Category Archives: reading

Engineering, Genealogy, Life Group lessons, reading, Writing

Retirement: The First Three Days

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My first official day of retirement was January 1, 2019. Having gone into the office the day before, and actually having done some meaningful work that day, Tuesday the 1st seemed more like the holiday I would have as a working man rather than a retirement day. We saw our daughter’s family off around 10:30 a.m., then we alternated resting and cleaning the rest of the day. We said we wouldn’t clean until Tuesday, but a few things were obviously easy, so we did it. That night we watched episodes of our favorite show, The Curse of Oak Island on the History Channel.

So Wednesday the 2nd was the first true retirement day. I was up around 6:15 a.m., got coffee, and headed to The Dungeon. I opened my brokerage programs, and realized I hadn’t set up my trading spreadsheet for 2019. I did that in a little more than an hour, and was ready when the market opened. After that, what to do? I read e-mails, Facebook, checked 23andMe, got breakfast, and watched the market.

I decided to work on my genealogy pursuits, and began better assimilation of data I’ve accumulated on the Penson family. Florence Elizabeth Penson married William Henry Foreman and gave birth to Bert Foreman, my new-found birth grandfather. That became my work for the rest of the day—along with watching the market. I took time to clean up Christmas stuff strewn across the work table in the storeroom. The evening was devoted to TV and reading. Thus ended a first, delightful day of retirement.

And, through the day, I had some e-mails for CEI Engineering. Since I have a contract with them for limited work, I still have my CEI phone and computer. The phone will soon be mine, but the computer will some day go back to them. One e-mail, from my former supervisor, included a request to do something, so I get to charge a little time to them. Just a 1/4 hour, but I’ll get paid for it. The extra income is something I’m looking forward to.

Yesterday, Thursday, wasn’t much different, except that I slept until almost 7:30 a.m. I watched the market and made one trade. I kept working on the Penson genealogy data. We did more clean-up, and Lynda did some laundry. She’s still not over the flu she caught just after Christmas, and her cough is terrible. We continued to eat leftovers, and the refrigerators are more or less back to normal. I cleaned out several things yesterday.

In the evening I worked on the outline for a series of Life Group lessons titled A Walk Through Holy Week. My co-teacher suggested this as something he’d like to do someday. A couple of months ago I looked into it, and realized we would never be able to teach it all in one Spring season. Last night I divided it into six parts, and planned the lessons for Part 1, which we will begin teaching in February this year. I still have some planning to do into two or three of the lessons, and will do so tonight.

So here it is, Friday January 4. I got up just after 7:00 a.m., which I think I’ll try to make my regular time. I made coffee, sat with Lynda a bit (she’s still coughing much and hard), called in one of her prescriptions, made a grocery list, and went to The Dungeon. Market futures are up, so it looks like a good opening. A Word document concerning the Penson family is open, and I’ve made some entries into it. And here I am, working on my regular Friday blog.

Truth is, I don’t yet know what my retirement routine will be. I have so many things I want to accomplish. My main January task is supposed to be inventorying my trunkful of Stars and Stripes, passed down to me from my dad. Perhaps I’ll get to that today. I’m going to make a grocery run, help out with more laundry, finish this Penson genealogy for now, finish the Life Group lessons work, and then, who knows? Maybe some reading. Oh, yes, I’ve been doing some of that in the evenings, in magazines I’ve collected but intend to read and not keep.

 

Adam Of Jerusalem, Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Mark Twain, miscellaneous, reading, Short Stories, Writing

Writing, Blogging, and Cleaning, Oh My!

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Lots of activity going on in my household right now, considering I’m the only one there right now. My mother-in-law is now in an assisted living facility near us, and my wife is away for a couple of weeks, helping our daughter and her family move. I was there the last couple of weekends with her. Their truck loading days are today and tomorrow. I would go and help, but with my shoulder not yet fully healed, I decided not to.

So, batching it, what have I been up to?

