“The Doom of the Griffiths,” a short story by Elizabeth
Gaskell.
The Book of Tobit, a book of the Old Testament.
“Rappaccini’s Daughter,” a short story by Nathaniel
Hawthorne.
Life on the Mississippi, a memoir by Mark Twain.
The Book of Judith, a book of the Old Testament.
“The
Ransom of Red Chief,” a short story by O. Henry.
Washington Square, a novel by Henry James.
84, Charing Cross Road, a collection of correspondence by Helene Hanff.
“Fifty Grand,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“A Simple Enquiry,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“The Pitcher,” a short story by Andre Debus.
“After Twenty Years,” a short story by O.
Henry.
Happy Catholic, a non-fiction devotional by Julie Davis.
The Imitation of Christ, a non-fiction devotional by
Thomas à Kempis.
“Paul’s Case,” a short story by Willa Cather.
Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity, a non-fiction work of literary criticism by Prue Shaw.
The Book of Esther, a book of the Old Testament.
“Wee Willie Winkie,” a short story by Rudyard Kipling.
Fantine,
the 1st Volume of Les Misérables, a novel by Victor Hugo.
“The
Peach Stone,” a short story by Paul Horgan.
Some Do Not…, the 1st novel of the Parade’s End Tetralogy by Ford
Madox Ford.
First Book of Maccabees, a book of the Old Testament.
“Ten Indians, a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“The
Wood-Sprite,” a short story by Vladimir Nabokov.
The
Shining, a novel by Stephan King.
How the West Really Lost God: A New Theory of
Secularization, a non-fiction
work of sociology by Mary Eberstadt.
Second
Book of Maccabees, a book of the Old Testament.
The
Thorny Grace of It: And Other Essays for Imperfect Catholics,
a collection of personal essays by Brian Doyle.
“Russian
Spoken Here,” a short story by Vladimir Nabokov.
“Greenleaf,”
a short story by Flannery O’Connor.
"Sredni
Vashtar,” a short story by Saki (H.H. Munro).
“The
Gift of Cochise,” a short story by Louis L’Amour.
“A
Canary for One,” a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
“The
Drums of the Fore and Aft,” a short story by Rudyard Kipling.
The
Priest and the Prostitute, a novel by Victor S E Moubarak.
“The Gentleman from Cracow,” a short story by Isaac
Bashevis Singer.
Style:
an Anti-Textbook, a non-fiction book on writing by Richard
A. Lanham.
Gerard
Manly Hopkins: Poems and Prose, Selected and Edited by
W. H. Gardner.
“Colorado,” a short story by Ann Beattie.
“A
Scandal in Bohemia,” a Sherlock Holmes short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
“The
Queer Feet,” a Father Brown mystery short story by G. K. Chesterton.
“Jacob’s Ladder,” a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“The
Letter to the Romans,” an epistle by St. Paul. NAB and KJV Translations.
“The Walk with Elizanne,” a short story by John Updike.
The
Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare.
Mansfield Park, a novel by Jane Austen.
I’ve been behind on my posts. I should have posted this on the turn of the
year. Here is my year end summary of my
reads of 2014.
I had thought I had fallen short from my typical
year’s reading—mostly as I’ve mentioned before because of the time devoted to
the new pup—but as I look over the quantity it seems to fall right into the
average of my past few years. Six
novels, eight books of nonfiction, six books from the Bible, one book of
poetry, one play, 24 short stories, and nearly half (fifteen Cantos) of Dante’s
Paradisio. That’s almost the same as last year, and in
total number of pages I probably exceeded last year. That’s fourteen books for the year, more than
my usual one per month, though some of them were on the shorter side this
year. I estimate the number of pages
read to be over 4300. Not a bad year.
I have to say I really enjoyed all six of the novels
read. It takes a certain acquired taste
to enjoy a Henry James novel, and while Washington
Square does not rank with the best of Henry James, one sees the craftsman
on every page. In Catherine Sloper,
James creates a character of sensitivity and fallibility, and in her father,
Dr. Sloper, a character of insensitivity but seemingly infallible. We want Catherine to be right and her father
to be wrong, but alas it doesn’t work out that way. “Fantine” is the first volume of Victor
Hugo’s Les Misérables but each of the
five volumes that make up the tome is about the size of a regular novel. I’ve committed myself to at least one volume
per year until I complete it entirely.
In this way I won’t have to spend a good part of a single year getting
weary with a single novel that’s over 1400 pages. I wonder if I would have gotten weary because
so far Hugo keeps a reader’s interest up on many levels: intellectually, emotionally,
and narratively. I don’t think I’ve read
anything by Victor Hugo before. I’m
doing a very similar thing with Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy, Parade’s End as with Les Misérables, that is, breaking up the
large work into sub part annual reads.
