Midweek updates #7

OK, I just made up that number. I don’t know how many updates I’ve done before, but I thought I should start keeping track. Seven is a good number.

Reading update:

I actually finished reading two books in February, which beats my January record by 100%. The first is The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child, by Linda Dobson. This is related to a momentous, intimidating-liberating decision we’ve made about our children’s education. It’s a heartening overview of different homeschooling options, and I’ve dog-eared lots of pages for further investigation. Next up on this topic is Teaching Your Own, by John Holt.

The second book I finished is Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes, an intriguing history of the early days of electricity in America. I have never been a big fan of Gilded Age history, so there was plenty of unexplored territory here, especially regarding the scientific and business achievements of the inventors George Westinghouse, Thomas Edison, and Nikola Tesla. The book kept bringing home to me how fundamentally different an electrified world is from what went before—so much we take for granted, when even the United States has been completely “electrified” for fewer than 100 years. Although Jonnes does not do much moralizing (and it’s an era ripe for moralizing), she does finish with these thought-provoking observations:

For all the immense gains and almost magical gifts that electricity bestowed, there were, of course, some small losses, felt only by a few. The world, now powered by machines, became far noisier…Natural sounds, just plain silence, were drowned out by man-made din…The American night sky, once truly black and blazing with billions of glistening stars, decade by decade became steadily more permeated by man-made electric light.

I began thinking, through the latter parts of the book, how the human generation and control of electricity—just one part of the scientific revealing and codifying of nature’s mysteries—has helped to quash our human sense of awe and wonder. Is it merely coincidence that the Romantics came after the Age of Enlightenment? There is only so much reason the human brain can take, before we begin longing for some wildness and beauty that we can’t quantify or dissect (or maybe that’s just me?). Jonnes quotes the following lines from Charles Dickens, from when he first saw the (pre-tourist age) Niagara Falls in the 1840s:

Great Heaven…what a Fall of bright-green water!…I felt how near to my Creator I was standing….Peace of Mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness…

I suppose there are such regions of nature, heart, and spirit still open to us, but it seems they must grow harder and harder to find.

Writing update:

I have switched gears (O fickle muse!), and am once again working on the sequel (imaginatively called, in my header, “Sequel”) to TS. I was surprised to see that I had saved the file as recently as last November. I am trying VERY HARD to shut up that nasty critic who wants me to explain what the point of all this is. SHUT UP! I’m seeking Joy here, lady.

Otherwise, in my real life, I have promised Number-One Daughter’s sixth-grade teacher to work up some Fairy Tale/Mother Goose “commercial spots” to fit in with the spring play. Perhaps the Three Pigs advertising their homebuilding business, or Big Bad Wolf advertising his security company.

And yesterday, I drafted an 800-word devotion for an upcoming ladies-only church event. I’m afraid it may be a bit too dense for tea and crumpets. I’ll have to let it sit a few more days.

A toast to Mr. Dickens

A Happy Belated Birthday (February 7) to Charles Dickens, who wrote one of my top two favorite endings in all of literature:

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.”

from A Tale of Two Cities

It happens that the writer of my other top favorite ending in all of literature is James Joyce, born on February 2. Pretty spooky, don’t you think? Both February birthdays! Even spookier—my birthday is in February, too!!

As for A Tale of Two Cities, I have this word of advice: Yes, it’s tough going, but READ IT!! The ending is totally worth it. I’ll take Sydney Carton over Charles Darnay, or Heathcliff, or Mr. Thornton, or even Mr. Rochester, any day. (Sydney Carton vs. Mr. Darcy? Tough call. Very tough call.)

Tenth day of Christmas books

This Christmas gift is not actually a book, but is based on one…

The Masterpiece Theater DVD of The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. It has been several years since I first watched this on PBS, and enjoyed it so much I had to snatch up the book. Of course the book was even better—more plot-twisty, more humorous, and so deliciously Victorian in style and language.

The Moonstone is not the first book-into-movie that sent me from the TV to the bookstore. Some of my other favorite books that I read after seeing the movies:

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton
Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens
Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Horatio Hornblower series by C. S. Forester

And still on my books-into-movies tbr list:

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot

Reading & writing update

Reading:

1. First of all, I had to set aside David Starkey’s Six Wives, because I had maxed out my library renewals. I’ll pick it up again later. I was confusing myself by skimming ahead to the Anne Boleyn chapters anyway.

2. I am nearing the end of Rodney Bolt’s History Play: The Lives and Afterlife of Christopher Marlowe. It gets more charming by the page. Thank goodness, Kit has just escaped an assassination attempt in Deptford and gone underground in Antwerp. It’s a shame that all the plays he’ll write from now on will be attributed to that “upstart crow,” William Shakespeare. But at least the dashing Kit is still alive and more importantly, still producing great literature.

3. I started Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol as a read-aloud with Number-One Daughter a couple of nights ago. Ah, Dickens. Can’t beat him for sheer exuberance of language. Last night, my son joined in listening, though when we stopped, he informed me that the illustrated paperback version he had just read to himself was “better.” Patience, Mom. He’s only nine.

Writing:

1. I still like the idea of using poetry in my current WIP. I have allowed myself to add letters and journal entries for two of the characters. Wimping out? No. But plopping butt in chair and writing a bad love sonnet at 5 a.m. is not as easy as some might think.

Thunderstruck

Yesterday evening, driving the children home from school/piano lessons, I pointed out the pretty LED lights winding up our front stair-rails and framing the be-wreathed door. “Look, kids,” I said. “This year we’re not the neighborhood Scrooges!”

A beat of silence, then my two older children said (in near-perfect unison), “What’s a Scrooge?”

I’d have fallen over if I hadn’t been firmly enclosed by a steering wheel and driver-side door.

Me, incredulous: “You don’t know who Scrooge is?”

Exasperated looks.

I tried to jar their memories, in desperation resorting to The Muppet Christmas Carol. This rang a bell with my nine-year-old son, who proceeded to relate how his third-grade teacher had used the Muppets version to illustrate a certain kind of fictional narrator. “You know, like when that blue guy—what’s his name [Gonzo]—starts talking and then the little mouse comes [Rizzo the Rat]…”

I did not despair; I rallied. Today I am off to the library to find both the Muppets and the Patrick Stewart video versions. You can also bet I’ve plucked my little hardbound copy of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol from my bookshelves. I must remedy this tragic oversight in my children’s upbringing post-haste.