Writing, for one thing. I’m back on Adam Of Jerusalem, first book in my church history novel series, and the prequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I wrote three evenings this week, adding about 4,000 words to what I had before, and last night getting to the first plot point. While I’ve known for quite a while the story I want to tell with this book, I wasn’t sure what scenes I would have, or how I would get that story told. Despite that, my writing speed is good. Well, last night was a little slower. I added only 1,000 words, possibly because I wasn’t feeling well. Went to bed early.

Another thing occupying my time—so far in just a small way—is blog maintenance. By that I mean I want to go back to old posts and clean up the categories those posts are tagged with. Some I didn’t tag at all, while others were tagged in a way that doesn’t make sense given how my blog has progressed. This is busywork, but I think needed. I have way too many categories and would like to trim it some. Hopefully after this work, the number will be.

Third, I’m doing cleaning in the house. This has been the slowest of the three things in the post title. I’m getting a little done every day. I ironed some shirts that came out of the wash a month or more ago with wrinkled areas, but I haven’t yet put the iron and ironing board away. I disposed of a pile of mail, but haven’t yet filed the things that need filing. I’ve cleaned one or two things off the kitchen table each day, but it’s still a mess. I’ve made a good start on decluttering all my paper, and have tossed many, many sheets, yet still have piles of paper where there shouldn’t be.

Through all of this, I’m still trying to lose weight, and have spent a lot of time walking, most days at noon and some in the evenings at home. I’m at my lowest weight for three or four years, though still have 35 pounds to go to get to the upper end of my target weight range. Ate properly Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, then kind of lost it last night. Back on track today, I think.

So what do I have in store for this Memorial Day weekend? Writing for sure. By the end of the day Monday I’d like to be a minimum of 7,500 words further along. I believe that’s achievable.

I have more cleaning to do. I’ll progress through that slowly, but by the end of the day Monday: the kitchen table will be clean; the kitchen floor will be mopped; the unfinished piles of decluttering remainders will be gone through and trashed or stowed. Also, all the oak pollen strings will be swept, raked, blown, or by hand put into a pile, and moved to the compost pile. A few weeds will be pulled as well.

I also hope to go through a minimum of 100 of my oldest blog posts not yet touched and clean-up the categories. I did 25 the other day. I believe 100 should be no problem.

For what it’s worth, I plan on some reading for relaxation. I’m on the last 70 pages of Mark Twain’s short stories. I hope to finish that this weekend as well. I believe that’s possible.

I’ll report back with a blog post, probably on Tuesday instead of Monday, and let you know how I did.

Bible study, Carlyle, home improvements, miscellaneous, Preserve The Revelation, reading

Bread and Boxes

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My time is very limited these days, almost all of my own making. I’m working hot and heavy on my novel, Preserve The Revelation. Over the weekend I added slightly more than 5,500 words to it. That exceeded my three-day goal of 5,000 words, so that was good. I was writing a difficult part, where a character dies, and another, closely associated character must carry on. But I’m through the worst of that. The worst going forward is I really haven’t planned out this next section very well, so I may find writing it quite laborious.

Two other writing tasks I’m working on is my chronological composition bibliography of Thomas Carlyle, and further study with writing intentions into my harmony of the gospels, specifically the Resurrection account. When I finished up my latest round of revisions, intended to be my last, in June, I did a little search for references I might add to the resurrection account. I found a couple, which led me to doing some writing on an auxiliary document last week and on the weekend. And some reading on it. This is perhaps totally unnecessary, but it’s something I want to do, something that gives me satisfaction.

Saturday saw me doing the typical chores around our house. I moved a large bookcase from the garage to the basement, to help close-in the temporary bedroom we’ve set up there. I loaded the shelves with Christmas decorations and who knows what all was in the boxes I placed. I now know I need to put a light back there, and will do so next weekend, or I might hire an electrician to do it, as I have a couple of other things I need for one to do.

Sunday was fairly restful. I wasn’t scheduled to teach Life Group, though I always prepare to since my co-teacher (on alternating weeks) is a veterinarian and can be called out at any time), but late on Saturday I received a text from him, saying his on-call weekends had switched and he would be on call Sunday. That meant I did have to prepare to teach. I did that by getting up early Sunday morning (thought in fact I had been preparing during the week). He didn’t get called in, and so he taught; I participated as a student. I napped in the sunroom after church, though not for long before I headed to The Dungeon for my writing.

