Category Archives: books

Bible study, books, Carlyle, Christianity, Emerson

A Coincidence of Reading

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I completed this book yesterday, from a Word doc from Project Gutenberg, uploaded to my Kindle library. My second reading of it.

I’m usually reading several things at once. I have a reading pile in the sunroom, where I go around noon most days to get a break from my tasks. That reading usually consists of printed books, and sometimes a magazine. I have a reading pile in the living room as well, and a basket of magazines I’m way behind on. This is usually evening reading, after all else is done for the day.

Then there’s my phone, through which I read using a Kindle app, a Nook app, and Google books. My phone I might use anywhere, and the things I read on it usually are easier reads. That may not be the best description. But I think they take a little less concentration and can be read in places such as waiting rooms, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. Any place I have a few minutes and want to engage my mind with more than people watching.

So yesterday, I read a little more than normal, and to my surprise, I finished reading four different items on the same day. How odd is that?

I always enjoy reading Poets & Writers magazine, and, on those rare occasions when I buy an issue, I read it slowly, enjoying each article. I even look at the ads.

In the sunroom, I finished reading an issue of Poets & Writers magazine. I buy one of these at Barnes & Noble from time to time. While this mag is very much oriented towards the Master of Fine Arts crowd and is far from my writing world, I enjoy it more than other writing mags. Anyway, I had only two pages left in this particular issue, and finished those pages yesterday. At a future writers meeting I will pass this along to someone.

Still in the sunroom, I next looked at an essay I’ve been slogging through on Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Years ago I downloaded this from the Bulletin for Biblical Research and printed it (at a time when the company I worked for had a generous policy of making personal copies). I may have read most of it before but, having come across it in a notebook while working on my near-continuous dis-accumulation efforts, I decided it was time to read it, absorb what it said, and get rid of it. The essay is about 60 pages long, heavily footnoted.

While I enjoyed reading it, the article was a bit of a chore to get through. When I started yesterday, I had about ten pages left to read. Maybe I had come to an easier part of the magazine, or maybe my mind was better engaged, but I got through those last pages. I’m not quite ready to discard the sheets, but within a couple of months I’ll extract the info I need from it to go into a future Bible study I plan to write.

Then, in the evening, I finished the last nine pages (of 633 total) in a biography of David Livingstone. This tome took me three months to get through, though admittedly I laid it aside several times to read other things. Other than the small print, and smaller print on the extensive quotes from Livingstone’s letters and journal, it wasn’t a hard read. Ten pages at a time was fairly easy to get through. And if I hadn’t been reading other things simultaneously, I think I would have been able to finish this in a month. It’s done now, and will likely take two blog posts to review.

Lastly, I finished re-reading Volume 1 of the correspondence between Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Years ago, long before Google Books and Kindle, I found this at Project Gutenberg, downloaded both volumes, and formatted them in Word for a blend between tight printing and easy reading. Using those printing privileges, I printed them and put them in notebooks. Meanwhile, I have recently learned how easy it is to upload a Word document to Kindle for your personal library. I did that with Vol. 1.

As I’ve said many times before, I love reading letters. Wanting something “light” for those odd moment reads, I sent this to Kindle and began reading it perhaps a month ago. I found it delightful, as I did perhaps 20 years ago. Yesterday, I came to the end of Volume 1.

This is sort of waste-of-time reading, since I have so many things to get through. But it was quite enjoyable. I was able to read it fairly quickly, including in the hospital last week with Lynda. At some point yesterday, I read a letter by Emerson to Carlyle, and was surprised to find it the last in the volume. So I promptly found Vol 2 on my computer and uploaded it to my Kindle library. Not sure when I will start this.

So, that’s the story of the strange circumstances that had me finishing four very different reads on the same day. It’s unlikely to ever happen again.

Time to pick up some new reads. One I’m already 40 pages into. What else will I pick up next?

Bible study, books, The Forest Throne, Writing

2022 Recap

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This was one of my two new publications in 2022.

In terms of my writing career, what can I say about 2022? It was productive, but not overly so. That seems to be the best I can say.

As 2022 started, I finished the first draft of There’s No Such Thing As Time Travel, and was ready for beta readers and to figure out what to do about a cover. Also finished, and not yet published, was our church’s Centennial book. I had finished it—all I could see to do on it—in October, and was waiting on proofreading and editing. So two books were essentially ready to go to publication.

