well this is embarrassing

It seems that the last time I posted about what I'm reading was... a week after Daphne was born.

So, a year and a half ago.

My bad.

Life is organized chaos lately, and no one better judge me for having little-to-no-time to read let alone WRITE about what I'm reading with a toddler always just around the corner getting into the dog food and one on deck about to make his appearance in ten weeks.  Seriously.

But since I value this, I'm going to continue my reading updates.  Starting with this year's.  So, here goes!

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes

We listened to this on Audible while moving cross-country, and it was the perfect way to spend the time.  Cary Elwes (aka Westley) narrated, and other cast members contributed, so listening is the way to take this one in.  If you're a fan of The Princess Bride at all, you're missing out if you don't pick this up ASAP.  Fun anecdotes and tender moments shared by the cast and director reminded me just how special the film is, why it's such a success, and just how truly quotable and endearing it will always be to my family and me.  Love love love.

The Weight of Glory, by CS Lewis

And now for something completely different.... 

This collection of Lewis's essays and memorable lectures to various organizations, of which The Weight of Glory is most famous, is not exactly light reading.  He addresses important topics, though, that are as relevant now as they were then in the midst of the WWII and post-war England.  Jack once again succeeds to simultaneously crush with his brilliance (half of his arguments go about ten feet over my head?) and encourage with his still-grounded understanding of Christianity.  He's a genius, but he knows all knowledge is nothing if the hope of Christ is not communicated.  

Doxology and Theology: How the Gospel Forms the Worship Leader, by Matt Boswell

I read this in a day.  What a thorough discussion of worship that is equally relevant to the layperson as the worship leader, in my opinion.  In it, a number of worship leaders and pastors communicate various aspects of worship in the church, but I was overwhelmingly encouraged that the majority of them made it a point to comment that while excellence is desirable, excellence in worship is not an end in itself.  It's all in vain if we miss the gospel and the God who requires our praise.  Yes.  This is what I want to see in our churches.  True gospel worship.  Read this book.

Rhythms of Grace: How the Church's Worship Tells the Story of the Gospel, by Mike Cosper

Can you tell I was on a worship kick for a bit there?  This one was good, but definitely for more of an average churchgoer.  And in that respect, it was spot on.  I liked the way Cosper walked through major events of the Bible and how each event corresponded with a new revelation of who God is and what worship should be.  A great biblical overview for students, in particular, I thought.  The rest of it was sort of blah to me, after having just read Doxology and Theology, which had a lot more weight and meat to its teaching.  Still would recommend.

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe, by Bill Bryson

Don't get me wrong... I love Bryson.  I've rents' house while Daph and I visited them for a week, just as a bit of light reading.  I've read at least five of his books, and they're all engaging and a fun read.  This one was no less.  But Neither Here nor There is also the first of his that I've read that's not about language, or Shakespeare, or something other than his own personal life.  As interesting as his meanderings through Europe are, it was sort of like turning on a travel show with a narrator whose voice you like who throws in a few cuss words and mildly naughty anecdotes to show he's authentic, and just having that on in the background while you do other stuff around the house.  That may be the best comparison I've ever come up with.  So I came away from this book feeling a bit meh toward it.  Not bad, but won't pick up again.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage

The idea of this book is far better than its actualization.  In a nutshell, Tom Standage walks the reader through history, detailing the development of six different beverages that at one stage or another influenced culture in an enduring way.  First, beer in ancient Mesopotamia.  Then, wine in Italy and Greece.  Spirits in America.  Coffee in the Middle East to Britain to America.  Tea in China, India, and Britain.  And finally, Coca-Cola in America and worldwide.  It could have been such a fascinating read, had Standage's writing style been more engaging than a (albeit thoroughly researched) senior thesis.  It ought to have been more lively, as a whole.  To his credit, things started picking up toward the middle, with the development of liquors and the importance of coffee in coffeehouses and the advancements that came about through the discussions that occurred over those beverages.  That is what I wanted in every chapter.  If you have any interest in world history, delicious beverages, and the social influences of pub- or coffeehouse-culture, you may want to pick this up.

