misereremepeccatorem

[misereremepeccatorem]

The Mirror Quartet, Bk. 1 - A Winter's Promise

The Mirror Quartet, Bk. 1 – A Winter’s Promise

Having finished reading this book last night, I have written myself a quick summary in an effort to keep track of characters and events. It is by no means exhaustive, but: spoilers ahead. ~~~~~ The world has been broken into pieces, such that instead of one planet, there are 21 arks (and many more pieces smaller than the arks). Ophelia (age 21?  I think it was 21 since she had turned down…

[misereremepeccatorem]

2021 in Books!

‘Tis the season to post at least one blog for the year: the reading wrap-up. How many books did you read this year?  38, according to GoodReads – though that leaves out 7 children’s books, and 11 books on quilting that I flipped through and read portions of.Did you reread anything? What?  The only reread I recall was The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  I never DID get all the way through my…

[misereremepeccatorem]

[misereremepeccatorem]

2020 in Books!

It’s only been 3 posts since the last summary post, but…I figured I’d do another, even if we all want to forget 2020 and hope for better from 2021 (despite how unimpressive the 7-day free trial’s been). How many books did you read this year?  34 – but don’t tell GoodReads; I technically missed my goal of 35 but accidentally marked The Girl Who Drank the Moon twice and couldn’t figure out how to…

[misereremepeccatorem]

Lewis on Affection

The following is a lengthy excerpt from CS Lewis’s The Four Loves. Having introduced his topic and aim in chapter 1, and appreciation of not-humans in chapter 2, he moves to the first of the four loves in chapter 3.

Doubtless I should reread the whole book, and soon; meanwhile it feels useful to have this treatment of affectionate love somewhere easy to access, and I have emphasized sections…

[misereremepeccatorem]

Review: Another Kingdom

Despite it being a year where I’ve gone out less and stayed home more than any other year, I’m pretty far behind on this year’s Goodreads goal of 35 books.  About half of what I’ve read this year can be chalked up to Book Group Thing, my extremely technical name for the Hillsdaleian discussion group that has a video chat each month.

Normally I’m the last one finished, and have no time to spare…

[misereremepeccatorem]

I’ve been trying to compose a retrospective post about 2019, despite it being three whole days into the new year, when old things are passed away and, largely, forgotten in the mists.

So whilst my mind sorts that out, I thought I’d follow a collection of prompts to tell y’all about this year’s reading.  Do share your own reading experiences as you like!!  Here’s to further work on our respective TBR piles throughout 2020.

How many books did you read this year?   33!

Did you reread anything? What? Curse of the Pharaohs (as I hope to continue the Amelia Peabody series, and had forgotten how this story went), As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust (ditto, but re: the Flavia de Luce series), Good Omens (before watching the Amazon show’s depiction of it).

What were your top five books of the year? Persuasion, A Gentleman in Moscow, The Stature of Waiting, Good Omens, and Thoughts on Creating Strong Towns.  The first 3 were beautiful, beneficial to the soul, and felt classic.  Good Omens remained hilarious, if blasphemous.  Strong Towns was so thought-provoking that I think it’s given me a bit of a paradigm shift in how I think about communities.

Did you discover any new authors that you love this year? I definitely enjoyed Ted Chiang, what I’ve read of Amor Towles, and WH Vanstone.

What genre did you read the most of? Mysteries – 7 of them (2 Amelia Peabody, 4 Flavia de Luce, 1 Sherlock pastiche).

Was there anything you meant to read, but never got to? Oh, always.  Kristin Lavransdattir, Crazy Rich Asians, some things other friends lent me.  Still haven’t finished Benedict Option or A Gathering of Ravens.  At one point I had three copies of The Ode Less Traveled, but I had trouble on Exercise 4 so I haven’t finished the exercises therein yet.

What was your average Goodreads rating? Does it seem accurate?  3.7, I guess, which sounds fair.  Just as I try not to go overboard on standing ovations, I try to save 1- or 2-star reviews for the truly terrible, and 4- or 5-star reviews for the truly edifying or life-changing.

Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones? I read 30 books, which was my main goal.  There will always be a TBR pile, though. I tried giving up fanfiction, which would work for a month tops before I returned to old habits.

Did you get into any new genres? No, I guess not, unless you count “Spanish baby books” as a genre.

What was your favorite new release of the year? The only new release I read was, apparently, The Golden Tresses of the Dead.  So I guess that wins.

What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?   The Stature of Waiting was originally published in 1982; A Month in the Country, 1980.  Oh, and Persuasion! 1818.  I’d seen the movie but hadn’t read it before.

Any books that disappointed you? A Study in Sherlock.  It’s an anthology written in homage of Doyle’s canon, but several of the entries seemed to say “Look how much I’m into memorabilia and name-dropping!!” instead of “Hey, look, a well-composed story.”

