The best two sentences in "A Gentleman in Moscow"

 "...just remember that unlike adults, children want to be happy. So they still have the ability to take the greatest pleasure in the simplest thing. "

from the chapter "Ascending, Alighting", page 253. 

The single best sentence in Anna Karenina

 "Then it was that he first clearly understood what he did not realize when leading her out of the church after the wedding: that she was not only very close to him but that he could not now tell where she ended and he began." Volume II, Part V, Chapter XIV.

I suppose that after 20 or so years of marriage I would have understood this line. But after forty six years I can begin to relate to it. Begin. Deeper than understanding. 

It was well worth a thousand pages of this great novel to find this little jewel of prose.  

The Thing: What I saw in Nashville

 A hobo on a park bench reading The Wizard of OZ. 

Some boots owned by Hank Williams Sr.

The grave of Johnny Paycheck 

Books read in 2022

The following are the  books I read in 2022. Most of them are quite good. A few were not worth reading, several are worth reading a second time. Although I do not read much science fiction, I got started on the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov and had to read them all. 

A book that took me almost 50 years to read, The Dreaming Earth. I started it in high schook, got bored with it, lost it some time in the 70s. I thought about it last year and decided to find it online. I did, and am glad to have done so. Nice little sci-fi story. The Best Loved Poems of the American People was a book in my parents home as a child. A wonderful collection. 

I hope to someday read again Marina and Lee, and Churchill's six volume account of WWII. 

The worst book of the bunch was "I lived to tell it all" by George Jones. He was a bad man who treated people terribly and squandered his wealth and talent. He wrote this book to brag about the amount of liquor,  drugs, and human souls he consumed. 

Another loser was "Pre-Colonial Black Africa" by Chiop. Basically a rant that everything good in the world came from P-C B A. World religions, economic structure, democracy, music, art, writing, mathematics, astronomy, skittles, tacos, Buddy Holly, pickup trucks, checkers. The writer makes the case that even the pre-colonial slavery of Africans by Africans was a good kind. 

As a Catholic I am supposed to like Flannerty O'Connor and see how her Catholicism is relected in her writing. If I am a proper intellectual Catholic, this will just ooze out of her brain into mine. Didn't happen. I liked one, one, only one short story. A Good Man is Hard to Find. I asked my wife to read it but she did not. 

The books are listed in the order I read them. 

Foundation - Asimov 
Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life - Lacey
The Second World War - Volume 1: The Gathering Storm - Churchill
Marina and Lee - McMillan
Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls: Revealing the Jewish Roots of Christianity - Bergsma
Prelude to Foundation - Asimov

Beyond the Veil: The Adventures of an American Doctor in Saudi Arabia - Gray
The Dreaming Earth - Brunner
Rural Roots of Bluegrass: Songs, Stories and History - Erbsen
The Second World War - Volume II: Their Finest Hour - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume III: The Grand Alliance - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume IV: The Hinge of Fate - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume V: Closing the Ring - Churchill
The Second World War - Volume VI: Triumph and Tragedy - Churchill
The Guardians - Grisham
The President is Missing - Patterson, Clinton
Second Foundation - Asimov
Foundation's Edge - Asimov
The Best Loved Poems of the American People - Felleman
Forward the Foundation - Asimov
Salvation on Sand Mountain - Covington (2nd Reading)
Foundation and Earth - Asimov
The Big Short - Lewis (3rd reading, at least)
The Practice of the Presence of God (3rd reading)- Lawrence
I, Robot - Asimov
The Caves of Steel - Asimov
The Naked Sun - Asimov
Into Your Hands Father: Abandoning Ourselves to the God Who Loves Us - Stinissen
The Robots of Dawn - Asimov
The Complete Stories - Flannery O'Connor
Robots and Empire - Asimov
The Stars, LIke Dust - Asimov
The Currents of Space - Asimov
A Pebble in the Sky - Asimov
The Joke - Kundera
The Saint Monica Club (3rd reading) - Green
The Hope of the Gospel - MacDonald
Basic Music Theory for Banjo Players - McKeon
The Diary of an Old Soul - MacDonald
Fantasy Classics Collection - MacDonald
The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism - Bouyer
Unspoken Sermons: Series I,II and III. MacDonald
Four Witnesses - The Early Church in Her Own Words - Bennett
Introduction to Christianity - Ratzinger
Cash - Cash
I Lived to Tell it All - Jones
Precolonial Black Africa - Diop
The Hidden History of East Tennessee - Guy
Defeating Dictators: Fighting Tyranny in Africa and around the World - Ayittey
Disraeli - Blake
Churchill - Gilbert

Too much of an above average thing

 Early this year I determined that I need a break from my heavy biographical and theological readings and just have fun escaping in good stories. I searched online and found that many people put Isaac Asimov at or near the top of lists of the best science fiction writers. 

