Well, I listened to one…

I started Gene Wolfe’s On Blue’s Waters while driving to Portland with Jared in March. I enjoyed listening to it on the drive but I didn’t get it finished before we got back and my everyday life has little time for zoning out with an audio book. I’ve been trying to finish it on the rare occasions I take the dog for a walk alone. Normally, of course, the boys are with me. Well, I just finished it tonight and it was fantastic. Unfortunately it is a difficult one to review. You absolutely can’t read it unless you’ve already read the tetralogy The Book of the Long Sun and you won’t likely get the rest of the this trilogy if you haven’t also read The Book of the New Sun and just about anything I could say about the plot would require pages of explanation. So, I’ll just say this: the language is rich, the narrative structure complex, and the narrator supremely unreliable. Getcha some!

I am bogged down in a couple of books, through no fault of their own. Confederacy of Dunces is great, but I’m just not hooked in right now. The plays of Sophocles are fascinating, but for some reason I keep putting them off. I have been reading Augustine’s City of God for our Friday night book club, but we’re only reading it one “book” at a time and 22 weeks is a slow pace that doesn’t leave me feeling bloggy about it. [Sidenote: If you haven't read it, do so now. It is insightful, timeless, and shaped you and your culture whether you know it or not.] I have also read a few P.G. Wodehouse novels and story collections, however they are hard to blog about because Wodehouse is cheerfully repetitive. I will say that Big Money is well worth your time. It’s in my top 5 Wodehouse list!

Anyway, I am reading and will review a few things soon (including Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness).

“a series of interconnected events, concepts, etc.” The Free Dictionary

And to illustrate, I give you a quote from P.G. Wodehouse’s Plum Pie:

“A problem has arisen in the life of a friend of mine who shall be nameless, and I want your advice. I must begin by saying that it’s one of those delicate problems where not only my friend must be nameless but all the other members of the personnel. In other words, I can’t mention names. You see what I mean?”

“I understand you perfectly, sir. You would prefer to term the protagonists A and B.”

“Or North and South.”

“A and B is more customary, sir.”

“Just as you say. Well, A is male, B female. You follow me so far?”

“You have been lucidity itself, sir.”

“And owing to … what’s that something of circumstances you hear people talking about? Cats enter into it, if I remember rightly.”

“Would concatenation be the word for which you are groping?”

“That’s it. Owing to a concatenation of circumstances B has got it into her head that A’s in love with her. But he isn’t. Still following?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I had to pause here for a moment to marshal my thoughts. Having done so, I proceeded.”

“Now until quite recently B was engaged to –”

“Shall we call him C, sir?”

“Caesar’s as good a name as any, I suppose. Well, as I was saying, until quite recently B was engaged to Caesar and A hadn’t a worry in the world.

Anyway, here is something I know.

When taping the drywall in a house one must be sure that the tape and taping mud (sort of a thinner spackle) lie flat in a perfectly smooth plane along with the drywall. If you do not do this, your wall will have odd undulations that become obvious once paint is applied. The seams tend to lie a smidge below the plane of the drywall as that is where the drywall is screwed down. After applying the tape, covering it with the initial layer of mud, letting that dry, and then sanding it smooth (please wear a mask!) apply your largest taping knife perpendicular to the tape seam. If there is a gap between the edge of the blade and the wall, you need to apply more mud and go through the process again.

My dad promised me I could get a job someday, simply because I knew that. So far, I haven’t. I’m waiting…

“To explain; to clear; to make plain.” Johnson’s Dictionary

Amanda, can you elucidate the main difference between Arminians and Calvinists?

Certainly! In brief both Arminians and Calvinists believe in the fundamentals of Christianity. Further, they both believe that God is sovereign and that man has free will. However, your average Arminian emphasizes the importance and scope of man’s free will more than your average Calvinist, while your average Calvinist emphasizes the pervasiveness of God’s sovereignty more than your average Arminian.

This wonderful family is responsible and frugal but adoption can be expensive and they could use a little help as they settle in again.

Therefore, some of their friends are hosting a fundraising yard sale.  June 8th and 9th we will be out in Hidden Springs for their community yard sale (my in-laws live out there and are graciously sharing their driveway). If anyone would like to help out we are collecting donations of yard sale goods between now and then and we would love to see you out there buying up those goods in about 7 weeks.

If you’d like to donate and either drop stuff off or have someone come pick it up just drop me an email (akpatchin at gmail dot com) or leave a comment and I will arrange it with you!

“a confused mass” or “an intricate or complicated situation”  Webster’s

I love the Web: an imbroglio of the weird, the wonderful, and the mundane.

From the campaign page:

Each Little Free Library is weatherproof, filled with books, labeled with the simple instructions “Take a book. Return a book.”, and maintained by a volunteer steward. Little Free Libraries are also numbered and registered with the Little Free Library project whose goal is to start more libraries than Andrew Carnegie endowed. Boise’s first Little Free Library will be in my front yard in the South Boise Village. Additional locations will be found as funds are raised and stewards volunteer. I will build or obtain a Little Free Library and I will maintain and stock it. Each Little Free Library costs about $350 to build, stock and register.

It already looks like enough will be donated to fund one and I am really hoping that people will be interested in building more! If the campaign passes it’s funding goal then I’ll open up the donations and planning for another!

I have been focused on my book about C.S. Lewis’s Library but have also been taking a few hours here or there to get distracted by other bright and shiny writing goals. Theoretically I will finish something some day. I have to finish a book this year or I lose out on a very serious but rather undefined bet with a friend. At the very least it will mean great and lasting shame. Therefore, I am off to write and research and edit and email librarians for crucial information…

“a person or thing detested or loathed” Dictionary.com

Anathema has evolved from meaning “something lifted up” to nearly the opposite.

“Anathema” is also a formal pronouncement of the Catholic Church. It is the highest level of formal rejection by the Church – above even major excommunication – and is only invoked by the Pope, who solemnly declares: “Wherefore in the name of God the All-powerful, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, of the Blessed Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and of all the saints, in virtue of the power which has been given us of binding and loosing in Heaven and on earth, we deprive N– himself and all his accomplices and all his abettors of the Communion of the Body and Blood of Our Lord, we separate him from the society of all Christians, we exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church in Heaven and on earth, we declare him excommunicated and anathematized and we judge him condemned to eternal fire with Satan and his angels and all the reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of the demon, do penance and satisfy the Church; we deliver him to Satan to mortify his body, that his soul may be saved on the day of judgment.” Catholic Encyclopedia

Which might illustrate how introverts feel about things like self-promotion…