Reading Notes

I believe Cabin Fever is officially setting in. It's all I can do to sit down with a book for more than fifteen minutes. If it weren't for audiobooks, I'd be getting nothing read at all! I'm on about Day 10 with The Confessions of Nat Turner, and that's not a reflection on the book. Today is the first time I have spent an extended period with it, and it really is a good book. It did win the Pulitzer Prize after all. But any book that takes more than a week for me to read tends to suffer from my weird need to move on to the next book, no matter how good the one I'm reading might be. Maybe it's an affliction that stems from being surrounded by hundreds of TBR's. I don't know. Anyway, poor Nat Turner is not getting the benefit of my undivided attention. I hate when that happens.

On the audio front, my commute book is an entertaining story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary entitled The Meaning of Everything. It has kindled in me a deep desire to own the entire print version of the OED. All twenty volumes. How fun would that be??? Unfortunately, the price tag is a bit hefty at $975. It may have to wait for awhile since spring is on its way and I have my heart set on a laptop so I can blog to that same heart's content out on the patio soon! :-)

I'm also listening to Wuthering Heights and I have a question for those of you who have read it already. Do Heathcliffe and Catherine ever become likable? Don't get me wrong. I'm about 1/5-1/4 into the book and I like it a lot, but I'm finding the lead characters strangely annoying. I know that doesn't make any sense, but reading can be like that, can't it? :-)

OK, I'm going back to Nat Turner before I have to leave him alone again to go cheer on my Wolves. Happy Reading, Everyone!

SKELETONS AT THE FEAST

by Chris Bohjalian



"As World War II winds down, a group of people displaced by the conflict begin a journey across devastated Germany in an attempt to reach the Allied forces. During their haunted travels, they struggle to keep their bonds, as well as their lives." (From the CD container)

Skeletons at the Feast shows you the war from the viewpoints of a Scottish POW, an escaped Jewish man masquerading in various personae as he desperately searches for a way to safety so he can tell the world what is happening to his people, a displaced Prussian family in denial about what the Reich is doing, and a Jewish woman on a death march from a concentration camp. It does not shy away from the brutalities committed by any party, and readers not prepared for the ugliness will probably have a tough time. But there is also hope and faith and loyalty, love and kindness, courage and sacrifice of the highest order.

Simply put, if this book doesn't move you in some way, I'm pretty sure you have no heart at all. I challenge just about anyone to get through this with completely dry eyes, without your heart being squeezed in pain, and without swearing to treat your fellow man with dignity, love and respect for the rest of your days, regardless of race, religion or any other differences we may have.

Meet The Timberwolves!

Too much fun!! My guy Craig Smith wasn't at the Meet The Team event last night. He was sick. Bummer. (Get well soon, Craig!) And Big Al Jefferson just had knee surgery a couple weeks ago, so he was missing. (You get well soon, too, Al! We need you!) But Peter and I had a blast chatting with all the other members of the Timberwolves and having pics taken. Here are the ones we took. There are a few others that were taken by the team photographer that will be emailed to us later. In the meantime, here is me schmoozing it up:

The awesomest mascot in the NBA, Crunch



Me and our rookie, Kevin Love



Fan favorite, Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen



Sebastian Telfair (How cute is he???)



Rodney Carney and one of our newest team members, Bobby Brown. No jokes. He's heard them all. :-) Bobby was traded from Sacramento, so I made sure to tell him it really was going to get warmer here someday. I'm not sure he believed me.



The Timberwolves are a first class organization. They really make their fans feel special, and we had a great time!

Max Will Be So Happy!

After our winter hiatus, Max and I are getting ready to head back to the competition ring! I sent in our entry for April 4. That is Max's birthday, so he's going to have one of the best birthdays ever in his little Border Collie book. Nothing like running a bunch of obstacle courses in the dirt of a horse barn to make turning five years old a grand party! Skye and Peter are sitting this one out, because they are putting their time and resources into honing their sheep herding skills. Peter is thinking about competing in that later this spring. I so hope he does! It would be wonderful to see Skye competing in his first love the same way Max does. Peter's a little nervous about it, but any encouragement for him from all of you would be great! Wouldn't you love to see some photos of Skye rounding up those sheep? Me, too! In fact, I think you can see in this photo that he is wishing he was in a sheep pasture instead of on a dogwalk. His expression is very, "Is there a point to all of this??" :-)


On the basketball front, tonight we're going to a special season ticket holder "Meet The Team" event. There will be food and video games, and the whole Timberwolves team will be there signing autographs and posing for pics. I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!! It's been a rough season, but I still love our guys!

Books? I'm working on The Confessions of Nat Turner, and I'll be getting back to my Class Notes posts hopefully this weekend. Until then ~

Happy Reading, Everyone!