While waiting for those to projects to grind through to publication, I began writing a Bible study. Our Sunday school class has been studying Holy Week, during the run-up to Easter. It is a multi-year effort. In a few weeks we will start our fifth part of this, the Roman trail. I had no intentions of developing this into a published Bible study, but in early 2022 said, “Why not?”

I began with what we studied in 2021, the Last Supper. That was our third year. I made some progress on it, then came the time to teach the fourth year, Gethsemane and arrest of Jesus and the night trials. I found writing it as I was teaching it much easier than trying to write what I had taught in prior years.

I count sales of these in the year’s total, even though it wasn’t a royalty producing project.

I worked on the current year and the previous year simultaneously. By the time the end of April rolled around, I had the current year’s mostly done, the previous year’s about 40 percent done, and a plan for the entire series. Although it is a six-year study, I came to see it should have been a seven-year study and that the published books should be divided into smallish seven volumes.

That’s when other things got in the way of writing. That included the three special projects, as well as a number of things around the house and health concerns. Writing lagged behind. Publication went forward, however. The Centennial book was published in April and seemed to be well accepted. TNSTATT was published in June. On-line sales are nonexistent, but in person sales have happened, with much effort and pushing on my part.

Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on.

In July I began work on the next book in The Forest Throne series, titled The Key To Time Travel. After delays of putting a major effort into it, I knuckled down in December and finished it. It is now waiting on beta readers, as well as for me to edit it. Early chapters have passed muster with my critique group.

The Kuwait Letters book is done. This is the final cover—before the typo was fixed. Now done, distributed, and un-published for now.

Two other publications in 2022 were letters collections. One of these was the letters with my good friend, Gray Boden, as a tribute to him after his passing in 2020. I suspect this book will soon be un-published, as it actually includes items for which I don’t have permission of the writer (i.e. copyright holder) to publish. The other was the collection of letters from our Kuwait years. Copies of his have been obtained by all family members that want them and has been unpublished. These were not really commercial ventures, but took time away from what could have been time on writing and marketing books.

I took part in three author events near the end of the year, and spoke three times to the letter writers society I’m a part of. I wasn’t aware of any other events I could have participated in. I’m hoping 2023 will see more of them.

I wound up selling 279 books, my highest year ever. Without the Centennial book (which I count as sales for me even though it was a non-commercial venture), I would have been a little behind 2021 sales.

So I enter 2023 with a completed, unpublished project, two works-in-progress and another soon to start. Here’s hoping and praying that 2023 will be more productive than 2022 was.

Bible study, books, Christianity

A Determinist Sociological Development

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In our evening reading aloud, Lynda and I are reading in two books right now. One is our denomination’s Lenten Devotional book Sacred Invitation: Lenten Devotions Inspired by The Book of Common Prayer. It’s been good, though for thirty years I never once heard celebration of Lent promoted in our church and don’t understand why it is being so now. But perhaps that’s a subject for a different post, or an essay. The book is an easy read. Daily morning and evening scripture readings (which I assume come from the Lectionary) along with a couple of pages of text and a page of questions to spark spiritual growth. The text is small, 11 point font or less—I think 10 point font.

The other is A History of the Jews by Paul Johnson. This was a book of our son’s when he was in college, for it has his name and a date from his college years written on the inside. It includes marginalia that does not appear to be his handwriting, so perhaps he got it used. In that case we are at least the third owners of it. It’s 595 pages of text, plus a lot of pages of endnotes. It is also in 10 point font, so it’s a lot of reading. We’re only on page 37 after three or four days.

Whether we finish it or not is a big question right now. I’m re-reading some of the early pages which Lynda read aloud and I was a little distracted in my listening. On page 6 I ran across this statement:

Under the influence of Hegel and his scholarly followers, Jewish and Christian revelation, as presented in the Bible, was reinterpreted as a determinist sociological development from primitive trial superstition to sophisticated urban ecclesiology.

That’s a mouthful, for sure. I know who Hegel is but know nothing about what he thought or taught, nor about the “school” that follows, or followed, him. That phrase though, “determinist sociological development”, threw me. What the heck does that mean? I looked up “determinist” and had a sort of idea of what it means: the opposite of free will. I kind of know what ecclesiology is but looked it up to be sure: the study of church doctrine is the way I would say it in layman’s terms (the definition wasn’t real clear to me). So this is saying that Hegel and the folks who follow his teachings consider the history told in the Bible moves from lack of free will to something scholarly, something sophisticated, something urban.

