Completed
First Quarter:
The Book of Ecclesiastes, a book of the Old Testament, KJV Translation.
The Book of Song of
Songs, a book of the Old
Testament, KJV Translation.
The Iman’s Daughter: My Desperate Flight to Freedom, a confessional memoir
by Hannah Shah.
The Future Church: How Ten Trends
are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church,
a non-fiction book by John L. Allen Jr.
The Book of Proverbs, a book of the Old Testament, KJV
Translation.
Compassionate Blood: Catherine of
Siena on the Passion, a non-fiction devotional by
Romanus Cessario, O.P.
What Jesus Saw from the Cross, a non-fiction devotional by Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges,
O.P.
The Wife of Pilate, a short novel by Gertrude von Le Fort.
Completed
Second Quarter:
“The Magic Barrel,” a short story by
Bernard Malamud.
The Book of Wisdom, a book of the Old Testament, Ignatius Translation.
“The Secret Sharer,” a short story
by Joseph Conrad.
The Hunger Angel, a novel by Herta Müller.
The Book of Sirach, a book of the Old Testament, Ignatius Translation.
Vision of Fatima, a non-fiction book on his sculptures of Our Lady of Fatima
by Fr. Thomas McGlynn.
“God’s World,” a short story by
Najib Mahfuz.
“Vitamins,” a short story by Raymond
Carver.
“Bobcat,” a short story by Rebecca
Lee.
Vol 3 of Les Misérables,
“Marius,” a novel by Victor Hugo.
“A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” a
short story by Ernest Hemingway.
Completed
Third Quarter:
Letter to the Galatians, an epistle from the New Testament by St.
Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
Letter to the Ephesians, an epistle from the New Testament by St.
Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
Letter to the Philippians, an epistle from the New Testament by St.
Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
Letter to the Colossians, an epistle from the New Testament by St.
Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
“Assisted
Living,” a short story by Edith Pearlman.
“The
Chosen Husband,” a short story by Mavis Gallant.
101
Places to Pray Before You Die: A Roman Catholic’s Guide,
a non-fictional travel guide by Thomas J. Craughwell.
“Barn
Burning,” a short story by William Faulkner.
Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc, a historical novel by
Mark Twain.
Heart
of Joy: The Transforming Power of Self-Giving, a collection of
speeches from Mother Teresa, edited by José Luis González-Balado.
First
Letter to the Thessalonians, an epistle from the New Testament
by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
“The
Music on the Hill,” a short story by Saki (H. H. Munro).
Gospel According to Mark, a book of the New Testament, Ignatius RSV translation.
“Zone of Quiet,” a short story by
Ring Larsen.
Second Letter to the
Thessalonians, an epistle from the
New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
Completed
Fourth Quarter:
First Letter to the Timothy, an epistle from the New Testament by St.
Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
“Saint Ursula and Her Maidens,” a short story
by Mary O’Connell.
Some Desperate Glory: The First
World War the Poets Knew, a book of
history and collected poetry by Max Egremont.
Second Letter to the
Timothy, an epistle from the
New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
“The Diary of an African Nun,” a
short story by Alice Walker.
A Room with a View, a novel by E. M. Forster.
Letter to Titus, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul,
KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
Letter to Philemon, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul,
KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
“Wunderkind,” a short
story by Carson McCullers.
The Confessions, an autobiography by St. Augustine of Hippo, translated by
Phillip Burton.
“What World is This? A short story
by Gloria Whelan.
“Achates McNeil,” a short story by
T. C. Boyle.
“Gimpel the Fool,” a short story by
Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Henry VI, Part 1, a play by William Shakespeare.
Rock Crystal, a novella by Adalbert Stifter, Translated by
Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore.
“The Match-Maker,” a short story by Saki
(H. H. Munro).
Unfinished Reads:
Julius Caesar: Life of a Colossus, a biography by Adrian Goldsworthy.
The Virgin and the Gipsy, a short novel by D. H. Lawrence.
Hildegard of Bingen: Selected
Writings, a collection translated and edited
by Mark Atherton.
It's been a very good year for
reading. Eight books of non-fiction,
sixteen books from the Bible (some of them short though), six works of long
fiction (four novels, two novellas), a book of poetry, a Shakespearean play,
and eighteen short stories. That's more
than a book a month. I didn't quite keep
up with two short stories per month, but all those Epistles from St. Paul,
which in most cases were read in two different translations, more than made up
for the six short stories off pace.