In the evening we felt the 5.0 earthquake that hit Cushing Oklahoma, about 200 miles from us. That was minor excitement. We got pizza instead of having to prepare food, which was good. I pulled out a writing book to read, since I’ve finished all other books and was ready for something new and since I hadn’t read a writing book in a couple of years at least. But for some reason a wave of tiredness washed over me. I’ve learned not to fight it, so I set my book aside, slouched a little in my easy chair, laid my head against the back, and dozed. Maybe for an hour all together. I woke up about 10:15 p.m. to find a different tv program on.

At that point I tried reading a little more, discovered I couldn’t, so went to the kitchen to prepare for the week. I washed a few dished that needed washing, then packed my breakfasts for the week and my lunch for Monday. Yes, I eat breakfast at work. I leave the house at 6:30 a.m. so as to miss traffic, and have a quiet time at work to read the Bible, pray, and do miscellaneous things (such as write this blog post). I did all of that, finishing right around 11:00 p.m.

At that point I headed to bed. I no sooner laid my head down when I realized I had forgot to put bread for my breakfasts in my food bag. I had done the same thing last week, and got to work and had a boiled egg, slice of ham, slice of cheese, and no bread. I debated getting up to add that, but decided instead to say, “Add bread to my food bag” over and over till I fell asleep, hoping I’d remember it in the morning.

Another unfinished task that crossed my mind as I was trying to lock in remembering the bread was that, during the yard sale last weekend, I moved many empty boxes out of the garage and strewed them on the side of the house or under trees nearby. Lynda reminded me on Sunday that those needed to be brought in. I figured I’d better do them in the morning before going to work, so I started to lock that task in by saying to myself, “Remember the boxes, remember the bread.”

I’m happy to say that this morning I remembered both. I put five slices of bread in two baggies and put them in my food bag. As I left the house through the garage I brought in the boxes and put them where they needed to be, at least temporarily. The need to do that was emphasized to me when I hear on the radio that rain is probable today. These  tasks, and one other within the house, made me about eight minutes late, caused me to be behind two slow moving truck, and then in a long, long line of vehicles heading in to Bentonville. So I was at work late. Alas.

However, so long as I crowd writing into my life, so long as I have so many other obligations that can’t be shunted aside, I will have to compromise somewhere. Driving in heavier traffic was this morning’s compromise. Who knows what it will be for the rest of the day, or tomorrow, or the next day?

Oh, and sorry for missing to post something here last Friday. Too many tasks, something had to give.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, home improvements, letters, Preserve The Revelation, reading, self-publishing, Writing

Staying Busy

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I’m a day late with this post. The last two months, since I established my Monday and Friday posting schedule, I normally try to write my Monday post on the weekend, or at worst on Monday morning before the start of my workday. I’ve missed a couple of times, but I’ve been doing better about regular posting.

This weekend, however, I did nothing concerning a post. By the end of Sunday I realized that, but it was too late in the day to write it. I decided I’d do it Monday. Monday came and went, and alas, I did nothing on it. Shame on me. I’ll do better going forward.

So what’s keeping me so busy that I didn’t do my blog post? On Saturday it was first work around the house, followed by writing on Preserve The Revelation. The house work included a major cleaning job on the refrigerator, thinning the blackberry vines, cutting a lot of low hanging branches, and weeding in our back yard. I also had chair set-up at church, and trips to Wal-Mart and Home Depot. Sunday was Life Group and church, followed by lunch at a community event. That put me home around 1:45 p.m. I should have written.

Instead, I began work on the print cover of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, using G.I.M.P. to assemble the graphics. As always, G.I.M.P. defeated me. I was able to create a palette the size of the cover, and add and size the front and back covers. But on the back cover I needed to hide three corporate logos. I had planned how to do this, and got two done quite easily. However, when it came to the third one, I stalled. I was using the same procedure as for the first two: cover it with an opaque layer. Only on this one I had to add text. Somehow the layer that is the back cover was deselected, and I couldn’t add the opaque circle. Without the circle, the text was meaningless. I worked more than three hours on it, and finally quit in frustration. I went back to Wal-Mart to pick up one thing I hadn’t the day before, then spent the evening reading.

