Autodidact 101: Self Education for the Beginner

53 Seconds!

2011-01-28T00:15:00.000-08:00

I am so proud of myself!
http://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_frame.htm

Update on Amazon

2010-11-13T20:39:00.000-08:00

So Amazon has pulled the guide for pedophiles. It was first put on the site Oct 28 and was not taken down until Nov 11th after threats to boycott. Amazon first defended its right to sell the book claiming they didn't want to censor books. It's just a different ball game all together and the fact that they couldn't see that from the start and that it took them so long to pull the book really worries me. We're talking about the safety and well being of our children. That just trumps anything else they got, any other argument just doesn't hold a candle for me, especially after looking at my gorgeous daughter. For myself I think it will take a while before I buy anything from this company. Ironically they acquired a site that sells diapers the day before they pulled the book.

Amazon and Pedophiles

2010-11-10T20:40:00.000-08:00

"Amazon is selling an e-book entitled "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," and shocked consumers across the nation now are calling for a boycott of the online retail giant." Reports Fox News.

Umm, I pretty much am. As a mother and a woman, no, a HUMAN, I'm disgusted and will not be buying anything from this site and will be disabling the links from my site to theirs. This is what the author says about his book:

"This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian [sic] rules for these adults to follow," a product description reads. "I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught."

He wants pedophiles on the streets sooner, he also can't spell, sorry couldn't help notice that. As a liberal I'm usually the first to say freedom of speech but there is always a line and this is it. There aren't pictures so somehow this doesn't fall under child pornography, I'm not interested in technicalities it's just wrong and I know where my money isn't going,...any where this book is being sold.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40112145/?gt1=43001
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/11/10/consumers-boycott-amazon-pedophile-guide/

Other Books

2010-11-03T13:19:00.000-07:00

I started a book club on meetup.com called Book Snobs of North Seattle. We've read Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz, The Vagabond by Collette, Portrait of a Marriage by Nigel Nicolson, and Dead Souls by Gogol.

I liked Palace Walk but was really more interested in the women in the book and it mostly covered the men and boys. I guess the second book of the trilogy follows the women and the third must follow little Naima who is supposed to die early. Several of the members of my group very much wanted to forgive the father for his tyrannical behavior but did not excuse Yasin at all. Yasin was looking for some control over his own life with his disgusting affairs and so I felt some forgiveness for him, but the culture was no excuse for the father to me. Even his friends called him overly harsh and extremely jealous. The only good thing I could say was that though he didn't treat his wife like the treasure she was he did know it intellectually.

I love Collette. The Vagabond is my favorite I've read of hers, it feels the most true and real. Some question her place in literary writing. She's no five course meal, she's a box of Godiva chocolates, rich and delicious, and a little sinful. I love her.

The Portrait of a Marriage was fascinating to me. There's sort of a stereotype I think of the upperclass homosexual marriage of convenience and this wasn't it. They truly loved and respected each other. The most important thing to me was that the children always felt secure in their parents marriage, though Nigel does say Vita was a bit cold and distant. Some in my group didn't want to forgive her this. I had to say if we're going to forgive the Muslim father in Palace Walk because of his culture then why can't we forgive Vita for hers. Upperclass turn of the century English woman a little cold and distant, shocker. Very breifly toward the end Nigel talks about Virginia Woolf and this is the best part of the book. He says she would talk to them (the children) interestedly and in earnest, saying "Go away Vita can't you see I'm talking to Nigel and Ben." I love that, I love that she was good with children. Dying to read Orlando now, V. Woolf based the character in the book on Vita.

Dead Souls, I read this book a bit distracted. I had a kind of cyber stalker and other unfun situations happening. I wish that they hadn't tried to rescue what he had burned. Sometimes it's best to just respect the author. It reminded me greatly of Don Quixote, it only lacked a Sancho Panza. But there is a great scene where one of his servants says something to the effect of, "Oh if you want to give me a beating I'm sure I deserve it and a great man like yourself would surely give me such a beating as I would deserve." It was terribly funny and dark, just as it should be. It's a satire and commentary on the bureaucratic society and the petty Bourgeois still something we like to satirize today.

Right now we're reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, for Halloween obviously. They won me over to reading this when they told me she was the author of the short story The Lottery, shiver.
After that is the Satanic Verses.

The Mill on the Floss

2010-10-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

Quick post- what I've been reading to catch up and get in the groove of things.

I don't think the relationship between Maggie and Tom was as important to the story as George Eliot thought it was. I also never cared much for Tom so I couldn't see why she did so much. He's the kind of guy your girlfriend starts dating and you think, 'uh oh,' but then you get to know him and think, 'Well I guess he's a good enough guy but I'd never date him, I'd end up hitting him over the head with a frying pan.'
This was a psychological novel, she was trying to say this had to be the outcome because these people could only act in this way. But I never really bought that because I could never understand why Maggie was so desperate for male attention. Her father loved her and was compassionate and affectionate with her so it never made sense for me. Perhaps it was just a flaw of her character but if so it makes me like her less. None of her suitors suited her it was just that they were there.
I loved Middlemarch and have read it twice, but this George Eliot didn't float my boat.

Lame-oh

2010-07-20T21:59:00.000-07:00

I'm coming back I swear. I'm always doing that, starting projects and not finishing. I'll have a post in a week.
Herodotus kicked my butt, that was supposed to be my next book. I'm a history major, but couldn't finish. I'll tell you more about it later. But for now, I think I'll start small, The Art of War, very doable in a week.

The Enarees, Herodotus Book One

2010-05-29T03:22:00.000-07:00

"The Scythians next turned their attention to Egypt, but were met in Palestine by Psammeticus the Egyptian king, who by earnest entreaties supported by bribery managed to prevent further advance. They withdrew by way of Ascalon in Syria. The bulk of the army passed the town without doing any damage, but a small number of men got left behind and robbed the temple of Aphrodite Urania - the most ancient, i am told, of all the temples of this goddess. The one in Cyprus the Cyprians themselves admit was derived from it, the one in Cythera was built by the Phoenicians, who belong to this part of Syria. The Scythians who robbed the temple of Ascalon were punished by the goddess with the infliction of what is called the 'female disease', and their descendants still suffer from it. This is the reason the Scythians give for this mysterious complaint, and travellers to the country can see what it is like. The Scythians call those who suffer from it 'Enarees'."

...What?

The Movie: Revolutionary Road

2010-05-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

So often in books made into movies one or the other disappoints. Usually its the movie, not always though, I infinitely prefer the movie The Joy Luck Club to the book, but maybe that's just me. Rarely are both wonderful. Revolutionary Road was the book come to life. So if you liked the book you'll like the movie, there is really nothing of Yates to miss. Winslet was of course wonderful, DiCaprio was occasionally just adequate but over all very good, and both were just perfect for their roles. The screenwriter and the director were just brilliant. They got it all in. I loved the casting of Micheal Shannon as the insane John Givings, he looks a bit like DiCaprio, a messed up version, so to my mind, in their final confrontation it seemed like that ugly place inside Frank is confronting himself with the things he won't allow himself to acknowledge. The final scene even helped me to understand something from the novel, the way which April ends things confused me, but now I see it was her protest against being a woman. As she stood at the window looking out I could hear her telling Frank, "You're the most wonderful thing there is, you're a man."
I really recommend the book followed by a viewing of this movie.

Oedipus and Antigone

2010-05-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Freud we all know the story of Oedipus. Or do we? Like Homer I found that the bits and pieces have become larger than the stories themselves. When reading the actual works there is so much more and the famous parts are often passing information. This is due to two things, the writers were working with already very well known stories in their time so the parts that we pay especial interest in aren't as of much interest to the ancient Greek. The other way that these stories are so large in our mind is the influence of the Greeks on our culture. The scene in Antigone where a messenger has come to tell the king Creon of Antigone's disobedience, the stuttering way the messenger gets out his story and Creon's peevishness, "out with it all ready," "you grow more tiresome by the minute," well it just smacks of Shakespeare, and really any play I've ever seen. I read the Lattimore translations of Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. These three plays are arranged in order of the events but not in the order of when they were written. Antigone was actually the first and it was thirty years in between Sophocles writing Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus. The first, Oedipus the King is the story of the tragic kings discovery that he had murdered his father and that his wife and mother of his children was also his own mother. I find it interesting that it is this rash violence of ancient Greece that brings Oedipus to kill his own father as they, unknown to each other, pass each other in the street. The driver of his fathers coach means to push Oedipus off the road which prompts Oedipus to kill everyone but one loan survivor left to reveal the truth years later during this play. Jocasta, upon learning that Oedipus is her son, hangs herself and Oedipus puts out his eyes. The most touching scene is at the end when the blinded Oedipus holds his two daughters, Ismene and Antigone, and laments, "I weep when I think of the bitterness there will be in your lives, how you must live before the world.-And when you're ripe for marriage, who will he be, the man who'll risk to take such infamy as shall cling to my children, to bring hurt on them and those that marry with them? What curse is not there? 'Your father killed his father and sowed the seed where he had sprung himself and begot you out of the womb that held you.'" I know I've looked at my beautiful daughter and wondered how many hearts she'll break, it would be a bitter pill to think she would be an object of derision and untouchable, completely marriageable. The whole scene reminds me of another tragic king, King Lear, I can almost heat Oedipus howl at the gods, "Why?" There is no answer. If the gods know at all they aren't telling.
The second play concerns Oedipus' two sons who are struggling over the throne. Oedipus is wandering Greece clinging to the arm of Antigone and begs to kindness of the king of whatever land he's in, telling his story like a wandering Entertainment Tonight, and living off their hospitality while their amusement with his infamous celebrity lasts. It the longest of the two and the least interesting. At the end Oedipus has cursed his sons and is called by the gods, saying you have tarried too long, to his final rest. And that is what it is for Oedipus.
Antigone takes up where the brothers have killed each other fighting for the throne and Creon, their uncle and Oedipus' right hand man during his reign and apparently the brother Eteocles, is now king and declares that no one should bury the body of Polynieces. Antigone goes out with an urn full of dirt and sprinkles this over the rotting corpse of her brother and is dragged before Creon. Antigone admits she did it but denies any wrong. She represents the right as ancient Greeks took burial very seriously and anyone who didn't bury their own family was cursed. Creon is stubborn and refuses to listen to reason from Antigone, Ismene, the chorus, his son Haemon (who suddenly appears as her fiance', so much for Oedipus' worries), or the prophet Teiresias who pronounces that due to his obstinacy one of Creon's own children will die. In the meantime Antigone is thrown down into a cave to slowly starve to death, instead she takes a stip of her clothing and hangs herself. Haemon goes in to save her but finding her dead runs himself through with his sword. Creon's kingship goes bad because of his bad character and his disobedience to the gods in not burying Polyneices. This is a common element of Greek writing except for poor hapless Oedipus.
Two final thoughts I have on this mess, none of would have happened but for the meddling of the Oracles and Prophets. They tell the King and Queen that their son will murder his father and marry his mother, so when he is born they leave Oedipus out to die of exposure. A shepherd saves him, he is passed to another he is carried to another land and adopted by the King and Queen of that land. When he is older he is told he will murder his father and marry his mother he leaves that land out of love for his parents. In doing this he stumbles right into the hornets nest. So if the prophets had kept their big yaps shut none of it would have happened. Lastly, if you followed everything in the Antigone story you would realize Haemon and Antigone are cousins...how's that for royal inbreeding?

Hashimoto's Disease

2010-04-10T00:37:00.000-07:00

So I had my long awaited appointment with the endocrinologist and, as most autodidacts will suspect, if I want any real information on my disease I need to get it myself. So I've already ordered two books about thyroid and autoimmune disease. The doctor told me that the hives and facial swelling are not connected to my thyroid even though the allergist and my primary doctor used those as indicators of a thyroid problem. So irritating. He couldn't tell me anything to do for them or to make the facial swelling go down. Sunday was Easter but we didn't go to church because my top lip was swollen. I've posted the picture of my swollen lips but this was just the top lip. I looked like daffy duck. Nope, no church for me. My husband was kind of depressed because in the Philippines this is a big holiday, here its really for those who are very religious and for kids. He didn't want to go without me. I think it made him home sick, holidays do that.
What it is, what is happening, is that my immune system is attacking my thyroid. One interesting thing he told me was that I may have developed the thyroid problem while I was pregnant and that is why I had preterm labor. It's impossible to know now but its interesting because I was never given a reason it happened. A woman whose baby was in the room next to ours was told after her placenta was analyzed that she had had an upper-respiratory infection and that is why she had her baby at 26 weeks. It must have been so upsetting for her to hear that something so stupid was causing her baby such pain, but it would have been nice to know. She was also told that it would be highly unlikely that it would ever happen again. They couldn't tell me anything of the sort. HD will eventually cause me to have an under-active thyroid, hypothyroidism, which can cause miscarriages, infertility and preterm labor. In addition to weight gain, it also makes me more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes. My husband and I are hoping to give Sophie a little brother or sister. We've already picked the names, Daniel or Lila.
We are moving to Everett Washington in two weeks. Once we get there I am going to find a Dietitian, an OB, and maybe a Fitness trainer. Exercise can help with thyroid function. And of course I have a lot of reading to do. Now if you'll excuse me I am going to go scratch at the hives that have nothing to do with my thyroid.

Iphigenia

2010-04-07T01:47:00.001-07:00

Isn't Netflix great? I got to watch a 1977 Greek making of this tale. Oh sure it wasn't a great movie but I'm not a film critic so I won't bother. I enjoyed watching it because it helped to kindle a little fire. I realized that these Greek tragedies, like Shakespeare, were meant to be seen not read. I also realized that the whole thing is a soap opera, not surprising when I think of it, Greek tragedy is where we get operas from and then where soap operas got thier name from, duh. The Trojan war is Salem or General Hospital, its just the pretense for all the drama.
The plot is that a soldier kills a sacred deer and an oracle proclaims that to win the war Agamemnon, as the leader of the Greek army, must make the first sacrifice, his child for Greece's children. Agamemnon writes his wife saying that Iphigenia is to marry Achilles before they go. He lures her there with the promise of marriage to a hero. Once the plot is revealed she runs away but the soldiers drag her back. Agamemnon struggles with this and tries to come up with a way to save her but in the end convinces her that if she doesn't the army will kill her themselves and the whole family. So Iphigenia tell her mother to bring her bridal veil and wreath, you can see her in it on the poster, looks kind of like a deers antlers. She says, "Death will be my marriage, children and glory." it ends with the Greek army sailing off and Clytemnestra watching as the wind wipes her hair around her strong dark eyes. It was very good but then I love old European movies. Small warning to those squeamish about nudity, hey like I said its European. As a side comment, the Achilles in this one made Brad Pitt look butch.

