Love is patient,
love is kind and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant.
Love does not act unbecomingly;
it does not seek its own, is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
But now faith, hope, love,
abide these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
from verse 9
However sweet these laid-up stores–however convenient this dwelling, we cannot remain here;
However shelter’d this port, and however calm these waters, we must not anchor here;
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us, we are permitted to receive it but a little while.
…
from verse 11
Listen! I will be honest with you;
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
…
from verse 17
Come, I give you my hand!
I give you my love, more precious than money,
I give you myself, before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
Part of the awesome loot I got this holiday season from my family.
The Daring Book for Girls
by Andrea J. Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz
The Best of MAKE Magazine
by Mark Frauenfelder and Gareth Branwyn
Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto
by David Tracey
Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight, Volume 1: The Long Way Home
by Joss Whedon
Readymades: American Roadside Artifacts
by Jeff Brouws
Monopoly: The Story Behind the World’s Best-Selling Game
by Rod Kennedy
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books
by J. Peder Zane
The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen
by Syrie James
Greetings from Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer
by Mari Sangiovanni
The Great American Road Trip
by Eric Peterson
Forbidden Knowledge: 101 Things Not Everyone Should Know How to Do
by Michael Powell
Far Out: 101 Strange Tales from Science’s Outer Edge
by Mark Pilkington
Magnum Magnum
by Brigitte Lardinois
A landmark book celebrating the engaging mix of photographer as both reporter and artist that has defined Magnum for sixty years. Magnum Magnum brings together the best work, celebrating the vision, imagination, and brilliance of Magnum photographers, both the acknowledged greats of photography in the twentieth century—among them Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, Eve Arnold, Marc Riboud, and Werner Bischof—and the modern masters and rising stars of our time, such as Martin Parr, Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, and Donovan Wylie. And it shows the work at a breathtaking scale: the vast page size of Magnum Magnum—12 by 15—gives the photos an impact never seen before in book form.
This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to my company’s warehouse employee book sale. This is where they lay out all the returned stock from bookstores and let us purchase it at a steep discount, which means that it doesn’t need to get recycled or trashed. It’s one of the great perks of my job for book lovers like us, and is a really great deal, money-wise. I was able to pick up many books that have been on my “to read” pile for a long time.
On the other hand… we came home with 160 books. 57 of them were mine, 30 of them are presents for family members, and 73 of them are Stephanie’s. So… yeah. We made great strides in reducing clutter this year in our house, then frakked it all up. Heh. Actually, the sheer volume of stuff we cleared out this year is quite a bit more than the books we acquired, so we’re not at all back where we started. But we have a lot of book storage to come up with.
And I have a LOT of books. Doing the math – I acquired more books at this sale than I read this year, easily, and I did the same thing last year. And I also bought quite a few new books this year, although one of my goals was not to do that. I feel guilty that there are so many wonderful books in my library that I simply haven’t read. And many of them have been sitting there for quite some time, while I go around willy-nilly, checking out new titles from the library and buying new books from the bookstore.
So… that leads me to my 2008 new year’s resolution(s), which I’m making a bit early:
In 2008, I will read only books that I already own, and read more of them than I have in the last few years. To accomplish that, my plans are:
So there it is – my official 2008 New Year’s Resolution. Let’s see if I can stick to it.
2019 update: I did not succeed at this resolution. Not this year, or any other year that I made it.
So, I’m trying to pick out what books to take on our cruise next week. Because of course that’s the most important thing to pack; clothes can just be plucked from the basket and chucked into the suitcase willy nilly the day before we leave, but reading requires some actual planning.
(Now if this sounds like I have my priorities in the wrong place, let me point out to you that my lovely girlfriend is in the dining room perusing her library and doing the exact same thing right now, and neither of us has so much as cracked a suitcase.)
I have alot to choose from, and that’s taking some narrowing down. We’re only gone five days, so in all likelihood I will only need two books, but of course I’m taking three, because I need to have options. And I don’t want to lug around hardbacks, so that rules out lots of my books. I’ve read most all of the mass market paperbacks I own, so I’m looking through my trade paperbacks. I don’t want anything dark or grim or textbook-like, but I would be bored as hell by throw-away romance or dumb genre crap.