Yesterday was the normal busyness of work and house. In the evening I went to The Dungeon, intending on writing. But there, on my work table, was the box of photos from our time in Kuwait, with several batches of photos out on the table. I had dug into the box last Wednesday to select some photos to scan and post on Thursday. In the box I found batches of photos not in envelopes, hence not matched with their negatives. I decided getting those photos matched was a better use of my time than writing. I don’t say that facetiously, either. Some day we’ll pass those photos on to our children, and having them properly organized is critical. It was a good use of my time—not that I finished, but I made significant progress. But by the time 9:00 p.m. came I wanted to be about my evening reading. No time to write the blog.

So here I am on Tuesday, writing Monday’s post, and it’s about nothing but why I didn’t write on Monday. But it lets my few readers know what’s going on in my world.

Since the weekend, one of my cover designers contacted me, saying he’d done work on it. We discussed it. Hopefully he’ll complete it very soon. In case not, I’ve contacted a third cover designer and am in discussions with her. Today I sent off a letter to an influencer, a seminary professor, concerning Doctor Luke’s Assistant and things he’s written that dovetail nicely with it. This is by snail mail, as the seminary doesn’t post faculty e-mails. We’ll see what comes of it.

Tonight, when the work day is through, I plan on staying about an hour after to do some research and typing on our fact internet and computer. When I get home, I have one small task to do in the yard, then I’ll heat some soup for supper, and descend to The Dungeon. No photos tonight. I need to add at least 1,000 words tonight, and 3,000 in total, before I will allow myself to return to those photos and finish that big task. I’m looking forward to it.

miscellaneous, reading, self-publishing, Writing

Restless

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Today I feel restless. I felt that way a little bit yesterday. I’m not sure what to do about it. I feel like I have a lot of loose ends, and am barely closer to seeing them completed than I was three days ago.

Yet, this weekend I got a lot done. Friday evening I completed my stock trading accounting for the week. I also moved some dirt and rock from one of the two piles in the front yard. Saturday I started off by cooking pancakes, bacon, and eggs for breakfast for the ladies and myself. That completed, I went out into the heat to move rocks and dirt. I got the pile from the driveway fully moved, using only my spider and a wheelbarrow. The sun having moved to where the piles were, and the temp creeping up into the upper 80s, I went inside to rest a while. But, being restless, I went back out, this time to the back yard, and pulled weeds from the gravel yard. I did this for close to an hour.

At that point I went back to the front yard, and discovered that the sun had moved such that trees were providing shade to the remaining rock pile, the bigger of the two. I decided I could move some of that, reducing the size and making it possible to finish it in a few evenings this week. However, I kept at it, taking frequent, short rests. I kept saying, “Okay, one more load after this one.” Because my wheelbarrow tire is low on air, I didn’t load a lot of rocks/dirt in it. A few shovels full, perhaps a cubic foot of dirt and rocks, and I wheeled it over to the woods, where I’m stabilizing a path for easier walking.

That “one more load” mentality worked well, and before long (well, maybe 90 minutes later), the entire pile was moved. That has sat there since last September, as I made it when digging out a bush we didn’t want where it was, but since we didn’t know what we wanted to replace it, I left the pile there till we decided. I estimate that I moved somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of rock and dirt. Now, if we can just decide on how to finish out the proposes flower bed, this project can be brought to completion, as much as it can until we plant flowers next Spring.

After a very light lunch, I went to the basement to finish a shelf installation project I came close to finishing last weekend. I saw that the way I was going to finish it was perhaps not best, and that I could do it a better way. I did that, and even installed a spare fluorescent light in the area, and am calling that project done. I even loaded a few things onto the new shelf.

Back upstairs, I rested a while, until Lynda reminded me that she fairly urgently needed a prescription at Wal-Mart. I had two ready, and my mother-in-law had some as well, so I quickly added a few things to the grocery list and headed out. Fortunately the store was no more crowded than usual, and I was back home after an hour and a half. Bought a pizza there for supper, and so finished my labors of the day with that. The rest of the evening was filled with trying to read the Leonardo da Vinci biography I’m working on, but not really having the mental capacity to do so.