Why I haven't been reading or blogging.

2010-03-21T23:48:00.000-07:00

If there are children near by tell them not to look, I'd hate to frighten them. This is what has been happening to me every night since Christmas. This is a particularly bad night. So you see why I haven't been in the mood to blog? You may not understand why I haven't been reading though. Us bookworms usually turn to books for escape and perspective all the more during difficulties. Usually that is the case for me but there have been a couple times in my life when I just didn't feel like reading. When I broke my elbows, (once the pain went down and I got off the Percocet, and my sister bought me a bookstand, I was reading a book a day) when I was hospitalized and put on bed rest for preterm labor, and for the first month when Sophie was in the NICU I mostly only wanted to read books on prematurity and the like. Have any of you ever just didn't feel like reading for a significant amount of time?
Oh, so the face, after some hoopla with the doctors I have found out its my thyroid. Every night I break out in hives. Itchy nasty hives ever since Christmas. I'm still waiting to see an endocrinologist to find out what we're going to do. That appointment isn't until April 9th. If only I could show him this picture and tell him what I go through every night maybe he'd see me sooner. Probably not.

Edit: It isn't my thyroid giving me hives or making my face and hands swell. It's my immune system of course, which is also attacking my thyroid. Poor thyroid, its already having a hard enough time and then I accuse her of doing all this.

Happy Birthday Sophie

2010-03-18T00:01:00.000-07:00

Jane Sophia Isabel
March 18, 2009, 3 pds 6 oz.
Ten weeks early.

March 12, 2010, 15 pds, 3 oz, enjoying a birthday cupcake.

I was warned that there would be moments when it would all come rushing back. I had no idea. Whoosh! All at once you let go. You didn't even know you were holding your breath. She's gonna be okay, she's gonna be okay.

Happy birthday to my favorite person in the whole world.

Word of the Month: March

2010-03-01T13:59:00.000-08:00

Doesn't have the same ring does it? eh

Chary
Pronunciation: \ˈcher-ē\

1 archaic : dear, treasured
2 : discreetly cautious: as a : hesitant and vigilant about dangers and risks b : slow to grant, accept, or expend

Merriam Webster's online dictionary

Write the new word on some post its and put them on the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, the car radio, the baby's forehead, anywhere you're likely to see it. I remember some nineteen year old smart alec telling me on my twenty fifth birthday that our vocabulary stops growing at that age. Since then its been my goal to prove her wrong (see sour face here).

A bit of Goofing off...

2010-02-28T23:55:00.000-08:00

It's funny that reading Revolutionary Road and Palace Walk (a Nobel prize winning book) should feel like goofing off but it does. I'm a bit busy lately so my reading has slowed as well, oh well. I'm sure my dozen or so regulars will forgive me.

Revolutionary Road, published in 1961, is about two grown up versions of Holden Caulfield. Everybody's a big fat phony which is ironic. I wouldn't call this a portrait of a marriage, and I'd be wary of anyone who did. It is a portrait of a certain kind of marriage. A dishonest one. We never really see the true April or Frank Wheeler, we see them occasionally peeking at us from behind their masks. They are both to chicken to come out. What are they afraid off? Mediocrity. They cannot forgive it in others, each other, and especially in themselves.
It can be very difficult to read a book about people you don't especially like unless it is well written, and this is, though I didn't dislike them and it wasn't until the very end that I felt any judgment for their actions. I don't want to give anything away except to say that what finally made me frown and shake my head was when their selfishness affected their two children, Jenny and Micheal I believe.
It didn't seem like I was reading about two thirty year olds, I felt that they were extremely immature. Richard Yates also made sure he had the presence of all the female archtypes. Maureen is the whore, Mrs. Givings, the crone, Milly is the matron, and April the maiden. She is the untouchable one.
The meaning of the entire book appears within the first dozen pages when April participates in a play at the community theater. "The trouble was that from the very beginning they had been afraid they would end up making fools of themselves, and they had compounded that fear by being afraid to admit it." And so on, the whole thing is a foreshadowing and obviously so.
The final question, though, is if this book speaks of reality. Yes. Not mine but I've known a few April and Frank's. People who thrive on drama and cannot seem to stop their self destructive behavior. They tell you their plans and you hold your breath wondering how this is going to blow up and you hold their hand as they cry about things never even attempted, yet again. Annoying, lovable, fragile, April and Frank.

The Oresteia

2010-02-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

Reading Aeschylus (pronunciation thanks to Merriam Webster\ˈes-kə-ləs, ˈēs-\) I really felt that I was missing something. There is a bit of back story which is not explained. At some point prior to the Trojan war Agamemnon feels compelled (for reasons I'm not clear on, probably due to their wonderful gods) to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Clytemnestra, his wife and Iphigenia's mother, sites this as the reason for murdering her husband upon his return. This wasn't clear to me during the reading but once I knew it it changed my entire feeling for the plays. She is this sort of Jezebel in the plays and so heinous her son Orestes comes to murder her. I don't blame her. If someone hurt my child, watch out. In fact my fury could not have waited ten years. However, she sends furies to kill her son for murdering her. So perhaps she isn't the mother bear after all.
The Oresteia isn't as tragic as one would expect. I expected at the end that everyone would be dead and this wasn't the case, there's plenty of blood shed though.
It is clearly Shakespeare's inspiration for Hamlet. Orestes isn't as introspective as Hamlet but Hamlet's mother isn't nearly as complicated or interesting as Clytemnestra.
But even clearing up the reason for Clytemnestra's desire for revenge I still feel that there is much I missed and I have a feeling that it has to do with the form itself. There is a lot that is unknown about Greek plays but I know practically nothing. I know that it was the inspiration for Opera. There, that's all. So before moving forward into Sophocles and Euripides I want to look at a few books recommended in The New Lifetime Reading Plan in the hopes that it will illuminate my future readings.

Greek Tragedy: An Introduction
History of Greek Literature
A History of Ancient Greek Literature

The Analects of Confucius

2010-02-18T14:03:00.000-08:00

I did it again. I waited an incredibly long time to write a review. It's been almost a month since I read the Analects of Confucius and its all a bit fuzzy. Even more so than my usual mommy brain fuzziness. So I am sitting here trying to decipher the handwriting in my ill-kept writing journal and kicking myself.

Two years ago I took a course on Religion, Rel 201 Religions of India, Rel 202 Religions of China and Japan, and Rel 203 Religions of the Middle East. They were very interesting and except for Rel 202 I really enjoyed them. The reason I didn't like Rel 202 was that the teacher was obviously biased towards Buddhism. A week was spent on Confucianism and Taoism each and the remaining six weeks were Buddhism. A bit more on that subject I can understand, it is very trendy right now and Religion is a tricky subject to teacher. The Rel 203 guy got all kinds of flack, though I thought he kept himself clear of a stated opinion. The real problem I think was that he had long hair and a long beard, like Moses, so people spent a lot of time trying to guess his Religion or lack of it. No one did that with the India guy and certainly not the Buddhist guy because that's obviously what he was. But anyway, the one thing we talked about in relation to Confucianism is why it can be called a religion. If you read the Analects you will quickly see that he makes no divine claims. He is not a 'holy man' or prophet. He barely mentions religion at all. A few quick references to reverence for ancestors is all. Despite this he does provide a framework for some of the basic elements of religion. One, morals and traditions, Two: a hope for a better life (though not in the next life or heaven but through diligence and knowledge you can improve your station and happiness in this life), three: structure to society.
Another thing that must be addressed when talking about Confucius, the myth. That fortune cookie, slightly racist, “Confucius say:” nonsense. His name is actually Kung Fu'tzu. Confucius was a latinization. When reading Confucius you have to think of it the same way as you do when you read Socrates (or Jesus), because he never wrote anything down, it's a bit of guess work what he actually said and what his followers attributed to him later. He was a tutor and moralist, he believed that if given a public office he could institute real change and prove his theories. He was never given that chance. He received an honorary post with no actual power or control to keep him quiet but once he discovered this he resigned. Every now and then you can detect some bitterness about this in his sayings.
I am trying to leave as much of my own opinion about religion out of my posts because I don't intend to get into a discussion about it. I only do that with people I trust. But I will say that I think all religions have something of value that we can learn from and that it is important in our time to have a basic understanding and appreciation for different religions and the people who practice them. So with that in mind here were some of my favorite quotes:

Book I, 16. The Master said, (the good man) does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.

Book II, 14. The Master said, A gentleman can see a question from all sides without bias. The small man is biased and can see a question only from one side.

15.The Master said, 'He who learns but does not think, is lost.' He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.

Book III, 26. The Master said, High office filled by men of narrow views, ritual performed without reverence, the forms of mourning observed without grief-these are things I cannot bear to see!
(In my view a synopsis of Confucius.)

Book V, 26. The Master said, In vain have I looked for a single man capable of seeing his own faults and bringing the charge home against himself.
Book IX, 10. Yen Hui said with a deep sigh, The more I strain my gaze up towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper I bore into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front; but suddenly it is behind. Step by step the Master skilfully lures one on. He has broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted to stop, I could not. Just when I feel that I have exhausted every resource, something seems to rise up, standing out sharp and clear. Yet though I long to pursue it, I can find no way of getting to it at all.
(The cry of every religious devotee.)

Book XII, 16. The Master said, The gentleman calls attention to the good points in others; he does not call attention to their defects. The small man does just the reverse of this.
(There are many like this.)

And of course the silver rule:
Book XV, 23. Tzu-Kung asked saying, Is there any single saying that one can act upon all day and every day? The Master said, perhaps the saying about consideration; “Never do to others what you would not like them to do to you.”

Word of the Week

2010-02-16T10:59:00.000-08:00

Sesquipedalian
\ˌses-kwə-pə-ˈdāl-yən\
: Latin sesquipedalis, literally, a foot and a half long, from sesqui- + ped-, pes foot — more at foot

Date: 1656

1 : having many syllables : long
2 : given to or characterized by the use of long words

Sorry I didn't get this posted yesterday. I am experiencing some health problems and so is the baby. Don't worry we'll both be fine. We are also planning another move, hopefully this move will be permanent.

This is the last Word of the Week, it will be a Word of the Month starting on the first of March.

Word of the Week

2010-02-08T15:28:00.000-08:00

Anagogical: interpretation of a word, passage, or text (as of Scripture or poetry) that finds beyond the literal, allegorical, and moral senses a fourth and ultimate spiritual or mystical sense.

Ajax and Post Traumatic Stess

2010-02-03T23:14:00.000-08:00

Isn't it wonderful when life intersects with what you're reading? Watching the PBS NewsHour tonight there was this story...
"A dramatic performance project called 'Theater of War' uses ancient Greek tragedies for a very special goal: To link ancient and modern warriors in an understanding of war's pain and mental agony."
Here's the link to see it yourself, something to think about when reading Sophocles who is up next.

The Oresteia, first page

2010-02-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

Agamemnon: (the Oresteia are three plays by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. Agamemnon is the first of the trilogy. More about the Trojan war,...great.)

Time and Scene: A night in the tenth and final autumn of the Trojan war. The house of Atreus in Argos. Before it, an altar stands unlit; a watchman on the high roofs fights to stay awake.

Watchman:
Dear gods, set me free from all the pain,
the long watch I keep, one whole year awake..
propped on my arms, crouched on the roofs of Atreus
like a dog.

I know the stars by heart,
the armies of the night, and there in the lead
the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer,
bring us all we have-
our great blazing kings of the sky,
I know them, when they rise and when they fall...
and now I watch for the light, the signal-fire
breaking out of Troy, shouting Troy is taken.
So she commands, full of her high hopes.
That woman-she maneuvers like a man.

And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,
and the thoughts go groping around through the night
and the good dreams that used to guard my sleep...
not here, it's the old comrade, terror, at my neck.
I mustn't sleep, no-

(shaking himself awake)

Word of the Week

2010-02-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

Ancillary
Pronunciation: \ˈan(t)-sə-ˌler-ē, -ˌle-rē

1 : subordinate, subsidiary
2 : auxiliary, supplementary

Merriam-Webster online

The Greek Lyrics

2010-01-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

I am total crap when it comes to poetry. Because of a bad experience in fourth grade I have stayed away form poetry until a few years ago. I am not a critic though, just a reader, I can tell you what I liked and that is it. I Bought a Poet's guide to Poetry by Mary Kinziea few years ago but I didn't finish it. I'm going to read it again. Along with the reading list I posted I have another one to read along side: Joseph Campbell, The Trivium, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, A History of Reading, etc., and that Kinzie is on the list. I'm planning to get through it before I get to more of those great poets, most of them are further down on my list so I have a bit of time to learn how to assess poetry. Perhaps though poetry is like opera, more fun when you don't know what's going on and you can access your emotional reaction more.

In any case, Richmond Lattimore has set the book up in sections, the poet's name as the heading with a few paragraphs about the poet and then a page or two of his selections. Almost every poem and epitaph are fragments and often there is very little known about the author. Here are my favorites.

Alcman of Sparta

No longer, maiden voices sweet-calling, sounds of allurement,

can my limbs bear me up; oh I wish, I wish I could be a seabird

who with halcyons skims the surf-flowers of the sea water

with careless heart, a sea-blue-colored and sacred waterfowl.

Stesichorus of Himera

Palinode to Helen

That story is not true.

You never sailed in the benched ships.

