January 2011
I hope to share on my blog a monthly update which will include records of the books, music, and poetry that have filled my days. Would you be interested in such a feature?
Books Read This Month
I am a voracious reader and have kept over the last several years a record of the books I have read; but I recently became interested in learning how many books I average a month. I was surprised by how much I was able to read unhurriedly even in the midst of a hectic January. These are the books I read for the first time.
I began The Rosemary Tree during a relaxed Sabbath picnic. (We discovered in it a new favorite word: malingerer.)This is a story about prisoners, and imprisonment can take many forms. Harriet is confined in a body of pain. Daphne feels trapped by her marriage and family. John is weighted by a constant sense of failure. Miss Wentworth lives in the past. Mrs. Belling is imprisoned by her own sloth and complacence. Miss Giles is enslaved by her illness, and Mary by her temper. Michael is, in fact, a recently released prisoner fleeing the shame of his crime and the pity of others. There is also the alienation between people, but the greatest imprisonment is the separation of God and unredeemed man. Who can say, muses Harriet, which is really the prisoner when a grey wall separates the prisoner and the one who loves him?
My sister and I found the story a bit too romantic and unrealistically triumphant for our taste. (How did Michael reform so quickly and completely?)There is also one long and strange passage; we could not decide whether it was an especially vivid daydream or an example of Goudge’s taste for the mystical. A redeeming element of the novel is the character John Wentworth, the clumsy and absent-minded vicar, an especially endearing character.
Of the other books by Goudge that I have read, the best is by far The Dean’s Watch. Read more about it at Bibliotheca.
01/13 How Children Learn. John Holt. ✩✩✩✩✩
I began this book in December, read it in two big spurts, and took plenty of notes. It was my introduction to John Holt, known as the father of the un-schooling movement. I was prepared to be skeptical but was immediately disarmed by Mr. Holt’s sensitivity and humility as he explores the wonderful way children learn. This is an account at once personal and universal; Mr. Holt uses his own relationships and interactions with young children to describe the intelligence and curiosity of every child. His respect, love, and admiration for these young people is evident in every page, and I found his wonder and enthusiasm such a refreshment. This book is one I highly recommend and will be adding to my personal library.
This children’s book is beautifully illustrated with richly colored woodcuts. I wanted to like it, but I found the text too dry as a whole. I feel that there was more potential for a lively narrative, though there were a few sentences that really pleased me. This book approaches four stars.
01/25 Never Too Late. John Holt. ✩✩✩✩
“If I could learn to play the cello well, as I thought I could, I could show by my own example that we all have greater powers than we think; that whatever we want to learn or learn to do, we probably can learn; that our lives and our possibilities are not determined and fixed by what happened to us when we were little, or by what experts say we can or cannot do.”
Best known for his brilliant insight into the way children learn, John Holt was also an intrepid explorer of adult learning. At the age of forty, with no particular musical background, he took up the cello. His touching and hilarious account of his passionate second career demolished the myth that one must start an instrument (or a sport, or a language) in early childhood, and will inspire any reader who dreams of taking up a new skill. [from the back cover]
Other Books
These are the books that I revisited or did not read completely.
This is not the saccharine story told by Walt Disney, but an honest and sometimes tragic tale tracing the life of Bambi, a male roe deer, from his birth through his childhood, the loss of his mother, the finding of a mate, and the lessons learned from his father. This book is sometimes called the first environmental novel. Salten’s appreciation of nature is evident in his lyrical and sensitive descriptions of nature. Here, the animals and even the leaves find voices.
Georges Seurat. Robert L. Herbert. ✩✩
I used this biography of Seurat to prepare for teaching our Society of the Arts about his life and pointillist technique. Because Seurat was a very secretive man, the interesting details of his actual life are very few. This biography is more a discussion, obtuse at times, of the progression of his artistic style. 1would have appreciated fewer of the nude pictures. I couldn’t study the book in general company, even with a shielding paper.
George and La Grande Jatte: Connecting the Dots. Robert Burleigh. ✩✩✩✩
This large children’s book is full of high-definition details from the painting, a real treat! The text is interesting and interactive, describing in a conversational style the complexity, harmony, and beauty found in Seurat’s iconic masterpiece. Interesting biographical details are also shared in this, my favorite book about Georges-Pierre Seurat.