I’m sure I’ve got that wrong, but that’s the best I can do. Now, a couple of things come to me from that. I find those kind of hard to understand statements a couple of times on each page. I spent ten minutes or so trying to riddle this one out. If I do that on every page, we’ll never finish the book. On the other hand, do I really need to understand that to understand the history of the Jews? Do I need to know that some dude (I guess he’s a man) and his minions have a complicated idea of what Bible history is teaching, that the author is getting ready to say is not correct? Probably not.

Elsewhere in the book, we’ve been running into lots of words that need looking up to understand, two examples being adumbration and aggadic. Thirty seconds on the cell phone provides those definitions but perhaps not that much greater understanding. Which makes me think this book is not for us.

Meanwhile, in other writing work, I’m engaged to write a book on the history of our church for our 100th anniversary. That happens in July, but because of pandemic fears and some major construction adjacent to the church, the actual celebration has been pushed back to a date not yet established. For that book, I’ve been researching our charter members. I’m probably doing too much research into our charter members. But given how research way leads on to way, I’ve pulled up some interesting church history documents. I have allowed myself to go down these rabbit holes. One document I was in today, a PhD dissertation, included this statement.

The manner in which nineteenth-century advocates of holiness reconstructed the Wesleyan/holiness cultural-linguistic system emphasized an imagistic religiosity which heightened individual awareness of spiritual autonomy.

Cultural-linguistic system…imagistic religiosity? This did me in. I have no idea what the PhD is talking about. This tells me nothing about the history of the church or the particular religious movement, nor does it help me live a better life. Nor will it help any Christian minister to be a better pastor of their flock. So what is its purpose? I’d answer that question, but I don’t have a spare week of continuous study that I would have to spend to do so.

All of which tells me I should do what I just read in a different book. I should stick to my lasts and leave the scholarly documents to the scholars. Back to my the Bible itself, a devotional book, books of letters, and Agatha Christie books.

books, family, home improvements, miscellaneous

A Busy Time Ahead

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On Friday this will all expand. Additional tables will be set up and moved out into the driveway and yard. I hope much of it goes.

For the next two weeks (at least), my life is going to be too full to keep up a regular blog schedule. I normally post on Monday and Friday. For a little while, however, I will likely do just once a week, probably on Monday.

What’s going on, you wonder? Since July my wife and I have been in the process of downsizing our possessions (not yet our house). We came to the realization that we have too much stuff, accumulated over 46 years of marriage and retrieved from the houses of three parents upon their deaths—or their own downsizing. We had to get rid of it.

This is a cute horse. Pinch its ear and it whinnies and moves it’s head and tail. But they grandkids don’t use it when they come. It fetched $25 on FB Marketplace, and some young child probably loves it now.

I started with my mother-in-law’s papers in July. Some I was able to discard, such as old health records and old financial records after shredding, but much my wife has to see before we can do that. She’s been in the process of that since my sorting gave her enough to look at. Things are being put into recycling. Cards and letters will all have to go, a very few saved for sentimental value.

Of course, I interrupted that work to transcribe the letter from our Kuwait years. They are now in the cloud and backed up. Someday, when life calms down, I’ll put them in book form for children and grandchildren. They aren’t great literature. No, simply a record of our time there. Someday I’ll do the same with the Saudi years.

Tools from Dad’s house. I’ve been surprised at how well tools are selling. Sure takes a lot of messaging, however, to get the sale made.

Slowly, slowly, we have been getting Esther’s things out of her room or our large basement storage room and making them ready for sale. Shelf decorations, boxed crystal, books, and clothes are all being gone through. It’s a slow process. I can only do so much and Lynda’s health and strength doesn’t allow her to work longer. She’s actually doing very well with it. I’d make the decisions on many things, but I know she has to be the one to do it.

Getting rid of Esther’s stuff, stuff that we don’t want or need and our children don’t want or need led me to look at our own stuff. While waiting on my wife’s strength to come back, I realized I had lots of stuff to get rid of that had come to us from Dad’s house back in 1997-98, stuff I never used. I wrote about this process before. All I’ll say now is last Saturday I found another tray of tools that can be sold.

But, it seems, no one wants this old, French postcard. Alas. Not sure where or how we will get rid of the postcards. We took hundreds of them from the house we owned in NC that had been left by the previous owner.

For all of this we are using Facebook Marketplace as our primary sales venue. For now, the only sales venue. I like the success we are having, but it is a slow process. Gent a new item listed and approved and almost immediately you will get “Is this item still available?” You tell them yes in a return message, and…never hear from them again. For one set of tools this resulted in five different people showing interest, even to the point of making appointments to come see and probably buy them. To the garage I went at the appointed time and…nothing. They didn’t show. Didn’t message that they wouldn’t show. Next day I get a message saying oh sorry but I just couldn’t come. Meanwhile I’ve told two other people that the tools are spoken for. Trying to be fair with buyers is turning into a lengthy and frustrating process.