What were your least favorite books of the year?   Hmm.  Robinson’s Housekeeping was strange to me.  Olive Kitteridge was delicately written but so godless!  So depressing.  Bright Bazaar was a book I checked out in hopes that it could give me decorating ideas, but instead it just infuriated me – apparently bright colors are only possible for wealthy homeowners who are aggressive minimalists.  Ugh.

What books do you want to finish before the year is over? I squeezed The Stature of Waiting in, and got started rereading The Buried Giant, which I haven’t finished yet.

Did you read any books that were nominated for or won awards this year (Booker, Women’s Prize, National Book Award, Pulitzer, Hugo, etc.)? What did you think of them? …okay, possibly I did?  But also, who knows.  I don’t care enough to go look it up.

What is the most over-hyped book you read this year? I dunno about ‘overhyped,’ but – I read 3 books by Jason Fung (The Obesity Code, The Complete Guide to Fasting, The Diabetes Code) and they could have/should have been edited down into one book.  I’m also surprised that Olive Kitteridge has been made into a show; it was so depressing that I’m not interested in learning more about the characters in it.

Did any books surprise you with how good they were?   The Stature of Waiting did.  It was also surprising in terms of content – I don’t know that I’ve ever read a gloss of the Passion narrative like this.

How many books did you buy? Seven, I think – 4 as gifts, 3 for me.  And I received at least 2 as gifts in return.

Did you use your library? Oh, for sure.  This is part of why I’m an irresponsible reader: I check out everything that catches my eye, and then it sits and waits for me for ages.

What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?   Probably Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang?  Which.  I wanted to read it because Arrival made me cry a lot.  It was both what I expected and…not at all what I could have expected.

Did you participate in or watch any booklr, booktube, or book twitter drama?  Nope.  Ain’t nobody got time for that.

What’s the longest book you read? A Gentleman in Moscow, apparently – 396 pages.

What’s the fastest time it took you to read a book? Probably an hour or two for a shorter book.

Did you DNF anything? Why? I didn’t finish The Story of a Soul because someone else requested it from the library.  I didn’t finish Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story because it Just Wasn’t What I Expected; I honestly thought it was a story, not a philosophical enterprise.  Lastly, I checked out several Spanish children’s books in the expectation that they would suit my level of Spanish vocabulary.  Some (Nariz, Naricita; Besos for Baby; Los Sueños) were feasible; some (Cómo Esconder un León a la Abuela; El Príncipe de los Enredos; Rooster; Los Arboles Están Colgando del Cielo) were beyond me. 

What reading goals do you have for next year?   To start with, I want to read at least 35 books.  I hope to read through my current library checkouts and not get out more than I can get through (even during the Summer Game)!  I want to finish The Ode Less Traveled and Studies in Words so I can, at long last, remove them from my “Currently Reading” tab.  I want to reread The Lord of the Rings.  I want to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, or at least, all those I haven’t read or watched before.

Tell me about your 2019 reading, or what you look forward to reading in 2020!

  2019 in Books! I’ve been trying to compose a retrospective post about 2019, despite it being three whole days into the new year, when old things are passed away and, largely, forgotten in the mists.

[misereremepeccatorem]

[Warning: spoilers in abundance ahead!]

My friends and I went to see Spiderman: Far From Home yesterday.  The trailers showed me Peter Parker ignoring Nick Fury’s calls so he could go on a class trip and try to Make A Move on MJ; the trip involves a monstrous creature attacking various sites in Europe, while a mysterious caped fellow fights it with magical green smoke.

Thus far the trailer – but the real story and intrigue of Far From Home is a movie-within-a-movie about objective reality and how it can be framed or obscured.

Memorials to Tony

everywhere Peter goes.

Post-Endgame, post “Blip” (when half the population disappeared for 5 years, then returned as if no time had passed), Peter Parker’s hoping to take the summer off from Avenger duties so he can process his grief over Tony Stark’s death, as well as act on his crush in Venice and Paris.  Fury summons him to help fight the new threat of Elementals (“cyclones with faces,” which manifest in earth, water, air, or fire in their attacks), giving him Tony’s bequest of EDITH: a pair of glasses that grant access to an AI controlling Stark Enterprises databases and drones.  Uncertain of his place in a post-Tony world, Peter gives them to Quentin Beck, seeming fighter of Elementals from another dimension.

Unfortunately, Beck is not what he seems.  As Aldrich Killian resented Tony in Iron Man III, as Adrian Toomes resented both Tony and the Department of Damage Control in Spiderman: Homecoming, so Quentin Beck and his crew of former Stark Industries

Binarily Augmented Retro-Framing: a disrespectful acronym from a disrespectful employer, I guess

employees resent Tony’s lack of appreciation for their intelligence and their labors.  Beck had developed the holographic projection technology Tony used solely for therapy, while maligning it and failing to understand or present its power and possibilities to the world.

