Wednesday without words...

My 2009 book report...

On my other blog, I keep a list of books I am currently reading, along with a list of books completed for the year. I began this while I was recovering from illness, and had extra reading time on my hands. Last year with less reading time, it looks like I averaged a book every couple of weeks. Not bad, for a slow, methodical reader like me.

Below is my list of completed books from 2009, just so I can remove it from the other blog. This list includes both reading books and audio books listened to on trips or while sewing or cleaning or taking walks. Let me comment on a few stand-outs, and not-so-noteworthy, titles.

The last book I finished, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, was beautifully written, if rather on the philosophical side. I found it charming and funny and sarcastic. I could imagine myself as a girl in the place of the younger protagonist, with her self-centered assuredness and sweeping moral judgments. Dh, on the other hand, was never a pre-teen girl with a dramatic flair, and he found the book irritating and annoying. This book had the most widely varied opinions in the house of the year.

My least favorite novel of the year was Henry James' Daisy Miller. If i could ask Mr. James a question, it would be, "If you had to write this story, why not make it a short story, or better yet, a haiku, and get it over with?"

Spoiled Americans
Waste their lives and die in pain.
No redemption here.

In the Willa Cather category, I found O Pioneers to be much better than My Antonia, but not nearly as good as Death comes for the Archbishop. But whatever the book, you can't bat Cather for lovely, moving description of the land the relationship of the people to it.

The most enjoyable theology book of the year was definitely Minority Report. Trueman is a savvy writer, and blends humor, truth and wit in all his essays.

Best new novel (to me) of the year: The Kite Runner. Brutal and hard to read in places, but beautiful and moving in a way I've not been moved since Cry the Beloved Country. (Both of these books were new to me in adulthood.)

And there was a liberal sprinkling of re-reads last year: Tolkien and Lewis, Sayers and Wodehouse. One can't do without one's old friends!

How about you, Gentle Readers? What books did you read last year? Or which of the following do you have opinions about? I'd love to hear from you!

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by M. Barbery (completed 12-09)
The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien (completed 12-09)
The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis (completed 11-09)
Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (completed 11-09)
The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis (completed 10-09)
The Eclogues by Virgil (completed 10-09)
Persuasion by Jane Austen (completed 10-09)
The Good Husband of Zebra Drive by A. M. Smith (completed 10-09)
The Confessions of St. Augustine (completed 9-09)
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien (completed 9-09)
Foundation by Isaac Asimov( completed 9-09)
My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (completed 9-09)
Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon (completed 8-09)
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shhaffer (completed 8-09)
The Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith (completed 7-09)
Knowing God by J. I. Packer (Completed 7-09)
Death of a Maid by M. C. Beaton (completed 7-09)
Thrones, Dominations by Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (completed 6-09)
Ender in Exile by orson Scott Card (completed 6-09)
Daisy Miller by Henry James (completed 6-09)
Minority Report: unpopular thoughts on Everything from Ancient Christianity to Zen Calvinism by C. Trueman (completed 6-09)
The Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card (completed 6-09)
The Kite Runner by Kahled Hosseini (completed 6-09)
The Lighthouse by P.D. James (completed 6-09)
Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy (completed 5-09)
The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper (completed 5-09)
Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther (completed 4-09)
Stardust by Neil Gaimon (completed 3-09)
Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist's Journey with the New Calvinists by Collin Hansen (completed 3-09)
Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (completed 3-09)
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (completed 2-09)
O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (completed 2-09)
The Kalahari Typing School For Men by Alexander McCall Smith (completed 2-09)
Xenocide by Orson Scott Card (completed 2/09)
Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers (completed 2/09)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (completed 1-09)
The Mortification of Sin by John Owen (completed 1-09)

Sundays with Jean

...For the Lord promises nothing except to perfect keepers of the law, and no one of the kind is to be found. The fact, then, remains that through the law the whole human race is proved subject to God's curse and wrath, and in order to be freed from these, it is necessary to depart from the power of the law, as it were, to be released from its bondage into freedom. This is no carnal freedom which would draw us away from the observance of the law, incite us to license in all things, and let our concupiscence play the wanton as if locks were broken or reins slackened. Rather, it is spiritual freedom, which would comfort and raise up the stricken and prostrate conscience, showing it to be free from the curse and condemnation with which the law pressed it down, bound and fettered. When through faith we lay hold on the mercy of God in Christ, we attain this liberation and, so to speak, manumission from subjection to the law, for it is by faith we are made sure and certain of forgiveness of sins, the law having pricked and stung our conscience to the awareness of them.
~Jean Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 17, Part 1

Wednesday without words

Sundays with Jean

...[T]he efficient cause of our salvation consists in God the Father's love; the material cause in God the son's obedience; the instrumental cause in the Spirit's illumination, that is, faith; the final cause, in the glory of God's great generosity...
~J. Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 14, Part 21

...For justification is withdrawn from works, not that no good works may be done, or that what is done may be denied to be good, but that we may not rely upon them, glory in them, or ascribe salvation to them. For our assurance, our glory, and the sole anchor of our salvation are that Christ the son of God is ours, and we in turn are in him sons of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven, called to the eternal hope of eternal blessedness by God's grace, not by our worth.
~J. Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 17, Part 1

Tragic Opera: abridged

And now for something completely different...how about some haiku? My sdil, Elsa, recently shared some of her haiku, written after one of her music history classes. The topic: opera. If you are familiar with these operas, you will laugh out loud. If not, you can still enjoy her playfulness.

SPOILER WARNING: if you read these on her facebook page, and are still trying to guess the opera, don't look here, because I have included the titles!

Tragic Opera: Abridged
By Elsa Finnegan

Everybody dies.
Is it the plight of all men
or just opera?


Madame Butterfly
U. S. hypocrite
weds suicidal geisha.
An uplifting tale.

Otello
Life after death? Yes!
Desdemona is strangled.
and sings anyway.

Orfeo
Euridice stays
across the Styx. Husband grieves:
No boat ride for her.

Girl of the Golden West
These Plains Indians
Sing Italian recit.
Unbelievable?

Boris Godunov
Usurper and his
cute kids versus ghostly prince.
Guess who goes crazy.

La Boheme
Consumptive falls in
love with penniless poet.
No tragedy here.


The bad have bad ends
and the good do too. But you
could sing well meanwhile!

The blessing of living life...

Perhaps you have missed my regular posts, Gentle Reader. Or perhaps you have not noticed my absence. Either way, I feel I owe you an explanation.

First, the obvious explanation. As can be seen from the photo at right, I have been in parts South visiting my family this week, with limited computer access. My husband is on travel, so I took that opportunity to visit with my parents and my sister. We enjoyed lunch, and shopping, and game-playing together.

But the less-obvious answer to why I have been absent from my blogging is that something remarkable has happened. As many of you know, I recently began using oxygen at night. Darth(I refer to my oxygen compressor affectionately as Darth Vader because it sounds just like him...) has been used by God to wrought a remarkable change in my life. For the first time since my cancer diagnosis, I am sleeping through the night every night. My fatigue and muscle pain are almost completely gone. I have not had to take an afternoon nap in almost two months. I finally feel as though I am recovering! And that recovery is allowing me to do things I have not been able to do for the past two years.

So rejoice with me, Gentle Readers. Where I had almost ceased to hope for improvement, God has lavished blessing upon me. And the truth is, I have been too busy living life to blog as frequently as I have in the past! Isn't that wonderful?!