You never went to the city of Troy.

Ibycus of Rhegium

In spring time the Kydonian

quinces, watered by running streams,

there where the maiden nymphs have

their secret garden, and grapes that grow

round in shade of the tendriled vine,

ripen.

Pindar of Thebes

Athens

O shining and wreathed in violets, city of singing,

stanchion of Hellas, glorious Athens

citadel of divinity.

War is sweet to those who have not tried it. The experienced

man in frightened at the heart to see it advancing.

Do not against all comers let break the word that is not needed.

There are times when the way of silence is best; the word in its power

can be the spur to battle.

Mistress of high achievement, O lady Truth,

do not let my understanding stumble

across some jagged falsehood.

Word of the Week

2010-01-25T00:50:00.000-08:00

Apotheosis

apo·the·o·sis\ə-ˌpä-thē-ˈō-səs, ˌa-pə-ˈthē-ə-səs\

1 : elevation to divine status : deification
2 : the perfect example : quintessence

Once again curtsy or Merriam-Webster online.
Next week I'll be beginning the Greek plays, first Aeschylus then Sophocles. Watch out things are about to get wild!

The Odyssey

2010-01-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

“...[B]ecause mythology was historically the mother of the arts and yet, like so many mythological mothers, the daughter, equally of her own birth. Mythology is not invented rationally; mythology cannot be rationally understood. Theological interpreters render it ridiculous. Literary criticism reduces it to metaphor. A new and very promising approach is opened, however, when it is viewed in the light of biological psychology as a function of the human nervous system, precisely homologous tot he innate and learned sign stimuli that release and direct the energies of nature-of which our brain itself is but the amazing flower.” -Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Primitive Mythology

People say of the Iliad and the Odyssey that Homer was saying life is either a battle or a journey. If that is true Homer believed life was a battle. Only about a third of the Odyssey is Odysseus' journey, it is the most fascinating part. The rest is about Telemachus, Penelope, and at least a third is dealing with the suitors. All people in ancient Greece are subject tot he whims of the gods and the plans of destiny but none more than the women. Just as I never believed the war was about Helen I don't believe that the fault lied in the suitors. They complain many times that Penelope gave them all words and signs that their presence was wanted. Of course men can say that but it because they interpreted her words and movements to suit his own desires. Penelope though laments, when she learns that the suitors are plotting to kill her son, that she hadn't kicked them all out long ago, that tells me she had the choice to do so. Hospitality is very important to the Homeric people, that is the great moral lesson that seems to preoccupy the Odyssey the most, how to be a good host and a good guest. If you are not it can warrant death as the suitors learn. Just as many people read the meeting of Telemachus and Helen, where she says that just as Menelaus was sacking Troy she had had a change of heart and that the only reason she went with Paris in the first place was because she had been tricked by Aphrodite, and smile knowingly, that is how I read Penelope and the suitors. The Iliad and the Odyssey would be more interesting from the female perspective. Helen, Penelope, and Briseis are by far the more interesting characters.

The events that you would expect at the ending of the Iliad, the Trojan horse, the death of Paris and Achilles (remember his heel), and the sacking or Troy, are briefly mentioned in the Odyssey. I suppose that the stories were so well known to Homers audience he spent his time detailing other the other aspects but for me it was a shame. I would have preferred hearing about those things than many of the other scenes. A particularly fascinating scene of the Odyssey is when Odysseus goes to the gates of Hades. I read this part very closely because it is from Greece that we get our Western concepts of the soul and the after life, though it is till too soon for the happy side. The golden resurrection god, Dionysus, wouldn't be born into Greek mythology for some time.

To my mind the Odyssey is really the dreams of a child about his absent father. The ideal. When a child grows up missing a parent he concocts fairy tales about that parent, “He didn't abandon me, he's really an international spy, brave handsome and rich, and he left to protect me, but he'll come back and we'll have adventures together.” Perhaps this interpretation says more about me. Perhaps it says something about Homer.

The first page of The Analects of Confucius

2010-01-19T16:24:00.001-08:00

Introduction

Thought grows out of environment. Ideally speaking the translator of such a book as the Analects ought to furnish a complete analysis of early Chinese society, of the processes which were at work within it and of the outside forces to which it reacted. Unfortunately our knowledge of the period is far too incomplete for any such synthesis to be possible. The literary documents are scanty and of uncertain date; scientific archeology in China has suffered constant setbacks and is still in its infancy. All that I have attempted in the following pages is to arrange such information as is accessible under a series of disconnected headings, in a convenient order, but without pretense of unity or logical sequence.

Confucius

The Confucius of whom I shall speak here is the Confucius of the Analects. One could construct half a dozen other Confuciuses by tapping the legend at different stages of its evolution. We should see the Master becoming no longer a moral teacher but a 'wise man' according to the popular conception of wisdom that existed in non-Confucian circles in China and in our own Middle Ages, an answerer of grotesque conundrums, a prophet, a magician even. We should see the disappointed itinerant tutor of the Analects turning into a successful statesman and diplomatist employed not only in his own country but in neighboring States as well.

-Arthur Waley

Word of the Week

2010-01-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

Conflate \kən-ˈflāt\
1 a : to bring together : fuse b : confuse
2 : to combine (as two readings of a text) into a composite whole
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

The Iliad

2010-01-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

Here are some tips for reading the Iliad. On the first page of your reading journal keep a list of the characters and whose side they are fighting for, Troy or the Greeks. Also keep a list of names, the Greeks and Trojans are called by several names, as well as the individual people. It's also a good idea to have a basic idea of Greek mythology.

The Iliad drips with testosterone. Where does it get a romantic image from? There is no romance in either the Iliad or the Odyssey. The Iliad begins with an argument between Achilles and Agamemnon over a woman they call Briseis. She is one of Achilles spoils of war. We laments many times how he won her from her family on one of the many Achaean campaigns into the surrounding country around Troy. Agamemnon takes her from Achilles who then refuses to fight with the Greeks. Achilles goddess mother then goes to Zeus and has him side with the Trojans because of the dishonor done to her son. Homer, being Greek, has an obvious bias to the Greeks because even though he says the Trojans are winning any affront to a Greek hero is met with equal violence to the Trojans so you have to assume that while the Greek heroes are far superior the victory is happening at the level of the common soldier who is faceless and barely mentioned in the Iliad. The violence is graphically described and through the whole thing I kept thinking that this ten year war is being fought over one runaway wife. It seems unlikely to me. Since we know that there is a historical Troy and a war leveled the city I read this thinking of real people. When Achilles says that he will overthrow the city and kill every man and his male children and capture all the women I feel these are real people being spoken about. And I don't believe that they fought over Helen. But her story with Paris is not my idea of romance. By the time we join their story they have been together nine years, she's a fish wife and he's a weeny unable to face her husband Menelaus in battle. I never for a moment believed that it is true love that Achilles speaks of when he laments the loss of Briseis. Its as unromantic as any story I've ever heard. She is his rape victim (for I don't believe a woman would willingly lay with a man who's just killed her entire family and kidnapped her).

I didn't like Achilles, he's a meathead, not my idea of a hero. He finally comes back to the battle after Hector kills his friend Patroklos. Achilles takes it very personally, which seemed unsportsmanlike. Its a war. I can understand revenge but the humiliation of his body after Hectors manly speech as they face off it just seemed petty. The most moving scene is when Priam goes to Achilles to beg for his sons body back. Achilles looks at the old man, a king and a father, who has been reduced to begging to the man who killed his son, and thinks of his own father, and though he swore he would never give the body back he is touched and gives Hector to his father.

The Iliad does not end as you would expect it to. There is no mention of the Trojan horse and in fact Troy hasn't been sacked. They tell us it will be, always there is the sense of destiny, heightened by the involvement of the gods, but we do not see it happen. It ends with the burial of Hector.

Note- I'm going to Seattle for the weekend with my husband. We'll be back late on Monday. I'll continue my thoughts on Homer next Friday from the Iliad through the Odyssey. I'm reading the Greek Lyrics now and hope to be finished Wednesday and then I'll be on to the Analects of Confucius. Have a good weekend.

Ode to the Cat

2010-01-13T01:23:00.000-08:00

There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tales were too long, and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a great landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, pep.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows exactly what it wants.

Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes.

Nothing hangs together
quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon
have
such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its back,
which is both subtle and confident,
is like the curve of a ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes
are the only
slot
for depositing the coins of the night.

O little
emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass
in rough weather
and poise
four nimble paws
on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious
of all earthly things
(because everything
feels filthy
to the cat's immaculate paw),
you claim
the touch of love in the air.

O freelance household
beast, arrogant
vestige of night,
lazy, agile
and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police
of human chambers
and badge
of
vanished velvet!
Surely there is nothing
enigmatic
in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery after all.
You're known to everyone, you belong
to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner, uncle
or companion
to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.

But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about cats.
I know everything else, including life and its archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of math.
I know the earth's volcanic protrusions
and the crocodile's unreal hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness
and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of gold.

By Pablo Neruda
from Odes to Common Things

This book is also full of lovely charming drawings.

Word of the Week

2010-01-11T11:30:00.000-08:00

Orgulous: Excessively proud, arrogant

Misused Words: discrete/discreet. Discreet means careful or prudent, discrete means separate, distinct, and unconnected. Arthur was discreet about his affair. He was able to manage two discrete households.

Nabokov and Carroll B. Johnson on Don Quixote

2010-01-08T01:21:00.000-08:00

I could not have chosen two more disparate books on the topic. It is very clear that Nabokov greatly disliked the book while Johnson is very eager to praise and excuse the book.

Nabokov devotes an entire chapter (actually it is an entire lecture, the book is a compilation of his notes for a class he gave at Harvard) on the cruelty of the book. He argues that the book is not funny but we are made to laugh at his pain and humiliation. For me, however, the funny part of the scene is not the pain he incures when he charges the windmills and has his face bashed in but his insistence that the windmills are giants and Sancho's plain arguments that they are in fact windmilld. I have no idea what a seventeenth century Spaniard would have found funny so I don't know what parts of the scenes are intended to be funny, I can only say for myself it wasn't the physical pain Don Quixote endured that I found funny but perhaps I was laughing cruelly at the insanity of an old man. I agree with Nabokov that the second book was particularly awful, the Duke and Duchess are noxious and evil. I don't think Nabokov wouldn't have liked The Three Stooges very much.

Nabokov also argues that the side stories have no function in the novel but are in fact fillers. He believes that they were old stories Cervantes had lying around that he just added. Nabokov says that even the readers of his time felt this way which is why he responds the way he does in the opening of the second book and why there are no such stories in that half. Johnson, however, says that these 'interpolated stories' are a common feature of books in Cervantes day. If that is true then why was he criticized for them by his contemporaries? If there is some greater meaning to those stories they should have been clearer in his day. In fact Carroll Johnson alludes several times to the reasons for the side stories but never delivers.

The second book deals with the usurpation of his character. This is why I read critiques about the book, in such old writings there is only so much you can do on your own, there are historical details that a layperson (like myself) won't know. It was ten years in between the publishing of the first book and the second and in that time another book was written by some other guy. A lot of the characters we see in the second half are that other writers creations. This is also why Cervantes kills Don Quixote, to keep others from taking his errant knight on any other unsanctioned escapades.

Johnson brings a lot of knowledge to the subject which illuminates many of the scenes. One example is the scene where Don Quixote accosts some merchants on the road. In Cervantes' Spain only Jews were merchants, this would have been immediately apparent to the reader. Don Quixote levels his lance at them and tells them that they must declare Dulcinea del Toboso the fairest lady in the world they say they've never seen her so how can they say honestly that she is beautiful at all. Johnson claims this is a satire of the forced conversion of the Jews and Moors which was an event that happened many times in the hundred or so years before Cervantes birth. He offers a few more examples but none so clear as that one. I still felt that Nabokov was correct in saying that Don Quixote was ill-planned so I wonder how much these kinds of scenes could play out to a greater meaning.

It's been a month since a read these books so they are a bit foggy in my memory which teaches me a blogger rule, to be faster with my reviews and stresses the need to keep a reading journal. I am going to read them both again after my logic stage reading of Don Quixote which I will begin after I have finished Le Morte d'Arthur.

Word of the week

2010-01-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

Parlous \ˈpär-ləs\ 1. perilous; dangerous; risky 2. dangerously clever; cunning; mischievous, shrewd, etc.

Grammar Lesson

2010-01-04T11:09:00.000-08:00

When to use 'that':
When a time element comes after the verb: Freddy said that on Friday he would rake the leaves, or, Freddy said on Friday that he would rake the leaves.
When the point of the sentence comes late: Johnny found that the old violin hidden in a trunk in his attic wasn't a real Stradivarius.
When there are two more verbs after the main one: Silvio thinks the idea stinks and Paulie does to. This is confusing, does Silvio think that the idea stinks or that Paulie does? A that in the right place clears this up.

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T12:56:00.000-08:00

It's been a decade and I'm still not used to that 2000 bit, it looks odd. I guess I know what kind of old lady I'm going to be.

Two New Year babies: E.M. Forster, 1879, and J.D. Salinger, 1919.

How to Read a Book

2009-12-30T02:25:00.000-08:00

I just finished How to Read a Book. This is a classic and I don't feel like really getting into my thoughts about it but I will say that either Adler and Van Doren think everyone reading this book is very dim or they just are that verbose. Here are some of my favorite sections though:

A house is more or less livable, so books are more or less readable. The most readable book is an architectural achievement on the part of the author.

Strangely enough, in recent years,...there is a dwindling concern with this criterion of excellence. Books win the plaudits of the critics and gain widespread popular attention almost to the extent that they flout the truth- the more they do so, the better. Many readers, and most particularly those who review current publications, employ other standards for judging, and praising or condemning, the books they read- their novelty, their sensationalism, their seductiveness, their force, and even their power to bemuse or befuddle the mind, but not their truth, their clarity, or their power to enlighten.

