10 Questions
(But I only answered 9!)
Here is a Q & A with me over at All Things Expounded.
Like a Mad Woman
I’ve been reading like a madwoman. I wolfed down The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, am four-sevenths of the way through The Chronicles of Narnia, and just finished the first volume of The Book of the New Sun. I am living on coffee and wine and fudge and the very best fantasy ever written.
In other news: I’ve ordered stacks of books off my 2012 reading list from Amazon and have heard a rumor that my delightful mother-in-law has been investigating my wish-list. I cannot wait!
Lately
I’ve been getting ready for Christmas lately. Shopping. Baking. Planning. Inviting.
I’ve been working on my Lewis Library project (albeit slowly).
And I’ve been reading for the sheer indulgent pleasure of it. First The Lord of the Rings. Next The Chronicles of Narnia. And lastly The Book of the New Sun. I hope I make it through all 16 books before the end of the year (counting The Hobbit and Urth of the New Sun in that total).
The List for 2012
The last few years have been slower reading years for me. I have dropped well below my usual pattern of 100-ish books in 12 months and even farther below my 2008 high of 200. Part of this has been due to my graduate work, which absorbed much of my time; part due to the depressive episode I struggled with; and part due to a lack of planning. Generally, I find it much easier to accomplish something if I spell it out and make it public. The specificity helps, as does the fear of shame if I fail.
I’ve now posted my reading list for 2012 here.
A few notes:
As stated on the list I have a couple of goals. The most important one to me personally is learning some Latin. As a lover of the classics I am always slightly ashamed that I’ve never even begun to study Latin. I want to work my way through the series of video lessons, vocabulary lists, and interlinear translations I’ve planned. My hope is that by the end of the year I will feel comfortable with very basic reading and translation. I have no idea if I am being wildly optimistic or not. We’ll see how it goes!
While I’ve read many, many classics, I do have a few gaps left. The eighteen classics listed include two repeats that I haven’t read recently enough and the other sixteen will be new for me. I’m excited to get to know them.
The heavy science fiction and fantasy reading is a bit of a lark. I do consider these genres to be truly enduring, and I hope to teach a course some day that explores those qualities, I actually haven’t read very widely in science fiction and fantasy. I tend to find a single author and then read very deeply in their catalog. I’m excited to spread out a bit more.
Finally, there are some oddments under “Other” that I’ve had on my to-read list for awhile and I’m eager to get to them (especially the Chesterton!). I’m a little concerned about trying to obtain all of these books, I only own a handful on the list, but with room on my shelves I’m sure to find the money…
The Foundation Trilogy
I finished Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy last night. I quite enjoyed all three volumes. They were not the most absorbing books I’ve ever read (I give them a collective grade of 3 stars out of 5), but I found them very interesting.
Asimov’s vision of the Galactic Empire, fundamentally secular and very concerned with the fate of future generations, is surprisingly moving. Individuals sacrificially labor to mitigate barbarity for far-flung worlds and distant times. His characters appear briefly and are richly varied.
I read several reviews on Goodreads and found that most ranked it at three stars or below while complaining about the lack of finely-drawn and sympathetic characters. In a trilogy concerned with the history of trillions? In a tale centered around the supposed science of psycho-history? Talk about adventures in missing the point…
Lewis Library Project
Some of you may recall that I tried to fund a Kickstarter project a while back. It was spectacularly unsuccessful, mostly because I was looking for a lot of money without a clear benefit to donors. The plan was to create a very complete database of the books C.S. Lewis had owned and read with a detailed post-mortem of those editions at the Wade Center and cross-references to quotations and allusions in his writings. I wanted to provide a scholarly resource for those interested in investigating the influence of what he read on his writing by making information about what books he’d marked up available.
As I haven’t yet found an alternative way to fund the bigger project, I am now working on a severely scaled back version of it. I am creating a Google Docs Spreadsheet listing the books known to have been in his library. I am using information from the Wade Center’s holdings, as well as a 1969 MA project by Margaret Anne Rogers, and Lewis’s books and letters. I hope to be able to gradually add details on references, quotes, and allusions over the next few years.
This is very much a work in progress (I’m still on “B” authors!) but I am going ahead and making it publicly available now. If you have any questions or comments about the project please do email me (akpatchin at gmail.com).
The Spreadsheet can be found at http://tinyurl.com/cslewislibrary
And Explanatory Notes and Abbreviations (also a work in progress) can be found at http://tinyurl.com/explanatorynotes
Choices
I am assembling a reading list for 2012. If you had to choose one Neil Gaiman book to read, which would it be? So far my choices are American Gods, The Sandman Series, or Neverwhere.
Thoughts?
Thanksgiving
I’ve been kind of busy lately. Between grading essays for my substitute teaching job, cooking and traveling for Thanksgiving, and reading good books, I haven’t had much time for blogging.
The good news is I am approaching 50 books for the year. I haven’t had an impressive reading year since 2008′s 200 books but dropping below 50 would be quite sad. I have some big plans in the works for next year’s reading, study, and writing and I’ll begin to share that soon.
Thank you all for you kind comments and messages throughout the year! I am grateful for my readers.
Operation Ares
My most bookish (and Wolfe-ish) friend loaned me Gene Wolfe’s first novel: Operation Ares. It was quite disappointing for a Wolfe. Of course, Wolfe himself has made efforts to keep the volume out of print, as it endured a brutal editing process (103,000 words to 60,000!) without Wolfe’s input, and he is not proud of it. There are many interesting ideas and themes in the book that are developed more effectively and fully in his later work. The ending is oddly, didactically, Libertarian.
If you are interested in reading Wolfe (because I unfailingly recommend his genius, or for your own reasons), might I recommend the very useful WolfeWiki? It includes helpful hints for newcomers to Wolfe’s work as well as encyclopedic catalogs of names, events, and lingering questions his work generates.
Mary Emma and Company
I just finished re-reading Ralph Moody’s account of life in Boston with his widowed mother and five siblings. Mary Emma and Company isn’t the best of Moody’s books, but it is a charming read. I have fond memories of my mother reading all his books aloud to us on long winter afternoons.