This is a hard one. This tea and coffee brewer was a wedding gift for Lynda’s grandmother back in 1924. Hard to part with it, but we have decorations in abundance. Alas, so far almost no views of it on FB Marketplace.

Slow, frustrating, even maddening. But things are selling. First was a rocking horse that the grandkids have all outgrown. Then it was a 3-gallon aquarium I found on a shelf in the basement that neither of us knew when we got it or if we even used it. Then came the tools. Then came an old kerosene heater we haven’t used since about 1995. Clothes are listed but no one is looking at clothes ads. We have a few decorations listed but it’s too early to know if we will get any interest in them. I found a bunch of unused postcards that apparently belonged to my dad and listed those in several lots, but that doesn’t seem to be the type of things people are going to FB Marketplace to buy.

Meanwhile, we are setting up for a garage sale that will be this Friday and Saturday. I hate garage sales and said I would never do another. But here we are. The neighbors were doing one so we said we would do one too to try to generate more interest. At our last sale I think we did a little less than $200 worth. I’m hoping for a lot more this time around, but am prepared to be disappointed. The work involved is way too much for the reward.

But, the true downsizing/de-cluttering test comes when the sale is over and you have lots of leftover stuff to deal with. A friend has said, “Don’t bring it back in the house. Take it straight to Goodwill.” I’m prepared to do that but I’m not sure the wife is. That didn’t happen after our sale and we ended up with tables in the garage for years. I’m hoping and praying that doesn’t happen this time. If an item is marked as “we don’t need this anymore”, that should apply whether you could get money for it or not. Right?

A few of the bigger, more valuable items, the kind of things that potential buyers for are unlikely to be yard sale shoppers, sure, those can be kept for selling. But most things I think not.

books, family, home improvements, memories, Mom, reading

Goodbye, Books

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So many books to read, so little time left in this world to read them.

The house I grew up in had a lot of books in it. The secretary in the dining room, the bookcase with the glass doors in the hallway, and on shelves of books in the basement—some tied with twine, some in boxes, some in a row, and some under drop-cloths. I didn’t know what these books were. Once I took the drop-cloth off some and saw they were encyclopedias, published in 1900.

After Mom died and we three children grew up and moved out, Dad became an acquirer of books. He was retired by then, and he and his friend boyhood friend, Bob Tetrault, would get together once a month, have lunch, then go to flea markets. I don’t know what Bob bought (if anything), but Dad bought books. He bought paperbacks, hardbacks, on a variety of subjects. Seemingly mindless that he already had more than a thousand of Mom’s books, he bought more—and read them.

When Dad died 32 years after Mom did, and we cleaned out the house, I took the books. I sorted them into three categories: those it seemed Dad acquired, which were published mainly 1970 and later; those older than that that Mom had acquired, mainly hardbacks from the 1930s and 1940s; and then much older books, all hardbacks. These, I learned, had belonged to David Sexton, Mom’s grand-uncle, the man who took my grandmother in as a single mother and gave her a home. These are mainly from the late 1800s, though I found some that went back as early as 1829. I think my brother sold off a few older ones before I took the bulk of them away, but that’s another story.

Now we come down to 2020 and our new effort to reduce our possessions, looking toward that day sometime in the future when we’ll downsize and likely move away. As I reported in a prior post, I’m identifying things to part with and selling them on Facebook Marketplace—with some success. Dad’s tools, taking up space in boxes on shelves in the garage, are gone, at least many of them are. I still have a few. Toys that the grandchildren have outgrown are slowly going. We’ll give a number of them away to a needy family, sell others. Clothes that are surplus or that no longer fit (mostly due to weight loss) are being identified, sorted, and priced in anticipation of a yard sale a week from now. I’ve reported earlier about reduction in papers (cards, notes, letters), something that is on-going and not related to selling.

That brings us down to the books. What to do about them? Uncle Dave’s books are obviously keepers. Not many people have a set of Thomas Babbington Macaulay’s writings published in 1856, and another set from 1905. Not many have Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Tennyson, and Kipling from the 1800s. My interest in Thomas Carlyle began because of his books Uncle Dave left behind. The many books that Dad collected we can obviously get rid of. A few would be worth keeping and reading. We’ll sort through them, see what’s good, and keep them. That would be maybe 1 or 2 of 100.