MISQUOTING JESUS

by Bart D. Ehrman



One of the things I neglected to mention when I wrote about the essay "Why I Am Not A Christian" by Bertrand Russell was that I have read the Bible cover to cover, both the Old and New Testaments, and I believe that the world would be a much better place if people who professed to be Christians of any definition would live by its teachings, especially those of Jesus Christ. But I do not believe that the Bible is meant to be taken literally regardless of the historical accuracy or inaccuracy of any of its passages, and I do not believe it is the inerrant word of God. If you are someone who does believe that, I am not here to tell you you're wrong. I'm just telling you my feelings on the subject.

That being said, its altogether possible, even probable, that the original books were, in fact, somehow inspired. However, we no longer have them. In Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Bart Ehrman takes the reader on a fascinating journey through time to show how the versions of the Bible we read today came to be. Granted, there are what look to the layman to be quite a few assumptions going on in some of his arguments, but there also appear to be some inarguable facts regarding some fairly substantial changes that occurred over the centuries that do change our interpretations. Though as I was listening, what I found to be equally interesting was how much of the texts have not changed over the centuries!

Erhman's ultimate conclusion, however, is that scribes who made changes, be they honest mistakes or intentional alterations, were only engaging in what every reader of the Bible does every time they read from its pages. We interpret the words in our own way. It may be the way we were taught to interpret them, or it may be conclusions we came to on our own, but we do put the written words and lessons of the Bible into our own words and use those words in our own lives in the manner in which we understand them. The difference being our words are not being written down and transmitted through the ages.

This book is not going to change the mind of the believers in the "inerrant words of God", and I don't think it means to try. It also is not in any way out to discredit Christianity. Far from it. But for those who are interested in the history of biblical manuscripts and their transmission, this is a wonderfully informative book aimed at curious non-scholars.

Bart Ehrman also has some great courses on Early Christianity and the New Testament from my favorite place, The Teaching Company. Check them out here.

Winter In Minnesota

More LOLs here.

I am soooooo ready for Spring!!

THE WOMAN IN WHITE

by Wilkie Collins



"Hailed as a classic the moment it was written in 1859, The Woman in White uses a dozen different narrators to tell the tale of a man's determination to save the woman he loves in the face of the worst intentions of the sly Sir Percival Glyde and the magnificent Count Fosco." (From the CD container)

One of the earliest examples of the Victorian Sensation Novel, The Woman In White was a long book but well worth the time. It took its sweet time laying down the back-story, but once the mystery started to kick in, I was hooked.

I really liked the many changes in narrative view point. Just when I started to get bored or agitated with one, it switched! Each character and perspective is unique, refreshing and adds a different spin on the unfolding tale. You're never quite sure which testimonies are trustworthy until the end. I listened to the audio version of this book, and the narrators were fabulous! I especially liked the portrayal of Laura Fairley's elitist hypochondriac of an uncle, Frederick Fairlie, with his frail and eternally suffering voice.

And here are the questions we modern women nearly always find ourselves ruminating over: What is it that these leading men see in their beautiful, empty-headed, helpless leading ladies? And why is the brilliant companion always an ugly spinster? I know, I know. Put myself in their time and I'll see the answer. Maybe. :-) I think I'd rather be the ugly but brilliant spinster, since being beautiful kept getting these poor women married off to the likes of Sir Percival Glyde.

Class Notes: Introduction To Narrative

Chapter Two: Defining Narrative

"The difference between events and their representation is the difference between story (the event or sequence of events) and narrative discourse (how the story is conveyed)." The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, p. 15

There was so much great stuff in this chapter that it's difficult to pick one or two highlights to share! I'll go first with the observation that "story" always moves forward in time regardless of the manner in which the narrative discourse presents it. The book used to exemplify this was one that I have read and loved, Time's Arrow by Martin Amis. (You can read my thoughts on it here.) Although the book is narrated completely in reverse time, it is dependent upon the reader's ability to reconstruct the forward movement of "story" to have its full effect. I remember clearly how alternately funny and horrifying it was. That technique was supremely powerful in that novel, and I don't think the story would have been nearly as impactful without it.

The second point I'd like to highlight is actually a question. What makes a story identifiable as the story it is? The author never actually answers that question, but uses it to feed our analytic skills. For example, what do we mean when we say, "It's a Cinderella story"? What are the events that make it a Cinderella story? At what point does it stop being Cinderella and become something else? What is it that distinguishes the actual Cinderella from "Cinderella stories"?

From here he goes into a discussion of constituent events (events necessary for the story to be the story it is) and supplementary events (events that could be removed and the story will still be reconizable as the story that it is). Because supplementary events are not necessary to move the story forward, asking yourself why they were included assists in interpreting the narrative.

Is your head spinning yet? In case it's not, here's another question that has scholars scratching their heads: Does a story exist before it is told? In other words, is a narrative a "presentation" that brings the story into existence, or is it a "representation" of something that already exists?

I am loving this book! It's shedding a whole new light on an activity I have always taken for granted. (Must be all those lightbulbs still going off over my head with every page I read.) I am thinking I'm eventually going to need to pick up The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. This is all just too much fun!!