Not only are many of the great books related, but also they were written in a certain order that should not be ignored. A later writer has been influenced by an earlier one. If you read the earlier writer first, he may help you to understand the later. Reading related books in relation to one another and in an order that renders the later ones more intelligible is a basic common-sense maxim of extrinsic reading.
It has often been observed that the great books are involved in a prolonged conversation. The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read. As readers, they carried on a conversation with other authors, just as each of us carries on a conversation with the books we read, though we may not write other books.
...novels and plays can be read in isolation... although of course the literary critic will not want to confine himself to doing so. (which I note most book bloggers are doing.)

...Activity is the essence of good reading, and that the more active reading is, the better it is.

We have made this point before, but we want to make it now again because of its relevance to the task that lies before you. If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you stretch, you will not learn.

Word of the week

2009-12-28T09:59:00.000-08:00

com·pen·di·um
Pronunciation: \kəm-ˈpen-dē-əm\

1 : a brief summary of a larger work or of a field of knowledge : abstract
2 a : a list of a number of items b : collection, compilation

From Merriam-Webster online

My sister, knowing my penchant for self improvement, gave me The Intellectual Devotional which is a compendium of seven fields of knowledge, one for each day of the week with entries for the entire year. I hope everyone received wonderful books for Christmas as well (and gave them too).

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-23T15:38:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas to everyone but especially to my brother who is in Iraq on his third deployment. Come home soon, there is a little elf here who can't wait to meet her Uncle Ryan.

Word of the week

2009-12-21T10:20:00.000-08:00

Tendentious : \ten-ˈden(t)-shəs\ marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view : biased

— ten·den·tious·ly adverb

— ten·den·tious·ness noun

Merriam-Webster online

Autodidacts need to avoid tendentiousness or they will end up with a very lop-sided education, and then they'll walk funny.

Who says birds don't have feelings?

2009-12-19T22:07:00.001-08:00

Okay this doesn't have anything to do with books but I wanted to share it none the less.
Love is for the birds.

Comments

2009-12-19T21:53:00.000-08:00

Well, the comments feature is working again.
Thank you to Sylvia bookworm for all of your help.

The New and Improved List

2009-12-16T01:22:00.000-08:00

I added the The New Lifetime Reading Plan into The Well-Educated Mind. I found her list a bit eurocentic and using two lists ensures a more well rounded reading plan. My goal will be to read at least thirty of these a year which will mean this project will take me at least ten years.

Italics are The New Lifetime Reading Plan, Bold is where they agree, between brackets are my own additions.

1 Epic of Gilgamesh
2 & 3Homer, Iliad; Odyssey
4 Greek Lyrics
5 Confucius, the Analects
6-8 Agamemnon, Aeschylus; the Oresteia; Aeschylus
9-11 Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Oedipus at Colonus; Antigone
12 Herodotus, Histories
13-18 Euripedes, Medea; Alcestis; Hippolytus; The Trojan Women; Electra; The Baccae
19 Sun-tzu, The Art of War
20-22 Aristophanes, The Birds; The Couds; Lystrata;
23 Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
24 Plato, Republic (and selected works)
25 Mencius, The Book of Mencius
26 Aristotle, Poetics, Ethics, Politics
27 The Ramayana, attr. Valmiki
28 The Mabharata, attr. Vyasa
29 The Bhagavad Gita, Anon
30 Ssu-Ma Ch'ien, Records of the Grand Historian
31 Lucretius, Of the Nature of Things
32 Virgil, The Aeneid
33 Horace Odes
34 Plutarch, Lives
35 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
36 & 37 Augustine, Confessions; City of God
38 Kalidasa, The Cloud Messenger; Sakuntala,
39 The Koran, Revealed to Muhammad
40 Hui-Neng, The Platform Sutra for the Sixth Patriarch
41 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People
42 Firdausi, Shah Nameh,
43 Beowulf
44 Sei Shonagon, The Pillow-Book
45 Lady Murasaki, The Tale of Genji,
46 Omar Khayyam, The Rubaiyat
47 Dante Inferno
48 Sir Gawain & the Green Knight
49 Luo Kuan-Chung, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms
50 Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

51 Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

52 The Thousand and One Nights, Anon
53 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
54 Sir Thomas More, Utopia

55 Francois Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

56 Attr. Wu Ch'eng-en, Journey to the West
57 Essays Montaigne
58 Life of Teresa of Avila
59 Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
60 William Shakespeare, Richard III; Midsummer's Nights Dream; Hamlet; Sonnets

-LRP suggests reading Shakespeare's Complete Works
61 Poems of John Donne
62 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

63 The Plum in the Golden Vase, anon

64 Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
65 & 66 Rene Descartes, Meditations; Discourse on Method

67 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

68 Blaise Pascal, Thoughts (pensees)
69 & 70 John Bunyon, Grace Abounding; Pilgrim's Progress

71-75 John Milton, Paradise Lost; Lycidas; On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, Sonnets, Areopagitica,
76-78 Moliere, Tartuffe; (LRP suggests several others)
79 Mary Rowlandson, Narrative of Captivity & Restoration
80 & 81 John Locke, True End Civil Government; Second Treatise of Government

82 Matsuo Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North
83 Congreve, Way of the World

84 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe
85 Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
86 & 87 David Hume, History of England; An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

88 Henry Fielding, Tom Jones

89 Voltaire, Candide and other works

90 Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy
91 Rousseau, Social Contract; Confessions
92 Paine, Common Sense
93 Gibbon, Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire
94 Sheridan, School of Scandal

95 James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson

96 Thomas Jefferson and others, basic documents in American history ( The Constitution, Declaration of Independence, etc), ed. Richard B. Morris

97 Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. The Federalist Papers, ed. By Clinton Rossiter

98 Ts'ao Hsueh-Ch'in, The Dream of the Red Chamber
99 Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
100 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women
101 Poems of Wordsworth

102 Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, Faust

103 William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Experience

104 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Ancient Mariner, Christabel, Kubla Khan, Biographia Literaria, Writings on Shakespeare
105 & 108 Jane Austen, Pride & Prejudice; Emma [Sense & Sensibility; Persuasion]
109 Keats, Odes & Poems
110 Longfellow
111 Tennyson

112 Edgar Allen Poe

113 Stendhal, The Red and the Black

114 Honore De Balzac, Pere Goriot; Eugenie Grandet; Cousin Bette
115 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
116-123 Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist; Pickwick Papers; David Copperfield; Great Expectations; Hard Times; Our Mutual Friend; The Old Curiosity Shop; Little Dorrit

124 Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls,

125 Ralph Waldo Emerson
126 Bronte, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, [Agnes Grey by Anne]

127 William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
128 Marx & Engel, The Communist Manifesto
129 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
130 Emily Dickinson
131 Christina Rosetti
132 Herman Melville, Moby Dick; Bartleby the Scrivener
133 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin
134 Henry David Thoreau, Walden, and Civil Disobedience

135-139 Anthony Trollope, The Warden; The Last Chronicle of Barset; The Eustace Diamonds; The Way We Live Now; Autobiography

140 Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
141 Gustav Flaubert, Madame Bovary,

142 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty; The Subjection of Women

143 Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle; The Origin of Species

144 George Eliot, Middlemarch; Mill on the Floss; [Adam Bede]
145 Burckhardt, Civilization of Renaissance
146 Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

147 Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons
148-151 Dostoyevsky, Crime & Punishment; The Brothers Karamazov [The Idiot, and selected short stories]

152 Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Through the Looking-Glass
153 Paul Laurence Dunbar
154 & 155 Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, War and Peace
156-158 Thomas Hardy, Return of the Native, The Mayor of Casterbridge, [Jude the Obscure]
159 Carl Sandburg
160 Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
161 Life & Times of Frederick Douglas
162-164 Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady; The Ambassadors, [The Turn of the Screw]
165 William Carlos Williams

166-169 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra; The Genealogy of Morals; Beyond Good and Evil; Ecce Homo
170 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
171-174 William James, The Principles of Psychology; Pragmatism; Four Essays from The Meaning of Truth; The Varieties of Religious Experience

175 George Bernard Shaw, Selected Plays and Prefaces; St. Joan

176 Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
177 Oscar Wilde, Importance of Being Earnest

178-180 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; Civilization and Its Discontents
181 Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery
182 & 183 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Nostromo
184 Langston Hughes
185 DuBois, Souls of Black Folk
186-189 Anton Chekhov, Cherry Orchard; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; Selected Short Stories
190 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism
191 Edith Wharton, House of Mirth; The Custom of the Country; The Age of Innocence
192 Poetry of W. H. Auden

193-195 E.M. Forster, A Passage to India, [Howard's End, A Room With a View]
196 Poems of Robert Frost

197-203 Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, [all of In Search of Lost Time]

204-206 D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers, Women in Love [Lady Chatterly's Lover]

207 Natsume Soseki, Kokoro,

208 Collected Poems and Plays of T.S. Eliot, Murder in Cathedral

209 Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
210 Lu Hsun, Collected Short Stories

211 Lytton Strachey, Queen Victoria
212 Phillip Larkin

213-215 James Joyce, Ulysses [A Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist & The Dubliners]

216 William Butler Yeats, Poetry and Autobiography

217 Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

218 Ernest Hemingway, Short Stories
219 Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
220-224 Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; To the Lighthouse; Orlando; The Waves; [A Room of One's Own]
225 & 226 Franz Kafka, The Trial; Selected Short Stories [The Metamorphosis]
227 Allen Ginsberg
228 Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

229 & 230 William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury; As I Lay Dying,

231-233 Eugene O'Neill, Mourning Becomes Electra; The Iceman Cometh; Long Day's Journey into Night
234 Sylvia Plath

235 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
236 Gertrude Stein, Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
237 Mark Strand

238-241 George Orwell, Animal Farm; 1984; Burmese Days; Wigan Pier
242 Adrienne Rich
243 Thornton Wilder, Our Town
244 Seamus Heany
245 & 246 Perry Miller, The New England Mind
247 Richard Wright, Native Son
248 Robert Pinsky
249 C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
250 Albert Camus, The Stranger; The Plague

251 Tanizaki Junichiro, The Makioka Sisters
252 Jean Paul Sartre, No Exit

253 R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher; The Vendor of Sweets
254 Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
255 Jane Kenyon
256 Thomas Merton, Seven Story Mountain

257 & 258 Mishima Yukio, Confessions of a Mask; The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
259 Henry Miller, Death of a Salesman
260 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
261-263 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot; Endgame; Krapp's Last Tape
264 Rita Dove
265 John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash

266-268 Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak, Memory
270-273 Saul Bellow, Seize the Day; The Adventures of Augie March; Herzog; Humboldt's Gift

274 Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
275 Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day
276 Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons

277 & 278 Jorge Luis Borge, Labyrinths; Dreamtigers,

279 Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
280 Betty Frieden, The Feminine Mystique

281 Kawabata Yasunari, Beauty and Sadness
282 The Autobiography of Malcolm X
283 Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

284 & 285 Aleksander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn, The First Circle; Cancer Ward
286 Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildentern are Dead
287 Italo Calvino, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler
288 May Sarton, Journal of Solitude
289-290 Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago
291 Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll
292 Charles Colson, Born Again
293 Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
294 Barbara W. Tuchman, Distant Mirror
295 Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory
296 Don Delillo, White Noise
297 Woodward & Bernstein, All the President's Men
298 James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
299 Jill Kathryn Conway, Road from Coorain
300 A.S. Byatt, Possession
301 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History & the Last Man
302 Elie Wiesel, All Rivers Run to the Sea

The Epic of Gilgamesh

2009-12-15T01:13:00.000-08:00

Discovered in 1872 The Epic of Gilgamesh was written in 1200 b.c.e and is the oldest story known. From the cradle of civilization Mesopotamia (which means the land between the rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates) the epic was lost in 612 b.c.e when the Assyrian city of Nineveh was sacked and deliberately broken to bits. It is unknown whether Gilgamesh was a real king, an inscription with a king list of Sumeria lists him but it also says that he ruled for 126 years and it was a common name at the time. The story of the story is really more interesting but I'll write more about that at a later time.

Gilgamesh begins as a jerk, it says that he hoards the wives of other men for his own purpose, Robert D. Biggs who wrote the intro for my translation says that this means as king he demanded the first night of a marriage. The men naturally complain. Specifically to the Gods who then create Enkidu. Enkidu begins life as a wild beast of the field. A shepherd though isn't to pleased about the wild man drinking from his pool so he and his father come up with a plan to bring a temple priestess over to tempt him. There is an interesting debate in the appreciation written by James G. Keenan on the translation of Shamhat to temple priestess. Some translations say she is a prostitute but at that time that profession has a different connotation than it does now. Personally I think they made the correct choice in light of the role she plays. They bring her to the pool and wait for several days until Enkidu shows up, then she disrobes and flaunts before him her womanly graces. There is some description here that gave me a sophomoric chuckle and then a groan and eye roll as it was obviously written by a man. It is very openly sexual and even raunchy. After this tryst the animals he once ran with want nothing to do with him and that animal power is gone from him so he returns to Shamhat who in turn brings him to Uruk (civilization) where he meets Gilgamesh. Enkidu and Gilgamesh are alter egos. They immediately clash (a recurring masculine theme) fighting until exhausted and after are immediate friends.

There is some debate of whether or not this is a homosexual relationship. Before they meet Gilgamesh has a dream of this meeting where he embraces him as a wife. It is suspicious imagery but I agree with Robert D. Biggs who says, “It seems inappropriate, in any case, to apply the modern European concept of homosexuality to an ancient text.” Enkidu then go to slay Humbaba, who is a god of the forest. This event is likened to the death of nature by the representatives of civilization. This is a very interesting idea from the cradle of civilization and one wonders how much they understood about the destruction of nature because of civilization. The slaying of Humbaba is a rather merciless scene, first Humbaba is bracketed by forceful winds sent by Shamash, Gilgamesh's patron god, until he is exhausted and weakened. Then in column vi Humbaba cries out, “Please, Gilgamesh! Have mercy on me, wounded. I shall freely give you all the lumber of my mighty realm and work for you both day and night.” It is Enkidu who tells Gilgamesh to ignore his cries. Since we first meet Enkidu in the wilderness I find this interesting, his transformation is complete, he is converted.