I decided to read his Foundation series. Then his prelude to Foundation Series. Then his postlude to Foundation Series. Then I Robot. Now I am reading all the preludes to preludes to Foundation and Robots. 

He is a good writer. But this stuff is getting old. I have four books left to read, or is it five? I am bored but will finish them so that I can send them off to goodwill. 

In the 1950s he had an insight to the type of inventions that would come our way by the 1990s. Remarkable.

He had a very bad sense of the value of faith in God. Or I should say the main characters in his books that I have read have this trait. Unremarkable.  

Rod McKuen was the narrator of my college era

On August 6, 1976 I bought a paperback book by RodMcKuen. I still have it. It has been in my garage for years, by the trashcan. I have tried to throw it away but always pull it back. I wrote my name and the date on the inside, as if it were important that both be recorded. I was 19, almost 20. I sacked groceries in a small town in southern Missouri and lived in a trailer. It was the summer before my junior year in college.  

I am probably one of the few people on the planet who can lay claim to having lived a life influenced by the poetry of this man. But there was a brief time when I wanted to be a younger version of him. The contemplative loner, hanging out in a cafe in Paris, composing a letter from a LandRover in Bangkok, walking the beach at sunset in Malibu, meeting a friend for tea in St. John's Wood, writing ballads about sunsets and hitchhiking. 

I look at the lines I underlined and realize I plagiarized so many of them in letters to long forgotten girlfriends, perhaps even to my wife of 43 years. If any of you are reading this I must confess that these lines were not originally from me...

 "I've drawn your face on tablecloths across the country"

"I was drifting while waiting for your eyes to find me"

"I have yet to see a sky or world quite good enough for you"

And this is just a sampling. This book is dog-eared, underlined, highlighted. I sat on a rock by my driveway and re-read all my favorites. Some seem corny and schmaltzy but others still speak to me as they did 50 years ago. 

There truly was a time when my hair was thick and long and my bellbottoms were size 28 or 30, that this book slipped perfectly into my back pocket. If girls were not impressed with my charm, or my grades, or future prospects, there is always Rod. When doing my lonesome walk to class, or through a park, or being pseudo-contemplative, he was there, narrating the scene. Meanwhile, I loped and moped and hoped she would ask the question... "whatcha readin?". 

I read this today, which once spoke to a life I could but imagine, and now have, in a way. 

Freedom

"Free I am. 

I have no bills to pay. 

My debts are squared,

the edges smoothed out perfectly. 

My ducks are in a row

and I can sail. 

There are borders

in this final life

that were not here at nineteen

or at twenty-three." 

(It deteriorates from there but you get the point)

I bought this book at a time when I was human play-dough, being molded by chance and circumstance and places. I'm sure it made its way to the small chapel on campus, an aging tennis court, that park I fled to so often, the trunk of my 1969 Ford Fairlane. So now, almost fifty years later I am drawn back to this little book, at obscure times. I can go years without thinking one thing about this guy, until a trigger reminds me a of a time when he was a much bigger influence on me than he should have been. He was a man who accoumplished some things but not a good man that other men should want to be like.  

Now the jeans are size 34 or so and the bottoms have no bells. I would be embarrassed to have this book in my back pocket so it rests on a shelf in the garage. But still there are lines that gnaw at me as I thumb through the pages once more. I see that I wrote my name in it twice that August 6 of 1976, on different pages. Something was going on that day and I think I know what it was. 

On my second reading of Les Miserables

 I first read this book about ten years ago. I so loved the play, which I had seen many times, that I knew I must read the book. Having done so, I got rid of it, thinking the length made it unlikely I would read it again. This is generally my practice. Books I like I will keep for several years, but if they are only decorations on a shelf and never opened again, they are sent to Goodwill. Really bad ones that I would not want to tote there end up in the trash. I only keep books that I re-read or refer to, or bear some sentimental attachment to the giver or previous owner. 

This year for some reason I felt  a desire to re-read Les Miserables. The main character, Jean Valjean, is one I certainly am drawn to, in a fashion. But the antagonist, Inspector Javert, also draws me deeper into the story. I relate to them both, could see myself enjoying dinner with both, and am attracted to the evolution of their souls as portrayed by Hugo. 

This passage struck me, from the Section Cosette,  Book V, Chapter 5: 

    "Jean Valjean had this trait, that he might be said to carry two knapsacks - in one he had the thoughts of a saint, in the other the impressive talents of a convict. He helped himself to one or the other as occasion required."