It turns out that holographic projections can create the illusion of an “Avengers level” monster, as well as project a magical caped crusader to conquer it with green swirls of smoke.  Beck’s crew find it ridiculous that a mysterious fellow in a cape has more attention and clout than a number of scientists and engineers, but figure that they can use the power of visual illusion to craft their narrative, getting their revenge on Tony by proxy in the process: they’ll claim EDITH for their own, and kill Peter, along with any other inconvenient witnesses.

EDITH’s weaponized droids do a whole lot of damage to London before Peter is able to break them, reclaim control of EDITH, and witness Beck getting killed by a stray drone shot.  The dust settles, Peter and MJ kiss, things return to normal.

Except.

Beck died, but his crew haven’t.  They choreographed the cyclone monsters, and use footage from Beck’s final minutes to set Peter up – framed for Beck’s death and the drone attacks on London, and named on the news.  Good-bye, secret identity, and hello, trying to disseminate the truth when people believe the fake news they heard first.

This is a fitting cap to all the moments throughout the film of characters trying to discern the truth: Ned telling Betty about what he saw on the news or the internet; Brad jumping to conclusions about what Peter’s up to, snapping a picture for evidence; Peter trying to communicate with Fury in a secure environment, only to be slammed into a bunch of holographic nightmares that taunt him with vertigo, MJ in danger, and Tony Stark’s desiccated corpse.

Watching these illusions and framed tales unfold as though they’re real, on a screen that can only ever show pictures, not reality: there’s something delicious about it.  Of course it is happening inside your head, dear viewer, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

One wonders how it felt to be a moviemaker working on a film wherein illusionists are crafting, choreographing, and displaying their fight scene to the world.  The filmmakers get their paycheck and whatever satisfaction comes from their creative work; what does Beck’s crew get, other than revenge and some slight satisfaction in filling a fraction of the gap Tony Stark left?  How long before the group would dissolve in in-fighting, or before they’d all pack up their scientific progress for Hollywood?

Perhaps we’ll find out in whatever Spiderman film comes next, as this group remains at large.  In the meantime, Far From Home was an interesting and amusing follow-up to Spiderman: Homecoming, and a necessary step back in scope from Endgame.  Watching it again should prove rewarding, if only to anticipate Beck’s moves (or to analyze how Fury behaves when he isn’t actually himself).  That said, the movie will probably provoke further thought than that, considering the extent to which visual and aural manipulation goes on in the external world.  The shadow of Orwellian oversight, the specter of Big Brother, and the threat of history being rewritten are familiar menaces, but no less foreboding for it.

Review: Spiderman: Far From Home My friends and I went to see Spiderman: Far From Home yesterday.  The trailers showed me Peter Parker ignoring Nick Fury's calls so he could go on a class trip and try to Make A Move on MJ; the trip involves a monstrous creature attacking various sites in Europe, while a mysterious caped fellow fights it with magical green smoke.

[misereremepeccatorem]

Between Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, and the promise of late-night-TV laughter, Late Night seemed like a must-see movie for me.  Thompson plays Katherine Newbury, long-time host of a late-night show which has been on the decline for years.  Kaling plays Molly Patel, who is hired onto Katherine’s writing staff because she’s female rather than on account of her skill or experience in writing comedy.

Molly’s presence happens to bolster Katherine’s reputation at a crucial moment; however, Katherine is not able to shift gears on the show in quite the way she needs to, at least at first.  Having made a niche for herself as an intelligent woman who demands excellence in herself, her monologues, and her show’s guests, she struggles to be more accessible without scorning her guests or audience: she spurns the concept of solely interviewing attractive celebrities, or capitalizing on the virality of cute animals on social media.

(N.B. that this sort of thing is my sole experience with late night television.  I am one of those who only bothers with Colbert, Corden, Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers, et al. once they’ve already been shared on my news feeds multiple times, generally alongside an MCU actor, Justin Timberlake, or clouded leopard cubs.)

As part of her efforts on the writing team, Molly re-watches Katherine’s old shows – partly from real appreciation, partly to gauge her rhythm, her strengths, and what worked on the old shows that stopped working since.  She notes one sketch she’d connected with at a much younger age: Katherine’s take on life with depression, which made it seem okay that she, Molly, was experiencing similar feelings.

This Brene Brown approach of authenticity-via-vulnerability becomes one of Katherine’s methods for re-engaging her audience: to discuss her real self, even when that means addressing a scandal from years past, when Katherine’s husband was first diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  That authenticity (recognized and bolstered by Molly) wins both Katherine and Molly their continued employment.

