Winter reading
Back in June I asked about your summer reading plans and got lots of interesting responses. So I thought I’d try again: what’s on your reading schedule for the holiday, and for 2010? Did Santa bring you any books — or an e-reader that you’ll need to fill? Perhaps you received (or gave) something our Christmas Critics recommended? (I’d also like to know how those of you who laid out your summer reading lists in June have kept up with your plans. The one thing Santa didn’t bring me is more time to read!)
I’ll get the ball rolling: a week before Christmas I traveled by train to Boston, and finished Eamon Duffy’s Faith of Our Fathers (excellent) on the way there. I stopped into a used books store in Cambridge and picked up a copy of Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall to keep me company on my way home. You don’t need me to tell you to read that, but it was a very good choice. I had to suppress many laughs along the way (so as not to alarm my seatmate), and I made it to the last page just as we were approaching Penn Station.
I’ve been working my way through another used-books-store paperback, George Eliot’s Scenes of Clerical Life. It ‘s a collection of short stories/novellas reputed to appeal only to Eliot completists — I think that’s unfair, but I am a little obsessed, so I may not be the best judge. Still, it’s far more entertaining than its title suggests, and I’d recommend it to anyone daunted by the length of, say, Middlemarch or Daniel Deronda. I’m halfway through the last of the stories, “Janet’s Repentance” — another grim title, but I am pleased to report I’ve been laughing out loud just as much as I did reading Waugh. (I’m reading the Penguin Classics edition, edited by David Lodge, another writer who’s always good for a laugh.)
A few weeks ago I went with my sister to the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library. One of the things I learned there was how much Austen admired and was influenced by the eighteenth-century novelist Frances Burney. Among the items on display is an early copy of Burney’s Cecilia, open to the page near the end where the phrase “PRIDE and PREJUDICE” appears. Well, I received my very own (non-antique) copy of Cecilia as a Christmas gift from my godson (I suspect my sister, his mother, did his shopping!), so it looks like that will be my big reading-for-fun project for 2010.
How about you?
There is a film of Decline and Fall, very good.
Among the books I could not leave behind or give away when I moved from DC back to NY were all my Waugh novels. I’ve read the early ones a few times each. I also brought my Penguin editions of several Dickens novels. They’re good for long and cold winter nights. The wind-chill factor here today is too low to describe.
I’ve begun re-reading Augustine’s sermons on the Psalms and decided this time through to see also how they were interpreted by Cassiodorus and by Aquinas, and also to try a modern commentary or two. Obviously a long-range project.
On another level: I’ve just finished my first Donald Westlake Dortmunder mystery, and found it very entertaining, and it’s great to know that there are many more to dig into.
I just finished the second of the Stieg Larsson books (The Girl Who Played with Fire) and am looking forward to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest. I loved The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It is so unfortunate that Larsson did not live to continue the series.
I just picked up The Ghost by Robert Harris and Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels by Pheme Perkins. I am being overambitious, but I do have on my list Charles Freeman’s A New History of Early Christianity and Luke Timothy Johnson’s Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity. I want to read Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel, and I thought I should know more about Henry VIII before reading a historical novel about him, so I started Alison Weir’s biography Henry VIII: The King and His Court, but I am just not cut out to read this kind of detailed biography, so I have given up. (What I slogged through had lots of interesting stuff, though. I am sure many people would love the book.)
Having loved what I have read of Stieg Larsson, I thought it might be interesting to read some other mysteries in translation, so I have Karin Fossum’s Don’t Look Back and He Who Fears the Wolf. For those who would prefer to read them in the original Norwegian, look for Se deg ikke tilbake! and Den som frykter ulven in your local Norwegian bookstore.
I re-read Huckleberry Finn a couple of weeks ago for the first time since high school – a long time ago. Very worthwhile. I’ve just started Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton., part of my reading-books-people-have-given-me-in-previous-years project. So far, it’s fascinating and quite readable. In between the two, I whipped through a quartet of Nero Wolfe novels and novellas, which are good on any occasion.
I’ve started reading What Jesus Meant by Garry Wills. Recently read The Defector by Daniel Silva, the latest mystery about Israeli agent and art resrorer Gabriel Allon. Also like The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold.
I’m just finishing Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood” and Peter Quinn’s “Banished Children of Eve.” (I read 2 at a time to keep from drifting and not finishing)
There there will be The Stories of J. F. Powers, intro by Denis Donoghue.
I recently finished Herman Wouk’s “The Hope” and “The Glory.”