After that there is an episode with Ishtar (an Assyrian Goddess) which I found uninteresting but it results in a bull from heaven being released which Gilgamesh and Enkidu fight and then slay. As punishment the gods smite Enkidu. He spends days ill and finally dies. Before that he curses the woman Shamhat. A bible parallel. Always the woman's fault eh?

One of the most beautiful parts of the story is how Gilgamesh grieves when Enkidu dies. This death confronts him with his own mortality and he sets out in search of Utnapishtim who is an ancestor of Gilgamesh and who survived the flood. After the flood Utnapishtim was granted immortality by the gods.

The biggest stand out in the text are the parallels to the bible. While completely different in the particulars the similarities are unmistakable. His mother Ninsun has never 'let a man touch her' so he is born of a virgin. In the story of Enkidu and Shamhat we see a parallel with the loss of innocence and the garden of Eden, also with the story of Samson and Delilah who losses his strength because of a woman. Of course the story of Utnapishtim and the flood. Then Gilgamesh is directed to a plant that will grant him eternal life but when he stops to get a drink from a lake a serpent slithers up and snatches it (enter that here). What all this means for the Bible is something I won't comment on. Believers and non-believers just see and interpret things differently so any debate is pointless. I noted a parallel Biggs and Keenin did not between Gilgamesh and Siddhartha Gautama (Buddha), a prince who spent all his days in luxury who when confronted with the realities of life sickness, old age and finally death went in search of meaning.

Gilgamesh ends by accepting the eventuality of death and adopts an eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die attitude. There is the important theme: the fear of death and the meaning of life. Apparently we've been pondering it for thousands of years and we're not any closer to an answer than Gilgamesh.

Word of the week

2009-12-14T00:06:00.000-08:00

Laconic: \lə-ˈkä-nik\
To the point, concise. Using the minimum amount of words to the point of appearing rude or mysterious.
Merriam-Webster

I've been goofing off a bit this week, finals are over and its my vacation, plus my husband was sick the past few days so I had two babies (haha, just teasing honey...sort of). I'll have a post about the Epic of Gilgamesh tomorrow.

One year

2009-12-12T00:22:00.000-08:00

Happy anniversary sweetie!

Wedding Prayer by Robert Lewis Stevenson

Lord, behold our family here assembled.
We thank you for this place in which we dwell,
for the love that unites us,
for the peace accorded us this day,
for the hope with which we expect the morrow,
for the health, the work, the food,
and the bright skies that make our lives delightful;
for our friends in all parts of the earth.
Amen

Imagine

2009-12-08T01:08:00.000-08:00

John Lennon was shot December 8, 1980.
Click on the link for the 1971 video.

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
it isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm note the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world can be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm note the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
and the world can be as one

You may say I'm a sap, but that song gets me every time.

Word of the week

2009-12-07T01:48:00.000-08:00

Fungible: Returnable by exchange. Interchangeable.

Fill out some post its and place them on the T.V. the refrigerator, the car stereo, the baby's forehead, any where your likely to see it often.

The Book Of Brevity

2009-12-06T05:00:00.000-08:00

I have this little book called The Book of Brevity, which is a book of Latin American short short stories or mini-cuentos. I came across it because the translator Jose Chaves taught at the community college I was attending. I like to take it out every now and then and thumb through it. They are funny, charming, and thought provoking. They are little puzzles without answers for you to sort out and have fun with. I'll share a couple with you.

The Burro and the Flute

A flute that no one had ever played had been lost in the country for quite some time, unitl one day a passing burro blew hard into it, making it produce the most beautiful sound in their life; that is to say, the life of the burro and the flute.
Incapable of understanding what had happened -as rationality was not his strong point, and they both believed in rationality- they quickly separated, ashamed of the greatest thing either one had accomplished during their sad existence.

Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala)

The Arms of Kalym

Kalym took off his arms and threw them into the abyss. When he arrived at home, his wife asked him, astonished: "What have you done with your arms?"
"I was tired of them, so I threw them away," said Kalym.
"Well, you had better find them. You're going to need them to eat lunch. Where did you put them?"
"They're sitting in an abyss, miles from here."
"How did you even manage to get them off?"
"I just took my right arm off with my left and my left arm with my right."
"That's impossible," cried his wife, "You needed your left arm to take off your right, but you had already taken it off."
"I know sweetheart, my arms are a very strange things. Let's just forget the whole thing and go to bed," said Kalym embracing his wife.

Gabriel Jimenez Eman (Venezuela)

...and my favorite...

The Dinosaur

When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there.

Augusto Monterroso (Guatemala)

Bookmarks

2009-12-02T08:23:00.000-08:00

Last night I bought nearly fifty bookmarks. I'm always losing them and down to one. I'm currently reading about five books in addition to my text books so I thought I'd look on Amazon and see how much their book marks are, but I didn't think I'd buy any since paying four dollars for shipping on a bookmark is kind of insane. But I found twelve Emily Dickinson bookmarks for a dollar fifty and free shipping, well, sold, but should I get the Emily ones, the Shakespeare, or the Degas ballerinas? Also contenders were the Henry David Thoreau and Van Gogh ones, then I saw Fairy bookmarks and thought of my little niece who loves fairies and is getting several books for Christmas so I had to have those as well. So having narrowed myself down to four sets of twelve I went to the check out and found they were having a four for three deal so I got the fairies for free. Four sixty three for forty eight bookmarks. It will take me a while to lose that many.

All this book mark buying reminded me of a comic I saw years ago of a very unhappy cat stuffed into a book. The caption read, "In a readers home everything is a bookmark." I nearly chocked on my tea because I had done that. I had used my cat as a bookmark. She, like all cats, would come sleep next to me while I was reading and I had several times layed the book over her while I went to the bathroom or the kitchen. Nothing is safe.

It's finals week so I'll be gone for a bit. Hope your finishing up Don Quixote because I've started on The Epic of Gilgamesh. See you next week and wish me luck.

Grammar Stage: Don Quixote VII

2009-12-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Warning! If you haven't finished Don Quixote don't read this post until you do. It is important to read the book and formulate your own opinion first.

I have several concerns with Don Quixote. The side stories are my biggest question with this book. The style of the book and the plot. The premise seemed so promising but in the end I feel it fell flat. Lastly the sexism and racism is a concern for me.

On a pragmatic level I understand the reason Cervantes had so many diversions. Cervantes was not very successful and Don Quixote was sold as a series. It creates a disjointed feel. In the second half the central characters weren't even the same, Sancho was more intelligent and Don Quixote was less insane. The side characters had disappeared and we had new ones, the graduate and the Duke and Duchess. Things really went down hill for me when the Duke and Duchess entered into it. At first it was funny, that he was famous and that they set up some adventures for him. But they took it too far, especially when they were laughing at Teresa, Sancho's wife, she wasn't a part of it, that made me mad. And when they drag Don Quixote back and present a 'dead' Altisidora who is raised by pinching and poking Sancho (and that's another thing why are they so interesting in flagellating Sancho?) you have to wonder don't these people have better things to do? Then I thought that perhaps Cervantes was trying to make a point about the spoiled bored upper-classes and then I connected it back to Dorotea and Don Fernando. That was an annoying side story. Boy what a relief when he marries Dorotea and we know she can look forward to a long life with him cheating on her. This isn't the promised meaning of the book but it is something to connect the stories. However there are many other stories and what about them?

Cervantes invented the novel but it has been greatly improved upon since then. Supposedly written by two different people who interject often, while interesting because it is so unusual, every time the translators showed up I felt assured that the style for less obvious narrators is superior. I understand a lot of that is a satyr of another work but as a modern reader it makes it disjointed and takes me out of the story. I imagine it did back then as well but it was more accepted by people in on the joke. While reading the section on poetry in The Well-Trained mind Susan Wise Bauer tells us that poetry was delivered orally and mostly on the spot. To help the poet remember the story they used formulas, the Hero is away from home, there is a great battle, the loss of a friend, struggle for return,...you can see that there is that formula in Don Quixote. Poetry was the first way of relating these stories so of course it would be the most familiar method for Cervantes. Ms. Wise Bauer writes: “Other memory aids shape the epics as well: The poet often began with an oral “table of contents,” a prologue that outlined what he was about to do...and halted occasionally to recap the action, to remind himself of where he had been before he proceeded on.” Sound like Don Quixote? So the epic poems that preceded him is a good place to start understanding him. It's a good thing The Epic of Gilgamesh and Homer are next.

The case of accused rape that Sancho judges which Cervantes meant to show Sancho's homely and surprising wisdom showed me something different. It was (and still is) the attitude that a woman cannot be raped but that at the last moment she had to acquiesce. From there people felt that the woman had brought it upon herself. The attitude toward the Moors is unsurprising considering the time and place but just how much of these kinds of attitudes are forgivable and understandable? It is hard to answer that because as much as we would like to believe we would have been intelligent and feeling and progressive enough not to be that way we simply cannot know. Our society and how we were raised plays a lot more into our attitudes than we would like to admit to ourselves. The fact is we have opinions that will melt with time as our grandchildren will show us. I liked that sanity returned to Don Quixote but I was also dissatisfied with the ending. I thought it would have been funny and more suited had they stumbled into exactly what they sought just as they stumbled into their adventures. If it had ended the way of Don Quixote's knight errant stories with Sancho proving better at being a governor than had been expected and being allowed to keep his post and with our knight winning the hand of his fair lady. If the real Dulcinea, Aldonsa Lorenzo, had figured “Hey sure he's a rich Hidalgo I'll marry him.” When Don Quixote regains his senses before he dies I'm actually disappointed. For me the fun is that he has his adventures and is a knight errant despite everything. No matter what happens or what anyone says he explains it away and enjoys himself. That is what makes me root for him and when he realizes the insanity of it all he losses that, the whole point of the adventures, of the bumps and bruises. He realizes he is a laughing stock and everything he has wasted and lost. It's not that I believe ignorance is bliss but when so much has been sacrificed to maintain that ignorance it is sad when it is lost.

Altogether I really enjoyed the book, which is what it all comes down to any way, no matter how genius a book is supposed to be (which is still up in the air as far as I'm concerned) it should be enjoyable. It was funny, even if a lot of the jokes are four hundred years old and are lost on me. It was a fun and interesting concept. The stories were entertaining if questionable why they were there. I can see why it has endured and inspired for so long. I am looking forward to expanding my reading of Don Quixote and deepening my understanding of Cervantes. The plot is thin, very little actually happens, there is no transformation or awakening, which leaves me wondering why I came along for the ride in the first place. It is the first novel so it deserves its place on our list but it's clunky and unrefined.

Doctoral dissertations could be written about this book (and probably have) but this was my first reading which Ms. Wise Bauer calls the grammar stage reading. I am now acquainted with Don Quixote but we have yet to make friends.

A Word for Steinbeck

2009-11-30T02:39:00.000-08:00

This week's word is a bit different, it's a Filipino word which I think we should adopt. There is a precedent for this, we have a Filipino word in our common lexicon, boondocks, which means mountain in Filipino, though our usage is a bit different you can see the progression. So the word is gigil (gee-gil), its meaning is that odd feeling you get when you're holding a kitten and it's just so cute you start talking high in pitch and you just want to squish its little face. Or your holding a baby and hugging him and his cheeks are just so plump and rosy you just want to chew on them. It's being overwhelmed by love or emotion or beauty. I've mentioned that my husband is from the Philippines, he will be hugging me and will squeeze me hard and say, "I'm so gigil for you." Or I'll be holding our baby and she'll bury her head in my chest grabbing at me and kick her legs like she wants to climb me and he'll say, "She's gigil for her mommy." It's a great word because it makes you feel like less of a weirdo when that feeling comes, and since I'm a new mommy it happens to me often, since its been legitimized with its own word.

Don Quixote quote

2009-11-27T10:23:00.001-08:00

Sancho and his proverbs, but this one gave me pause. "The kettle calling the pot burnt-arse."
Hmmm...never heard it that way before.

I hope your thanksgiving looked like below though I don't know why Rockwell put celery on the table he could have at least covered them in marshmallows or cream of mushroom soup. Something healthy on a thanksgiving table, what is he thinking?

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-26T09:35:00.001-08:00

Plato and a Platypus

2009-11-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .. Many of you probably already read it but I abide by Ralph Waldo Emerson's advice never to read a book younger than a year old. For those of you who don't know this book it is a brief primer to philosophy and a lot of great jokes. I thought my fellow beginning autodidacts would appreciate such a fun intro to a tough subject. It made an excellent bathroom book.

Claes Oldenburg, Soft Toilet

Ted meets his friend Al and exclaims, "Al! I heard you died!"
"Hardly," says Al, laughing. "As you can see, I'm very much alive."
"Impossible," says Ted. "The man who told me is much more reliable than you."

A woman reports her husband's disappearance to the police. They ask her for a description, and she says, "He's six feet, three inches tall, well-built, with thick, curly hair."
Her friend says, "What are you talking about? Your husband is five-feet-four, bald, and has a huge belly."
And she says, "Who wants that one back?"

A man with a parrot on his shoulder attends services on the first day of Rosh Hashanah. He bets several people that the parrot can lead the service more beautifully than the cantor. When the time comes, though, the parrot is totally silent. At home afterward, the man berates the parrot and bemoans his losses. The parrot says, "Use your head, schmuck! Think of the odds we can get now on Yom Kippur!"

Word of the week

2009-11-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

I got this one from Don Quixote, eructate: to belch.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, intro.

2009-11-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

I'm still not done with Don Quixote but I'm going to amp it up. I've been carving out thirty minutes every night to read it but now I will try an hour because I want to be done next week. I'll be reading it again but a new translation and I am planning to read some critical works about it as well as that Arthur du' Morte book so I won't be done done but I want to move on to other things.
Next is Epic of Gilgamesh, and as I said I'll be starting next week so order your copy now, preferably here, which is the oldest selection on Ms. Wise-Bauer's list snd perhaps the oldest story ever written. Originally written in cuneiform around 2750 and 2500 BCE. It was written by (or probably for) King of Uruk, Enkidu. Written in ancient Sumerian. Sounds fun huh?