With Ford’s work it’s actually more sensible since each of the four
parts are identified as novels. The four
novels center on the character of Christopher Tietjens, an upper class official
who’s noble ideals conflict with his service in the Great War (WWI) and his
failed marriage. I really love the title
of the first of the four novels, Some Do
Not…. It characterizes Tietjens
wonderfully. I had not planned it this
way, but I recently realized I started the novel on the hundredth year of the
start of the war, a rather nice coincidence.
I’ve considered Ford to be one of the best, if not the best, prose
writers in English of the 20th century and a great developer of
characters. He does not fail; I love all
the characters in this book and can’t wait to get back to their lives. Mansfield
Park is an outstanding novel by Jane Austen. Don’t believe the commentary that this is a
lesser of her novels. It’s as good as
any of them. I think that the critics
diminish this work because it might be the most conservative of her works. Who says that women writers must all be
against the “patriarchal society,” or whatever nonsense they call it. Jane Austen is clearly a conservative in the
Edmund Burke tradition. I read this at
the very end of the year—I might have finished it on New Year’s Eve—when my old
computer was going fluky and I couldn’t post on it. I intend to follow up with a post on this
work, which I read on its 200th year from publication. I mentioned I had never read a Stephan King
novel before, and so I picked up The
Shining. Was it great
literature? Nah, but it was well done
for what it is, and also very enjoyable.
He’s really good at creating characters and complicated plots. I think I had promised I was going to post on
it, but unless someone really wants me to, I’m going to have to back out of
that promise. So I read Henry James,
Victor Hugo, Ford Madox Ford, Jane Austen, Stephan King, and Victor SE
Maubarak. Victor who? LOL, Victor Maubarak is a blogger friend who
stops and comments here, and so I read his mystery novel, The Priest and the Prostitute.
It was well done and a joy to read.
It brought a smile to my face in almost every chapter. I do hope he follows up with another adventure
of his central character, Father Ignatius.
I notice that my nonfiction reads divide into three
groups: the personal, the devotional, and the discursive. The personal comprises of a memoir by Mark
Twain, Life on the Mississippi, an
exchange of letters (84, Charing Cross
Road) between a New York City writer, Helene Hanff and the staff at her
favorite bookstore in London in the post WWII decades, and a collection of
personal essays, The Thorny Grace of It
by Brian Doyle. Mark Twain’s prose is
always a pleasure to read, and this memoir focuses on his apprenticeship as a
steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River and his return to a riverboat
excursion many years later. Brian
Doyle’s essays center on the quirks of Catholic life, and as I reflect on it
now, his witty prose is very Twain-esk.
That’s a huge compliment. Helene Hanff’s letters with the staff of
Marks & Co. and they capture nuances of the time and places. I can’t speak for British side, but Helene’s
persona is so New York City—blunt and jazzy, but in an endearing sort of
way. I had not realized it until I just
looked at the Wikipedia entry, but the letters were dramatized for stage,
television, and film. I’ll have to seek
out the film.
My devotional reads span the centuries. The
Imitation of Christ, the most read religious work after the Bible, by Thomas
à Kempis, dates to a 15th century Dutch monk while Julie Davis’ Happy Catholic was published a year or
two ago. The works are about as
different as you can find, à Kempis’s work an interior methodology for
spiritual discipline, while Davis’ work a joyful display of epiphanies culled
from everyday life and culture. Both
have their place.
Prue Shaw’s Reading
Dante: From Here to Eternity is a discourse on Dante’s Divine Comedy and received immensely positive reviews when it came
out last year. The reviews were so
praiseworthy that against my better judgment—positive reviews of literary
criticism almost always fall short for me—I went and bought and read it given I
had been reading Dante for the past couple of years. And as my gut told me, the reviews inflated
its value. If you’re completely new to
Dante, you’ll get something out of it, but if you have some background, the
lengthy introductions from some of the scholarly translations are
superior. If I remember correctly, Shaw
did a good job explaining Inferno, a
so-so job on Purgatorio, and a very poor
job on Paradisio. How the
West Really Lost God: A New Theory of Secularization by Mary Eberstadt
presents a counterintuitive argument on the relationship between the family and
belief in God in western society. The
intuitive argument is that the loss of faith led to a breakdown of the
traditional family structure; Eberstadt’s argument is that the fragmentation of
family is what has led to today’s pervasive loss of faith. It’s an interesting argument, and through
statistics she is fairly persuasive.
Whether you agree or not, it makes for a good read if you’re into that
sort of sociology. The third discursive
work of nonfiction was my annual read on writing, this year, Lanham’s Style: an Anti-Textbook. This is an excellent book on the nature of
prose style, also presenting a counterintuitive argument, this to a clichéd
understanding of writing style. I had
started a fairly lengthy essay on the subject, both at times agreeing and
disagreeing with Lanham, but it’s on my old computer, and when I finally
transfer it over, it’s one I intend to post.
