On a more literary note (not that Homer didn’t need to be potty-trained…) it seems that there is a fierce debate raging…or will be if I have anything to do with it. Which is your favorite The Iliad or The Odyssey and why? I vote Iliad because there are more eyeballs rolling in the dust and guts uncoiling and scrambled brains. You?

While were on the subject of preferences: I’m a huge fan of the Fitzgerald translations now. I’ve read the Pope translations before and really do appreciate the language (in Pope the eyeballs “brast” out of their heads) but theFitzgerald just flows. Next up, learning Greek…after I follow through on my ambition to learn Latin…

OK, I’m definitely planning a celebratory party. I will be finishing sometime on New Year’s Eve so the party is kicking off at 8pm. Please bring something to munch since I won’t have time to cook until after I’m done reading.

Also in the cards is a party on Friday the 9th at 7pm. It is for a lovely friend who lost her job. It is a soon-to-be-homeless party. I promise she has a sense of humor about this. I will be serving Stone Soup (I provide the stone and everybody brings something to throw into the pot) and we will be doing gag gifts. I suggest things like a tin cup for begging, a cardboard sign “Will write for food” (she’s a writer), maybe a few coupons for the Rescue Mission. Personally, I’m getting her some beans and rice.

Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster Page: 223 Finished

The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann Page: 151

I’m a bit tired tonight but I wanted to post a bit about books since I haven’t been doing that very much lately.

I loved Jean Webster’s little novel. It was fun, sweet, charming and engaging. It just felt so fresh and light and airy. Exactly like the kind of novels my mom used to read to us that ended happily and satisfyingly but kept you interested until the end. Not high literary challenge but joyous and fun. I highly recommend it for a quiet hour or two.

Robert Louis Stevenson was wonderful too, of course. I read most of the Garden of Verses yesterday while taking the boys for a walk (and highly entertaining it was to read it out loud as we walked by my curious neighbors) and finished it this morning while doing the same. Alex seemed to enjoy it and I thought that it was very read-aloud-able. I really enjoy the range of styles and age-levels available in the Everyman’s Children’s collection. The little books of verses are great for reading to short attention spans while I forsee the longer works being enjoyed up through the boys’ early teen years.

Unfortunately I’m not enjoying Mann as much. I loved Joseph and His Brothers but so far The Magic Mountain doesn’t feel so much magical as it does depressing. The store is slow moving (even for Mann) and other than some mild philosophizing (and it really is very mild) lacks any point of interest. Hopefully it starts to engage my attention one way or another soon as I still have 700 pages to go…

Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu Page: 695

I don’t know if I should get credit for reading all those pages in Virgil because I just skimmed the 10 or so with the brief glossary. Oh well. Rich and amazing, Virgil has whetted my appetite for Homer. I haven’t ordered copies of The Iliad or The Odyssey yet but I’m looking forward to it. As you can see I picked up Genji again. I’m hoping to get through it this time. I wanted to write a long, witty, interesting post but I’m tired and can’t so just insert verbose wit *here*.

It is a nearly inexpressible pleasure to read Virgil after slogging through Beckett. The crisp, impetuous swift poetry after the sluggish, plodding mush. I feel like I stepped out of a dank and smelly sickroom into a crisp, bracing winter morning. Here is purpose, drama, heroics. Here are quick deeds performed for lasting purposes. Here is life. If you cannot be thrilled, challenged and inspired by the great epics mourn that your soul perished without you. I’ll understand if you’re not quite ready for Virgil. If you need to brush up your mind, strengthen your reading skills, get some background to help you along please do. Read the Wikipedia article, talk to someone who is as enthused as I am, feed yourself something a bit stronger than your usual fare, and then sit down with a dark beer, a fine wine, or some strong coffee and go to it. If you don’t love it right away, teach yourself to and let it strengthen you. I was particularly struck by these lines, although the great beauty of the poem is the effect built up over thousands of lines; “Some struck seeds of fire/Out of the veins of flint”.

And here is quote from a Latin Literature Anthology’s preface.

“The editors of Latin Literature in Translation have no delusions about the originality of their work. We readily agree that this is a thing of past and scissors, and we blush to think what some of our learned colleagues in the Classics may say when they find here no Latin text, no scholarly emendations, not even  reference to the profound works of the Germans on Altertumswissenshaft, but only a weakened brew, served up for those whose heads are not strong enough to stand the original.”

Brideshead Revisited  Page: 315

I must confess, I’m a bit shocked. It is mis-titled and mis-intended. A poem about wanting to crawl back into the womb? For children? A line in a poem that says we might as well suck at a dug? For kids? Really? I don’t think so.

