Summer Reading Goals, year 3 - "Out of the Silent Planet"

There is only one day left in August, one day until the deadline for my summer reading goals. It's been a busy summer, and I have completed 3 out of 5 goals so far. I will continue on with the last 2  - I know what I'm going to read for those goals, I just haven't completed them yet - and will hopefully complete them within the next week or so.

The third goal completed from my list was to read the first in a new series. Technically it's an old series, and technically I have read this first book before, but it was many years ago and my memory of it was very, very vague, so I decided to start anew. The series I decided to tackle this summer was C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, and the first in that series is called Out of the Silent Planet. 

Out of the Silent Planet was published in 1938, one year after Lewis's good friend J.R.R. Tolkien published a little book called The Hobbit. Both of them were respected professors who shared a love of science-fiction and fantasy, and they would often bounce ideas off each other and share rough drafts. Lewis's Space Trilogy is less well-known than his remarkable fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia or Tolkien's incredible epic The Lord of the Rings, but this "harder" sci-fi trilogy was published and acclaimed during a period now known as the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1920s-1930s).

Out of the Silent Planet is a fairly straight-forward work of sci-fi. An academic named Dr. Ransom is kidnapped by two scientists and forced onto a spacecraft bound for Mars. He soon discovers that he is to be presented to the planet's natives as a sacrifice and manages to escape his captors upon landing on the red planet. Alone in the wilderness, he realizes there are several different species on this planet, some to be avoided and some to befriend, and is soon taken in by a native race that live near the water and vaguely resemble otters. Aided by these kind creatures, he begins to learn the language and customs of this strange new world, better preparing him to face his human enemies as they creep ever closer. 

This book is slim - only about 200 pages - and enjoyably paced. Lewis introduces us to some very compelling creatures and customs, and I wish there had been more time spent with them. There is action, suspense and incredible descriptions. The landscapes he describes are colorful and strangely beautiful:

- It was this which finally convinced him [Ransom] that the things, in spite of their improbable shape, were mountains; and with that discovery the mere oddity of the prospect was swallowed up in the fantastic sublime. ...Here in this riot of rock, leaping and surging skyward like solid jets from some rock-fountain, and hanging by their own lightness in the air, so shaped, so elongated, that all terrestrial mountains must ever after seem to him to be mountains lying on their sides. He felt a lift and lightening at the heart.  -

The story culminates rather quickly and (spoiler alert) with Ransom safely back on earth. I felt rather sad that Lewis had taken all the time to create these creatures and landscapes and languages when he was not planning to return to them...for as I proceeded to the second book in the series, I realized it was taking a very different turn indeed.

I will not spend time on Perelandra right now, but it was not what I expected and definitely not the sequel I was looking for at the time. If you read this trilogy, take to heart the opening note which says that each book in this series can be read independently. The protagonist - Ransom - is the same in Perelandra, but his adventure is very different, his enemies fiercer, his surroundings stranger and the allegorical themes much, much stronger. 

I have not yet read the final installment, That Hideous Strength, but I will make time for it this fall. C.S. Lewis has the uncanny ability to go from light adventure to heavy theology in mere pages, and while it can be startling, it is never without purpose. Lewis's deeply allegorical style can take some getting used to, and not everything he writes will hit you with the right message every time. I don't think it was the right time for me to read and fully understand Perelandra. I'm sure that at another time in my life it will have a more meaningful impact on me. I still struggle to understand the deeper meaning of his re-imagined myth Till We Have Faces, while his descriptive and fantastical journey through heaven and hell in The Great Divorce is one of the most beautiful works of theological fiction I have ever read.

To conclude, Out of the Silent Planet is a solid work of science-fiction written at a time when the stars and planets held infinite possibilities. Space was the ultimate adventure for writers and dreamers in the early 20th century, and traveling with Dr. Ransom was an enjoyable and imaginative ride. 