When I get ambitious I will tackle Harvey Cox’s “The Future of Faith.”
For those, no doubt numerous, dotCommonweal readers who can read French: La foi des demons ou l’atheisme depasse by Fabrice Hadjadj.
Here is one sample paragraph that struck a chord for me in my attempts to understand the crisis of sexual abuse by clergy (it was unrelated to that topic).
Cette machine a concasser les hommes, le magistere recent l’appelle une “structure de peche”. L’expression est souvent reprise, mais rarement comprise dans ses implications. La premiere, c’est qu’une telle structure n’est pas le fruit d’une seule decision, meme commune. Elle ne correspond pas a une simple institution humaine, car elle deborde ses acteurs. Ce debordement peut s’imputer a la perte de visibilite et de responsabilite qu’implique la division bureaucratique du travail. Mais cela va plus loin encore. La structure de peche fait fonds sur un ensemble d’institutions adverses, un emboitement d’intentions contraires, des conflits qui se coordonnent et nous embringuent pour pousser a la faute la brave zigoto. L’effet pervers qui en results depasse la perversite des hommes qui y concourent. Ceux-ci apparaissent alors comme des “innocents coupables”, jamais tout a fait innocents, mais pas non plus entierement coupables. Et c’est la peut-etre la reussite majeure d’une telle structure: favoriser des crimes massifs, mais l’air de rien, sans haine, par hygiene et par mecanique, en sorte que les consciences ne soient pas trop troublees. Chacun peut se croire dans son bon droit. Chacun peut avoir le sentiment qu’il combat l’erreur opposee. Et chacun pourra plaider, plus tard, en n’ayant tort qu’a demi: “Ce n’est pas ma faute, je ne savais pas, j’ai ete dupe, etc.”
I recently read Paul Philibert’s “The Priesthood of the Faithful: Key to a Living Church” which seeks to explain/clarify Vatican II’s vision of ministry in the Church by emphasizing the priestly character conferred on every Christian at Baptism and by placing ordained ministry (presbyters) within that context.
I also recently dusted off my three volumes of Bernard Haring’s “Free and Faithful in Christ”, which I studied in the seminary. It is interesting–more, enlightening–to read Fr. Haring’s words through the lens of our contemporary ecclesial experience. He could have written these words this morning!
A few recommendations not of reading but of aids to reading in the following University podcasts. They are slow in some parts, all are at an undergraduate level, and they assume you’ve read the texts.
1) Professor Giusseppe Mazzotta of Yale gives an extended course on Dante. He’s the President of the Dante Society of America so one can’t easily find a much better interpreter of Dante. In this course he covers the entire Comedy, not just the Inferno. And think how much Yale tuition money you can save.
http://academicearth.org/courses/dantes-inferno-purgatory-and-paradise
2) Another series about Western literature I’ve sampled is that of Berkeley philosopher Hubert Dreyfus. He’s kind of folksy but still challenging. I’m looking forward to his forthcoming book (Retrieving Realism – or something to that effect) co-authored with Charles Taylor and another one on living with the sacred in a secular age.
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Podcast-Directory/Philosophy/History-of-Philosophy/Man-God-and-Society-in-Western-Literature-Podcast/21920
In Dreyfus’ lecture on the film “TheThird Man” he mentions that he has seen the film more than twenty times — so you know he’s a man of impeccable taste. He even explores Harry Lime’s theology!
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978306
Some of these lectures are also available on iTunes.
I just finished ‘The Knox Brothers’ by Penelop Fitzgerald and was impressed by the fact that I only really picked it up to read about Ronald, but found all four brothers interesting (Wilfred the Anglo-Catholic, Dilly the cryptologist, Evoe the editor of Punch and finally the ‘biggest catch since Newman’ Ronnie).
Last summer it was suggested one read ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ which I had never heard of until then. To date I have read it thrice (but in fairness, once was because I decided to incorporate it into a religion class focusing on the middle ages).
I was wondering if there are any other fictional gems out there like it with a decidedly ‘Catholic’ atmosphere. I have already read Waugh’s ‘Decline and Fall’, ‘ Brideshead’ and ‘Handful of Dust’, Greene’s ‘Power and the Glory’ much by Chesterton and Belloc, Eco’s ‘Name of the Rose’. I try to balance fiction with non-fiction but lately I have had much more success finding non-fiction (be it biography, history, philosophy, theology or Biblical studies) than fiction that catches my eye.