First you can track back to my Plans
for 2017, here,
my 2017 first quarterly update, here,
my second quarterly update here,
and my third quarterly update here.
Quite a bit of the longer works were
selected as part of the Catholic Thought book club at Goodreads, which I've
mentioned that I'm now moderator. As
moderator I can't quite skip reads I'm not interested in. But I can't say I hated any of the
reads. Through the nominating system and
the vote, we seem to pick interesting reads.
Of the eight non-fiction works, three I would categorize as memoirs (The Iman's Daughter, Vision of Fatima, and St. Augustine of
Hippo's The Confessions), three I
would categorize as devotionals (Compassionate Blood, What Jesus Saw from the
Cross, and Heart of Joy), one I would categorize as a travel book (101 Places
to Pray Before You Die), and one a book of information on Catholic Church
trends, (The Future Church). Hannah
Shaw's The Iman's Daughter was a
powerful testimonial, McGlynn's Vision of
Fatima was wonderful reflection of how he came to sculpt the Our Lady of
Fatima statue based on his conversations with Sr. Lúcia de Jesus dos Santos, at
the time the remaining survivor of the Fatima apparitions. See my blog post for pictures of the statue. Antonin Sertillanges' What Jesus Saw from the Cross is the absolute best book for a
Lenten devotional I have ever read. I
highly recommend it.
As you can see I continue to make
progress reading through Bible. Five
books (Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs,
Proverbs, Wisdom, and Sirach)
were read from the Old Testament, books from the wisdom literature
section. Ten of St Paul's epistles were
read, which now completes my reading of his letters. (Actually the Letter to the Hebrews remains unread, but as some quip, it's
neither a letter, nor written by Paul, nor written to the Hebrews; I'll be
reading that this year.) The book club
read the Gospel of Mark, since we're
in the B liturgical year, and so that was a re-read. Of the works I read for the first time, I
read it in the King James Version (KJV), and to repeat myself, I read in the
KJV not because I enjoy it or think it a good translation (actually I think
it's terrible) but because the language of the KJV was important to the
development of English, I want to get one full reading in it. Because the New Testament books are so
important to understanding Christianity, I augmented my reading with the
Ignatius RSV translation, which I think is one of the best translations. The Books
of Wisdom and Sirach are not in
the KJV since Protestants threw them out of the cannon, and so I read them in
the Ignatius. Too bad, their loss.
With all the non-fiction books, I
didn't get to read as many novels as I would have liked. I'm continuing through the huge opus of
Hugo's Les Misérables, reading one
volume per year. It is a great novel,
and there are two more volumes to go. Mark
Twain's Personal Recollections of Joan of
Arc was an excellent fictionalized account of St. Joan of Arc's life. Though fictionalized, it was very close to
the actual history. A Room with a View was a good novel, though not up to the great
novels E. M. Forster has written. Nobel
Prize winner Herta Müller's The Hunger Angel was a disturbing novel of Romanian
ethnic Germans struggling to live in a post WWII Russian concentration camp. Extremely well written, poetic, and very well
translated by Phillip Boehm. Le Fort's The Wife of Pilate and Stifter's Rock Crystal were both excellent
novellas and highly recommended.
Interestingly, Le Fort's makes a great read around Lent and Stifter's
makes a great read around Christmas.
I completed Max Egremont's Some Desperate Glory, which I had
started last year and spilled over. It
was a collection of the WWI poets that fought in the war on the English
side. The book was uniquely structured
to be both a collection of the poetry and biographical information on the poets. I highly recommend it. Because the historical events concerning
Twain's Joan of Arc novel were fresh in my mind, I read Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part I, since it covered the
same events, only from a different perspective.
It may have been Shakespeare's first play he wrote, so it had rough
spots and not up to his great works. It was still worth reading if you are a
Shakespeare aficionado. It was one of
the plays I had not read yet. With it
I've now read 29 of the authentic Shakespeare plays. As I said in my blog post on this play,
https://ashesfromburntroses.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-first-part-henry-vi-by-william.html
"Some people have bucket lists of traveling across the world; my bucket
list consists of reading all of Shakespeare."