Book review: Go Set a Watchman

As you have already heard through numerous news stories and media blasts, Go Set a Watchman is not exactly a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. It contains familiar faces, places and situations but is, in many ways, a work of its own. Most reports say that this is an earlier version of Mockingbird that was relentlessly revised by Harper Lee and her editors to become the novel we know and love. And with the reclusive author in such poor health and the murky details surrounding Watchman's publication, many believe this new book was published without her consent. I feel like in her mind, it is still the rough-draft of a story that she never felt confident enough to share.

To me, the biggest detail that sets this novel apart from its predecessor is that fact that Jean Louise (Scout) remembers her father’s famous court case differently than it is portrayed in Mockingbird. In a brief, fleeting memory, she recalls that her father once represented a black man accused of raping a white girl and that he won an acquittal for his client. Having just re-read and re-lived the heartbreaking details of the case in Mockingbird – the case that Atticus Finch lost– this plot deviation was rather shocking to me. If Atticus had won, so many of the most potent scenes in Mockingbird would never have happened. There would not have been the silent salute of respect from the balcony once the verdict was read and Atticus walked alone from the courtroom. There would not have been the heartbreak of Tom Robinson’s desperate and fatal escape attempt. And perhaps most importantly, Atticus's oldest child Jem would not have struggled with the bitter realization that the justice system is not always just.

Atticus losing that case was the catalyst for a huge leap in Jem’s mental and emotional growth in Mockingbird. Without the lost case and the resulting conversations he had with Atticus, Jem would have been in the same place where Jean Louise finds herself in Watchman: still caught in the illusion of youth that justice is always just, fathers are perfect and truth will always prevail. And even though Jem is dead and gone in Watchman and the story focuses wholly on a grown-up Scout, I wish his memory could have been more thoughtfully preserved and his importance not cast aside.

Also, contrary to popular media buzz, the Atticus Finch portrayed in Watchman is not a racist or bigot. Watchman is the story of a young woman coming to terms with the fact that her father is human, imperfect and simply doing the best he can do in an angry, troubled town filled with angry, troubled people. Atticus does not always make the right decisions. He is a good man, not a perfect man. To 9-year-old Scout, he was a knight in shining, flawless armor. To a 26-year-old Jean Louise, he must come down from his high horse and don simpler garb. He does not have all the right answers, but he is trying to fight the good fight.

Taken as a whole, you could say that Watchman is a second chapter in the lives of Scout, her father Atticus, and the town of Maycomb, Alabama. I enjoyed grown-up Scout and her observations of a tiny Southern town stuck in their tiny Southern ways. Her many childhood memories help fill out a life just glimpsed in Mockingbird, and her grown-up conversations and observations are thought-provoking. Two new characters are introduced in this story: Henry Clinton, childhood friend and now almost-fiance to Jean Louise, and wise uncle Jack, bachelor brother to Atticus. Both fit easily into the familiar scenery and fill gaps left by Jem, Calpurnia and other beloved faces.

I don’t think I would tell a high school student to read Go Set a Watchman immediately after finishing To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time. Watchman is, in many ways, a necessary story. But Mockingbird is a better novel in style and structure as well as heart and soul.

In Memory

I did not know you, and yet you were an incredibly important influence on my life. By college I had assembled quite the collection of your movies. During psychology class one day I told my professor about your little-known psychological thriller "The Final Cut," and she borrowed and enjoyed it and we were able to discuss it academically. Your uncredited appearance in Kenneth Branagh's "Dead Again" was brilliant, as well as your hilariously awkward Osric in his version of "Hamlet." You could be serious, funny, intellectual and thought-provoking. You helped me love film and the arts. Your work helped me think critically and deeply.

I first fell in love with you in the magical "Hook," which was watched yearly as a New Year's Eve tradition for several seasons during my childhood. Your thoughtful journey in "Bicentennial Man" brings me to tears. Your manic joy doing voice work in "Aladdin" and countless others is infectious. And your quieter performances - like the ones in "Dead Poet's Society" and "Good Will Hunting"  - just makes me want to give you a hug.