Here, so far, are the options I’ve narrowed down:
The Shadow of the Wind
by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
I bought this way back on another vacation – last year when we were in Chicago for the gay games. It has some great reviews and was a bestseller, which recommends it. It’s described as “scary” and a “thriller” which gives me pause, but it’s about authors and books, so it’s right up my alley. This one is definitely going.
The Power of Place
Winifred Gallagher
A non-fiction book “How our surroundings shape our thoughts, emotions and actions.” It’s an interesting subject, doesn’t sound brain-busting, and was reviewed well by several reliable reviewers, and described as “engrossing” and “richly textured and intriguing” so I think this going, too.
Hot-Wiring your Creative Process
by Curt Cloninger
I’ve been meaning to read a work-related book for sometime, and this one looks fun, stimulating and not brain-busting. I feel guilty that I’m only half-way through Transcending CSS Design, so I’m seriously thinking about taking this along, although the balance of two non-fiction books to only one fiction makes me think twice. I have a much easier time focusing and getting lost in fiction these days what with my recent ADD-like problem. (I blame the internets. And coffee.)
Birds of a Feather
Jacqueline Winspear
A mystery novel that’s received several awards and good reviews, so it’s exacly what I want. I picked it up at our workplace booksale (Penguin is one of our publishing companies). Unfortunately, it’s a sequel (the first was equally well reviewed). I really like the idea of a nice, non-pulpish mystery, and the cover and description are great, but I don’t know if this is one of those “They Must Be Read In Order” deals.
The Night Listener
by Armistead Maupin
Another bestseller, and I love Maupin. Even reading the cover, I’m not sure I understand the plot, but a reviewer mentioned “hitchcock” so it’s on the list. I’ll read more about it on Amazon before I decide.
The Geographer’s Library
by Jon Fasman
Another fiction, but it’s also about musty old books, which is lovely, but might be overkill. Probably not going.
So…. what do you think?
Ozick’s previous novel, The Puttermesser Papers, revolved around one quirky hero; this time around, Ozick incubates several. Characters, not plot, drive this Depression-era tale, and Ozick eviscerates each one through her narrator, Rose Meadows, a resolute 18-year-old orphan. Virtually abandoned, Rose wanders into a job with the Mitwisser family, German refugees in New York City. Filling gaping holes in their household, she becomes a research assistant to the father, a professor stubbornly engaged in German and Hebrew arcana; a nurse to his oft-deranged, sequestered wife; and nanny to their five children. As she penetrates the fog surrounding their history, Rose limns their roiling inner lives with exasperated perception. Mrs. Mitwisser especially chafes against the family’s precarious, degrading status as “parasites,” erratically supported by the unbalanced millionaire son and heir of an author of popular children’s books who is fascinated by Mr. Mitwisser’s research. With her trademark lyrical prose, gentle humor and vivid imagery, Ozick paints a textured portrait of outsiders rendered powerless, retreating into tightly coiled existences of scholarly rapture, guarded brazenness and even calculated lunacy—all as a means of refuting the bleakness of a harsh, chaotic world. Erudite exposition is packed into the book, so that character study and discourse occasionally grind the plot to a halt. Edifying and evocative, if often daunting, this is a concentrated slice of eccentric life.
The assessment of “grinding the plot to a halt” is dead on – I found this book to be a tough slog. I also had trouble sympathizing with any of the characters; each of them was either mean or sad, and I couldn’t get over my frustration with them.
Settle down to enjoy a rousing good ghost story with Diane Setterfield’s debut novel, The Thirteenth Tale. Setterfield has rejuvenated the genre with this closely plotted, clever foray into a world of secrets, confused identities, lies, and half-truths. She never cheats by pulling a rabbit out of a hat; this atmospheric story hangs together perfectly.
There are two heroines here: Vida Winter, a famous author, whose life story is coming to an end, and Margaret Lea, a young, unworldly, bookish girl who is a bookseller in her father’s shop. Vida has been confounding her biographers and fans for years by giving everybody a different version of her life, each time swearing it’s the truth. Because of a biography that Margaret has written about brothers, Vida chooses Margaret to tell her story, all of it, for the first time. At their initial meeting, the conversation begins:
“You have given nineteen different versions of your life story to journalists in the last two years alone.”
