"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Thursday, May 2, 2019

2019 Reads, Update #1

My first quarter update is running a month behind, which is not unusual.  I was waiting to complete the major read of this quarter, Dante Alighieri’s Paradiso, the third canticle from his epic Divine Comedy before I posted this.  I just finished it.  You can probably see I’m still posting my summaries and comments.  I’m spreading them out, so they’ll be coming out for the next few weeks.  I’ve actually read Paradiso twice in that I’m reading two translations in parallel, which has been my method for the other canticles.  I’ve been reading the outstanding Hollander and Hollander translation and the equally good Anthony Esolen translation.  The way I would compare the translations is in this way: the Hollander and Hollander has outstanding commentary and bibliography, so that’s more geared for graduate students.  The Esolen is just a fine, clean translation with less commentary, so that’s more geared for undergraduate students. 

I’ve also read seven short stories and two essays.  “Mother” by Sherwood Anderson is an excellent story and well worth reading.  You can find it for free on the internet.  “The Background” (Saki) and “Poldi” (McCullers), “A Sin Confessed” (Guareschi), and "Why Bugsy Siegel Was a Friend of Mine” (Burke) were good stories, and I’d recommend them.  The others were not worth it.  The two essays, one on how to mark up a book you are reading by the great academic, Mortimer J. Adler, and the other by Joshua Wren (published in Dappled Things, Vol 13, Issue 4) on the French Catholic writer Léon Bloy and his contribution to the Catholic literary tradition are both excellent reads.  The Adler essay you can find for free on-line.

I’m also reading the Old Testament’s Book of Jeremiah.  I finished the modern English translation and about half way through the King James Version.

I have to say I am reader who juggles many books at the same time.  For our parish Bible class, we are reading Mike Aquilina’s The Fathers of the Church, and we’re about thirty pages from the end.  I’m about forty pages from the end of The Life of Saint Dominic.  I’m reading the Narnia series with my son, and we are a third of the way into The Horse and His Boy, which I think is excellent.  And our Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads has just started reading Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ.  We just started the first week of a planned five week read.  You can still join us, and you can find the work for free on-line.  Here’s one site.  

So here’s a listing of the first quarter activity. 


Completed First Quarter:

“The Background,” a short story by Saki (H. H. Munro).
“How to Mark a Book,” an essay by Mortimer J. Adler.
“In the Snow,” a short story by Stefan Zweig, translated by Anathea Bell.
“Poldi,” a short story by Carson McCullers.
“Mother,” a short story by Sherwood Anderson. 
“A Sin Confessed,” a short story by Giovanni Guareschi, translated by Adam Elgar.
“A Fire-Stained Cathedral Gargoyle: Léon Bloy and the Catholic Literary Tradition,” an essay by Joshua Wren.
“Gibberish,” a short story by Thomas Berger. 
Book of Jeremiah, a book of the Old Testament, NIV Translation.
"Why Bugsy Siegel Was a Friend of Mine," a short story by James Lee Burke.
Paradisio, 3rd part of the epic poem, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated and annotated by Robert and Jean Hollander.
Paradisio, 3rd part of the epic poem, The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated and annotated by Anthony Esolen.


Currently Reading:
The Fathers of the Church: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers, 3rd Edition, a non-fiction work by Mike Aquilina.
The Life of Saint Dominic, a biography by Augusta Theodosia Drane.
Book of Jeremiah, a book of the Old Testament, KJV Translation.
The Horse and His Boy, a novel from the The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis.
The Imitation of Christ, a non-fiction devotional by Thomas à Kempis.


Upcoming Plans:
“The Light of the World,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“God Rest You Merry Gentleman,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“The Sea Change,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“A Matter of Chance,” a short story by Vladimir Nabokov.
 “The Manager of ‘The Kremlin,’” a short story by Evelyn Waugh.



I has been a very busy quarter.

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