Walking with Wesley: A Ninety-Day Devotional, by Nick Harrison

Devotionals are not really my thing, but I picked this one up because Kevin left it on our counter, and I want to know more about the man who founded and inspired the denomination we're now a part of.  I was looking for a bit of an overview of John Wesley's life, and maybe a bit more about his personal beliefs of salvation and living in the power of Christ.  I found those things in this book, but Nick Harrison seems to have an earnest sort of infatuation with the man Wesley, and I just couldn't get past it.  I mean, I realize that the purpose of the devotional was to be encouraged by his life and challenged by his convictions, but he's still a man.  He had faults.  We can't put him on a pedestal like that, Nick Harrison.  For the next book I read on Wesley, I'd like to read about his struggles, about times he was humbled, times he stumbled and needed correction, and how he responded to that.  Do we have record of that?  That's what I want - stories of real human beings with active relationships with God that can be touch-and-go and shaky at times.  That's what's encouraging to me: when people choose God when the going gets rough and it hurts to be faithful, not these saints with no recorded flaws and perfect responses to every person with a question.  That's real life.  Give me a real person's story.  Please and thank you. 

happy birthday, dear jack

Happy 115th Birthday, dear Jack!

To celebrate, here are a few of my favorite quotes of his.

Read a book today.

this is pathetic

It's been about three months since my last post.  It's not that I haven't been reading.  Because I have been.  Kinda.  I've been jumping from book to book for a while, and in doing so, haven't thought to write down any thoughts about these particular books.  But it's time for an update.  Please bear with me and my fragmented thoughts/sentences; I'm nearly in my right mind, and will use this occasion to pull the pregnancy card.

Since finishing the Shakespeare book by Bryson, I've sampled:

marriage books (The Sacred Romance, Real Marriage), 

novels/short stories (Ender's Game, The Jungle Books, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Book Thief),

religious stuff (The Forgiveness Labyrinth, The Vine and the Trellis, The Mass)

other non-fiction (Made in America, The Professor and the Madman)

See?  I have been busy.  But not captured enough to finish one.  Obviously some of these I've read before.... Eh.  My eyes hurt.

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Shakespeare: The World as Stage, by Bill Bryson

Such a satisfying read.  Finally.  Of course, considering the content, this one's pretty par for the course: it's hard to mess up Shakespeare for me.  (The only one who's ever done that is a certain undergrad professor of mine - who will remain unnamed, although that's probably an unnecessary courtesy.  She said once, literally, "Shakespeare was a pretty good writer for his time," as we read through his masterpiece Hamlet.)  This book is comparatively well-informed and -researched, with a substantial bibliography (many works of which I already own.  Yes!)

Shakespeare is a delightful, engaging, and succinct overview of the main points of one William Shakespeare's life.  Bryson discusses and probes various theories to the overwhelming silence of Shakespeare's life outside his plays and poetry, and gives the reader clear understanding of what we may believe to be true, without tremendous assumption (which, unfortunately, Shakespeare scholars and aficionados are wont to do.) 

In regards to his schooling, for instance, Bryson puts it this way:

Shakespeare's genius had to do not really with facts, but with ambition, intrigue, love, suffering -- things that aren't taught in school.  He had a kind of assimilative intelligence, which allowed him to pull together lots of disparate fragments of knowledge, but there is almost nothing that speaks of hard intellectual application in his plays -- unlike, say, those of Ben Jonson, where learning hangs like bunting on every word.  Nothing we find in Shakespeare betrays any acquaintance with Tacitus, Pliny, Suetonius, or others who influenced Johnson and were second nature to Francis Bacon.  That is a good thing -- a very good thing indeed -- for he would almost certainly have been less Shakespeare and more a showoff had he been better read.  As John Dryden put it in 1668: "Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learn'd."

And so, we love him for his humanity.

Bryson also addresses the various theories as to who Shakespeare "really" was (e.g. Marlowe, Bacon, de Vere.)  He sheds light on the origins of these theories - briefly, thank God - and concludes thusly:

In short it is possible, with a kind of selective squinting, to endow the alternative claimants with the necessary time, talent, and motive for anonymity to write the plays of William Shakespeare.  But what no one has ever produced is the tiniest particle of evidence to suggest that they actually did so.  These people must have been incredibly gifted -- to create, in their spare time, the greatest literature ever produced in English, in a voice patently not their own, in a manner so cunning that they fooled virtually everyone during their own lifetimes and for four hundred years afterward.  The Earl of Oxford, better still, additionally anticipated his own death and left a stock of work sufficient to keep the supply of new plays flowing at the same rate until Shakespeare himself was ready to die a decade or so later.  Now that is genius!

Haha.  Oh, Bill Bryson.  Thank you for charming me once again.  

i'm stuck

Here I am on my day off.

I just finished twenty pages of one book,

and here I am watching The Breakfast Club.

I'm stuck.

I'm in the middle of these two books, and I'm bored out of my mind.

Yet - 

despite the fact that I have seven+ recently purchased books sitting on my shelf

taunting me - 

I cannot move past them just yet.  