It’s not that good, fun poems weren’t included, because they were. And there are rich, deep ones too but there are far too many poems in this collection that would involve complex and grown-up explanations far beyond the capacity of most children. It might qualify as an anthology of poetry for teens or rather mature grade-schoolers but I won’t answer for the consequences. If you want to explain to your six-year-old what is meant by virgin and why it’s so important for the bride to be one, that’s your business but I’ll wait till he’s a bit older before I delve into that topic. Also a high number of morbid poems are included with hangings, cemetery decay and faithless lovers all making a showing. I’m sad that I finally have to recommend against one of Everyman’s selections for children but their you have it. I get to go ride home in the rain now…

I never read much poetry either growing up or in school and for awhile I imagined that I didn’t like poetry. I think starting back at the basics (with children’s poetry) is a good strategy for those of you in my boat. Strongly cadenced, pleasantly rhyming poems with simpler themes make an easy introduction to the art form. Anyway if you’re not too sensitive to colonial/racial issues turn to Rudyard Kipling to revel in his strong military beats and fascinating rhymes. Pick up Edward Lear for a nice dose of over-the-top nonsense and Lewis Carrol for a more literate insanity.

Marriage Poems John Hollander Page: 255 Finished

I’m going bald. My hair is falling out at an incredible rate. The drain trap in the shower is completely full before I’m halfway through my daily ablutions. All day I’m picking hairs off myself and the boys. Never having had thick hair, the loss is especially keen. Hair loss is a normal side effect of high stress and thus a normal side effect of labor but I’m almost back to my normal weight, wearing my old jeans and otherwise starting to feel like myself again, so why do I have to go bald now?

Poetry has never been my “thing”. I didn’t have the opportunity to learn much about it in school and I never sought it out on my own. It tends to bear a poor reputation among those I know and I can’t help but believe that that is our fault and not poetry’s. Unfortunately what was once a noble art has descended in popular culture to the adornment of greeting cards but we have such a wealth of accumulated poetry that we should be able to find some to understand and enjoy. Other than the great epics there was no poetry on the Everyman’s Greatest 100 lists I used to develop my reading plan. I did get to add a few books to the preset list to round out my numbers and I added two of the Everyman’s Pocket Poets. I chose the poems of Baudelaire because I wanted to know why Lemony Snicket named the children after him and I chose the Marriage Poems because I’m in love with my husband. Unfortunately not everyone thinks well of marriage and while many of the poems are frankly joyful some are indisputably hopeless. I thought Thomas Hardy’s novels were depressing! His poems on marriage? Dreary. And if Hardy is sadly defeatist, Swift is unhappily worse and thank God that Shelley is in the minority.  Hardy believed that marriage was almost always a destruction of ones hopes and ambitions, Swift that the body was gross and it’s marital function grosser and Shelley that we were not meant to be bound to another for a lifetime. I wonder why John Hollander chose to include such overwhelmingly negative perspectives. I did enjoy the anthology despite the downers and am inspired to begin adding poetry into my regular reading routine. I love the Pocket Poets bindings and would love to own the whole set.

I had the privilege of getting up at 5:45 this morning to open Veritas while Jared slept a bit longer. But then he handled both boys and tore down part of a brick house while I hung out and made coffee. On the whole I think his day was more productive because while I had a busy day in the coffeehouse (and GREAT sales) he managed to get us a thousand dollars worth of bricks free.

Today was one of the most frustrating I’ve experienced. Every attempt to read was thwarted; ditto attempts to nap. John was a sweetheart and offered to watch the shop for a couple of hours this afternoon. We came home and I dropped Jared and Alex off at the park to play. Luc was asleep until five minutes after I laid down to nap. When Jared and Alex got home I tried to lay down again but it was too noisy to drop off; then when we went back to Veritas I tried again and again to read but Luc interrupted me, Quinn interrupted (and then tried to help), and finally Lizzie interrupted. I headed home with the boys and juggled them until Jared got home.

I still am enjoying Chaucer, especially the tales I hadn’t read before. So far, the Clerk’s Tale, the Merchant’s Tale, and the Summoner’s Tale are firsts. While they are a little uneven in quality they are all very much worthwhile. I’m getting a bit more comfortable with the language and finding myself understanding better as I read on. I wish it read a bit faster though, that or I had more time to devote to it.

Essays Orwell Page: 373

I didn’t actually do my reading tonight because nobody came to here it…well Kayla came but we ended up visiting instead of reading, so that’s another 20 pages I’m behind… On Tuesday I read in one of Orwell’s essays, “Inside the Whale”, this commentary on Joyce’s Ulysses. “It would be absurd, for instance, to look on Ulysses as merely a show-up of the horror of modern life…Joyce actually is more of a ‘pure artist’ than most writers. But Ulysses could not have been written by someone who was merely dabbling with word-patterns; it is the product of a special vision of life, the vision of a Catholic who has lost his faith.” And I just love it when one of the works I’m reading comments on or quotes from another. Chaucer quotes Dante and Virgil, not to mention numerous quotations and allusions to Scripture and while I don’t always pick up on the classical references, I always enjoy the ease with which I “get” the Biblical ones.

I keep intending to post some pictures of the boys but I’ve been posting down at Veritas and either don’t have the camera card with me or don’t have the laptop that the camera card is compatible with. For those family members that look here for photos, I will get around to it…eventually.