She [Vida] shrugged. “It’s my profession. I’m a storyteller.”
“I am a biographer, I work with facts.”
The game is afoot and Margaret must spend some time sorting out whether or not Vida is actually ready to tell the whole truth. There is more here of Margaret discovering than of Vida cooperating wholeheartedly, but that is part of Vida’s plan.
I give the book a thumbs up; it was a quite good homage to victorian gothic tales or those of the Brontë sisters. The book has a promotional website that’s also quite fun to peruse as well.
A strange Victorian Steampunk novel that I enjoyed, despite its length and rather confusing cast of villains. Celeste Temple is a young English woman raised in the West Indies and residing in London awaiting a future wedding to her fiancé, Roger Bascombe. When he sends her a curt note breaking their engagement, she decides to find out why – following him to a mysterious party in an English country manor. After infiltrating the gathering, Miss Temple witnesses a bizarre set of “scientific” experiments and narrowly escapes capture after killing one of her homicidal pursuers.
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters
by Gordon Dahlquist
Her escape to London is short-lived, as the alchemical experimenters begin searching the city for her. She is soon joined by some unlikely allies – military doctor Abelard Svenson looks after his addle-pated foreign prince who is caught up with the sinister cabal pursing Miss Temple, and Cardinal Chang, a paid assassin who’s true love has been indoctrinated into the strange cult.
The trio soon find themselves in grave danger as they investigate the strange blue glass books produced by the villains, and try to unravel their sinister plot of world domination.
The book runs 700+ pages, and the cast of villains is huge, and difficult to follow. Some of them seem little more than cardboard cutouts, especially many of the minions and hangers-on to the cabal. Unfortunately, there’s quite a bit of exposition near the end, also, as the villains are forced to explain their dastardly plot – but it’s handled rather well and doesn’t seem overly heavy handed.
But there is a mysterious house with bizarre secret passageways and hidden rooms, and the final battle takes place on a zeppelin, so there’s plenty of fun involved.
My mom gave Water For Elephants to me for Christmas, so it was one of the first things I wanted to read this year. I loved it – Gruen’s writing is smooth and fluid, and her detailed research on circus life during the Depression immerses you in the scene, and Jacob’s fascinating life carries you along.
It’s on the New York Times bestseller list, and it’s not surprising why; it’s a great read.
Water for Elephants
by Sara Gruen
Our protagonist is Father Jonathan Mears — the chaplain of the fictional Annandale Military Academy (modeled after real-life Culver Academy), an establishment he graduated from himself years before, along with his brother Dan. The Mears family are generations-old residents of Annandale, though their old family homestead burned down a few decades ago.
When Father Mears stumbles across a witches’ coven conducted by some of the students of his academy, his own family’s long dormant history of witchcraft and his own supernatural talents come to the surface. Because he’s a devout Anglican, he devotes his use of these magic talents to his religion, essentially acting as a “good witch” and servant of God. Joining forces with his brother, neice and a distant cousin who also have supernatural talents, Father Mears combats sinister magical forces at work against his family, his beloved Academy and against the community. He also faces some who have difficulty understanding his unique fusion of witchcraft and Christianity.
Father Mears is a funny, cheerful and self-confident guy who carries the story along with some twists and surprises, and Annadale Military Academy and it’s denizens have quite a life of their own as well, although the young male students seem to have a few more snappy comebacks and witty remarks than I’ve ever seen in real-life teenagers. One character that’s left too much in the shadows is the brother Daniel Mears, who seems only roughly sketched out considering his role in some of the plot.
Houghton makes great use of the Indiana landscape through the story; natives of northwest Indiana will feel at home driving around the countryside, and alumni of Culver Academy probably get quite a kick out of the large role their alma mater plays in the book.
In all Rough Magicke is a pleasant, nicely-spun set of tales – the novel has three well-rounded parts which could stand on their own, although to his credit Houghton didn’t follow the lead of other fantasy authors in creating a drawn-out trilogy when he could pack all the surprises into one book. On the other hand – be aware it is quite a long book, at that.
Rough Magicke
by John William Houghton