Its or it's?

2009-11-19T01:09:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted anything on grammar in a while because I haven't had much time and English Grammar for Dummies hasn't been as helpful as I would have liked. I haven't forgot my goal to become a grammar curmudgeon though and so last week I ordered Woe Is I: The Grammarphobe's Guide to Better English in Plain English which has turned out to be perfect for the beginning autodidact. It is clear and concise, concise being one of the more important aspects, because as I said, I don't have a lot of time. It's also occasionally funny which is always a plus. There is a glossary and there is a section on writing email. I am not a book reviewer but I will pass on books that I enjoy or found interesting. This is one I definitely recommend.
The problem of its versus it's: an apostrophe stands in for words that have been omitted, so if you replace it's for it is (or it has) and the sentence still makes sense then it is correct.
This rule applies to many such conundrums such as who's (who is) and whose and you're (you are) and your.

Word of the Week and the big three-0.

2009-11-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday dear me-ee!
Happy birthday to me.

Yup today is my thirtieth birthday. Don't worry I'm not going to whine about my youth being over or get prosaic and talk about how nice it is to get older because you become more confident in who you are because neither are true. The two most immature and self-loathing people I know are in their forties and fifties. Birthdays and senescence do not make you better, learning does.

Senescent (say-nes'nt): To grow old, growing old, aging.

A Quote

2009-11-14T04:29:00.000-08:00

Love not what you are but what you may become.
Our incomparable Cervantes.

Don Quixote, VI

2009-11-13T11:21:00.000-08:00

From J.P.

First, it is helpful to know that Cervantes was poking fun at the chivalrous romances that were so popular in the middle ages, and even more so at the people who were reading them. If you have waded through Mallory’s Le Morte d’ Arthur (the whole shebang, or even a partial read of the original) you will appreciate the wit in DQ and the formula that he is both following, and yet at the same time rewriting. The other thing about DQ is that it is an incredible window into Spanish-life. So your complaint about it being more about everyone else in Spain is partially true – that is part of the author’s intent. The third aspect to remember is that the book is actually a novel inside a novel (Cervantes is one of the first, if not the first to do this – it is good to realize the novelty of this – no pun intended). In addition, between the two volumes of DQ there is a huge back story going on– After Cervantes wrote the first part of DQ, an anonymous author (many believe it was Lope de Vega with whom he had a big rivalry) released an unauthorized “second edition” of the book. Often, the second part of Cervantes’ DQ is a reaction and response to both the “unauthorized” version of his novel as well as the writing conventions of the age. Much of Cervantes’ genius was not recognized at the time that he wrote (just look at the entire canon of his writing if you are not familiar with it). He wrote in a number of different genres – some with more success than others, but he tried his hand at them and he came up with something totally new in DQ. Some of his most entertaining writings are his short stories. The second part of DQ was finished at the end of Cervantes life.

There will be resolution at the end of part II, but part of the reason it is so long is because of the “quest” inside the quest that is going on, and because Cervantes uses second volume to reply to the unauthorized version that was written (think early literary criticism). I will say that the first time I read DQ in my humanities class I did not enjoy it nearly as much as the second time through (in many ways it just seemed like a crazy guy writing a crazy story…and what was the point). Granted the second time through I read in the original Castilian – and I was living in Spain (so could appreciate the window into the Spanish life). More recently (last year) I waded through Le Mort d’ Arthur and gained a whole new appreciation for the entertainment of DQ – which I have been reading in parts again in English when I have time (I homeschool my kids, so I have to set aside my pleasure reading often).

Cervantes books usually combine an element of the autobiographical, many references to classical works (he does this as a critique of the accepted formulas for writing different genres that were common at the time – and actually REQUIRED to be published). All that to say, I think you will probably be frustrated with the story if you don’t want to explore some of the additional levels of story going on both within the story and outside of it. If you get a good translation with ample textual notes, it will be helpful to that end. It can be read just for itself – but I think much of the pleasure of reading it comes from “getting” many of the inside jokes, because it helps you to appreciate the genius of the man and the skill of his writing. At least that has been my experience with Cervantes.

I am so happy to get some input from a reader. I haven't enabled comments because a, I don't know how, b, I want to make sure that all the comments are only about the books, and c, that everyone plays nice. I welcome emails but reserve the right to reprint it unless you ask me not to I will not print names unless asked but will abbreviate. Thanks J.P..

Don Quixote, V

2009-11-12T17:53:00.000-08:00

I have just ordered Nabokov's Lectures on Don Quixote and there are several books on the Don that I intend to read. I have a feeling that Don Quixote is one of those Swimmer incidents where there is more the deeper you dig. Also being that Cervantes is the inventor of the modern novel I am wont to call him a genius and cut him all kinds of slack out of gratitude and respect. I am planning to begin reading from oldest to youngest rather than through each genre so the Epic of Gilgamesh is next but expect Don Quixote to keep popping up as I am planning to make him a project of mine.

Catalhoyuk, Library Thing, and Comments

2009-11-12T03:46:00.000-08:00

I am taking an Archeology class and we are talking about an ancient town discovered in Turkey. As far as we know thousands of people lived in Catalhoyuk but none of the homes are larger or more opulent and all of the burials are the same signifying that this was perhaps an egalitarian society. For this size that is rare. Also there are no streets. People moved from one home to another over roof tops and entered in through the window. That's kind of fun don't you think?

Also, I just discovered Library Thing and am obsessed so welcome if your following me from there. I really want this to be a buddy reading system. I have been debating and debating on whether or not to have a comments feature. Being right there would encourage more response but from prior experience this can open up a whole can of worms. For now just email me. Let me know if you think there should be comments or not.

Word of the week

2009-11-09T09:07:00.000-08:00

Stentorian: Loud and powerful of voice. Origins in Homer, Stentor is a herald in the Iliad.

Don Quixote, IV

2009-11-05T04:05:00.000-08:00

While I am still enjoying Don Quixote it seems to be less about him than every other person in Spain. I am hopeful that all the side stories will relate to Don Quixote, that they will reflect and be a counterpart to the story as the second story (I forget their names) in Anna Karenina showed how leading a chaste and moral courtship would lead to happiness while the adultery of Anna led to misery and despair. But I am a little afraid that at least some is simply to stretch the story out. Don Quixote was published as a series and, as can be imagined, a writer would wish to have as much story to publish as possible. My worry is that if he is in fact padding the story with these sub-stories then isn't he giving in to the tastes of the masses for sensationalist nonsense that Don Quixote pokes fun of? I am only half way through the book so I am still hopeful of a satisfying resolution and eager to get on with the story of Don Quixote instead of all these maidens, Dorotea, Luscinda, Zoraida, and the other one, each more beautiful than the last (gag).

Columbia River Gorge

2009-11-03T09:39:00.001-08:00

One nice thing that happened during my move was that I got to drive through the Columbia River Gorge which I always enjoy. Besides being beautiful it is the site of fissure eruptions which is an unusual occurrence on continental crust, it usually happens under the sea in oceanic crust. A fissure eruption is where the entire surface cracks and lava bubbles up and spreads out like pancake batter. So when I'm driving through the gorge I look up at the cliffs and think 'Lava, miles and miles of lava.' It astounds me. It has also seen another geologic event. During the ice age a finger of a huge glacier held back an enormous lake, bigger than the great lakes, and when the ice damn broke the water flooded western Washington and Oregon and the water escaped to the Pacific through the Columbia River. This happened about forty times. Here is more about it and here are some pictures of its loveliness.

Word of the week

2009-11-02T04:03:00.000-08:00

Mendacious men-dey-shuhs; a flaw, shortcoming, not truthful; lying or false
Mendacity: the quality or state or being mendacious 2. a lie; falsehood
New World Dictionary

Don Quixote, III

2009-10-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be illuminating to learn a bit about the world Cervantes lived in. Here are a couple sites about the time of Don Quixote and once I can find the toilet paper among all the boxes I'll write a bit more.
Spain 1600
This Painting by Caravaggio was finished near the same time Don Quixote was published. Caravaggio is one of the last great Renaissance artists, after him they would move into the period known as Baroque.

Moving- what a pain

2009-10-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

Well that was about the worst thing ever. My poor sister and husband had to do almost all of the grunt work because the baby, most likely upset by everything, would scream the second I put her down. And the cats peed on themselves during the drive to Washington. So the poor things had to sit in thier own urine, because all the towels were packed, and when we finally arrived at our hotel in Yakima Washington at about midnight, exhausted, we got to give the cats a bath.
We were unable to come up here to look for a new apartment so moving in was the first we've seen of it and well...its a roof I guess. We can't live here because of all our stuff. Sigh. There is still a lot of work to do and I have a midterm this week. Wah wah wah.

Word of the week

2009-10-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

I'm just going to post the word of the week a little early. Usually I'll post that on Monday, a good start for an autodidact's week, but the big move starts tomorrow and even though the internet is scheduled for Monday you never know what will happen. I found this word on this great site though I already know quite a few of the words it may be informative for some.

abstruse adj. Dealing with matters difficult to be understood.

So fill out some post its and put them on the bathroom mirror, the refrigerator, the car stereo, the baby's forehead, the remote control, any where you'll see it often and I'll be back next week with more on Don Quixote
.

Being; a gripe.

2009-10-21T01:28:00.001-07:00

From one of my newest treasure A Book of Days for the Literary Year which I learned from about from Mental Multivitamin: on October 20th (yesterday I know) in 1955 Jean Cocteau is initiated into the Academie Francaise, declaring "Since it's now fashionable to laugh at the conservative French Academy, I have remained a rebel by joining it."

Exactly. I had an art instructor who was a real dolt, he declared that even if he had wanted a white pickup truck for years if he suddenly started seeing a lot a white trucks he'd get the opposite. The relentless pursuit of being 'different' being 'unique' is itself not an original idea. Why not try just being.

Don Quixote, II

2009-10-21T00:12:00.000-07:00

Reading Don Quixote it is easy to draw comparisons to so many things even in modern culture. Though this book is considered the first novel and was written in 1605 it has the grain of truth of human experience that keeps it relevant. When Don Quixote begins bragging "Before anyone shears me I will pluck the beards off the chins of all those who even contemplate touching a single hair of mine!" I think of my brother as a teenager and his dopey friends half seriously knocking each other about. I read about how Don Quixote has so enamored himself of his knight errant books and wasted his life in the reading of them that he has lost grip with reality and I think of a World of Warcraft player thirty years old and living at home, he delivers pizzas for a living comes home and spends all of the rest of his time online. In my minds eye I see his fat hairy belly hanging over the elastic band of his grey sweatpants, a neon orange Cheetos trail down the front of his t shirt his only company the glow of his computer screen and his only sense of purpose, accomplishment and self-esteem his current level. A modern day Don Quixote.
I also thought of young women who watch those Hills reality shows, I'm sorry I don't really know the name but you know the ones I mean. The made up drama, the feeling that these people are their friends and that they know those reality show actors can entertain and dull the minds of silly girls who can then search that same kind of vapid interaction in their own relationships. I thought of women who read harlequin romances ad naseaum until they are no longer happy with their own real relationships (though sometimes its the other way around, their dissatisfaction with their husbands make them look to those books) and then I realized I was not the only person to think of that.
Gustav Flaubert's Madame Bovary is on our list and I know that that is the story, a woman who, bored of marriage reads to many romances and tries to find that same kind of passion in reality. I can guess the ending. It's one of those books I've been meaning to read and now I have a new vain to analyze it in: Cervantes influence on Flaubert.
Which brings to mind what Ms. Bauer said about reading the books from oldest to newest to retain the historical flow. I mindlessly agreed and now I realize just how wise that is.

Don't forget to link through my page to get these books and help me keep this blog going. Its a big list.

A little poem

2009-10-20T00:11:00.000-07:00

The Seasons

Then sleep the seasons, full of might;
While slowly swells the pod,
And rounds the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.

The winter comes: the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;
The white drift heaps against the hut;
And night is pierced with stars.

Coventry Patmore
From A Victorian Posy

Ponderings

2009-10-20T00:02:00.000-07:00

We all procrastinate but some of us are chronic. From an article by Steven Kotler in Psychology Today:

"Procrastination reflects our brain's hunger to feel good now rather than reap future rewards. But at the end of the day, it's really about choice: You have to decide exactly who it is that you intend to be."

"Expectancy of success is essentially a measure of confidence. The more confident you are, the less likely you are to put off a task. Task value is a combination of two factors: how much fun this particular job is and what it means to you and your life. The more fun, the more meaning, the less procrastination.

The need for instant gratification looks at both how much time will pass before you are rewarded for doing the job and how badly you need a reward for its completion. You're more likely to finish a report due next week if it results in immediate promotion. But if that promotion must wait until a year-end review that is still six months away, the urge to tarry increases. Finally, impulsiveness measures how easily distracted you are. The more readily you succumb to distraction, the greater the chance you'll procrastinate."

How much does it help to know why you procrastinate? There are some interesting ideas in the article but I like the bottom line message, it's about choice.

A Great Find

2009-10-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

A couple of great finds I thought I'd share with you. A Victorian Posy
is full of gorgeous pictures, lovely poetry and prose, and it smells amazing.
I Also noticed that most of my visitors are coming from The Well-Trained Mind site so I can only assume most of you are homeschoolers so I thought you might like this, Isaac Asimov's The Rocky Planet, very cool even though it's a bit out of date.

Woof Woof

2009-10-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

Dog Blog

Word of the week

2009-10-19T00:42:00.000-07:00

Preamble: pree-am-buhl–noun

1.	an introductory statement; preface; introduction.

2.	the introductory part of a statute, deed, or the like, stating the reasons and intent of what follows.

3.	a preliminary or introductory fact or circumstance: His childhood in the slums was a preamble to a life of crime.