Finally to the short stories. As I’ve done in recent years, I’ll categorize
the short stories between exceptional, good, ordinary, and duds. If you see some unknown authors in the list,
it’s because I made a conscious effort to seek out stories of contemporary
writers. I was not exactly overwhelmed
with those. Only two stories (Gloria
Whelan’s and T.C. Boyle’s) made it above ordinary. I rated Saki’s “The Match-Maker” and Edith
Pearlman’s “assisted Living” as duds.
That’s the first Saki short story I was disappointed with. I rated six stories as ordinary, the Egytian
writer, Najib Mafuz’s “God’s World,” Raymond
Carver’s “Vitamins,” Rebecca Lee’s “Bobcat,” Ring Larsen’s “Zone of Quiet,”
Mary O’Connell’s “Saint Ursula and Her Maidens,” and Alice Walker’s “Diary of
an African Nun.”
Five stories were rated as
good. “The Chosen Husband” was about a
young man who is sort of roped in to be the husband of one of the daughters of
a declining Montreal family and had the usual Mavis Gallant subtlety in
language and psychology. Saki made up
for the dud with a really fine story about a woman who killed in the woods by mysterious,
horned beast. “Wunderkind” was my first
story I’ve read by Carson McCullers, and I was really impressed. It was about a young girl who as a child was
a prodigy on the piano but now entering puberty has lost her brilliance. I nearly put this in the exceptional
category. Gloria Whelan’s “What World is
This?” about a pair of girls who play a hoax about seeing an apparition of the
Virgin Mary, was well written, and T.C. Boyle’s “Achetes McNeil,” about a young
man in college who is estranged from his self-centered, though famous novelist
father was hilarious. I don’t think I’ve
read a T.C. Boyle story yet that I didn’t find interesting and fun.
As it turns out, the five stories
rated as exceptional are all classic short stories by preeminent short story
writers. There’s something to be said
for sticking with the classics. Bernard
Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel” was about a young, shy rabbi who hires a
matchmaker to find him a wife. It was
funny, theologically penetrating, and psychologically insightful. Great short stories work on many levels, and
that’s the difference between an exceptional rating and a good. Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer” is about
a young, inexperienced captain who secretly takes into his cabin a castaway who
was swimming alongside his ship. The
castaway turns out to have been escaping another vessel where he was suspected
of murder. Hemingway’s “A Clean-Lighted
Place” is about an old man who frequents a bar and keeps the waiters from
closing down late one night because he insists on drinking. The waiters speculate on why the old man
drinks alone and why he has attempted suicide.
William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning” is about a young boy, Sarty, trying to
understand his Civil War veteran and arsonist father, Abner Snopes, through the
final events of Abner’s life, the events that led him to be shot and killed. “Gimpel the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer is
about a man who throughout his life is taken advantage of, especially by his
wife, because of his simplicity and willingness to believe other people. It’s also a very funny story, but filled with
the love of life and God that Gimpel exudes.
As always I give a prize to the best
short story I have read during the year, and this year it is nearly impossible
to distinguish between the exceptionals.
But I need to pick and I must pick.
This is based on my impulse today, but tomorrow I could have changed to
another. First the runner-up will be “Gimpel
the Fool” by Isaac Bashevis Singer. The
central theme of the story is overwhelming, and placed in the mouth of the
rabbi Gimpel one day brings his problems.
The rabbi says, “It is written, better to be a fool all your days than
for one hour to be evil. You are not a
fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame
loses Paradise himself.” And the winner
for the best short story read this year…drum roll please…though difficult to
choose, I have chosen William Faulkner’s “Barn Burning.” In a swirl of history, symbolism, local
Mississippian dialect, class consciousness, and family bonds, we see the inner
nature of Abner Snopes, a combustible dysfunctionality. He is pricked by his sense of lower class
status to the point of outrage, and fire is a perfect symbol for his outrage
and belligerence. He retaliates through
arson, as if that will reset the power struggle that has belittled him. His being an arsonist is an outward expression
of his inner combustible dysfunctionality.
It’s a powerful story, powerfully told.
If you wish, you can probably read
something within the blog on most of these books and stories I’ve read. I haven’t blogged on all of them but I’ve
blogged on most. Just do a search in the
upper left hand corner at the top of the blog page. Also, I found listing the works by genre was
easier to absorb. I list it in this form
below.