Real Food for Mother and Baby. Nina Planck. ✩✩✩
The subtitle sums it well: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby’s First Foods. I was especially thankful for Planck’s recognition that a mother’s investment in her baby’s health begins even before conception. Most mothers will appreciate Planck’s honesty (she doesn’t always achieve her own ideals), while envying her the abundance of fresh and local produce, meat, and dairy from the farmer’s market.
Thirty-six Children. Herbert Kohl. ✩
I had been looking forward to this account of a teacher’s experience teaching thirty-six black ghetto children, the failing students of a failing school. I found it very depressing, not so much because of the poverty, violence, and indifference of the children (though that certainly contributed to it), but because the teacher himself (though I appreciated his sometimes brutal honesty) seemed himself to lack real purpose and direction in teaching these drifting students. Mr. Kohl did not have much to say to his readers about hope or solutions, and I ended by mostly skimming the book.
The Untold Story of Milk. Ron Schmid. ✩✩✩
I am already convinced of the incomparable value of raw dairy, and I was looking for a book that I could share with the unpersuaded. This book was too lengthy and comprehensive for that purpose, but it might interest those who want to learn about the history, politics, and technology of America’s dairy industry. Of particular interest to me was the chapter exposing the modern myth that blames cholesterol and animal fat for heart disease.
Additions to the Library
These are the books that were added this month to my personal library. These titles are always carefully chosen and have my highest recommendation. Read more about them at Bibliotheca.
Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature. Linda Lear. ✩✩✩✩✩
Mrs. Miniver Jan Struther. ✩✩✩✩✩
My Country School Diary Julia Weber. ✩✩✩✩✩
What Makes a Van Gogh a Van Gogh? Richard Muhlberger. ✩✩✩✩
Music
I will be making an effort this year to go beyond my iPod, the music I already know and love, and to discover new favorites by listening more attentively to the local classical radio station, borrowing recordings from the library, looking for “new” music by the composers I know, and looking for pieces by composers with whom I am not yet acquainted.
Whenever I hear an especially lovely piece on the radio, I quickly jot down the title and composer on whatever scrap of paper happens to be on hand. Unfortunately, I don’t often remember to look them up later, and I have scattered throughout my papers these hastily scrawled notes. One which I recently found could be deciphered “Lyric for Strings, George Walker.” I looked it up, and found a piece at once Romantic and modern; my favorite part begins at 2:11. I won’t be forgetting this one again.
John Holt, in his book Never Too Late (see above), introduced me to Johannes Brahm’s German Requiem. I listened to the two movement that had so greatly affected him—”All Flesh Is As Grass” and “How Lovely is Thy Dwelling Place” are their English translations. I was saddened to learn that Mr. Holt—though profoundly moved by Christian oratorios and hymns—was not himself a Christian. To read more of the thoughts inspired by the German Requiem and other music that stirs the soul, read my blog post Heavenly Hurt.
I recently discovered the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (LAGQ) and requested through interlibrary loan their recording For Thy Pleasure. I wanted it for Monteverdiana which I had heard on the classical radio station. What really interested me, though, when I had listened to the entire CD, was the last track: Pachelbel’s Loose Cannon. We have all heard that sweet, slow, (and, yes, still beautiful if trite) music popular at weddings. I can be something of a purist snob at times, but something else in me likes an occasional shake-up. My siblings are aghast that I can listen with equanimity to the famous theme translated into bluegrass, reggae, dumbau (whatever that is), and other modern musical styles. Certainly, I find at least one of the variations too rough for my taste, and this track won’t be replacing the original, but I find it refreshingly original and fun. Listen to it at YouTube HERE and see what you think. Sacrilege or brilliance?
If you are interested in hearing more music by the LAGQ, I recommend their album Air & Ground.
Poetry
I did not devote as much time as I would have liked this month to my memorization and recitation; though, to my satisfaction, I found that I had not forgotten anything already committed to memory. I did manage to learn that little poem When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, always my favorite of Walter Whitman. To learn about my youngest brother’s insight into this poem, read my post Why He Ran Away.
The oak leaf lettuce is flattened by the frequent rainstorms we have enjoyed this month. At the top of the page, the leaves of the purple-podded bean are spangled with raindrops.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011