4.	(initial capital letter) the introductory statement of the U.S. Constitution, setting forth the general principles of American government and beginning with the words, “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union. …”

I am moving this week from Oregon to Washington, which will probably mean I won't be able to post very often. The husband also packed my dictionary along with some other books even though I pointed to the stack next to the couch and told him that I was using those. I guess he didn't believe me. We're newlyweds, he'll learn. So I copied and posted this from here.

Two minutes forty six seconds

2009-10-18T02:36:00.000-07:00

My set daily puzzle time is getting better. Its amazing how much better my time is when my husband isn't over my shoulder.
"What about that one?"
"I already got that one."
"What about that, that and that?"
"No those two are both green."
"Oh."

Why care?

2009-10-18T01:05:00.000-07:00

Y? Care? About? Grammar?

Did any of that alarm you? Did the 'y' irritate you? Then you are no grammar curmudgeon.

I didn't care about grammar until recently (note I didn't say 'used to' I have learned it's a no no). I have always wanted to be a writer but for various reasons I won't get into here I have only recently sat down with serious intent. After a month of hacking away I found that my former devil mare care attitude had left me in such a state that I did not know how to use the tools of the trade. Visiting sites like Mental Multivitamin, the Underground Grammarian, and The Mudge left me cold and a bit shame faced. But after a moment I realized I didn't need to be embarrassed about my ignorance. I know I am not the only person who's education has failed them and who from lack of exercise has lost the bit of grammar muscle we had and are now weak, uh is there a comma here or,...eh I'll just leave it. After all the supplier you're sending that email to won't know either. But is that okay? I don't think it is and I've been trying to come up with the explanation for that idea. Here's what I've come up with: it's like driving without traffic rules. I know, it's something Mrs. Bosselman would have come up with (Second Grade-shiver). Never the less it's true. Would you want to drive somewhere where there are few rules and no one to enforce the rules?
My husband is from the Philippines and it took him a long time to get comfortable driving here. He'd grip the wheel sucking air in between his teeth, when someone tried to pass him I thought he was going to have a heart attack. In Manila there are few rules and fewer police to hand out tickets. He told me that people will fly up the shoulder of the road and cut you off...from the right! Yikes. Here we have a lot of traffic rules which he had to get used to and he had to learn that he didn't need to worry about what everyone else was doing.
English is a living language and so it will change. The true grammarians can fuss and complain about all the little rules and pull out their little glasses and sniff at our errors. I want only a working knowledge. That's why I am posting quick little references. After a bit there should be a good library of tips, some will hopefully stick in your mind. If not, then next time you find yourself staring at an email wondering if the comma is in the right spot, rather than hoping the other guy won't know any better then you, glance over here.
That is the point of this blog, as I learn I want to share it with you.

My Goal

2009-10-16T21:48:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I took an online class. An English class, into to literature or something like that. One of the stories I was asked to read was John Cheever's The Swimmer. I read it and didn't like it, didn't understand it, put it away and went to sleep. The next morning I picked it up and read it again because I was going to have to post some comments about it and comment on other peoples comments that day so I needed to be clear why I didn't like it and see if I couldn't make better sense of it. After reading it again I understood what was happening so I posted and started a conversation with another student about it. It still wasn't my favorite of the four stories I'd been assigned but that student noticed some things I hadn't and I told her some things I saw. Pretty soon we had a good discussion going and I was referring back to the story to see what she was saying and vice versa. Another student see's our conversation and says she doesn't know why we're so excited about she thought the story quote 'sucked'. I told her go read it again. She posts back, 'you were right' and she joins in, there are so many layers to this story. By the end of it The Swimmer had become one of my favorite short stories ever and I knew John Cheever was a genius.

I know most people won't want to read this entire list but as I go I hope some will join in a few of the books. I hope some people will read this blog and be encouraged to pick up some of the classics. I hope some people will see this blog and be inspired to look a bit closer while reading. But my real goal is to open up a dialogue about what we're reading. I hope people will email me and I will post it. I'm interested in what people will say about these books. You can email me at autodidact101@gmail.com.

hehe

2009-10-15T23:21:00.000-07:00

There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Well-Trained Mind.

2009-10-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

From The Well-Educated Mind:
"Sustained, Serious Reading is at the center of the self-education project. (...) Reading is the most important method of self-improvement. Observation limits our learning to our immediate surroundings; conversation and lectures are valuable, but limit us to the views of a few nearby persons. Reading alone allows us to reach out beyond the restrictions of time and space,...."

And this, "Even before the advent of television, reading that required concentration was a difficult and neglected activity." As Don Quixote can attest to. A lot of blame has been placed on television for the dumbing down of America, there is always someone saying that things are going to hell in a handbasket.

Ms. Bauer's book is teaching how to use a classical education as an approach to reading. She is suggesting reading a book three times. The first time is the grammar stage reading where you get a sense of the information and story. The second is the logic stage where you begin analyzing the material, is it true, etc. She recognizes that most of will not have the time to read each book (and in fact she doesn't say that you need read all of the books) this is where the reading notebook comes in. If you have been underlining important passages (or using post it flags), writing questions down, and keeping a record of facts in your note book you can go over that for the logic stage. The rhetoric stage is the hardest. This is when you'll develop your arguments about the book. (I'll go into this later.) She writes, "You don't have to progress all the way through grammar-stage reading, logic-stage inquiry, and rhetoric-stage discussion for every book. If a book enthralls you, linger over it. If you barely make it through the first reading and close it with relief, there's no reason to feel that you must go on to the next stage of inquiry."

After I posted the list of novels where I whined about Moby Dick I picked up TWEM. "But if you simply cannot wade through a book after a good solid try, put it down and go on to the next book on the list. Don't jettison the whole project because you can't stand Paradise Lost. Even literary scholars have books that they have never managed to get all the way through. My bete noire is Moby-Dick; I know it's one of the great works of American literature, but I have made at least eight runs at it during my adult life and have never managed to get past midpoint."
HA! Very nice to know you have company. I've only tried half as many times but I think its plenty. It's such a shame too because it starts out so well.

I have also excluded Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, she writes that it is on the list because it started a war but for me it isn't somewhere I want to go. So Moby-Dick is gone and Adolf but other than that I am up to the challenge.

Have you ordered Don Quixote yet?

Watch me take a dive

2009-10-15T00:37:00.000-07:00

Hey she looked. I got a nice little email from Mental Multivitamin and it made my day.
I Just saw this author on the Daily Show and I'm intrigued. I already have a huge list to read but I think this will be added to my extra credit wish list on Amazon.
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
Jon Stewart asked her whether it wasn't okay for people to believe thought could make them richer and healthier wasn't harmless like hey Jesus makes you stop drinking well that's fine. She responded, 'No I don't think self delusion is ever okay."
Hehe.

2009-10-13T23:42:00.000-07:00

From On the Uses of a Liberal Education by Mark Edmundson.
Is it a surprise, then, that this generation of students -- steeped in consumer culture before going off to school, treated as potent customers by the university well before their date of arrival, then pandered to from day one until the morning of the final kiss-off from Kermit or one of his kin -- are inclined to see the books they read as a string of entertainments to be placidly enjoyed or languidly cast down? Given the way universities are now administered (which is more and more to say, given the way that they are currently marketed), is it a shock that the kids don't come to school hot to learn, unable to beat their own ignorance? For some measure of self-dislike, or self-discontent -- which is much different than simple depression -- seems to me to be a prerequisite for getting an education that matters. My students, alas, usually lack the confidence to acknowledge what would be their most precious asset for learning: their ignorance.

Ah how comforting because I have no problem declaring my ignorance and my eagerness to learn. I came by this essay from Mental Multivitamin my favorite blog. I avoided blogs before because I am somewhat of a technophobe but M-mv is the exception. In fact it is my inspiration. I have done these kinds of projects before, I tore out a page from the back of a Penguin Classic listing other books and slowly read my way through them, (I would have to say that this is the largest one) and that is why I ordered Susan Wise Bauer's book The Well-Educated Mind. On their website they have a list of blogs but most were awful mommy blogs. I was hoping to find a blog of a homeschooling mother talking about how she uses the trivium to teach her children not writing about nonsense. On the list though was Mental Multivitamin. I am slowly reading through the back postings and am finishing up 04. She really inspired me, Ms. Bauer's book and M-mv coincided and here I am.
M-mv is the cool adult blog and I am a little bit like a little kid jumping up and down, "Hey look at me! Look look, watch me. Are you watching?...Hey you weren't watching!" Just desperately trying to get noticed. Oh well, education is it's own reward.

A little cultur[al waste land].

2009-10-13T19:48:00.000-07:00

Duane Hanson, this artist amazes me. Yes those are statues. Check this one out too.

The dreaded comma splice duh duh duh

2009-10-13T02:05:00.000-07:00

An independent clause can be separated from a subordinate clause with a subordinate conjunction and/or a comma.
Translation: An independent clause is a complete thought or sentence, a subordinate clause adds to the independent clause with more information, a subordinate conjunction is a word that connects the two clauses.
Subordinate conjunctions: while, because, although, though, since, when, where, if, whether, before, until, than, as, as if, in order that, so that, whenever, and wherever.
False subordinate conjunctions: however, consequently, therefore, moreover, also, and furthermore.
Examples: Jack needs to do the dishes before his mother has a fit. Before his mother has a fit, Jack needs to do the dishes.
His mother has a fit. This is not a complete sentence but Jack needs to do the dishes is.

How to avoid the dreaded comma splice: make sure you have an independent clause or whole sentence that can stand on its own, use an appropriate subordinate conjunction, do not try to connect two complete sentences with a comma (that is what semicolon's are for).

Aggrandize

2009-10-12T01:10:00.000-07:00

Aggrandize \ə-ˈgran-ˌdīz 1. To make greater, more powerful, richer, etc.: often used reflexively 2. To make seem greater or more exalted. Aggrandizement, aggrandizer

I don't think Obama needed any aggrandizement from the Nobel prize committee, but that is what he got.

How 'bout that, a little topical example with our weekly word.

The rest of the list.

2009-10-10T01:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to dig up all of these from Amazon as I did for the novels but please click through for any upcoming book purchases and help me buy all these books. Think of it as good karma, helping me save my marriage hehe.

Memoirs and Autobiography
The Confessions, Augustine
The Book of Margery Kempe, Margery Kempe
Essay, Michel de Montaigne
The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself, Teresa of Avila
Meditations, Rene Descartes
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, John Bunyan
The Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration, Mary Rowlandson
Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin
Walden, Henry David Thoreau
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written By Herself, Harriet Jacobs
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass
Up From Slavery, Booker T. Washington
Ecce Homo, Friedrich Nietzsche
An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein (eshk, Moby Dick)
The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, C.S. Lewis
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X
Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton (ooh I like that)
The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Born Again, Charles W. Colson
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez, Richard Rodriguez
The Road from Coorain, Jill Ker Conway
All Rivers Run to the Sea: Memoirs, Elie Wiesel

History
The Histories, Herodotus
The Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
The Republic, Plato
Lives, Plutarch
The City of God, Augustine
The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Bede
The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
Utopia, Sir Thomas More
The True End of Civil Government, John Locke
The History Of England, Volume V, David Hume
The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Common Sense, Thomas Paine
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Mary Wollstonecraft
Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, Jacob Burckhardt
The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B Du Bois
The Protestant ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber
Queen Victoria, Lytton Strachey
The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell
The New England Mind, Perry Miller
The Great Crash 1929, John Kenneth Galbraith
The Longest Day, Cornelius Ryan
The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, Eugene D. Genovese
A Distant Mirror: The Clamitious Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman
All the President's Men, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, James M. McPherson
A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Dairy, 1785-1812, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama

Drama
Agamemnon, Aeschylus
Oedipus the King, Sophocles
Medea, Euripides
The Birds, Aristophanes
Poetics, Aristotle
Everyman, Aristotle
Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlow
Richard III, A Midsummer's Dream, Hamlet, Shakespeare
Tartuffe, Moliere
The Way of the World, William Congreve
She Stoops to Conquer, Oliver Goldsmith
The School for Scandal, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov
Saint Joan, George Bernard Shaw
Murder in the Cathedral, T.S. Eliot
Our Town, Thornton Wilder
Long Day's Journey Into Night, Eugene O'Neill
No Exit, Jean Paul Sartre
A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams
Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett
A Man For All Seasons, Robert Bolt
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard
Equus, Peter Shaffer

Poetry
The Epic of Gilgamesh
The Iliad, The Odyssey, Homer
Greek Lyricists
Odes, Horace
Beowulf
Inferno, Dante Alighieri
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
Sonnets, Shakespeare
John Donne
Psalms, King James Bible
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Songs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake
William Wordsworth
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
John Keats
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Walt Whitman
Emily Dickinson
Christina Rossetti
Gerard Manley Hopkins
William Butler Yeats
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
William Carlos Williams
Ezra Pound
T.S. Eliot
Langston Hughes
W. H. Auden
Philip Larkin
Allen Ginsberg
Sylvia Plath
Mark Strand
Adrienne Rich
Seamus Heaney
Robert Pinsky
Jane Kenyon
Rita Dove

...I feel sick. Also I feel like Homer Simpson looking at a mountain of donuts, 'ahhh boooks, aaahh' tongue lolling out. Somehow, I'm going to read all of these, but for now I'm going to bed.

Don Quixote, I

2009-10-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

Don Quixote, so far, is hilarious. I did not know that. It is easy to read even though it was written in 1602. I'm sure that is due to the translator and the fact that it wasn't written in old English.
It is the story of a man who has been reading to many romantic tales of knights and ladies, he becomes a tad nutty and runs off, with a not-to-bright farmer Sancho Panza as his side kick though Sancho is often the voice of reason, in search of adventure after making a make shift suit of armor, getting an old nag of a horse and imagining up a lady paramour he names Dulcinea. Here is a taste:
"After a a couple of miles, Don Quixote spotted a throng of people who, as it afterwards transpired, were merchants from Toledo on their way to Murcia to buy silk. As soon as Don Quixote saw them, he imagined that here was the opportunity for a new adventure; and, wishing to imitate in every way he believed he could the passages of arms he'd read about in his books, he decided that one he had in mind was perfect for the situation. And so, with a gallant bearing and a resolute air, he steadied himself in his stirrups, clutched his lance, lifted his shield to his chest and, taking up his position in the middle of the highway, awaited the arrival of these knights errant, for this was what he judged them to be; and when they came within sight and earshot, Don Quixote raised his voice and, striking a haughty posture, declared: 'You will none of you advance one step further unless all of you confess that in all the world there is no maiden more beauteous than the Empress of La Mancha, the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso.'" Imagine this scene on your commute hehe.