Non-Fiction:
1. The Iman's Daughter: My Desperate
Flight to Freedom, a confessional memoir by Hannah Shah.
2. The Future Church: How Ten Trends
are Revolutionizing the Catholic Church, a non-fiction book by John L. Allen
Jr.
3. Compassionate Blood: Catherine of
Siena on the Passion, a non-fiction devotional by Romanus Cessario, O.P.
4. What Jesus Saw from the Cross, a
non-fiction devotional by Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges, O.P.
5. Vision of Fatima, a non-fiction book
on his sculptures of Our Lady of Fatima by Fr. Thomas McGlynn.
6. 101 Places to Pray Before You Die: A
Roman Catholic's Guide, a non-fictional travel guide by Thomas J. Craughwell.
7. Heart of Joy: The Transforming Power
of Self-Giving, a collection of speeches from Mother Teresa, edited by José
Luis González-Balado.
8. The Confessions, an autobiography by
St. Augustine of Hippo, translated by Phillip Burton.
Bible:
1.
The
Book of Ecclesiastes, a book of the Old Testament, KJV Translation.
2.
The
Book of Song of Songs, a book of the Old Testament, KJV Translation.
3.
The
Book of Proverbs, a book of the Old Testament, KJV Translation.
4.
The
Book of Wisdom, a book of the Old Testament, Ignatius Translation.
5.
The
Book of Sirach, a book of the Old Testament, Ignatius Translation.
6.
Letter
to the Galatians, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and
Ignatius RSV translations.
7.
Letter
to the Ephesians, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and
Ignatius RSV translations.
8.
Letter
to the Philippians, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and
Ignatius RSV translations.
9.
Letter
to the Colossians, an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and
Ignatius RSV translations.
10. First Letter to the Thessalonians,
an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV
translations.
11. Gospel According to Mark, a book of
the New Testament, Ignatius RSV translation.
12. Second Letter to the Thessalonians,
an epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV
translations.
13. First Letter to the Timothy, an
epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
14. Second Letter to the Timothy, an
epistle from the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
15. Letter to Titus, an epistle from the
New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius RSV translations.
16. Letter to Philemon, an epistle from
the New Testament by St. Paul, KJV and Ignatius
RSV translations.
Novels:
1.
The
Wife of Pilate, a short novel by Gertrude von Le Fort.
2.
The
Hunger Angel, a novel by Herta Müller.
3.
Vol
3 of Les Misérables, "Marius," a novel by Victor Hugo.
4.
Personal
Recollections of Joan of Arc, a historical novel by Mark Twain.
5.
A
Room with a View, a novel by E. M. Forster.
6.
Rock
Crystal, a novella by Adalbert Stifter, Translated by Elizabeth Mayer and
Marianne Moore.
Poetry:
1.
Some
Desperate Glory: The First World War the Poets Knew, a book of history and
collected poetry by Max Egremont.
Drama:
1.
Henry
VI, Part 1, a play by William Shakespeare.
Short Stories:
1.
"The
Magic Barrel," a short story by Bernard Malamud.
2.
"The
Secret Sharer," a short story by Joseph Conrad.
3.
"God's
World," a short story by Najib Mahfuz.
4.
"Vitamins,"
a short story by Raymond Carver.
5.
"Bobcat,"
a short story by Rebecca Lee.
6.
"A
Clean, Well-Lighted Place," a short story by Ernest Hemingway.
7.
"Assisted
Living," a short story by Edith Pearlman.
8.
"The
Chosen Husband," a short story by Mavis Gallant.
9.
"Barn
Burning," a short story by William Faulkner.
10. "The Music on the Hill," a
short story by Saki (H. H. Munro).
11. "Zone of Quiet," a short
story by Ring Larsen.
12. "Saint Ursula and Her
Maidens," a short story by Mary O'Connell.
13. "The Diary of an African
Nun," a short story by Alice Walker.
14. "Wunderkind," a short
story by Carson McCullers.
15. "What World is This? A short
story by Gloria Whelan.
16. "Achates McNeil," a short
story by T. C. Boyle.
17. "Gimpel the Fool," a short
story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
18. "The Match-Maker," a short
story by Saki (H. H. Munro).