The books that came from Lynda’s dad and mom are more contemporary. The subjects vary from World War 2 to Christian living. I suspect most of those will go. They are not as numerous as the books my parents had, and are not keepsakes. The books we accumulated on our own are a little tougher. If we read them they can go. If we haven’t read them, are we likely to read them? If yes, we keep; if no, out they go. I suspect this will be 50-50. That will get rid of another thousand or more.

This one I will NOT be selling. My heirs can figure out what to do with it. I’ve not yet read “Little Women”, but when I do it may be from this copy.

What about Mom’s books? This is the hardest part of the decision. Over the years, at yard sales and when we briefly sold books on line from 2000-2003, I’ve sold a few of them. Now, however, I’m looking at selling maybe 700 of them if I can find buyers. At the end of that, I might find a good place to donate them, or sell them to a used book store or dealer for 25¢ on the dollar. This is hard, harder than selling Dad’s tools. Harder than selling anything I acquired over the years. Mom bought these books and, I believe, read all of them. It’s a piece of her I have clung to, hoping to read them myself and experience them as she did. Alas, if I could read two a month it would take me 42 years to go through them all. Will I live to be 110 and read these books to the exclusion of all others? Give up all my other interests just to read these books? I don’t think so.

Signed when she was 9 years old, Mom continued that practice all her life.

As buyers come by and take a few of Mom’s books, I look at the half-title page, where she always signed it and put the date she bought it. I look at that and come close to crying. Another piece of Mom gone.

But what else is there to do? My children don’t want these books. My grandchildren, I’m sure, won’t want them either. As Emerson said, each generation must write their own books. Very few people in our family are still alive who knew Mom, with a few more who knew about her. Someday these will all be gone. Should I leave that task to someone who comes after me, letting them make a hard decision?

No, I’ll make that hard decision. It won’t happen in a day, but over months, perhaps years. Slowly these books will go. I’ve pulled a few out to read, and will get through them.

books, Health, letters, memories, miscellaneous, stock market

A Strange but Good Day

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Tuesday, July 28, 2020. A most interesting day, and perhaps typical of the jumbled life I live right now.

You’d think life would be simple, being retired and mostly staying at home due to the corona virus pandemic. You’d be wrong, however. I suppose the reason is in part that I have too many interests. Let me catalog some events from the day.

So far I’ve transcribed 2/3 of the letters in this box, and they run to 31 typed pages (the box is not full).

I woke around 6:15 to see my digital alarm clock flashing. Must have been a power failure in the night, probably momentary but enough to reset the clock. I got up and weighed and checked my blood sugar. No change in weight (still at the lower end of the range I’ve been bouncing around in). My blood sugar was 81, a good number. The day before my new doctor’s nurse called to convey the doctor’s follow-up comments on recent blood work. All was normal, except iron, which is a little low. Since the nurse didn’t mention the reduction in insulin dose that the doctor said, and since that reduction wasn’t in the printed office visit summary they gave me, I told the nurse what my blood sugars had been with the lower dose—the same as they had been with the higher dose. She said she would tell the doctor. Fifteen minutes later the nurse called back and said the doctor wanted me to reduce my sugar further by a couple of units.

But that happened on Monday. I’m talking about Tuesday. It was raining at 6:15, which meant I wouldn’t be able to go outside for my morning yardwork. Instead, I went into the sunroom and just rested for 30 minutes. I then got up, dressed, got my morning coffee, and went down to The Dungeon for my normal work. Everything seemed very normal. I read devotions, prayed, recorded my health info, checked my book sales, opened my stock trading programs, then checked my e-mail. And the first surprise came.

I had an overnight e-mail from a man with Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. They wanted to use a photograph from this blog for training purposes; would I let them know how to acquire the rights to do so. Wow, this was strange. I spent 15-20 minutes trying to figure out if this was legit. I found web pages for that organization and it all looks legit, except the man’s name was nowhere on it. He’s in an administrative position, however, and they don’t list any administrators on the site. So I sent him an e-mail to try to verify that it’s a legitimate claim.

Shortly after this an e-mail came from Amazon, confirming my order for $543 and change. Except I have no orders outstanding with Amazon. I compared the e-mail with the one from my last order. They looked much the same but there were telltale differences. So I contacted Amazon, confirmed it was most likely a phishing attack, forwarded the e-mail to them for investigation, and went back to my normal business.

