Wendell Berry

Nathan Coulter deserves a full book review, though I may read more of the Port Royal series before eulogizing the initial offering. But briefly, I greatly enjoyed the book. I've paraphrased the quote below to a number of friends already, and was happy to find it requoted online since I thought the book was so good that I gave it away soon after reading it. Really, can you find a better recommendation than that???

Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you’d left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth.

E.B. White

This is just a quote, stolen from Esther ("from E. B. White, who is commenting on the centralization of schools and transportation to school via bus, in 1940"). I recently visited the Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, where one of their more frequently referenced exhibits is a 20-minute video on lobstermen narrated by E.B. White. It was a unique treat to hear his narration of the day in the life of a lobsterman. There is something so practical and simple in appreciating our daily work even though the work of others can seem exotic by virtue of unfamiliarity, habitat or culture.

"Whether the improvement is general nobody knows. Certainly there is something lost. One thing that is lost is the mere business of walking to school, which is something in itself. In my community scholars still get round on the hoof. They pass our house at seven in the morning, clicking along in a ground-eating stride. Some of them make a four-mile trip to school--eight miles in all....In all the time I've been driving these roads I've never been asked for a ride, which is almost unbelievable considering the distances that must be covered, often in zero weather or in storm. Walking is natural for these children, just as motoring is for most others....I enjoy living among pedestrians who have an instinctive and habitual realization that there is more to a journey than the mere fact of the arrival. If the consolidated school served by busses destroys that in our children I don't know that we are ahead of the game after all."

E.B. White, One Man's Meat, pp. 110-111

Book recommendations from the Jobbing Doctor's wife

Somewhat unusual choices, and a number of books I haven't read. From a sidebar, found via a Leap'n link:

MRS J D'S RECOMMENDED READS.
Mrs JD is a teacher (and a very good one at that). Here is a list of her recommended reads for her pupils.

I do, of course, agree with her.

To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
1984 by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngosi Adichie
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you - Harold Bloom

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
The reluctant fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The House of the spirits by Isabel Allende
Paula by Isabel Allende
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Books let us into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our own - William Hazlitt

The History of the World in 10 and a half chapters by Julian Barnes
Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
An Ice Cream War by William Boyd
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
Snow falling on Cedars by David Guterson
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon
Notes on a scandal by Zoe Heller
A pale view of hills by Kazuo Ishiguro
The unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera
A short history of tractors in the Ukraine by Marina Lewycka

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled "This could change your life". Helen Exley

Small island by Andrea Levy
Eight months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
The god of small things by Arundhati Roy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
A suitable boy by Vikram Seth

We read to know that we are not on our own. C S Lewis


We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The bonesetter's daughter by Amy Tan
Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe
The boy in the striped pyjamas by John Boyne
The ragged trousered philanthropists by Robert Tressell

Recommendation from Kim

Best ipad accessory case ever.

Young Mandela

David Smith introduces Nelson Mandela with the news of his arrest in 1952, and spends the first chapter describing the ensuing trial. He then jumps back to Mandela's birth and childhood, and from there he generally proceeds in an approximately linear order. His prose is very pleasant to read. He writes in short, clear sentences that smooth the flow of ideas and events. However, the overall order of events can seem jumbled and unsettled as the linearity is muddled by apparent digressions. Smith has escaped the biographer's trap of writing a hagiography, and he seems to deal fairly with the mystery and denial surrounding Mandela's love life. He provides an insightful picture of Mandela's ideological and pragmatic assessments. Overall, I would recommend this book to historically minded readers.

Rain Song (and How Sweet It Is)

Alice Wisler is one of the few living authors I know as a real, human person. She introduced me to her novel How Sweet It Is a couple years ago, and I've been meaning to get a copy of Rain Song ever since. How Sweet It Is was lovely, light reading free of the cloying soppiness that generally engulfs books in the Christian romance genre. Maybe it was a little bit saccharine, but then the title is honest.

Rain Song, similarly, was easy to read. Wisler's amusing surprises and quirky characters kept me laughing. I kept wishing I knew Alice better, because the character-development-through-periodic-revelations kept me wondering how Alice fit this all together. Perhaps this is the challenge of knowing an author: one wants to see her reflected in her work, however inappropriate that may be. Take the wonderful Monet the Terror, a wee lassie whose antics prompt persistent (and probably unnecessary) medical evaluation. Was Monet based on an actual acquaintance or an active imagination? Either way, Monet contributes to the story and the protagonist's character development. She also features in the subtle introduction of "food for thought" material, given that her behavioral pathologies could be explained more easily by circumstances than by medical causes. Wisler's plot and character development grow steadily through the book. The end is almost anti-climactic, but Wisler draws a satisfying conclusion by answering questions raised earlier.

Overall, this is a lovely book. It's a great read for relaxation on a rainy day or a beach trip. I would recommend snapping it up before it goes out of print in the midst of the new ebook revolution. I have to catch my copy of Hatteras Girl before it disappears into electronic land.