You had your misses. You had work that was too crude for me to enjoy; your stand-up was avoided at all costs. But I always loved the moments when I felt I could see your heart; when the mania slowed and the jokes took a step back and the man beneath the laughter shone through. When "The Crazy Ones" premiered in 2013 I watched the first few episodes, but something felt wrong to me. I'm not at all trying to say it was prophetic. I'm not at all trying to say I saw it coming. But as I commented to my husband and my mom and others, the comedy in that show felt painful. It felt unhappy. It felt like something else was trying to be said, but was lost.

I ache to think how much of your life was spent trying to say something that was never heard. It's almost a physical pain to me, thinking of your sadness, thinking of your hidden hurts and battles. I don't know how I can feel so deeply for someone I never knew. But I do. And I miss you.

Robin Williams

July 21, 1951 - August 11, 2015

The incredible "Mr. Holmes"

Sherlock Holmes is one of the rare fictional characters who has become so recognized and beloved that he feels utterly real. Holmes has been portrayed on the page, screen, stage and airwaves countless times over the past 128 years - in the past 5 years alone there have been 2 very successful movies and a extremely popular almost-4-season TV show focused on the brilliant yet antisocial detective. We know the character. We love the character. And in the new film "Mr. Holmes" we get to know a version of him that is more vulnerable and real than ever before.

 

Ian McKellen brilliantly brings the fictitious character we know and love to life and places him firmly in reality. This is a lovely and heartbreaking "what if" tale. What if Sherlock Holmes was real? What if he, and his brother Mycroft, and his housekeeper Mrs. Hudson, and his dear friend Dr. Watson were all very human but also very embellished and exaggerated in the stories that Dr. Watson loved to write? What if Holmes spent his life battling the fictionalized glamour that surrounded him? What if he grew old and retired to the English countryside in the post-war 1940's? 

The pace is not quick nor the action thrilling, but this film is beautiful, thoughtful and engaging. The story moves back and forth between retired, 94-year-old Holmes and somewhat younger, still-employed Holmes. Retired Holmes is humbler than we have ever seen him before, struggling with a fading memory and unfocused mind. He is desperate to remember his final case, the one that forced him into retirement, but the memories are fleeting and faint. Aided by his housekeeper's young, inquisitive son Roger, Holmes begins to piece together the mystery of his past. Young Roger unabashedly admires the retired genius but Holmes is clueless when it comes to returning his (or anyone's) affection, struggling to let true emotion shine through his standoffish shell. 

"Mr. Holmes" tells the story of the detective with all the answers who realizes he may not always understand the question. For the first time in his life Holmes realizes how deeply one person's life can affect another, and how much of an influence he's had on people, intentionally or otherwise. In the end he learns how to love and how to mourn. He accepts that human nature is intricately complex and that he cannot, in fact, always have the answer. And because of that, he gains peace.

 

My 15-year-old sister saw the movie with me and cried silent tears through the entire second half, still wiping them away as we walked from the theater. This story has been told before: a man struggling come to terms with his life, his losses, and his future. But this is not just any man. This is Mr. Sherlock Holmes. 

 

Summer Reading Goals, Year 3 - "The Sword in the Stone" and "Far From the Madding Crowd"

For the first goal on my list - reread an old favorite - I chose T.H. White's "Magical story of Young King Arthur" The Sword in the Stone. In this story, the young Arthur has no idea or aspirations to ever be King of England, and is merely an adopted boy with the unflattering nickname of the Wart, living in a lord's household and growing up alongside the lord's privileged son Kay.

I think one of the biggest differences between the book and the well-known 1963 Disney adaptation is that in the book, Kay is not an utterly mean-spirited dolt just there to make the Wart miserable. He and the Wart fight, like all teenagers, but overall they are friends and brothers. And while Kay's father, Sir Ector, had plans for his son to become a knight and for the Wart to be just his squire, it is really just due to bloodline and not because he loves the boy any less.