My survey read through the Bible took me this year through
some of the Apocrypha books, which I must admit was a pleasure. The Old Testament Books of Tobit, Judith,
Esther, First and Second Maccabees are great stories. You can almost consider them short
stories. But what made them doubly
pleasurable is that other than Esther, none of the rest were in the King James
translation, and so I was free to read them in a contemporary translation, the
New American Bible (NAB). As I’ve
mentioned, I’m trying to read book by book the entire Bible in the King James
translation, and contrary to conventional notions I dislike the KJV. It’s awkward and unnatural English, even
unnatural for its day. When reading
something that I want to understand, I prefer clarity over aesthetics. So why do I insist on reading the entire
Bible in KJV? Because the KJV has had a
significant influence to the development of English, and being one who wants to
absorb every development of the language I feel I compelled to read the entire
thing. I’m also reading the New
Testament, and this year I read Paul’s epistle to the Romans. With the New Testament I read both
translations, KJV and NAB.
My annual poetry read this year was with Gerard Manly
Hopkins. He’s a great poet, and I posted
on several of his poems. I didn’t get a
chance to do a concluding post where I wanted to provide my thoughts on how
Hopkins fits into modernism. Let me just
succinctly say, I don’t think he does.
The general notion is that Hopkins was a sort of proto-modernists. There are echoes of modernism in his work,
but frankly everything he does is in sympathy with Tennyson, Swinburne, or
Browning. I think Hopkins falls squarely
into the Victorian tradition. For a
drama I reread Shakespeare’s The Tempest
as a sort of personal reevaluation. I’ve
felt it a somewhat overrated work. But I
take that back. Now that I fully
understand its totality, it is a great work.
It’s one of Shakespeare’s shortest plays, which makes it feel like it
lacks a bit of gravitas. But that’s just
a superficial perception. I do want to
post on it because I have a thought about it that might not be as widely
considered.
And so finally the short stories. I was able to squeeze in my two per month
average. Most of the ones I read were
good, a few were exceptional, and a small handful were duds. The duds were O. Henry’s “After Twenty Years,”
Ann Beattie’s “Colorado,” (which was supposed to be one of her best), Hemingway’s
“A Simple Enquiry,” and surprisingly the Father Brown mystery story, “The Queer
Feet.” I tend to enjoy Chesterton’s
Father Brown mysteries, but I didn’t get this one. Of the exceptional stories I would include
Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief,”
Hemingway’s “Fifty Grand,” Debus’ “The Pitcher,” Cather’s “Paul’s Case,” Paul
Horgan’s “The Peach Stone,” O’Connor’s “Greanleaf,” Saki’s “Sredni Vashtar,”
Kipling’s “The Drums of Fore and Aft,” and Singer’s “The Gentleman from
Cracow.” Every year I announce my prize
for the best short story read during the year and before I do, let me give a
side bar note to two stories. My
analysis of “The Ransom of Red Chief” has skyrocket to third place of my blog’s
most hit on post. Every week it keeps
climbing and it will surely overpass the leaders. For the life of me, I can’t understand why
that post. Another honorable mention
should go to Kipling’s “Wee Willie Winkie,” a good story in it’s own right, but
what makes it memorable is that I took the framework of that story and told it,
abbreviated and improvised, to my son as a bedtime story. He loved it!
He identifies with Willie. Now
for the annual prize. Drumroll,
please… Third place: Isaac Bashevis
Singer’s “The Gentleman from Cracow.” Second
Place: Flannery O’Connor’s “Greanleaf.”
And the winner: Paul Horgan’s “The Peach Stone.” Who you may ask is Paul Horgan? A two time Pulitzer Prize winner in history,
but who also wrote fiction. I didn’t get
a chance to post on “The Peach Stone,” but what a magnificent story of a tragic
death of a child and the mother’s acceptance of the loss. Reading the story felt like I was listening
to a quartet ensemble playing a chamber music piece. It was so good a story I may still post on it
this year.
As to the works I intended to read but fell short, I
will start the New Year with them. I did
readjust under a quarter of Adrian Goldsworthy’s biography, Julius Caesar: Life of a Colossus. And I never did get to von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Actually I’ve already completed Goethe’s
novel here in January of 2015, and I’ll make a focused effort to complete the
excellent Caesar biography. The other
work I didn’t complete was Dante’s Paradisio. As I said I made it through the 15th
Canto. It will definitely be a 2015
priority. More on that in my upcoming
post outlining my reading plans for the new year.
One last word.
I didn’t post on all of my reads, if not most of them. There just isn’t time in a life to do
that. If I did post on it, you can
locate it from the tag list on the right side bar, either by author or by
title. If I didn’t post on it and you’re
interested in my thoughts on a particular work I’ve mentioned, let me know. If I can accommodate, I will.