So I read twenty pages at a time.

Inching along.

Prolonging my fictive misery.

Blech.  

What do I do?

Move on?

Power through?

Stop whining and do something active?

Please advise me.

Here are the two books I'm stuck in.

The Soloist, by Steve Lopez

It's the good and true story of a journalist who meets a Julliard-educated homeless man playing a violin with two strings.  

He befriends this man, writes an article, and begins a journey with him.  

Mental health, 

classical music, 

the state of the homeless in Los Angeles, 

and the unsteady friendship between two men make for an interesting read, right?  

Wrong.  

Sure, the content is fantastic, but Mr Lopez's writing style is... bland.

Knowing him to be a journalist, and this to be his own story, I was anticipating something more along the lines of a Tuesdays with Morrie a la Mitch Albom.

With Lopez, I'm hardly engaged.

There was a movie based on this book a few years back, starring Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx.

Even when I saw it in theatres, the premise was so good, but the movie was slow.

Not as slow as this book.

Egghhhhh 170 pages left.

  

Death Comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James

It's a natural choice.  The sequel to Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice.  

I ought to love everything about it.

But I don't.

P.D. James may be a brilliant crime writer and important person in literature.

But, for all I know, this book doesn't work.

The vivid personalities Austen introduced to the world fall lifeless (no pun intended) under James's pen.

I may only be fifty pages in, so perhaps I've got to give her a break and a chance, but I don't want to.

Meh.  Another I want to finish, but I'm so bored!

The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

Such a fun, fluff summer read!  As I was already a fan of the movie, I was delighted to find that the book was not all that different.  

**************Some spoilers ahead detailing differences between book & movie - STOP now and read the book if you want to be surprised! **************

Though decently written with vivid descriptions, the language (lottttttsssssss of F-words) was a little disappointing.  

She doesn't ever sleep with Christian in Paris.  YAY for the morality of the character, but I do wish Weisberger had spent more time developing that little flirtatious relationship.  It was fun.  :)

The story is told from Andrea's point of view, which causes the reader to commiserate a bit more with her character.  Unlike in the movie, Anne Hathaway's portrayal of Andy makes you want to hate her just a bit when she becomes absorbed in Miranda Priestly's world.  The novel's Andy, because we the readers are privy to her thoughts, is much more likable.  

Her boyfriend, named Alex - not Nate - is a saint.  He teaches at an underprivileged urban school, typically goes above and beyond in the classroom and extracurricularly, and is something of a frustrating character for that very reason.  He's as much a workaholic as Andy is.  Perhaps that's due to her lifestyle, and the changes therefore in their relationship.  Hmm.  Regardless.  He's not brooding; he's not a chef; and he's more manly, I think, than Adrien Grenier's Nate.

Certain characters are combined in the movie.  Stanley Tucci's character Nigel plays a relatively insignificant role in the book - maybe five whole sentences in the entire 375 page novel - but combined with the characters James and Jeffy of the book, Nigel comes to life on screen.  

Miranda's British, and Emily's not.

Lily, Andy's best friend, is pretty trampy.  The story weaves her story into Andy's... mainly due to the drama Lily causes.  It's Lily's alcoholism that brings about the climax of the story.

The novel ends dramatically differently than the movie.  There is no mutual respect between Miranda and Andy.  They have a significant falling-out, actually.  But this falling-out causes Andrea to receive several consequential job offers.  

**************End of spoilers!**************

Easy-peasy summer reading.  So much fun.  If you liked the movie, you will LOVE the book.  And I guarantee that you will feel like you need Prada and Gucci products after this one.  I don't even know what such brands look like, except in my imagination... but I want them.

The Search for God and Guinness

The Search for God and Guinness, by Stephen Mansfield

Such a delightful and engaging read!  From the history of beer itself to the (rather in-depth) history of this particular brewery, Mansfield takes the reader through the social, religious and political journey of the Guinness family.  

I was surprised by the way the Guinness family almost single-handedly saved the city of Dublin during crisis.  The care, the flexibility, and the proactivity of these visionaries demonstrated that this company was grounded with an understanding of the grace of God, and the responsibility to affect change in their community and world.  Seriously.  This family was involved.

Sounds sappy from the way I describe it, and I'm sorry.  It's not.  It's informative.  It's inspiring.  It got a little boring for a significant portion of the mid-chapters.  But stick with it.  

If you're a fan of Guinness the stout, you oughta read this book.  

If you're a fan of history, or Ireland, you oughta read this book.  

If you like missionary stories, you oughta read this book. 

If you like well-written books with a journalistic feel, you oughta read this book.