The Disney movie keeps several of the same adventures and lessons shared between the Wart and his whimsical teacher Merlin (spelled Merlyn in the book), but leaves out many of the best and most fun adventures. One of my favorite subplots in the book surrounds the bumbling King Pellinore and his constant hunt for the Questing Beast. One day Pellinore and his faithful hound decide they are fed up with questing and spend a few months relaxing at the castle where Wart lives. Soon after, however (spoilers!!) it is discovered that because nobody is hunting him, the Questing Beast has fallen into depression and is wasting away in the forest.  King Pellinore finds the Beast half-buried in the snow, and his tender heart is instantly broken.

         -  The spectacle which they came across was one for which they were not prepared. In the    

           middle of a dead gorse bush King Pellinore was sitting, with tears streaming down his face.

           In  his lap there was an enormous snake's head, which he was patting. At the other end of the 

           snake's head there was a long, lean yellow body with spots on it. At the end of the body there 

           were some lion's legs which ended in the feet of a hart.

 "There, there," King Pellinore was saying. "I didn't mean to leave you altogether. It was only because I wanted to sleep in a feather bed, just for a bit. I was coming back, honestly I was. Oh, please don't die, Beast."

..."But how did you - how did you find it?" faltered Sir Grummore. 

"I happened on it. And small thanks to you," said King Pellinore. "Running about like a lot of nincompoops and smacking each other with swords. I happened on it in this gorse bush here, with snow all over its poor back and tears in its eyes and nobody to care for it in the whole wide world. It's what comes of not leading a regular life. Before, it was alright. He and I got up at the same time, and quested for regular hours, and went to bed at half-past ten. ...We must just carry him home and put him in front of the kitchen fire. Send somebody on to make some bread and milk. When we get home, the first thing will be to give it a nourishing meal, and then, if it's all right in the morning, I'll give it a couple hours' start and then hey-ho for the old life once again. What about that, Glatistant, hey? You'll tak' the high road and I'll tak' the low road, what?" -

It is a scene that is sweet, and darling, and absolutely silly. Which is pretty much the whole book. There are a few odd interludes with some weird mythology after Merlyn has turned the Wart into various animals (he gets turned into a snake and a badger, which Disney cut out), but overall it is a silly and enjoyable romp through the forests of medieval England.

The second goal I have completed is to read a classic that I've never read before. A co-worker went to see the new film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd and asked if I had ever read it. I had not, nor had read anything by Mr. Hardy, so decided to give this one a go.

Far From the Madding Crowd was published in 1874 as Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major success. It is the sweepingly romantic tale of independent and strong-willed Bathsheba Everdene and her various suitors.  Bathsheba inherits her uncle's farm after his untimely death and is determined to run it on her own, despite the many challenges presented to her as a woman in that time and profession. Kind shepherd Gabriel Oak, who had known and loved her before, joins Bathsheba's staff and quietly helps her through many struggles. Bathsheba knows of Gabriel's love for her but is too proud to return it. Instead, she finds herself avoiding the romantic advances of William Boldwood, an older farmer who is dangerously smitten with her, and Sergeant Troy, a handsome young soldier with a dashing exterior and a cruel, selfish heart.

 Hardy's prose is sweeping and his verbal imagery full of incredible detail. Take this passage, which describes a hillside being pummeled by a "desolating wind:"

-  To-night these trees sheltered the southern slope from the keenest blasts, which smote the wood and floundered through it with a sound as of grumbling, or gushed over its crowning boughs in a weakened moan. The dry leaves in the ditch simmered and boiled in the same breezes, a tongue of air occasionally ferreting out a few, and sending them spinning across the grass. -

I had never before thought of dry leaves swirled by wind as "simmering and boiling," but because of his words, I can picture it perfectly.

Madding Crowd apparently appeared first as a magazine serial and then was edited and re-formatted for publication as a novel. Hardy was still alive when the first film adaptation was made in 1915 (there have been four), and according to a 2007 poll it is considered in the Top 10 of greatest love stories of all time.