Adam–
Re your inquiry about “fictional gems with a decidedly ‘Catholic’ atmosphere”–
If you haven’t read these already, then your “Catholic” (and in many ways, catholic) sensibilities will be enriched by:
“The Diary of a Country Priest” by Georges Bernanos
“Silence” by Shusaku Endo
“Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather
All three remain among the most popular reading choices of my parish’s book club.
I’ll also add “The Jeweler’s Shop” by Karol Wojtyla, written well before he became JPII. This short play has a highly unusual format (no dialogue between characters; it uses interior monologues instead) that I believe were characteristic of some of the underground plays in Poland during the German occupation during WWII, but the play presents a philosophical and spiritual commentary on love and marriage.
I’m reading Richard Price’s novel “Lush Life.” Gritty New York, well observed – and well heard, since he has such a great ear.
In the meantime, I’m finishing up some Advent reading: “Why Christ?” by James Kelly, O.S.B. Kelly, a Biblical scholar who studied at the École Biblique in his younger days, was a monk at Mount Saviour Monastery near Elmira, N.Y. in his later years. He died in 2006, but not before completing this book, which we had talked about a number of times when I visited the monastery. He wanted to write a book that told Jesus’ story as a narrative, drawing on good Biblical scholarship. The device he used was to have the story told by the wealthy young man who was told by Jesus that he would have to give away his riches (and who in this account joins Jesus later in life). There are many gems in the book, the fruit of Brother James’s scholarship and also, I think, of the monastic life. He completed the book a few days before his death, and the other brothers saw to it that it was published.
On my bookshelf, just in, are James T. Fisher’s “On the Irish Waterfront”; my former Newsday colleague Len Levitt’s book “NYPD Confidential: Power and Corruption in the Country’s Greatest Police Force” and sociologist Sharon Zukin’s “Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places.”
Looking back on the past year, John W. O’Malley’s “What Happened at Vatican II” stands out.
Paul Moses mentioned Fr. O’Malley’s book on Vatican II. I haven’t read that book yet, but for Christmas a relative gave me Fr. O’Malley’s latest book, “A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present.” I’ve only skimmed it to date, but I look forward to reading it carefully.
I also plan to read “Franz Jagerstatter: Letters & Writings from Prison” (Erna Putz, ed.) to learn more about the recently-beatified Austrian farmer who chose death over service in Hitler’s army.
I’ve already started “Plain Secrets: An Outsider Among the Amish,” author Joe Mackall’s story about his contact with the Swartzentruber sect of Ohio, reportedly the most conservative of all the Amish sects. The book has been very interesting so far.
One of my children gave me “Three Cups of Tea,” by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin, for Christmas, and I finished it last evening. A quick and very enjoyable story about an American mountain climber (Mortenson) who fails in his attempt to climb K2, the world’s second highest mountain, but who as the result of that failure finds his life’s calling: building schools, especially for girls, in the Karakoram region of Pakistan. Mortenson’s efforts make a compelling case that Islamic fundamentalism is best fought by improving access to education and by alleviating poverty.
Finally, one of my reading goals for 2010 is to read Fr. Copleston’s multi-volume history of philosophy from cover to cover. I’ve read a number of isolated portions of his magnum opus, but I’m hoping that reading it seriatim will be enlightening.
Christmas week I always like to take another look at “Murder in the Cathedral.” Back when my LP player was working I used to listen to a recording of the play, but reading it has the benefit of looking at all my old marginal notes. New books on my desk include a broadly hinted for “The Children’s Book” by A. S. Byatt. (Joe came through as usual.) I’m looking forward to it, as I loved Byatt’s “Possession” and here she is doing something in the same vein except that this time the nineteenth century author inspiring the action is one of my favorites, E. Nesbit. Two others on my list are also highly recommended by my in-house critic: John O’ Malley’s “A History of the Popes: From Peter to the Present” and Nicholas Lash’s “Theology for Pilgrims.” Let it snow. I’m all set.
I read H. Allen Orr’s review of Robert Wright’s Evolution of God–an excellent review–but what most struck me was the title of the book. The title brought to mind someone I was very interested in the mid 50s, Wilhem Schmidt SDV, author of several books translated into English and one that was not, as far as I could ascertain, Der Ursprung der Gottesidee, The Origin of the Idea of God. Schimid was both a linguist and an ethnographer and he set out to show that primitive religion, so far as it could be studied in what were then called primitive peoples, pointed to the originality of monotheism. I read some of his work in English but never found the time to undertake a reading of the one with the most intriguing title. I would very much like to know whether there is any interest in his work in Catholic intellectual circles today. All this further puts me in mind of Jean Bottero, one time Dominican and eventually the the doyen of French Assyriolgists. A few years ago on vacation in Paris I read an interview he gave in Le Figaro but recklessly failed to save it. The book he wrote that I wanted to read was La naissance de dieu, now happily translated as The Birth of God. One thing he said in the interview really stuck with me. He said, as best I can remember, “I do not need a God I can understand”.