Sunday was restful, with breakfast leftovers, church, fast food lunch, afternoon at the computer, evening church picnic, and again trying to read in the biography, but ending up watching a chick flick on Hallmark Channel. My afternoon work consisted in writing an e-mail to a high school friend I recently reconnected with, getting my household budget up to date, and my usual weekend stock market work. Quite late I packed breakfast and lunches for most of the week. By the end of the weekend, I felt that I had accomplished a great deal.

So why am I feeling so restless? Sunday I received a reply to a Facebook message I sent a month ago, to a pastor-author who has written in a similar area to me. I at first confused this man with another, an educator-author I intended to correspond with, but hadn’t yet. I discovered the confusion this morning as I about sent the wrong message to the wrong person. I wrote messages to both men, and posted them. Also this morning, I commented on the FB post by a second cousin I’ve never met (but know about), and reminded her of something. Also this morning I saw, on my desk at work, a list of my works-in-progress that lay abandoned, waiting on an opportune time for me to get back to them. It’s seven different books, and I’m not sure this is really all of them. This weekend I thought of a good new title to add to the cozy mystery series I’m planning. Also, I had been hoping to do an author interview on my next blog post, but that’s not ready, so I’m doing this instead. These loose ends make me restless.

I keep planning books, yet the time to write seems further away than ever. Sales are non-existent. I’ve decided to give a couple of books away, including one to a former pastor who was in town this weekend for our church festivities. I don’t know when he’s going back, but it would be nice to put it in his hand rather than mailing it. Oh, well, another loose end to live with, and a little more restlessness.

Harry Potter, reading

Reading Harry Potter

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Having seen all the Harry Potter movies, I have always had in mind to read the books. However, they never seemed to get any closer to the top of my reading pile. Indeed, they never really made it into my reading pile, but rather remained on the shelves, gathering dust, wondering if I would ever get to them.

Well, I finally did, at the wife’s insistence. More of a suggestion, really. She said, “Why don’t we read the Harry Potter books out loud?” We don’t do a lot together, the wife and me, except eat meals and watch television. And I’m fairly sick of television these days. This would give us a chance to do something together. So even though it would cut into my writing time, I said okay.

I believe it was after the first of the year that we began with The Sorcerer’s Stone. That’s a fairly short book, I think around 300 pages. Lynda has read them all before, but at least ten years ago, and she really didn’t remember the details of the books. We’ve seen the movies multiple times over the last year, as we watched them in rounds. But finally, I was reading Harry Potter.

At first we read around five pages, then passed the book to the other and they read five pages. Back and forth. Eventually we read longer sections, around a chapter each. I’m sure we were done with The Sorcerer’s Stone in less than a week. One of the main things I noticed was the different beginning in the book than in the movie. The basics were there in both: one-year-old Harry is taken to the Dursley’s to grow up away from the wizarding world. In the movie it’s a fairly short scene with only Dumbledore, McGonagal, and Hagred, told from Dumbledore’s point of view. It serves as a nice prologue to the story. In the book it is much more elaborate, and is told from either Vernon Dursley’s point of view or by an omniscient narrator. I don’t know that either is better.

The it was on to The Chamber of Secrets. A little bit longer book, it begins to flesh out some of Harry’s back story. At least it tells how he comes to be a prisoner in the Privet Drive house. His rescue by the Weasley brothers is much less dramatic in the book than it is in the movie. I think, on the whole, I’m going to remember this one less than the others.

Next was The Prisoner of Azkaban. Longer still, it was good to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione start to grow up. In this book we learn something more about their schoolwork. The book does a better job of explaining things such as the Marauder’s Map, and the secret passageway to the Shrieking Shack. The friendship of Moody, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs is explained much better in the book, as it to be expected. On the other hand, the dramatic scene in the movie where Harry goes into the corridors at night in search of Peter Pettigrew, who he saw on the map, is much better in the movie.

The Goblet of Fire is the one, so far, where the book and the movie diverge the greatest. The interaction between the students of the three schools is significantly different between the two. The movie excels in showing the Yule Ball, with the women in all their finery. The book does a better job of explaining what becomes of Rita Skeeter, what Fleur is like, how the tasks take place, and many more things.

