Category: Books

Russell Shaw has a piece on Flannery O’Connor commemorating the 40th anniversary of her anthology Everything That Rises Must Converge.

For those who may not be famliar with her, Flannery O’Connor is commonly regarded as one of the greatest American Catholic authors of the 20th century.

Her own stories contain chills as horrible as those of H. P. Lovecraft’s–made more horrible by the fact that hers aren’t supernatural. Also unlike Lovecraft, her horrors are redeemed by her staunchly Christian and Catholic worldview.

Quoth O’Connor: "All of my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it."

GET THE STORY.

Today in 1949 George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984 was published.

Man! Was it that long ago?

1984, I mean, not 1949.

I remember growing up in the years before 1984, when Orwell’s novel was still a dark prophecy of the future. There was no way that the world would really resemble the novel come that year, but the number "1984" was still an ominous and emblematic number, filled with cultural resonance.

Guess the passage of time took the edge of it.

The novel’s still a classic, though.

LEARN MORE.

Now, you may be wondering why I’ve got a picture of Joseph Stalin in this post. The reason is that 1984 was written in significant measure to illustrate Orwell’s disappointment with Soviet Communism and, if you read the novel, it’s hard not to see Joseph Stalin (who was in power in Russia at the time) and all the Soviet propaganda posters of him as the prototype for Big Brother and all the IngSoc ("English Socialism") propaganda posters of him in turn. Realizing the political context of 1984, it’s hard not to imagine Joseph Stalin’s face on all those "Big Brother Is Watching You" posters.

The rainbow used to be the very symbol of simple, innocent beauty. Noah’s Ark, the Wizard of Oz… heck, Kermit the Frog – these are the kinds of things that used to come to mind when we thought of rainbows. As an artist, the rainbow represents all the possibilities of the limited palette; from these few colors, you could paint anything.

Nowadays, though, the rainbow has been co-opted for more nefarious uses. From GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, the rainbow has been adopted as a symbol to give a veneer of happy innocence to the twisted causes of these groups.

Now, the rainbow is being dragged even more deeply into the muck. A new book, Rainbow Party, tells the story of a group of teens who engage in a fairly new form of group sex involving girls wearing different colored lipstick (so, if your kid is ever invited to a rainbow party, just be informed that they will not be doing crafts for entertainment). The book itself would be less irksome if it were not written by an author of juvenile fiction and published by Simon Pulse, a division of Simon & Scuster that specializes in books for teens.

Michelle Malkin comments on the book in the Houston Chronicle, and points out why it is closer to sex-ploitation than to education. Under the guise of "educating the yutes" it will doubtless be showing up in school libraries before long. It reminds me of Reefer Madness, a classic exploitation flick which was designed to generate ticket sales and controversy, but was billed as being for educational purposes (it was re-released at one time under the frantic title Tell Your Children!).

GET THE "COLORFUL" STORY.

Michelle did the blog book meme a piece back, and now Revolution of Love has tagged me for the book meme that’s going around the blogosphere, so here goes:

1) Total number of books I own –

A quick estimate of that based on shelf counting, etc., puts the number at about 4,000.

2) The last book I bought –

According to "My Account" at Amazon.Com, that would be

INTO THE TWILIGHT, ENDLESSLY GROUSING by humorist Patrick McManus

3) The last book I read was –

Read all the way through? Well, I just finished (listening to) one today so I s’ppose that would be

THE MAKING OF MODERN ECONOMICS: THE LIVES AND IDEAS OF THE GREAT THINKERS by Mark Skousen

4) Five books that mean a lot to me –

The five books (or sets) that mean the most to me would be the Bible, the Catechism, the Summa Theologiae, the collected decrees of the ecumenical councils, and the collected encyclicals of the popes, but those wouldn’t be very interesting for me to use to answer this question since they are all standard works directly related to my profession.

Therefore, let me offer five that are special to me for other reasons. Each one of the following affected my life in an important way:

1. THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS: ARE THEY RELIABLE? by F. F. Bruce. I read this book when I was a new follower of Christ who had imbibed an awful lot of secularism in high school and college. This book, by an important New Testament scholar, helped me start taking the historical value of the Gospels and the other New Testament documents seriously.
2. MIRACLES by C. S. Lewis. This one further helped me get over the secular worldview by offering a powerful exploration of the concept of miracles and how they can fit with natural law and science.
3. SCALING THE SECULAR CITY by J. P. Moreland. This one was a morale boost to me as a developing apologist because it provided an exemplar of Christian apologetics done with the kind of rigorously-argued approach that I craved. As an analytic philosophy student, I thrived on rigorous argumentation, but so few works out there tried to bring this level of work to the defense of the faith. This one did. It’s a modern classic and represents a kind of apologeics that still does not exist in Catholic circles. (Though I don’t like all of Moreland’s treatment of the kalaam argument for creation.)
4. EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES by J. N. D. Kelly. Though Kelly is not a Catholic, reading his survey of doctrine in the early Church helped show me just how Catholic the early Church Fathers were.
5. DR. ATKINS NEW DIET REVOLUTION by Dr. Robert Akins. This is the book that saved me from getting diabetes. I was insulin resistant with rising blood sugar levels when my doctor recommended this book to me. After going on the this diet, I dropped a hundred pounds without hunger. Even before the weight came off, I felt better and had more energy than I had in years. This book opened my eyes to how completely BACKWARDS normal dieting advice is (and thus why all previous diets I had tried had failed so dismally).

5) I tag – (5 bloggers)

Okay, here is a design flaw in this meme. There is no way, given how far it’s spread, that I’m going to go to who knows how many other blogs and search through their archives to see if they’ve already done the meme. Neither am I going to fire off tags to other bloggers irrespective of whether they may have done this meme.

Therefore, I hereby tag all the bloggers reading this who haven’t already been infected by the meme.

Michelle did the blog book meme a piece back, and now Revolution of Love has tagged me for the book meme that’s going around the blogosphere, so here goes:

1) Total number of books I own –

A quick estimate of that based on shelf counting, etc., puts the number at about 4,000.

2) The last book I bought –

According to "My Account" at Amazon.Com, that would be

INTO THE TWILIGHT, ENDLESSLY GROUSING by humorist Patrick McManus

3) The last book I read was –

Read all the way through? Well, I just finished (listening to) one today so I s’ppose that would be

THE MAKING OF MODERN ECONOMICS: THE LIVES AND IDEAS OF THE GREAT THINKERS by Mark Skousen

4) Five books that mean a lot to me –

The five books (or sets) that mean the most to me would be the Bible, the Catechism, the Summa Theologiae, the collected decrees of the ecumenical councils, and the collected encyclicals of the popes, but those wouldn’t be very interesting for me to use to answer this question since they are all standard works directly related to my profession.

Therefore, let me offer five that are special to me for other reasons. Each one of the following affected my life in an important way:

1. THE NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS: ARE THEY RELIABLE? by F. F. Bruce. I read this book when I was a new follower of Christ who had imbibed an awful lot of secularism in high school and college. This book, by an important New Testament scholar, helped me start taking the historical value of the Gospels and the other New Testament documents seriously.
2. MIRACLES by C. S. Lewis. This one further helped me get over the secular worldview by offering a powerful exploration of the concept of miracles and how they can fit with natural law and science.
3. SCALING THE SECULAR CITY by J. P. Moreland. This one was a morale boost to me as a developing apologist because it provided an exemplar of Christian apologetics done with the kind of rigorously-argued approach that I craved. As an analytic philosophy student, I thrived on rigorous argumentation, but so few works out there tried to bring this level of work to the defense of the faith. This one did. It’s a modern classic and represents a kind of apologeics that still does not exist in Catholic circles. (Though I don’t like all of Moreland’s treatment of the kalaam argument for creation.)
4. EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES by J. N. D. Kelly. Though Kelly is not a Catholic, reading his survey of doctrine in the early Church helped show me just how Catholic the early Church Fathers were.
5. DR. ATKINS NEW DIET REVOLUTION by Dr. Robert Akins. This is the book that saved me from getting diabetes. I was insulin resistant with rising blood sugar levels when my doctor recommended this book to me. After going on the this diet, I dropped a hundred pounds without hunger. Even before the weight came off, I felt better and had more energy than I had in years. This book opened my eyes to how completely BACKWARDS normal dieting advice is (and thus why all previous diets I had tried had failed so dismally).

5) I tag – (5 bloggers)

Okay, here is a design flaw in this meme. There is no way, given how far it’s spread, that I’m going to go to who knows how many other blogs and search through their archives to see if they’ve already done the meme. Neither am I going to fire off tags to other bloggers irrespective of whether they may have done this meme.

Therefore, I hereby tag all the bloggers reading this who haven’t already been infected by the meme.

I’ve been reading romance novels for over twenty years now — yes, I started too young — and although I now read more contemporaries, my nostalgic favorites are the historicals I started with. So, the topic of historical accuracy in fiction is of deep interest to me:

"Historical authors Celeste Bradley and Nicole Byrd will be presenting their workshop ‘It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to’ — a debate on the necessity (or not!) of historical accuracy in the romance novel. As one who watches from the sidelines, I won’t be presenting my opinion on the subject here. However, I am deeply interested in learning about your views on the matter.

