The Rabbit books are depressing me. They evoke a working-class malaise that is familiar and oppressive. Also the obsession with sex is just difficult to read. Unpacking this is a bit hard for me. I’m not a prude. I’m not uptight. But I often feel that if I object to sex in a book that is how I will be labeled. So here are my problems with the way sex is a part of the Rabbit Angstrom books.

Marriage is a sacrament and sex is sacred to the bonds of marriage. This is not just some over-the-top ideal but how some people do, and all people will one day, live. I hate the cheapening of something so beautiful, so important and so loaded with meaning. Sex is not “just” anything. It is not “just” a physical act. It is not “just” a release. It is not “just” a moment of pleasure. It is rich and complex and rife with meaning. It makes one person out of two seperate adults and then, millions of times every year, makes another whole human being. It heals wounds in a marriage, cements emotions good or bad and can wound deeply. It is sacred and playful and mystical and procreative. It is humbling. It is serious and hilarious and the hilarity is tinged with awe. It is a terrifying gift, a small picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church and that is why it ought not to be cheaply portrayed.

I don’t think every depiction of sex is necessarily a violation but it is very difficult for me to deal with the emotional roller coaster of reading about it. Like teevee shows depicting violent crimes or movies where children die, I have to be wary of that which stirs too deeply without cause. Real children suffer, real marriages crumble, I want to save my pity for them.

I decided that I needed to get started on Rabbit Angstrom just so the longest book on my list was out of the way. One day and one seventh of my way in, I’m not thrilled but not horrified. I enjoyed Updike’s Henry Bech and found the stories interesting and varied. So far Angstrom intriguingly styled but I’m not sure if I’m going to think it worth my time. Probably will, since it would be in an incredible minority if it weren’t but it is just possible.

Home life has been a bit dull lately. No big projects, no exciting adventures in the last few weeks. The boys have a couple of handfuls and I’ve been ready to buy a ticket to Siberia just to get out of the house! We’ve been doing the usual domestic stuff, cooking, cleaning, baking, etc. But none of it has been earth-shattering. Alex likes to clump around in my high heels (and is doing it right now), he also likes to take all his clothes off, if I leave him alone long enough. Typical right? Luc is just happy to be walking and while he’s still pretty slow, he’s steady and stable.

I’m out of coffee and that is making this morning exceptionally tough. Off to find caffeine…

Ok, so I’m not really happy with the results of yesterday’s contest. So instead, ladies, tell my what your favorite book by a male author is and why and gentlemen your favorite book by a female author and why. Contest closes Thursday night.

Huck Finn is finished and I now realize that I had never read it all the way through before. Great book though. It hits all the right notes for what it is and, I think, is justly considered the first work of American literature. Although I’m more of a British lit gal, I still appreciated it. I don’t much care for Twain’s scepticism, his crudity and his  irreverance. I know many admire him for these qualities and I know that they represent much of the American voice yet I still don’t have much affection or admiration for it.

Anyway, good book, justly classic and all that, maybe not a long-term favorite.

Does anyone but me ever make themselves sound a little better than they are? No? Just me then.

I go to a local coffeehouse Saturday mornings (because my husband is awesomely sweet and helpful) and there is an older (70-ish) gentleman that is there every Saturday at the same time I am. He has spoken to me a few times and finds my reading project interesting, and this week I claimed to have an international audience for my writing…so thanks to the three or four of you from around the world, I sounded super-cool. Thank you.

Of course, then he went on to ask me if I had a sister because he was looking for a woman. Umm…40 year age difference may not creep him out but it sure did me! I actually told him that none of my three sisters were that old! I’m not sure he was pleased. I don’t really care.

I started Tom Sawyer and was incredibly refreshed! The best books have an comfort to them. They challenge (well, not Tom) and soothe and satisfy. I’m happy. I love reading and only have 25 books left in my list! Yay for me!

I finished The Dain Curse and started The Glass Key. I’m so over hardboiled crime. Chandler was a bit more powerful stylistically but both Chandler and Hammett are apparently completely indifferent to human life. Body after body piles up and, well, blech! I wonder if modern mystery stories have this high a body count though I’m sure the cool language used to describe the deaths is unique to these older, noir, mysteries.

I’m anxious to get back to some serious classics. Huck Finn is up for book club and I’ve still got The Republic and Lao Tzu waiting for me. Yay!