Like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, I think Late Night missed its chance to be tighter, snappier, and funnier.  Surely a room with so many comedic writers should be buzzing and zinging with jokes and one-liners, even if they ultimately get cut from Katherine’s monologues.  One of the funniest moments, for my money, was Molly quoting Yeats as she looks at the door to her new workplace (Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams), before the sad-trombone moment of getting hit by someone’s bag of fast food trash.

It’s still an amusing film overall, poking lots of little fingers at while male privilege and those who are out-of-touch with current events. Katherine makes a point to a reporter partway through that comedy is a rare meritocracy – that funny people can succeed as comedians, no matter where they come from.  Given this claim, I don’t think we ever get any real unpacking of why she spent so long working solely with white men, buuut she stops doing that: the movie ends with Molly having ushered in a slew of new hires, many of them people of color and several of them female (but without having displaced the white male faces we recognize from before).  Presumably this more-diverse writing staff has more avenues to appeal to and entertain a wider variety of people; certainly it’s based on Mindy Kaling’s own experience with The Office.

Though it could have had more concentrated hilarity, Late Night was a worthwhile watch for me due to Emma Thompson (cold-hearted boss to bemused Boomer to lonesome Emmy winner to playful entertainer to penitent wife) and Mindy Kaling (earnestly insistent as ever on clinging to one’s seat at the table, speaking one’s mind, and learning from past mistakes).  Let me know if it earns the honor of your time.

Review: Late Night Between Emma Thompson, Mindy Kaling, and the promise of late-night-TV laughter, Late Night seemed like a must-see movie for me. 

[misereremepeccatorem]

Review of sorts: A Month in the Country

Review of sorts: A Month in the Country

I’m currently staying with my friend the Mead, in the final few weeks before her family raises their tentpoles to head south and east.  This time lends itself to a bit of reflection on the times one’s had, the times one might have had, and what all might be lying ahead – both generally speaking, and where one’s bookshelf is concerned.

Our conversation, amid two years’ worth of catching-up, jumped…

[misereremepeccatorem]

More Religious Characters, Please

More Religious Characters, Please

I concur with most everything said here, especially Katie’s note about 21st century literature. As I read, I strained my memory for “books [with religious/Christian characters] other than just The Shack and weird Amish-romances.”

The books or authors that most immediately come to mind when I think of good Christian fiction (whether they feature practicing Christians or not) are either Inklings…

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: To Speak

Levertov Week: To Speak

To Speak

To speak of sorrow works upon it moves it from its crouched place barring the way to and from the soul’s hall —

out in the light it shows clear, whether shrunken or known as a giant wrath — discrete at least, where before

its great shadow joined the walls and roof and seemed to uphold the hall like a beam.

  I keep trying to decide if I agree with this premise or not.  “Sorrow shared is…

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: To the Muse

Levertov Week: To the Muse

To the Muse

I have heard it said, and by a wise man, that you are not one who comes and goes

but having chosen you remain in your human house, and walk

in its garden for air and the delights of weather and seasons.

Who builds a good fire in his hearth shall find you at it with shining eyes and a ready tongue.

Who shares even water and dry bread with you will not eat without joy

and wife or husband

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: Annuals

Annuals

All I planted came up, balsam and nasturtium and cosmos and the Marvel of Peru

first the cotyledon then thickly the differentiated true leaves of the seedlings,

and I transplanted them, carefully shaking out each one’s hairfine rootlets from the earth,

and they have thriven, well-watered in the new-turned earth; and grow apace now –

but not one shows signs of a flower, not one.            …

[misereremepeccatorem]

[Image: tweet from Heather Lindsaychen (@oceana1009): “Reframing motivation not as an act of will, but a thing that naturally occurs when I am rested, fed, and am taking things at my own slow pace has helped me a lot“]

Hey, here is a nice insight for those beating themselves up for their low motivation.

Remember that a good, healthy motivation comes when your needs are being met. That’s not always possible in this world, but being kind to yourself for the impact of that always is!

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: The Ache of Marriage

Levertov Week: The Ache of Marriage

Sometimes I get impatient with poetry about married life, because I’m doing my best not to be bitterly single, and failing.

Sometimes it’s a pleasant sort of pain, to catch any glimpse of what it’s like.

  The Ache of Marriage

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved, are heavy with it, it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion and are turned away, beloved, each and each

It is leviathan…

[misereremepeccatorem]

Levertov Week: The Thread

Levertov Week: The Thread

In the interest of posting again, ever, I thought I’d share some poems by Denise Levertov this week (and possibly next week as well).

I first encountered her poetry through friends from undergrad – denizens of the Wake and Donnybrook – sharing “The Servant Girl at Emmaus” and “St. Thomas Didymus.”  These prompted me to look for more of her work.

Generally speaking, Levertov is valued by many for…