Century, Ronald Arnett says that history is “the metasubject needed in a good education.”

This contention is a correlate of C.S. Lewis’ opinion that old books are critically necessary to learning. In his introduction to an old book (Athanasius’ De Incarnatione), Lewis writes, “Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.”

Where Postman praises the study of history for what is constant in human nature, Lewis praises historical study for providing us a perspective from which to judge what is transient and contextual about our own times. Lord Acton, himself a greatly learned and distinguished historian once wrote, “History is a great innovator and breaker of idols.”

In my post yesterday I noticed what Postman did - The constancy of human nature. Lewis had a different view and I do like Lewis. Perhaps what a reader sees in history depends on his/her "mood" or "situation" at the time. I do think history valuable, or perhaps I should say invaluable perhaps because while human failings through the ages are similar it is easier to see them exposed as they are in a different era, where we have less attachment.

The article goes on to say that Lewis stressed the importance of primary sources. I certainly have no argument with him there.

That is, when we have a question about Plato or Platonism, the reader should first consult a book by Plato or a Platonist rather than “some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about ‘isms’ and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.”

It seems self evident but it is a lesson many journalists would do well to take to heart!

History as a reminder

They say that history is valuable to teach us what mistakes not to repeat. I have thought for some time now that what it teaches us instead is that human nature doesn't really change much, that the flaws we see in the present - in individuals, in our community and in the world - have always existed and likely always will. These human weaknesses persist over time although they may present themselves with different trappings. My present reading has only confirmed this belief. But I like reading history nevertheless.

The Maul and the Pear Tree is an early P. D. James mystery but it is non-fiction and co-authored with T. A. Critchley. It tells the true story of several gruesome and seemingly senseless murders which were committed in a dockside area of London in 1811. I had read the book many years ago but had forgotten the plot and the conclusion completely so it still read like a mystery to me.

The first murder took the lives of four people in a household - a shopkeeper, his wife, their infant son and a servant boy. The second set of murders took place nearby and not long after. An older publican, his wife and a servant woman were similarly bludgeoned to death and their throats cut. Who committed these horrific crimes? The authors take us through the maze of clues to be considered by the amateurish "police" forces of the times and documents the mostly ineffective reactions of the government of the day.

We can understand that the forensic methods we have now were not available to the authorities then, but what strikes me is the similarity in the lack of communication, the lack of thought and a deficiency of what I can only call "intellligence" or common sense by authorities that we often see missing today in incidents like the tasering of the poor Polish man at Vancouver International Airport.

What is also similar is the reaction of the public. The morbid interest in the gory details of the crimes, the speculation, the fear aroused in the neighbourhood, the criticism of the authorities when no solid arrests were made (although several unfortunate men were held on rather flimsy evidence for some time) and the lurid press - none of this is unfamiliar although over a century separates us from the residents of Wapping.

I won't spoil it for anyone by disclosing the ending. P. D. James is an excellent writer and a certain humour and irony shows through her account of the somewhat keystone cops like investigation. If you want to get a flavour of what this book is like you can read excerpts of it online.

Did you Guess the Giller?

Last week they announced the winner of the Giller Prize so I am too late to enter the Guess the Giller Contest.

Those of us who are readers might have loved to have a paid trip to a Literary Festival as well as the autographed set of books on the Giller short list. Did you vote?

The Guessthegiller.ca contest ran this year in over 20 public library systems and was promoted through Scotiabank’s 950 branches across the country. A recent electronic tally of on-line votes show nearly 4,000 people have cast ballots for who they thought would emerge the winner on Nov. 6. The contest offers a grand prize of an all-expense paid trip for two to one of Canada’s pre-eminent literary festivals. The runner-up prizes are complete sets of this year’s shortlisted books autographed by the authors.

I wonder if this was promoted at our local library? They haven't yet drawn for the winner of the contest. The draw is Nov. 20th.

If you haven't read the books you might still like to see the excerpts they provided on the Guess the Giller site.

The end ranking of the listed books on the voting site is:

1. Elizabeth Hay's Late Nights on Air - The winner!

2.M. G. Vassanji's Assassin's Song

3.Michael Ondatje's Divisedero

4. Daniel Poliquin's A Secret Between Us

5. Elizabeth York's Effigy

If I have one criticism of the setup on the Guess the Giller site it is that the print in the excerpts is too hard to see. They should provide a zoom. Love the way the pages turn though just like a real book. They had this in NANOWRIMO too when I did it and it was neat to see your words as if they were published!

I've been away

Sorry to all you faithful readers (all 3 of you)- I have been away. Mostly I have been mentally away, although I was also away physically a couple of times since my last post here in July (hard to believe it was that long ago!).