Finished To the Lighthouse. Started The Dain Curse, The Glass Key and Selected Stories by Dashiell Hammet and finished the stories. I feel as though I’m making progress and that is good. Still not a Virginia Woolf fan. The woman had style but really, what did she say that was important? Meaningful? Not to dismiss the woman’s life or anything, but I often think that she had a tortured existence and death for the sake of a few lightweight style pieces. Yes, I know, a Women’s Studies center is coming to assassinate me. I shall invoke the aid of St. Augustine.

If you’ve never had the chance, make brownies with a half cup of peanut butter chips in them. My husband raves.

Any thoughts on unionizing for the 30 hour work week? No? We have an economic crisis? What are you saying!?

Don’t you just hate it when all your inspiration comes after you’re in bed ready to fall asleep? Yeah, me too. I was up writing until midnight. I know that is not late to you young things; I too used to be up until 2, 3 or 5 for homework, for “hanging out” or just to read, but now with two little ones waking me up early and running me ragged all day, 10 or 10:30 looks pretty good.

I finished up the last of Naguib Mahfouz’s books Thebes at War and encourage you to get out there and pick up a copy. His Cairo Trilogy was excellent and now his three novels of Ancient Egypt are my list of recommends. They are simply lovely books. I couldn’t put them down…and not just because of some reading goal!

Now I’m trying to get Aesop finished up quickly so I don’t lose it at the dry style and moralizing “Reflections”.

Oh! I almost forgot to mention! This is the day 12 years ago when I first met my little brother. My mom insisted she wasn’t sure if she was really in labor right up until she almost broke my hand squeezing it during contractions. So lucky me got to play “catch” with an incredibly slippery, incredibly precious baby boy. I love you bro!

I know, I know. I’m a slacker. A whole weekend with no posts. Somehow Friday’s slipped away and then Saturday’s and now Sunday’s is up late. Blogging daily has been a good thing for me, keeping me engaged with the books, keeping me honest about my reading but twice now I’ve gone a couple of days without inspiration, without motivation to hop on the internet and tap out my thoughts.

I finished three books in the past three days. Naguib Mahfouz’s Khufu’s Wisdom and Rhadopis of Nubia and Nabokov’s Pnin. Mahfouz’s novels of Ancient Egypt are excellent. I like their style and structure. In Khufu he develops a prophecy, which like Oedipus’s is fulfilled by the very attempts made to thwart it. Nabokov is his usual off-kilter self but, amazing stylist that he is, I’m going to let him get away with it. Pnin is intriguing, employing Nabokov’s typical unreliable narrator and disorienting play with English and internal translations. I find it incredible that English was Nabokov’s third language and yet he employed it so delicately and so smoothly. Pnin plays with this as the protaganist is a Russian emigre who speaks poor English and excellent French. At a short 150 pages it would be an easy weekend read for all but the most sluggish.

We have a tentative plan for disposing of the remainder of our books. There are so many good ones still there, so many amazing books that I hate to let them go but the gigantic POD in our driveway has to move soon (and stop costing us money!). Once I have some concrete plans I’ll update you on the final resting place of Veritas.

…Oh, and Brent? You have NO room to talk…

I didn’t finish Aesop’s Fables in time for book club. shocking I know. With the inevitability of having to finish before the year is out, you would think finishing within a two-week time frame would be simple. But you would be calculating without the dull, soulless morality of the Greeks. I simply cannot believe that a child would ever want to read this book. Dull little “fables” with boring but improbable events, extrapolated into highly complex and equally unlikely “reflections”.

I am done with Beloved. A huge relief. It is sad, improbable, sad, unappealing and, oh, sad. I’ve read it before and didn’t remember how horribly off-the-rails it goes. I listened to a “Slate” audio book club about it several years ago and was relieved to find that it has not entirely entered the canon despite Oprah’s Seal of Approval.

I’m working on developing a new literary theory. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Sixty-five days and thirty-nine books. Scary…

I am working on staying up later to get more reading in. Now I drink a pot of coffee every morning and half a pot every night. So far it has meant an extra few hundred pages.

I finished Sons and Lovers and I just want to say thank you Pam for not being an obsessive unhappy freak who lives through her sons. It makes my life easier and is giving me a good example for when I’ll have to let go of mine. Sheesh! Literature can be downright disturbing. The novel is about a woman who had an unhappy marriage and so clings to her sons, poisoning their relationships with women and sucking the life out of them at home. Her husband was kind of a jerk but she was a self-righteous shrew. Lawrence is good enough to make you feel sympathetic and pitying to each character in turn but they were not a very admirable lot.

I’ve accepted advice and started Robinson Crusoe. So far he sounds just like Sinbad the Sailor but next to Paul and and the rest of the Morels he’s downright jolly even if he doesn’t understand the concept of risk… Hopefully by tonight we’ll be down to 38.