To me, the book has achieved such high status because Bathsheba Everdene is a very imperfect hero, and therefore a relatable one. She is vain and afraid of failure. She lets her heart lead her instead of her head, and finds herself in an almost inescapable mess because of it. She keeps looking for something better without realizing the best is right in front of her. She lets pride cloud her way and vanity control her, and almost loses herself. But, like all good love stories, she finds her light in the end.

Two reading goals down and three to go! It's early July, so I'm doing pretty well. What have you read so far this summer?

Summer Reading Goals, year 3

It's June again, ladies and gentlemen, which means time for Summer Reading Goals - Year 3!
(To see what I read in previous years: click for 2014 and 2013) 

The first three are the same goals as the previous year, but will (of course) cover different books. The last two are brand-new, so we'll see how it goes!

My goals for June-September 1:

1) Reread an old favorite (or something I've had on my shelves for years but have only read once).

2) The first in a new series (I love reading series. I just read a great one this spring. The anticipation, the endings knowing there will be another beginning, the depth of character and plot...*happy sigh*.)

3) A classic that I've never read before (something in the realm of Austen, Dickens, Steinbeck, etc.).

4) A play by someone other than Shakespeare (I adore Shakespeare, and could read him all day, so this is making me branch out).

5) A "How-To" book...and then I have to actually DO whatever it is I learn. :-)

I'm sure there will be some mass-market paperbacks, summer sci-fi, etc, thrown into that mix, but those are the books I will read with serious intent and the plan to blog about them. If you have any books that fit the categories above, let me know! I always love recommendations.

Happy summer reading!

Most of my personal library (books and DVDs)

Tiny dreams

We have a big dream to do something small.

Several months ago I came across a documentary on Netflix about people who build and live in "tiny houses," which are ridiculously small yet fully functioning homes (we're talking under 200 square feet on average). I started watching it and Matt joined me a few minutes later. We were both struck with how doable it seemed, and how much it could potentially lower our cost of living. Thus, we began to dream.

I have heard many definitions of what a tiny house truly is: some say it must be under 400 square feet, some 1200; some insist that it must be mobile, some that it must be off-the-grid, some that pure salvaged material is the only way to go. For us, we have taken bits and pieces from many ideas and begun to forge our own.

Here is our dream: a plot of land on which we can build a small, two story house about 600-700 square feet total. Living area and kitchen on the first floor, study and bedroom above. Large porch. Large windows. Ability to expand as the future dictates. Patio and garden space in the yard. An exterior shed/garage to hold extra storage and a second fridge/deep freeze, etc. Lots of space to breathe, no longer having to share walls with too-close neighbors (as we have done for the past 6 years). Lower utility bills due to living in a smaller space.

If we can get the right financing, we could buy and build for a fraction of a the cost of a traditionally-sized home. Right now our financing dreams have been temporarily shot down, as the loan options we have pursued are very strict and would not let us build on our own. Building on our own - with as much help as possible from my dad, who has built both of my family's homes - is a huge part of our plan and not something we want to sacrifice. It also sounds like we'd have to have a sizable down payment, and that is not feasible for us right now. Right now our down payment is zero. Less than zero. Savings account? What's that?

 I know there is a long list of new responsibilities that come with owning a home, but renting is draining after so long. I struggle with doing everything I can to make our home beautiful while facing the limitations of a lease. I enjoy decorating and adding cosmetic touches, but there are so many bigger, more basic tasks that I would love to accomplish. I get sad looking at the peeling exterior paint and crumbling siding, but am encouraged by looking the flower beds we planted, the simple but pretty patio furniture, the flourishing vegetable garden. We care about how our home looks, and we do what we can with what we have, and that makes me happy.

Somehow, if we can find the money to get started, we will accomplish this dream. We will work our way out of debilitating student loan and credit card debt. We will own a home and make it beautiful. I really have no idea right now how that will be accomplished, but somehow, someday, we're dreaming that it will.

(Click here for my tiny house Pinterest board that has more of our favorite ideas)