I was focused elsewhere. Not on reading, not on writing, not on ideas but on just getting through "stuff" - mostly other people's "stuff". I just haven't felt I had much to say in this forum. My reading has been minimal and hasn't inspired me to much thought. I have also left my book circle so I have been less pressed to keep up my reading or to think seriously about what I do read.

But I don't want this blog to just die so I came back - to read a few past posts, and to say I am still here.

I have finished a few books since my last entry. The most recent was Wanderings: The History of the Jews by Chaim Potok. This was a repeat read. I read the book many years ago and wanted to refresh my memory. Of especial interest to me was the early history of the Middle East, full of bloody, tribal jealousies, bitterness and long memories. Since it was published in 1990 I wondered what he might have written as an additional chapter if he had revised it before he died in 2002. I have read, also many years ago, several of his novels - The Chosen, My Name is Asher Lev, The Book of Lights. Great novels they are too, full of insights into not only the Jewish soul but humanity.

Women in art

I saw this a while ago on you tube and passed it around to some friends who I thought would enjoy it. I think it is so neat I want to post it here.

The Bible blogged

I could have titled this Blogging the Bible but that is the name of David Plotz's contribution to blogdom. The Bible is a great work of Literature, it is the foundation of several religions, it is the history (with all its biases and myths) of a people. It is worth reading. But not many of us read it. As Plotz says we tend to be lazy in the west about our religion and even lazier about reading what we perhaps see as a boring document that we already know a lot about. If we go to church on a regular basis we get excerpts -chosen for us by the powers that be. But what about the rest - the dark corners of the book that we never pull out into the light of our reading lamp? Plotz decided it was time he took a look. His goal, he says

... is pretty simple. I want to find out what happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based. I think I'm in the same position as many other lazy but faithful people (Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus). I love Judaism; I love (most of) the lessons it has taught me about how to live in the world; and yet I realized I am fundamentally ignorant about its foundation, its essential document. So, what will happen if I approach my Bible empty, unmediated by teachers or rabbis or parents? What will delight and horrify me? How will the Bible relate to the religion I practice, and the lessons I thought I learned in synagogue and Hebrew School?

Don't expect academic commentary, only fresh eyes on the old text, some humour and often some original insight. Here's a sample from his look at Genesis:

First murder—that didn't take long. I never realized there was a vegetarian angle to Cain and Abel. Cain offers God the fruit of the soil as an offering, while Abel brings the choicest meat. God scorns Cain's vegetarian platter, so Cain jealously slays his brother.

Here is a more charitable reading of what kind of father God is. He's not indulgent or lax. He's laissez faire. His job is to push the children in the right direction, but in the end, He understands they must be free to make mistakes. When He rejects the vegan special, God chastises Cain with this advice. "Sin couches at the door; Its urge is toward you, Yet you can be its master." This is just about the best advice you can give anyone. It is conservative idealism, compressed into a sentence: We must decide for ourselves to do right. Not that Cain pays attention: He kills his brother in the very next verse.

Later, Plotz considers the story of Noah:

6:13-7:5: God's specific commands to Noah about how to build his ark and what to bring on it. As an inveterate reader of owner's manuals, I find this passage compelling in its specificity and precision. Now I know why people are always building replicas of Noah's ark—it's perfectly clear what it looked like.

Chapter 7
7:22-23: The grimmest verse so far: "All in whose nostrils was the merest breath of life, all that was on dry land, died. All existence on earth was blotted out—man, cattle, creeping things, birds of the sky; they were blotted from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark."

What a chilling account of the flood, and of the loneliness of Noah. Even the good man, even the righteous man, is alone in the world, and always subject to God's awesome power. This is pretty raw. It also seems to me to offer at least a clue about why God destroyed the earth. It seems clear that the Pre-Deluge evils were not crimes of men against other men, but crimes of men against God. As men mastered agriculture and metalwork and built cities, which earlier verses suggest they did, they felt they didn't need God. They came to see their laws, achievements, and prosperity as their own, accomplished independently of God. So, perhaps the point of the flood was not to restore ordinary moral behavior—day-to-day decency, law, etc.—but to restore faith, or at least fear. We thought we didn't need God, and that was what angered Him. The Flood—this verse in particular—reminds us (or at least the one righteous man who is permitted to live) that we are never independent of God, but always floating alone, vulnerable, at His mercy.

There is some interesting discussion about Plotz's posts too.

I haven't read the whole series yet but I would like to. I should, of course, also get out my bible and read along with him.