Normal business on a weekday includes stock trading. I placed a trade and it filled. Good work. Then, instead of working on one of my books, I began transcribing letters from our Kuwait years. Have I discussed this before on the blog? I can’t remember. I won’t go into it much now except to say that morning I transcribed three letters. That brings the total transcribed to sixteen. In the Word file they run to 24 pages. I have ten more to go in this box, and dozens more in the main box. These are just some I found lately going through my mother-in-law’s things as part of our decluttering effort. They will be added to the large plastic bin (30 x 24 x 6) full of other letters from our Kuwait and Saudi years, all waiting to be transcribed. I also managed to do a little over a half mile on the elliptical.

That got me to lunch time. From that point on the day seemed more or less normal. I made a quick run to the nearby Wal-Mart pharmacy for a couple of prescriptions, had some reading time in the sunroom since the day was cool enough. The wife and I did our evening reading in an Agatha Christie mystery. Normal seemed good.

Throughout the day I was careful of what I ate, though I wouldn’t say I dieted. Yet, when I weighed Wednesday morning I was at my lowest weight in over two months. I followed a similar eating regimen on Wednesday and we even lower on Thursday. This was while reducing my insulin dose (per doctor’s orders) and seeing only a small increase in my blood sugar. Maybe my health is improving.

As I finish this post on Thursday afternoon, I have a generally good feeling about where things stand. A good felling and outlook is…well… good. Bring on Friday. Bring on the isolated weekend. I might even get some time to work on a book or two.

books, C.S. Lewis, Documenting America, Dune

Too Much To Read

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Eight of the fourteen bookcases in The Dungeon. Just a fraction of what we have. How am I ever going to get through all of these?

As I write this, I’m nearing the end of two books I’m reading, and am about halfway through a book I’m re-reading. It won’t be long before I’m ready to choose something else to read. But what will it be?

The books I’m just about finishing are:

  • Jews, God and History by Mix I. Dimont; down to the last 20 pages
  • Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford; about 120 pages to go in this 610 page book

The book I’m re-reading is:

  • The Inklings of Oxford: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Their Friends by Harry Lee Poe and James Ray Veneman; 60 pages into this 102 page book, reading on my smart phone.
While I’m pleased to have a number of C.S. Lewis books, I don’t have enough. May more purchases be in my future? These three are definitely on my sooner-than-later reading list.

So, again I ask myself, what’s next? I should shift to fiction, as most of my reading this year, or maybe all of it, has been non-fiction. I’d like to get back to the Dune series by Frank Herbert. Alas, I don’t have the next one in the series and I’d really like to read them in order. I should just bit the bullet and order it on my Amazon gift card or go to Barnes & Noble and buy it. I have so many books already in the house, though, I hate to bring another book in.

Other fiction I could read is try to get through some of JRR Tolkien’s works. I read the first book of The Lord Of The Rings, but struggled with it and am not anxious to try again. I also have the prequel to that, The Silmarillion, but, again, I find Tolkien hard to get through.

If I stick with non-fiction, I have a number of things to choose from. For one, I should really finish The Federalist Papers. I spot-read this as research for Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition. The last few I read held my interest, so I’m thinking I should try it again and get it read. That’s a major commitment due to length, so I don’t know.

I should also go back and re-read some of John Locke’s Treatises on Government, since I read them in a distracted, less-than-optimal state. Or, I should read some of the things he referenced. It’s quite possible that the next book I write in the Documenting America series will be Run-up to Revolution, in which case I need to be reading what the Founders were reading. That’s research, however, and I’m really thinking of pleasure reading.

If I were to shift to poetry, I should read some of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poems. I have two compilations of hers. Or, I should get back to Robert Frost or Wallace Stevens, both of whom I started reading but didn’t finish. But, I’m not sure I’m ready to read poetry right now. It makes me too anxious to then write poetry, as my Sidelines Syndrome kicks in, and all I need is another distraction from my prose writing.

Then again, I haven’t read any letters for a while. Still on my work table is volume 1 of The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis. It’s 1024 pages, so I sure wouldn’t read it cover-to-cover without a break. I’m thinking I’ll read it in a few key areas, concerning Lewis’ conversion first to theism then to Christianity. Or, I could get back to Thomas Carlyle’s letters, though that would be on-line reading. I also have a couple of C.S. Lewis compilations yet to read. They are scholarly essays, and I think I would enjoy them.

Thinking of fiction again, I have Lewis’ space trilogy at hand. Hmmm, maybe I should read the first of that and see how I like it. Or, I have a thousand novels in the house, either picked up from sales or passed on to me from my mother. I could grab any of them off the shelf and easily fill a couple of weeks of pleasure reading, finding out if these are any good by modern standards.