Thank you William, those are exactly the type of suggestions I was looking for. I remember studying the Diary when I was briefly in the seminary (the film, with its Jansenist undertones). I think in temperament I should be a Jansenist, but in theology I am much too liberal.
Endo and Cather I will need to pick up on my next routine visit to the used-bookstore. Particularly Endo, as I spent some time in Taiwan and visited Japan staying with Catholic connections in Nagasaki.
Somewhere along the lines I hope to fill in the gaps in my education that secular schools left. Fortunately I was introduced to Waugh, much to my surprise, by an English prof who made us read DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and Waugh.
Another author for the long winter nights: Sigrid Undset, especially Kristen Lavransdatter, which I want to reread, some fifty years since i read it the first time.
“Looking back on the past year, John W. O’Malley’s ‘What Happened at Vatican II’ stands out.”
This has also been released by Now You Know Media in 4 CDs under the title of “Vatican II.”
I suspect that the CDs might be slightly abridged, but I have the book and just need to get into it.
“Silence” is superbly written.
Anyone inclined to consider the causes of the current recession might like Robert Skidelsky’s newest book about John Maynard Keynes. “Keynes: The Return of the Master”. Mercifully it is only about 200 pages long, unlike is great biography of Keynes which is more like 2000 pages. Beautifully written, and, of course, highly authoritative. Lots of “I-told-you-so”. Take THAT you Reaganites!!
I’ve just started it and read around in it (as I do with most new books), What I find particularly interesting is the moral dimension of Keynes thinking. He excoriates the capitalists who turn the accumulation of money into their end instead of appreciating it as only a means to a good life. He saw such foolish greed as one of the great problems of capitalism.
I’ve also forced myself to get into come contemporary thinking on the problem of evil, i.e., theodicy. One work, by Tilley (who was recently a subject of one of our threads) has written “The Evils of Theodity”. He actually thinks that it is morally evil to “practice” theodicy because, he argues, it cannot solve the problem and only leads to various other evils. Weird. But the first part is a very good introduction to the theory of speech acts.
Marilyn McCord Adams is a medieval scholar as well as an Episcopalian priest who writes on the subject. Yes, there is indeed some new thinking aobut the subject, though no solution to the problem as it was viewed in the past. With her husband she edited “The Problem of Evil”, a collection of excellent articles on the subject. Also, her own work, “Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God” has some new insights, I think. She is as much theologian as philosopher.
I’ve just gotten into the books, but they look awfully good.
Adam –
The English convert Muriel Spark wrote funny but very serious novels. A couple of really big Catholic novelists were Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy. Both are also funny and terribly serious at the same time. Seems to be a characteristic of contemporary Catholic novelists.
Some earlier writers you might find interesting are Tolkein (“The Lord of the Rings”), and his Anglo-Catholic friend C. S, Lewis who wrote some early science fiction with religious overtones.
The French novelist Francois Mauriac is one of my favorites. Extremely powerful writer. Then there is the German Nobel prize winner Heinrich Boll, whose “Billiards at Nine-Thirty” is an anti-war novel that doesn’t mention the War. Also try his short stories. If you enjoy pot-boilers try the old “Quo Vadis” by H. Sienkewica (but I seem to remember it also got a Nobel prize), and Morris West’s, “The Shoes of the Fisherman”, a great popular success.
And don’t leave out the poets. Paul Claudel, a Frenchman, wrote some great stuff. Extremely beautiful, I think. It has been claimed that Wallace Stevens, an American giant, converted on his death-bed. Very difficult poety but worth the effort. Richard Wilbur is more accessible. He’s Episcopalian, as I remember.
Not to mention Chaucer, Shakespeare and Dante :-)
lP. S. If you like mysteries, Tony Hillerman is one of the best.
P. P. S.
And Dorothy Sayers, an Anglican, was one of the greats, and a theologian as well. P. D. James, another great mystery writer is another one who could qualify as Catholic of some sort.
Also, Seamus Heaney, the splendid poet, is/was Catholic.