Which brings us to The Order of the Phoenix, which we finished on Saturday. This is the longest of the books (so I understand); thus the movie is much condensed. It’s hard to know whether the movie is better or the book is better. The book explains a lot that the movie doesn’t. The book tells more about the Order of the Phoenix, whereas the movie seems to focus more on Dumbledore’s Army. My only negative comment is that the book seems over-long. It probably needed to be to flesh out the remaining back story on the encounter of baby Harry and Voldemort, but it seemed to take forever to get through it. By the end, had I been reading silently instead of aloud with Lynda, I would have found myself skipping or skimming sections.

The Half-Blood Prince and The Deathly Hallows remain. I need to take a break from this reading every evening. It’s taking an hour or two every night away from my writing. It’s not bad time spent, but I need to make progress on my novel if I’m ever going to get it published. So I’m not sure when we’ll finish the last two.

In my next post, however, I’m going to make some comments on the story line of the Harry Potter books, and what has made them a success.

letters, reading, Writing

A Conan Doyle about to break-through

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This past Sunday, the weather being pleasant and our getting home from church with fair promptness, I fixed a cottage cheese and lunchmeat lunch and took it to the sun porch to read. Or maybe this is more of a Florida room, except it’s elevated—an appendage to the house fitted with some expensive heating units (that we never use) and without air conditioning. I decided I would get back to reading in the letters of A. Conan Doyle (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/359482.Arthur_Conan_Doyle).

It probably helped that the last time I went to Barnes & Noble I bought, from the discount table, a two-volume set of the Sherlock Holmes stories, arranged chronologically. The first, A Study in Scarlett, was published in 1887. When last I read in this book I was somewhere around 1885 or 1886, so I knew I was getting close to that momentous occasion.

Unfortunately, the editor wrote that not many of Doyle’s letters between 1885 and 1890 survived. For some reason his correspondents didn’t keep them, I guess. So in the book I moved into this period with mainly editorial comments and brief, and sometimes unattributed, references to the various autobiographical works of Doyle.

At this time he had three novels circulating among publishers, with one of them A Study in Scarlett. He stated he had high hopes for the novel, but he also thought another was better. But all of his novels received rejections, and went off to another place. Doyle bemoaned that sometimes they weren’t even read. If only the editors would read them they would like them.

Finally a publisher offered him £25 for the copyright, with no royalties. Doyle held out; he wanted royalties. The publisher didn’t budge. Nothing else was selling. His medical practice was paying most of the bills, but literature was where he really wanted to be. Finally he took the offer, and Scarlett was published in December 1887, not as a stand-alone book first but in an annual.

Reviews initially weren’t great. The normal number of copies of that annual were printed. That’s as far as I got with my reading on Sunday. Sherlock Holmes had seen the light of day, but was still mostly unknown. This coming Sunday, hopefully, I’ll move into the period of 1888 and beyond when Holmes became the most famous fictional detective, and Doyle practically a household name.

Is this encouraging me to at all while I’m in a very dry period of my publishing career, dry in terms of sales, not of ideas and production. Not really. If publishers and initial readers can’t see genius in the work of A Conan Doyle, what hope is there for me? Twenty years later a copy of that annual sold at auction for more than £150,000. That offers some encouragement.

Though in twenty years I’ll be 81. Alas.

reading

Thirty Minutes of Foraging

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So yesterday I had a delivery to make in downtown Rogers, a set of engineering drawings to the Rogers city engineer. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity, a trip to Rogers on my own, so that after my business was up I could take time to visit The Friendly Bookstore, also located in downtown Rogers. I had not been there since they moved to a new location almost three years ago. Downtown Rogers is not far from our office (a little over 6 miles), but with gas prices the way they are I just don’t drive 6 miles out of my way. The bookstore turned out to be a mere three or four blocks from the City Admin building.

This is the bookstore run by the Friends of the Rogers Library. It is an outstanding store. Prices are close to what you expect at a thrift store or yard sale, but the supply is huge, more on the lines of a for-profit used book store. I never go in there but that I come out poorer in dollars and richer in volumes. Yesterday was no exception.