So many books, so little time. I haven’t talked myself into any of these yet, but will have to make a decision soon. Perhaps I’ll report back here.

Dateline: Wednesday 31 July 2019

Bible study, books, Christianity, Documenting America, Life Group lessons, miscellaneous, Writing

Progress as Promised, On Several Fronts

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In my last post, I told about the de cluttering effort my wife and I are in. I spoke specifically about the multiple stamp collections I’m dealing with, as well as a few other de-cluttering activities.

The stock book I worked on. I still have a few stragglers to add to it (which fell out before my work commenced), plus perhaps some re-distribution.

This weekend, while de-cluttering is still high on the priority list, so is what I call simply “getting things done.” It began on Friday, where I worked in The Dungeon for a good part of the day, doing my normal writing and stock trading tasks. In the evening I finally finished putting loose stamps into that stock book I mentioned in the last post, and on Saturday I gathered all the stamps in one place, while on Saturday and Sunday I put them all in a larger box and into their designated place in the storeroom. Check one item off the to-do list.

Our newer minivan was overdue for servicing. I finally called on that on Friday afternoon, learned they had appointments on Saturday, and took an early one. I learned of a sensor that’s gone bad; it will be replaced later this week under warranty. I also took that van to a nearby body shop for an estimate on fixing the rear tailgate after the fender-bender I caused in June. Ah, me. Much money to be spend fixing that small folly.

Friday and Saturday remained productive for the whole days. Let’s see what I checked off the list.

  • Elliptical and walking for Friday and Saturday.
  • Work on Acts of Faith each day.
  • Work on Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition each day.
  • Clean up in the front yard, along with weekend weeding and deadfall pick up in the back yard on Saturday.
  • Seeing about accommodations for a trip we will soon be taking.
  • Making a haircut appointment. (I hate using the phone for things like that and always put off making such appointments, so when I do it it feels like a major accomplishment.)
  • Helping the wife make an omelet Saturday noon.
  • Household budgeting on Friday; balancing the checkbook on Saturday; catch up on trading accounting on Saturday.
  • Dusting the high corners near the ceilings.
  • Preparing to teach Life Group on Sunday.
  • Working on organizing the stamp collections, in place for better storage or, perhaps, selling within a couple of years.
I found time each day to just sit and read in the sunroom, and nap there one day.

I could probably add a few more things to the list, but I’d be getting into minutia if I did. Suffice to say the weekend was full, productive, enjoyable, and, if you can believe it, restful. Yes, I had time to watch TV (while working on the stamps and crossword puzzles), to sit in the sunroom and read, to get full nights’ sleep, and to gather with God’s people in worship and study on Sunday.

Whether every weekend will be so enjoyable and productive remains to be seen. This one was, and I thank God for it.

Bible study, books, C.S. Lewis, Writing

Finding Help…in My Library

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Eight of the fourteen bookcases in The Dungeon

I love a library, be it large or small, new or old, plain or fancy. Little in life is better than finding stacks of books. Any time I can I go to a library. Any more I don’t check out a lot of books, but I still enjoy browsing, pulling them from the shelf, sitting and reading for a while until my allotted time is up. Or, sometimes I just pull out a magazine I enjoy and read that.

An online library is just as good—almost. The selection is typically better, if of books that are older. Reading is still possible, though perhaps not quite as enjoyable as getting out and reading from paper in my hands.

While I’m pleased to have a number of C.S. Lewis books, I don’t have enough. May more purchases be in my future?

This week I had need of a library. I’m writing a Bible study. That’s my latest work-in-progress. Have I talked about that on the blog before? I’ll have to check to see if I did and, if not, schedule a post to describe the project. Briefly, it’s titled Acts Of Faith, and each chapter has a biblical story about someone who did something on faith and the difference that made in a life or in the world. The second part of each chapter talks about a Christian from after the Bible period who also did an act of faith that made a difference.

The chapter I was to write was about the conversions of Zacchaeus and C.S. Lewis. Zacchaeus’ was fairly easy. I knew Lewis’ would be easy because I had read about it years ago in his book Surprised By Joy. How long ago? Maybe forty years? Long enough ago to know exactly what I was looking for but not so long that I had the book wrong. So, I go to my shelf where I keep my C.S. Lewis books and…no copy of Surprised By Joy is present.