Last summer it was suggested one read ‘A Canticle for Leibowitz’ which I had never heard of until then. To date I have read it thrice (but in fairness, once was because I decided to incorporate it into a religion class focusing on the middle ages).
Adam Marischuk,
I would highly recommend getting used copy of The Best of Walter M. Miller, Jr. (it’s out of print). I guarantee you won’t be disappointed with this collection of short stories. On the other hand, whatever you do, avoid Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, the sequel to A Canticle for Leibowitz. It was started by Miller and completed by someone else, who I believe claimed to be following Miller’s outline. But whoever deserves the blame, the book is simply awful. Read all the one-star reviews on Amazon.com if you want to know just how bad it is, but definitely don’t read the book.
Thanks David but I did find the collection of Walter Miller’s short stories a few months ago and read it swiftly. I cannot say any of the short stories compare to A Canticle, but some where better than others and all dealt with ethical or metaphysical issues. I loved the line in response to a complaint from an astronaut/worker on Mars who is despairing of his drilling job to release some gas into the atmosphere: “In 500 years, Mars will be inhabitable. Some sew, other reap.”
And thanks for the warning about the Wild Horse Woman. I was tinkering with finding it but I heard bad things. Perhaps I won’t let it destroy the flavour A Canticle left in my mouth.
Thanks Ann as well. I have read just about everything form Tolkien (I am currently teaching The Hobbit to a grade 10 class) and I really enjoy him. Lewis not so much. I was actually very surprised/disappointed when I picked up up Morris’ “God and the Philosophers” when I found so bloody many references to Lewis. A biography on the two (Tolkien and Lewis) pretty well sums up Lewis to me, a popularizer and apologist, an Anglican Belloc without the flair. By the end Tolkien could barely even find anything good to say about Lewis’ writings and the Chronicles of Narnia left me like that.
I loved Quo Vadis (very similar to River God by Smith). I have only heard of O’Connor and Walker in passing and Spark is new. I’ll have to do a little research to see what I should pick up. I know Claudel through Maritain.
I did my minor on Chaucer a school and read Dante while in Italy. Shakespeare is like listening to popular music on the radio, annoyingly familiar even when good.
Speaking of religious-themed novels, I just got one from the library today – Dissolution by C.J. Sansom. It’s a mystery set in Tudor England during the dissolution of the monasteries and is sort of like The Name of the Rose. Pretty good so far.
Fr. Komonchak, I share your enthusiasm for the works of Sigrid Undset. Kristen Lavransdatter is well worth rereading, istm. Have you also read her other medieval trilogy, The Master of Hestviken? It’s darker than Kristen Lavransdatter (which is saying a lot considering the latter ends with the Black Death), but I found it quite wonderful too. There is a single character that unites the two works, as perhaps you know — Kristen’s father, Lavrans, Undset’s image of the Christian knight. Together these life stories of a man and a woman paint an impressive picture of medieval Norway.
I’ve recently finished re-reading Orhan Pamuk’s My Name Is Red, which is set in Ottoman Istanbul, and I’d highly recommend it. Am now reading Naguib Mafouz’s At the Throne, a series of dialogues about Egyptian history. I’m sadly at a disadvantage, because of not knowing enough about the contemporary political questions that his work is evidently discussing by way of historical figures, but having read his Cairo trilogy (another amazing work) I have some clue at least and it’s an amazing book. Surprisingly, he denied that At the Throne was a work of fiction, and claimed rather that it was “history.”
For about the 40th time, I have been reading again Hilaire Belloc’s The Path To Rome, a Christmas tradition. Even though I know whole passages by heart, I am always astonished that I find something new.
For those who haven’t read it, try it. Pure joy!
Today I will start plowing through Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed.
For perhaps the third time, I am reading, in the evening, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson – wondeful gossip in 18th century prose.
BTW, Claire, thanks for quoting that passage. I do quite agree with what the author is saying. Is Fabrice Hadjadj a moral theologian? Shall have to look for the book.
Both of O’Malley’s books were very good. The recent book on Archbishop Hurley gives another personal view of the same area covered by O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II but adds the South African experience.
The fictional novel, The Bishop’s Man”, really makes you think.
Finished Weakland’s autobiography – excellent; but wonder if others notice that he ends on a very disolute and sad note in terms of not knowing how to react or handle the sexual abuse crisis and being frustrated because catholics did not just follow his orders. Appears lost on a very important issue.
Rita,
I’m not sure, this is the first book I’ve read by him. I was told he was a young philosopher and a convert from Judaism. The book cover says he’s an essayist and “dramaturge”.