"How do you feel about historical accuracy in the novels you read?"

GET THE STORY.

My rule of thumb is that if the reader can spot the error, the entire effect of the fictional "world" the author is trying to create evaporates. This can occur even when the error is minor, but is appalling when the error is so huge that it shows a lack of care by the author in performing requisite research. An example of both:

• When I read Regency historicals — a hot "trend" in the romance novel world right now — I cringe every time a married lady has "Mrs." tacked on to her first name and married surname. The people of the British Regency era were sticklers for manners, indeed the fictional genre owes its start to Jane Austen’s comedies of manners set during the British Regency (ca. 1811-1820), and a woman of that time would never be called Mrs. Anne Smith. In historical usage, "Mrs." is attached to the husband’s full name — in other words, Mrs. Anne Smith should be titled Mrs. John Smith. This is a small error, but an annoying one for a reader who catches it.
• The most appalling error I ever came across was in a medieval romance that abused the seal of the sacrament of confession not once, but twice in the same novel. Two separate plot points depended upon two different priests violating the sacramental seal. The first time I gritted my teeth and plowed on with the novel because the violation was part of the "back story" (information from before the book opens that must be mentioned for the overall development of a character but doesn’t necessarily affect the present action all that much); the second time, the plot resolution depended on another priest — a bishop, if I remember correctly — violating the sacramental seal. At that point, I was so outraged that the book metaphorically thudded against my wall. That it didn’t do so in actuality was solely because I like my walls more than I did the book.

Frankly, I think if an author is going to take the trouble to write a book, the story should be as historically accurate as her research can make it. If dramatic license must be taken, note should be made of the deliberate inaccuracies in an afterword. To include dramatic license, but to attempt to leave the reader ignorant of it — i.e., "It’s my party and I’ll lie if I want to" — only makes the author look ignorant, at best, or careless, at worst, to a knowledgeable reader.

CHT to the reader who sent me this link to

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE’S RANKING OF THE TEN MOST HARMFUL BOOKS OF THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES.

It makes interesting reading. Human Events Online asked a number of folks to nominate and then vote on which books they thought had done the most damage in the last two centuries.

The list (sans the reasons why the books are on the list–read the article for that) is:

1. The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler
3. Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book
4. The Kinsey Report by Alfred Kinsey
5. Democracy and Education by John Dewey
6. Das Kapital by Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
8. Course in Positive Philosophy by Auguste Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes

The article also lists many books in the (dis)honorable mention category–ones that were apparently nominated but didn’t make the final top ten (e.g., The Origin of Species, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, The Greening of America).

Of course, the fascination of such lists (since they have little practical use) is analyzing them to see whether or not one agrees with them.

In this case I’d buy some of the entries (Communist Manifesto, The Kinsey Report), I’m open to others being in the top ten (Charman Mao’s Little Red Book, Democracy and Education), puzzled by others (Beyond Good and Evil, and Course in Positive Philosophy–I just don’t know if Nietzsche and Comte’s works had enough influence to rank in this way).

One book that I’m surprised is not there (nor even in the [dis]honorable mentions) is An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus. This was the book that popularized the whole "overpopulation" problem by postulating that the means of production only grow arithmetically while the population grows geometrically.

The authors of the list might have not named this one since the first edition came out in 1798, and thus at the very end of the 18th century, but all five of the revisions (which amounted to quite substantial changes) came out in the 1800s, qualifying them.

What’re y’all’s picks for the ten worst books category?

I haven’t yet been tagged in the book meme going around St. Blog’s Parish, but the questions about books interested me, an inveterate reader, so I figured I’d leap into the fray untagged.

• Total books owned:  Likely in the thousands.  Every few years, I tend to collect enough to open a used bookstore in my house.  I purge them by donating to libraries or used bookstores, and then the vicious cycle starts again.  My name is Michelle and I’m a bookaholic.
• Last book purchased: We Have a Pope!, an upcoming biography of Pope Benedict XVI by Matthew Bunson.  I bought it through Catholic Answers and am eagerly anticipating receiving a copy when the shipment arrives.  <Commercial>If you want to purchase a copy, too, GO HERE.</commercial>
• Last book read:  Benedict XVI by John L. Allen Jr.  Although some of Allen’s later books, such as Conclave and All the Pope’s Men, are very good, I understand now why Allen himself thinks this book (originally written when the Pope was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) is not one of his best.  It is not so much a biography of the Holy Father but uses him as a pretext to discuss Allen’s own liberal views.  Allen said recently that he wished he had been able to write new material to preface the U.S. edition of the book, but did not have the opportunity.  Apparently, though, the U.K. publisher did allow for a new preface.
• Five books that mean a lot to me:  The Bible (natch), God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts by Gregory K. Popcak (very helpful), Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating (first Catholic book I read), Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer (favorite romance novel), Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (favorite book growing up).
• Tagging:  Since I wasn’t tagged myself, I won’t tag another blogger; but feel free to answer one or more of the questions in the comments box.  Consider yourself tagged, if you like. 🙂

(Nod to Selkie for inspiration to do the St. Blog’s Book Meme.)