Coincidentally, until recently I had two knapsacks in my closet. I wonder which one I discarded.

Moby Dick

 I finished reading this book yesterday. My version has 377 pages. The White Whale does not show up until page 357. Most of the book is spent on excruciating details of the types of whales, ships and whalers. Everything from which whale is best for what type of oil to which artist of whaling scenes best captures the moment. Everything you wanted to know and many things you did not. I wondered, "Why is this book considered a classic?". 

I see the value as a historical piece, detailing everything one would want to know about how to catch, skin, clean, make oil, and the like. You are schooled on the many professions that depended on the whaling business, how to outfit a ship, hire a crew, finance the voyage, etc. It increased my understanding of what that life was like at that time and at that place. 

Interesting, yes. Readable for those of an era gone by, absolutely. A great piece of literature, no. The folks at Penguin books place it #1 on their list of ten greatest American novels. Eggheads.  Stereotypically, they call it "a metaphor for America's post 9/11 foreign policy" Nope, not the version I read, not the country I live in.    

I would recommend it to anyone who 1) lives in Nantucket and wants to learn about the history of the area 2) aspires to go into the whaling business 3) is interviewing for a job at Penguin books.  

The books I read in 2020

Perhaps I read more books in 2020 than any other year. All of those listed below are good, and worth reading again, except for those at the end, which were mainly a waste of time.  The best ones? Probably The Great Divorce, which I have probably read a dozen times.  One drop in a Sea of Blue gave me a new perspective on the life of soldiers in the Civil War and fighting both humans and the elements for four years. By What Authority is an excellent defense of the spiritual authority that God has bestowed upon the Catholic Church, and only the Catholic Church. It dives deep without losing the reader. The worst book I read was One Hundred Years of Solitude. It is a great example of how a poorly written book can achieve international acclaim when  tapped by the hip intelligentsia.  

Worth reading Again Essays of a Catholic - Hilaire Belloc The Spiritual Combat and A Treatise On Peace of Soul - Dom Lorenzo Scupoli The Imitation of Christ - Thomas a Kempis Say Nothing-A true story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland - Keefe The Catechism of the Catholic Church St. Ignatius of Antioch - The Epistles One Drop in a Sea of Blue, The Liberators of the Ninth Minnesota - Lundstrom By What Authority?: An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition - Shea Earth Abides - Stewart The People v. Clarence Darrow: The Bribery Trial of America's Greatest Lawyer - Cowen Hartland to Capitol Hill - Gunderson Pouf - Hall Rome Sweet Home - Hahn, Hahn The Church History - Eusebius The Great Divorce - Lewis In Cold Blood - Capote Hank and Jim - Eyman Ignatius Catholic Study Bible - New Testament (and all footnotes) - RSVCE Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey - Clint Hill The Passage of Power - Robert Caro Master of the Senate - Robert Caro Means of Ascent - Robert Caro The Path to Power - Robert Caro Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence Civil War: Volume 3 - Foote Civil War - Volume 2 - Foote The worst of the bunch: The Desert Fathers - Sayings of the Early Christian Monks Enemy of all Mankind - Steven Johnson One Hundred Years of Solitude - Marquez On his own terms: the Life of Nelson Rockefeller - R.N. Smith

Marriage and a book

Sometimes you read a book and love each page. Others you just slog through. I just finished "One hundred years of Solitude", which is supposedly one of the great novels of the last century. It is not. No Sir. 

It has one passage near the end that makes all the drudgery preceding it worthwhile. It describes a trait of a good marriage. "... they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs. "

"...there has been much throwing about of brains."

In October of 2010 I decided to read the complete works of William Shakespeare. Every play, every sonnet. I have had it on my ipad. Almost all of the reading has been while on the bus, commuting from home to downtown Minneapolis.

For the first year or so I was reading Shakespeare and the KJV of the Bible side by side. When I finished the Bible, I picked up speed with Will. This project required a deeper level of concentration than I am accustomed to.

Today's snowstorm gave me a two hour bus ride. I knocked off the last fifty pages.

I don't feel smarter, just a wee bit more refined.

While most of it was terribly boring, there were a few times when a passage grabbed me with its beauty and compexity. Like this, from The Twelth Night. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have said about you...

His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles,
His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate,
His tears pure messengers sent from his heart,
His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth.

Goodbye Mr. Shakespeare.

the author of the worst book i ever read is dead.............

When I was thirteen I read "catcher in the rye". I wasted at least a semester of my life trying to be as depressed as the lead character, henry something. He is survived by a dwindling army of 60ish, still-depressed,  junior high english teachers.