Of course, book buying for me is like therapy, or comfort food (and with my restricted diet I need all the alternative comfort food I can get). It boosts my spirit. Yesterday I dropped $17 there, but am the richer for it. Here’s what I found:

—Orthodoxy: The American Spectator Anniversary Anthology. 491 pages of conservative essays from 1961-1986.
—The Hogarth Letters. Some letters from the early 1930s commissioned by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Not sure what this is really about—hopefully literature—but the price was right.
—The Letters of Virginia Woolf: Vol 3 1923-1928. I’m not a big fan of VW, but I am a fan of letters, and of writing and writers, so this should be good.
—Coleridge: Poems and Prose Selected by Kathleen Raine. I already have a fair amount of Coleridge material, but nothing to keep at the office. Now I do.
—The Writings of Arminius.

The Arminius book was pricey at $6.00 (well, pricey for me), but it will hopefully turn out to be a treasure. Arminius was a theological influence on John Wesley and the Wesleyan/holiness movement. It’s something a wannabe Wesley scholar should know something about. Today I began reading it, and am not disappointed. Except, I am disappointed that it is only Volume 1 of a three volume set. I can get the entire three volumes from an on-line bookstore for a mere $44.00 plus $4 shipping and handling. That would bring my total investment in James Arminius up to $50.00 I’ll have to think about that.

None of these will go in my reading pile, which is in desperate need of reshuffling. They are more resource books and occasional reads when nothing else tickles my fancy. I won’t touch the letter ones till I finish the letters of A Conan Doyle, begun a year ago but set aside for other things. Still, I’m looking forward to this comfort food.

books, reading

An Evening at Barnes and Noble

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So I put in a lot of hours at work this week, about 50 through Friday, and I’ll work at least seven today and maybe five tomorrow. The work load demands it, the wife is out of town, and I’m able to do my writing for a couple of hours in the evenings, so why not try to get ahead of the workload curve? I’m not getting much recreation, and little exercise (though I walked at noon yesterday, ten minutes in 20-30 mph winds). Still, I’ve been eating well, my weight is falling, and I have little or no desire for snacking. Maybe giving up chips and soda for Lent is a good thing.

I decided to treat myself last night and after leaving the office at 6:00 PM I drove 2.2 miles out of my way, a true expense with gasoline at $3.459, to go to Barnes and Noble. I usually do this at least once each time Lynda is out of town, though didn’t the last two times she deserted me for the grandkid(s). I browse through the remainders tables, and sometimes find a bargain. I look through many of the aisles, looking at lots of books, and every third trip in have to buy one. I daydream that mine will be there someday, though I know the odds against that are astronomical. Eventually I grab a magazine or three from the rack, buy a vente house blend, and sit in the coffee shop and read. Normally I can’t do that for very long, for Sidelines Syndrome takes over and I feel I should be writing. So I leave halfway through the vente and head home and thence to The Dungeon to write.

But last night I was in the store almost two and a half hours and suffered not at all from Sidelines Syndrome. I didn’t buy any books tonight, though I found three that were tempting. The first was The Kennedy Detail, written by Gerald Blaine, one of the Secret Service agents assigned to JFK. Focusing much on Dallas, he speaks of how the agents felt in losing the man they were sworn to protect. I read in this for over an hour. Someday I’ll buy it, but not for $28.00. The second one was Founding America. This caught my eye because it is mainly a compilation of original documents from 1774 to 1791, with a few editor’s notes. The idea is sort of what my Documenting America is. We have no reason to be ignoring source documents in favor of historians’ sifting through them and in the process giving opinions. Read the documents; they aren’t difficult to understand. I didn’t buy Founding America, though I was sorely tempted, and the price was better at $12.95 (I think it was).

It seems to me much has changed in Barnes and Noble. I find fewer shelves of books and more display tables. These tables hold fewer books than the shelves they replaced did, and some have games, puzzles, or other non-book items. At the front, where latest releases were once displayed, is a Nook display. In some places in the store a major amount of shelves have been removed in favor of even larger display tables.