No problem. It must be in the storeroom where I have a bookcase of literary books. Nope, not there either. No problem. It must be upstairs in one of two places where we keep shorter, inspirational books. Nope, not there either. No problem. We have a built-in bookcase in the living room. I wouldn’t expect this book to be there, but it must be. Nope, not there either. That meant it had to be in a box in the storeroom. Finding it there would be an impossibly time-consuming task.

But then I thought, that was so long ago, perhaps I borrowed the book from someone or from a library. Yes, that must be it. That would mean I could check it out from a library here. I wasn’t planning on being close to one anytime soon, but I could go if needed. I checked on line card catalogs of my closest two libraries. Nope, they didn’t have it. The book is new enough to be in copyright so I knew I wouldn’t find it in an on-line library. Nothing to do but buy a copy. Through the miracle of e-books I could have a copy in hand in only minutes.

I went to two different online retail locations and found Surprised By Joy. Both had it as an e-book, but at a ridiculously high price. A book by a famous author can command a good price. I wasn’t willing to pay that, not right away at least. Let me look one more time in my library.

Yes, my library. You see, we have way too many books in our house, maybe as many as 3,000. I need to get rid of some, but find that hard to do. For years I figured I’d read them in retirement. But retirement is here and I’m too busy writing to make a dent in the number of too-be-read books in the house. Yes, if I read two or three a month and then get rid of them, at some point I’ll see that dent being made. Until then, we have our own library.

I did have a copy of “Surprised By Joy” after all. I just needed to do a better job of looking.

I went back to the shelf that I checked first, the one where I thought the book should be. There were a number of C.S. Lewis books, which I saw earlier when I looked. Two of them I haven’t read, have barely opened. One, titled The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis, is a collection of his theological works pulled together by his estate. The other, The Beloved Works of C.S. Lewis, had four of his books, again collected and published by his estate. I looked closer at it, and the first book in this book was…Surprised By Joy.

Wow, I didn’t realize I had it! Pulled it from the shelf, spent about an hour reading in the places I remembered, and I had my information and quotes for the chapter. Another hour and I had the rest of the chapter written. An exorbitant price for an e-book avoided, progress made on my book.

So, I did find it in a library. It just turned out it was my own library.

books, Engineering, Short Stories, Writing

Only 9 Months and 2 Days Till Retirement

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Yes, the day draws ever closer. It’s now down to 9 months and 2 days (at the start of today) until I retire. I’ve already given notice to my supervisor, and have, for the last 6 months, been off-loading my work and training others to take over things.

One thing I’m also doing is looking at my personal stuff, and seeing what I can take home now. It would be a good idea not to walk out of the office on New Year’s Eve with four or five boxes of stuff. So, since the beginning of the year, I’ve been removing things and taking them home.

At one point this was full of personal, non-engineering books that I thought I’d read on my noon hours. Many are already at the house.

The photo is of my personal books shelf in my office. Not my engineering books, but those having to do with things other than engineering. These are things I picked up at bookstores or thrift stores and brought straight to the office. My thought process was that I would read them on noon hours and breaks. Alas, I’ve read none of them, some having been here five or ten years. So, I’ve made it a practice to take one book home a week, being realistic about which one I’m most unlikely to use in the time left. They all could be considered research books, supporting one of my many writing projects. Which projects will I work on at the office, and which won’t I?

I’m now down to 18 books plus my Bible. I’d be very happy to carry that out on the last day. So, in 18 weeks I could be done moving books. But which one to take this week?

I think it will be Stories by O. Henry. Bought for the exorbitant amount of 50 cents at a thrift store, I got it to use as an example of how to write short stories. But, I have only one short story in my writing queue at the moment, and it’s questionable that I’ll really get to it this year. So, off it goes to the house when I leave the office tonight.

That will leave 17 yet to go home. I won’t take one every week. Some weeks I’ll take a coffee mug home. I have six of those to move. I’m not sure yet what to do with my engineering books, which are shown in the next photo. They are two deep in this cupboard. Some of them I’ll either give away or silent-auction off in my office.  Some I may just toss.

Some of these engineering books I haven’t looked at for years. Some are from school, and badly out of date. Why am I keeping them?

Then, there’s my books-for-sale inventory, my creative writing. I keep them at work rather than at home. Every now and then someone comes into my office and buys one.  At some point, I’ll have to take them home.

How many of these will I actually sell at work? Not too many, if the future stays as it’s been in the past

Yes, deconstructing a work station after 44 years at the job (different companies, different cubicles or offices, but the same engineering) takes time. I don’t want to just move the clutter in my office to join the clutter at home. Hopefully, by making an early starts, the job won’t be so bad.