One sure way to end a promising friendship is to crack someone else’s spine.

Well, yes, putting someone in a wheelchair tends to be a relationship buster, too, but that’s not what I have in mind. I am referring to borrowing a person’s paperback book and destroying the book’s spine through ruthless handling:

"I had a rude awakening my first year of college when I discovered these book guidelines [of the proper care and treatment for paperbacks] weren’t universal: there are creasers [of book spines] and non-creasers. I worked in a used bookstore for a few summers, so I brought a number of books with me to my dorm. One of my roommates was a creaser. I didn’t mind as much when she was reading the used books, but she treated new books the same way. Oh, the horror! It got to the point where I would hide my new books in drawers or under my mattress or pillow so she couldn’t get to them."

GET THE STORY.

I can relate to this writer’s sorrowful tale. I first became aware of the phenomenon of creasers when I was in high school. I had so many new and used paperbacks that I could have opened a used bookstore in my bedroom, and all of the books I bought new still appeared to be new. One day I was chatting with a girl in my science class — the teacher was otherwise occupied 😉 — and discovered she shared my love for romance novels. I recommended a book I’d recently bought and offered to lend it to her, an offer she snapped up.

I lived to regret it. The book I gave her to read was brand new. The book I received back was thoroughly trashed, to such an extent that I doubted it was the same book. Perhaps it was petty of me, but that budding friendship withered.

I’ve heard the various justifications for spine-cracking: It demonstrates love for the book; like the Velveteen Rabbit, the book becomes Real; breaking the spine makes the book easier to read. I don’t buy it. I can manage to flop on a couch, soda in one hand, book in the other, snack nearby. The book will be thoroughly read and loved, but escape the experience unscathed. On the rare occasions that drops of liquid touch the pages, I dry them out carefully. I remove any crumbs from the pages before turning a page. In other words, you can love your books and still respect them the next day. You can leave them fit for someone else to love.

Moral of the story: Creasers can lend books to non-creasers without worry, but non-creasers would be well-advised to interview potential borrowers about their reading habits.

Do you have a pet peeve that flares up in the most annoying places?  I usually encounter my pet peeves when I’m reading novels.  It’s probably because I do freelance editing in my spare time and wish I could whip out my editing pencil and mark the changes.  (Probably could, thinking about it, but then I’d have a book with editing scribbles.)

Since those editing scribbles would otherwise remain unread, I’ll share a few of my pet peeves here.  Any literary editors out there are free to take notes and incorporate the changes accordingly.

• Your grandmother’s sister is not your "great-aunt."  Just like your mother’s mother is your grandmother, so your mother’s aunt is your grandaunt.  Just as you are your grandmother’s grandchild, so you are your grandaunt’s grandniece or grandnephew.  Climbing up the family tree, your great-grandmother’s sister would not be your "great-great aunt" but your great-grandaunt; sliding down, you would be her great-grandniece/nephew.  And so on.  The male family titles take the same form.

• Although the usage is common enough today, a woman in a historical novel should not be dubbed "Mrs. Catherine Lennox."  The title Mrs., according to historical protocol, was always used by a married woman or a widow with her husband’s full name.  That means she was  "Mrs. Nicholas Lennox."  If she was divorced, she combined her maiden and married names and became "Mrs. Granger Lennox."

• I eagerly await the historical novel that takes note that the title "Ms." is not the invention of twentieth-century secular feminists, but has been dated by protocol historian Judith Martin (aka "Miss Manners") back to the Elizabethan period.  It fell into disuse when the title from which it derived, "Mistress," took on implications inappropriate for chaste women, married and single.  Once secular feminists pointed out that there should be a courtesy title for a woman to use with her own full name and that was not dependent on her marital status (as men have such a title in "Mr."), "Ms." was reborn.  (Secular feminists did get a few things right.)

There.  With that transcribed from my paperbacks to a blog, I feel much better now. 😉  Feel free to share your own pet peeves in the comments box.