The teen book section seemed to be larger than before, the poetry section smaller that the even minuscule size it have been previously, if that’s possible. Reference books seemed to occupy fewer shelf-feet. Cookbooks even seemed to be reduced, as maybe were travel books.

These latter things people now get on line. Google for a reference. Google a recipe, Google a destination. Or Bing them. As a result B&N doesn’t need to stock as many books because they don’t sell. What will happen when Nook and Kindle take over the world? The brick and mortar stores are shrinking, and will soon be shrivelled. Such are the observations of an occasional B&N patron. And, as always, I set off the alarm as I left, even though I bought nothing and carried nothing out of the store I didn’t bring in except the vente. I warned the cashier that I always set it off, so was not arrested for shoplifting.

Oh, the third book that caught my eye? It was in the remainders section, on a lower shelf, a neat stack of perhaps twelve copies. When I saw it, I almost whipped out my cell phone and called good friend Gary in Rhode Island. The book was The Screaming Skull, & other Classic Horror Stories. The Screaming Skull? Who knew a college freshman prank, quite minor at that, in which no animals were hurt, no feelings were hurt, no one was bullied, no hate speech was uttered (except maybe by the subject of the prank) would find its way onto a remainders bookshelf in B&N in Rogers Arkansas in 2011? Maybe I should have invested the $7.95 plus tax just to say I had it. Gary, check it out at a B&N where you’re at.

C.S. Lewis, Emerson, reading, Writing

New Books or Old Books

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Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The American Scholar” 1837

Naturally, since I myself am a writer, I do not wish the ordinary reader to read no modern books. But if he must read only the new or only the old, I would advise him to read the old. C.S. Lewis, Introduction to On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius, 1944

So, two eminent scholars seem to disagree! Why am I not surprised. Emerson says read the modern books. The generation right before you, after they observed the world and digested it, shared the knowledge they had for my generation. C.S. Lewis says not so; read first the old books, then if you have time and inclination read the modern as well.

This came up because, at my last foraging in a thrift store, I found the Athanasius book. I might not have bothered with it except I have an interest in the early Christian writings, and thought this slim paperback would be a welcome addition to my reference library. Also, in 2005 I first read a seminary paper by my son-in-law on Athanasius’ de Incarnatione Verbi Dei. I didn’t understand it, put it down, picked it up again almost exactly a year later, didn’t understand it, put it down again, etc., until finally I was able to glean enough from it to understand it (I think) the discussion and write a review. When I saw the book I thought, “I’ve read about this writing of Athanasius; now I have the chance to read it in modern translation.”

When I got it home I read the Introduction. C.S. Lewis’ words stood in stark contract to what I remembered reading in Emerson. “The American Scholar” is actually the only essay of RWE’s I’ve gotten all the way through. Others I’ve picked up and put down, but that one I really liked. Emerson’s words had seemed true to me. That’s why every American generation writes another biography or two of George Washington, and why the shelves of our local libraries are constantly rotating books, selling off those more than fifty years old and replacing them with newer distillations of the same subject.

Lewis has more to say about this than does Emerson. He goes on to discuss the importance of reading the original sources. Commentaries on Plato are more confusing than Plato, he writes. Just read Plato. He’s not so hard to understand in modern translation. Since that is exactly what I am attempting to do with the Athanasius book, I could understand Lewis’ remarks. And, as a writer I’d better figure out how to write materials for the next generation while at the same time directing them to the old books.

We’ll see how this goes. I’ve read about fifteen of the 95 pages of Athanasius, and sort of understand what he’s saying. I haven’t gotten to the meat of his argument yet. Of course, when he began by saying, “In our former book”, I had to divert to various on-line sources to see what that book was and what it is all about. That led me to some letters he wrote. That led me to some biographical materials, and even a compilation of his works. The tentacles of research are at work.

It is taking me much concentration to read De Inarnatione. I can’t do it while also watching television, or even while that noise is on in the house. I can’t read it if I’m also thinking of articles to write or blog posts to post or bills to pay or work issues the morning will bring. So I may not finish it quickly, may even put it aside and go to some other book in my reading pile. We shall see. The experiment is on.