And here:
"'...and if I do not utter any complaint about the pain it is because knights errant are not permitted to complain about wounds, even if their entrails are spilling out of them.'
'If that's so there's nothing more for me to say,' replied Sancho, 'As for me, I can tell you I'm going to moan like anything about the slightest little pain,...'" Hehe, once again Sancho is the one to make sense.

The Well-Trained Mind. Beginning Don Quixote.

2009-10-09T00:24:00.000-07:00

Susan has several good suggestions I want to share from The Well-Educated Mind. On page 68 She begins a section about how to read a novel based on the trivium which is, grammar, logic, and rhetoric, a classical method of teaching and learning. She says to read the preface only if it is written by the author or you will be swayed in your reading by another persons opinion. Look the book over before beginning, read the back, front, and table of contents. Look at the brief author bio. In your notebook keep a list of the characters and their relationship to each other. This is a very good idea when reading Russian writers as a common complaint is the difficulty keeping people straight.

She also writes that when reading nonfiction you need to ask yourself what the author is trying to convince you of, but that that is not necessary when reading a novel. She writes that the novelist is not presenting you with an argument. I disagree. Every author has a unique perspective of the world and they present that with their book. When you are reading Dickens he is trying to convince you that if you work hard and are a good moral person you will succeed, get the girl, inherit a large amount of money and go to heaven. Kafka and Sylvia Plath will present you with a different take on the human condition. I'm only a little way into Don Quixote but I can see that Cervantes is trying to present an argument to me about how to live about how people are. When reading a novel look for the authors view of the world, and his beliefs about the human experience.

How to Read a Book

2009-10-08T04:10:00.000-07:00

Adler and Van Doren have succinctly described what I feared and what I am aiming for. "There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read widely and not well." "To avoid this error-the error of assuming that to be widely read is to be well-read are the same thing- we must consider a certain distinction in types of learning (page 12)."
In chapter two they outline levels of reading: elementary, inspectional, analytical, and syntopical reading. Inspectional reading is where most people stop, after elementary you can answer, "What does the sentence say?" After the second level you can answer, "What was the book about?" How many times have you asked that question or answered that? For many books that is enough, after reading the Notebook knowing the answer to this question is enough. However, reading Crime and Punishment requires more. "Analytical reading is preeminently for the sake of understanding (19)." This is the level that I am trying to achieve. I will try to gt to the last level at another time. For now gaining a better understanding of what I am reading is enough.
Tip from the book: ask these questions during your reading, what is the book about as a whole, what is being said in detail and how, is the book true in whole or in part, and, what of it?

Coordinate Conjuntions

2009-10-07T01:12:00.000-07:00

A list of coordinating conjunctions: for, but, yet, so, nor, and, and or.
example: A101 is bad at grammar and math, but she is trying to improve.

The sentence did not get a comma after the and because it was not a complete sentence, but it did get one after but because it was a compliment to the independent clause.

This may all be very remedial for many of you but I need it, and it may be a good reminder nonetheless.

Yup, I'm a dummy.

It's here.

2009-10-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

At last my copy of Don Quixote has arrived and I can get started. As an added bonus it came with a note from one Miss Julie, to 'My dear Jeremy,' who appears to have been writing with her left hand. It'll be a fun book mark.

Word of the Week

2009-10-04T23:46:00.000-07:00

Superlative : \su̇-ˈpər-lə-tiv\ Superior to or excelling all others; of the highest kind 2. excessive or exaggerated
New World Dictionary

I have bought those word a day calenders and I think I learned a few words from them. To me though a word a day is like taking a hand full of darts at lobbing them at the target, sure a few will hit but most are doomed for the floor. I am going to write this word on post its and note cards and tape them around my house: the refrigerator, the bathroom mirror, the remote, the stereo in my car, the baby's forehead. Well maybe not that last one, but places I will see it regularly. Every Monday I will post the word of the week.

The Plan; The List

2009-10-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Okay here it is. The list of classics in The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. Later I will delve into the biographies and histories she has listed. But first
1.)Don Quixote Miguel de Cervantes
2.)Pilgrims Progress John Bunyan
3.)Gulliver's Travels Jonathan Swift
4.)Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
5.)Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
6.)Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
7.)The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne
8.)Moby-Dick or, The Whale Herman Mellville
9.)Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life among the Lowly Harriet Beecher Stowe
10.)Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
11.)Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12.)Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
13.)The Return of the Native Thomas Hardy
14.)The Portrait of a Lady Henry James
15.)The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain
16.)The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane
17.)Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
18.)The House of Mirth Edith Wharton
19.)The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald
20.)Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf
21.)The Trial Franz Kafka
22.)Native Son Richard Wright
23.)The Stranger Albert Camus
24.)1984 George Orwell
25.)Invisible Man Ralph Ellison
26.)Seize the Day Saul Bellow
27.)One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
28.)If on a Winter's Night a Traveler Italo Calvino
29.)Song of Solomon Toni Morrison
30.)White Noise Don Delillo
31.)Possession: A Romance A.S. Byatt

phew!- I tried to get Ms. Bauer's suggested translator where available but some like If on a Winter's Night a Traveler where not available.
Quite a few of these books I have already read. As I said earlier a book isn't a notch on the belt once you've read it. Once you have read a book you have simply made its acquaintance. To make friends you have to pay more than one visit. If the book is good company this is easy, some of those books I am looking forward to revisiting. I don't know how I'm going to get through Moby Dick again though. As far as a time line for getting through this list I would love to give one, to say I'll do it in a year. But I have a small baby, I'm in college, and my husband's work has us moving every four months or so, so I'd hate to make myself a liar. I love reading though and it shouldn't take me to long. See if you can keep up, I'm sure you too have many distractions in your life. You just need to read thirty minutes a day, fifteen at lunch, fifteen before bed, and don't forget your notebook, if you read at an average pace you'll finish a book in two to three weeks.

Why learn to read?

2009-10-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

'Uh, excuse me, I already know how to read. See? I'm reading this right now. '

The first chapter of How to Read a Book, The Activity and Art of Reading (ooh I love that), says that this book is for those who wish to become better informed, for those who wish for greater understanding. They go on: "There is a sense in which we moderns are inundated with facts to the detriment of understanding. One of the reasons for this situation is the very media we have mentioned [television and radio, and I would add internet] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary. (though this is only and appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements-all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics-to make it easy for him to "make up his own mind" with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead he inserts a packaged opinion in his own mind,[...]. He has preformed acceptably without having to think."

Exactly. The part about ingenious rhetoric reminds me of The Daily Show. I love The Daily Show but it is so easy, you don't have to think you merely have to sit eating a late night bowl of ice cream or chips and laugh at the jokes and the stupid politicians and Jon has done all the thinking for you. I don't have the statistics but a large percent of the population claims this as the place where they get their news much to Jon's dismay. Watch and laugh but also think. Much of this attitude comes because on some level we know the news is biased and slanted, because there is so much out there. It isn't just laziness, apathy, or the desire to be entertained that drives us from serious reading. It is that we do not know how or where to look. That is why that cynical kind of humor is so appealing.

Because of? Due to?

2009-10-04T01:56:00.000-07:00

from:

Because of, is a description of an action.
The ball game was canceled because of rain.

Due to, describes a noun or pronoun.
Part of Mental multivitamin's obsession with books is due to her book poor childhood.

I think we can all agree that what I really need to conquer are commas. There are seventeen uses for commas. Don't hold your breath.

The Notebook

2009-10-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

Okay-so the notebook. I said I would explain it later and here it is. As I read through Susan Wise Bauer's list I will be writing questions, comments, and summaries about what I read. That's a lot of what I'll publish here. How I am doing with the books as well as how my followers are doing in their reading. Right now I am waiting for my copy of Don Quixote to arrive from Amazon. I am not wasting time though I am reading through the beginning of The Well-Educated Mind and How to Read a Book. As well as trying to study more about grammar. Bear with me on that.

Susan writes on page 33 about keeping a reading journal, she says: 'simply reading isn't enough. We must learn to fix our minds, to organize our reading so that we are able to retain the skeleton of ideas. What we summarize in our own words becomes our own.' Reading a book isn't a notch on the belt. 'Yup I've read Don Quixote ain't I clever.' If you do not understand it, if it doesn't become a part of your mental landscape, if it hasn't enriched your life, then it means nothing. Learning to read for understanding as well as how to analyze the books, that is what I am out for. I was always turned off by the idea of dissecting books. To me they are living things and if you pick them apart then you kill them. But I am trying to think of them as crystals with shades of color if you only hold them to the light and look turning it ever so slightly this way and than that way.

Three minutes forty seconds

2009-10-03T23:11:00.000-07:00

Yay! I just finished the set daily puzzle. That's the first time I have gotten all six sets since I started a week ago when I first discovered Mental Multivitamin. I'm getting smarter. Smart enough not to end this with a wide smiling emoticon.

...and how to use them

2009-10-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

Polonius: What do you read, my Lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

I need to learn about grammar. Many people do. Laziness and forgetfulness have made us throw away the fundamentals of our language. One thing I blame are cell phones. I resisted texting for a long time but I did eventually gave in. But I think I became poorer for it. It was another excuse to be lazy and not actually call that friend I haven't seen in so long, it also developed bad habits in me and I know I am not alone. Admit it, you've left a note for your husband or roommate or whomever that read, C u @ 8. Maybe not quite this bad but still a stunted text inspired letter such as, Happy B'day, and they were lucky for the apostrophe. I have bought myself a cell phone with a full qwerty keyboard and I am disciplining myself to use it, to send proper messages. I believe that if I just take the couple of extra seconds to spell things out, use punctuation even, the rules of usage will be fresher in my mind; then when it comes to more formal writing I will be able communicate clearly and not sound like an idiot.

When first meeting someone one of the first things they use to judge your intelligence is vocabulary. In writing you can add how well you use the words, e.i. your grammar. I may have made an error with the preceding sentence, I actually am not sure but that is something I want to correct in the next months of my self education project. Instead of using spell check and moving on I am going to take note, just a few seconds longer to look at the word: so that's how you spell preceding.

You Will Need

2009-10-02T01:32:00.000-07:00

Oh sheesh, and I already see several grammatical errors. I have always been of the descriptive grammar persuasion rather than the prescriptive, but I have seen the error of my ways. I will have a weekly grammar lesson as well as a word of the week vocabulary feature. As I read over the materials I have chosen I will discuss it and give tips, and any tips that are forwarded to me, your input is welcome, so that we can all benefit and grow.
We will need a copy of The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had
By Susan Wise Bauer
How to Read a Book (A Touchstone book) Mortimer Adler, and/or How to Read and Why By Harold Bloom, and the first book on our list provided by Susan Wise Bauer which is: Don Quixote (Penguin Classics)

as well as a good notebook. I'll expand on this in a later post.

Also if you would like to improve on your command of the English language along with me I am using a copy of The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
and English Grammar for Dummies. A classic and a, well, not so classic. Hehe.

Introduction

2009-10-02T01:27:00.000-07:00

I am an autodidact. I first learned this word from Bono in a Rolling Stone interview several years ago. I looked it up and was blown away. Rarely can you find a word, a single word, that can so encapsulate your life.
I won't be harping on and on about my own life. Assuming you're not twelve and since I'm not your sister I don't know why you would want to read that; I do feel the need to tell you a bit about myself as a preface.
I was taken out of school when I was twelve. After that my mother 'home-schooled' me. While I think home-school can be a wonderful thing for some parents to do my mother is not one of them. That first year she bought a math book and taught me two lessons from it. After that...nothing, and I mean nothing. She also wasn't much of a reader, religious material and the occasional self-help book. For some reason my brother (also home-schooled) and I loved to read. My mother would bring us to the library every couple of weeks to stock up. We had books tucked under our chin and stacked all the way down to the tips of our fingers. I had no regulation on what I read which was usually Sweet Valley High and Babysitters' Club. After a while though I began to worry about becoming stupid. All my friends were in school learning while I was home gobbling up these junk food books and watching Saved by the Bell ( I know, I know, but give me a chance here). So I began checking out Dickens and Shakespeare along with my regulars. Every year the state of Oregon required homeschoolers to take a test, math and science were always suffering (though not as much as you might think) but the other subjects I was years ahead of my age level. I have since my educationally bereft childhood attempted some community college; basically though every bit of knowledge, skill, or wisdom I have I found on my own, through reading. Without great books I would be, well, an idiot. I wouldn't even have had a basic education. I left school the first semester of middle school for Pete's sake. That is why I so strongly identified with this word and why I feel so strongly about books, particularly the classics.
I know that there is already a plethora of literary blogs out there but I felt the need to put my two cents in because frankly I felt left out. I felt like Bridget Jones in that scene at the launch party trying to get in on the Great Conversation (more on this later) afraid someone would turn to me and ask me to define a novel or irony, eep.
For all the wonders of being an autodidact there are some drawbacks. You don't know what you don't know. It is like Marvin, from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, with one foot in the mud just going around and around to prove a point. My point was: at least I'm trying.

So I have a plan and anyone who wants to can join me. Its a journey. It won't be easy but I promise I won't chastise you for wasting time on less worthy pursuits or mock your guilty pleasures. You're company is welcome however much time you can devote but I will ask you to carve out half an hour every day to reading the great books with me. Think about that, only half an hour. Just skip that rerun of Two and a Half Men, you don't even really like that show do you? Or if you do, (see I'm not mocking you) set a timer on your internet trolling, only check your email once. Half an hour is nothing in your day you can do it.