SparksMarks

Archive for the ‘Project Books Update’ Category

Well, the best laid plans of mice and men…don’t always work out, do they? I did devote Saturday to reading as planned, but my plan to catch up on posting on Sunday night during the Oscars didn’t quite work out as my internet wasn’t working. Or to be more specific, Ryan was sucking the life out of the internet by playing World of Warcraft and there was none left for my laptop. Oh well. I am a little disappointed this kept me from participating in the Persephone Weekend, although I did read a Persephone. I’ll just post about it sometime this week.

As for the project books I’m reading, I stayed on track with The Story of Art and the Bible and read Love’s Labour’s Lost by Shakespeare. I have several Shakespeare posts I need to catch up on, especially since I’m planning to read two more plays this week.

The Story of Art chapter 2 focused on the “art of eternity” – art from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.  I was familiar with some of the topics addressed in this chapter, but was impressed at Gombrich’s ability to still make the information interesting and new while also giving a great overview and new perspective on some things. For example, I knew that a lot of ancient Egyptian art was created for religious purposes, and that the drawings of many soldiers and servants in the pyramids were there to help the dead through their afterlife. (I’m glad they stopped sacrificing people to bury with the dead pharaohs and turned to drawings instead!) What I hadn’t thought of before was how this affected their style.

Egyptian art is very flat and sometimes the perspective is odd. For example, you often see people drawn with their face in profile with an eye facing forward, the chest facing forward, the legs turned sideways in a walking motion, and arms sticking out to both sides. Since they believed that the pictures were necessary for the person to help the pharaoh in the afterlife, every body part must be drawn in the best way possible. The chest is best seen from the front, but the head is best viewed from the profile, so they do both. The holds true for landscapes as well. A drawing of a pond will show it from overhead, but the fish and birds will be drawn sideways instead of as though you’re looking down on them. The things I found odd about their artwork now makes more sense and gives me a greater appreciation of what they were trying to accomplish.

This week’s Bible reading was from Exodus 1-20, which focuses on Moses. I’m still in familiar territory as God calls Moses to lead the people out of Egypt and gives him the 10 Commandments. Reading about Moses always makes me laugh. He tries so hard to get out of being the chosen one to lead the people out of Egypt. He’s not good enough, he’s not a good speaker, surely God can find someone else, right? He’s full of excuses. Finally God agrees to speak to Moses, who will in turn speak to his brother who will speak to the people. That kind of cracks me up. It’s like a game of telephone. Maybe that’s why God decided to write down the 10 Commandments and communicate them clearly.

Another Shakespeare play down! I read Love’s Labour’s Lost over the weekend and will post my thoughts on it this week.

This post should have gone up on Tuesday, but I’m a bit behind this week. I did do a lot of reading over the weekend, but haven’t made much progress during the week.

Over the weekend, I made more progress in my Bible reading, nearly completing Genesis. One of the most troubling stories of the Bible was in this section. I’m always disturbed when I read the story where Abraham nearly sacrifices Isaac. This is one of the passages that is easy for non-Christians to point to as a reason to not practice Christianity. I know the story is supposed to teach us that we should be willing to sacrifice anything for God, but it’s still a hard story to swallow. The happy part of the story is that God stops Abraham from going through with it, showing His grace and mercy.

I also read chapter 1 of The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. I’m really enjoying his writing style and the photographs are wonderful. This chapter focused on ancient art and discussed the fact that while we might not view many of these items as beautiful, it’s interesting to examine them. Many of these pieces are amazingly detailed considering the tools they had available at the time. It’s also fascinating that they took the time to create this artworks. These people had to spend most of their time hunting, preparing food, and just generally staying alive and yet they created these pieces. Gombrich talks about how many of the pieces may have been used for teaching or spritual purposes. The drawings of bison in caves may have been used in a belief that creating the pictures and performing a ritual would call forth the bison. I usually just find these types of pieces interesting just because they’re so old and are still in existence, but this made me think more about the uses they may have had and

Finally, I made progress on my Shakespeare reading, completing both The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentleman of Verona. It’s good to know I can get through two plays in a day when I need to! Granted, these aren’t the most challenging of his plays and I was already familiar with The Taming of the Shrew, so that might not always be true. I will post separately on both of those plays soon.

I have quite the reading list for this weekend to make up for my lack of consistent reading during the evenings this week. In addition to the project books list I have way too many library books checked out and need to finish off a few of them as well. Even Ryan, my husband who normally ignores the large stacks of books strewn about the house noticed that I had a lot more library books checked out than I normally do. And his exagerrated guess at how many I had checked out was a little too close to the truth. He jokingly guessed 20; I have 18 checked out. And I just got another email from the library that I have two more reserves in. Oops. I hope to read as much as possible this weekend in between hockey games, dinner at my parents and doing my taxes, and watching the Oscars, which might actually be entertaining this year with James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosting. The plan is to read as much as possible on Saturday and then prepare posts on Sunday night during the Oscars. We’ll see how much I can actually get done.

I’ve decided to make Tuesdays my day to post weekly updates about my project books/reading plan. I will probably do most of the reading over the weekend and that way it will be fresh on my mind Monday nights when I write the posts, plus hopefully having that deadline will motivate me to complete whatever I should be reading that week.

This past week I took my reading plan to a new level of nerdiness and gave myself deadlines to help me stay on track. I don’t usually have any sort of specific reading plan and like to allow for spontaneity in my reading choices, but since I’m trying to read a certain group of works chronologically by a certain deadline I had to create a concrete plan or I’d end up never escaping from certain time periods! I will still be reading a lot of books that aren’t on my plan so it’s not like I can’t just grab a random book of the shelves when I feel like it.

So far, the reading plan is going well. I read/skimmed quite a bit in the Norton Anthology of English Literature, finishing off the sixteenth century. This section mainly had poetry, the most prominent except for Shakespeare being Sir Walter Raleigh and Christopher Marlowe. I’d read their most famous poems before, but since they’re short and I actually like them (I’m not always a huge fan of poetry – I prefer clear direct language and that’s not usually what you get with poetry) I reread them. Those poems are Marlowe’s “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love” and Raleigh’s “The Nympth’s Reply to the Shepherd,” which is a response to Marlowe’s poem. I think both works are strengthened by their relationship and wonder if they would be taught so frequently if Raleigh hadn’t written his reply.

In Marlowe’s poem, the main refrain is “come live with me and be my love.” It’s about how perfect their love will be and has a let’s go frolicking through the daisies feel to it. Raleigh’s response is from the perspective of the woman being wooed, and she’s rather cynical. She basically says if you can promise to be truthful and that the beauty wouldn’t fade, then she’ll “live with thee and be thy love.” I enjoy reading these to poems together and seeing the word play between the two.

Also, this portion of the anthology had several brief excerpts regarding explorers, which I just skimmed to get an overview of which lands were being discovered by England at that time for historical perspective. It’s interesting to think about all of the lands that Europe was just discovering and what it would have been like to realize the world was so much larger than you thought. I also finished and reviewed Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe.

I’ve also started my journey through the Bible chronologically, reading Genesis 1-22. Even if you’re not a Christian or didn’t grow up in Sunday School, you’re probably familiar with most of the stories in these chapters. The creation. The fall of man. The flood. It’s a rather action-packed set of opening chapters. One story I always find interesting is that of Abraham and Sarah (or technically, Abram and Sarai since it’s before their names change). God promises Abraham that he will have a son whose descendants will create a great nation. Being nearly 100 years old, Abraham and Sarah find this unlikely. Sarah thinks it’s impossible for her to have a child since she’s pushing 100 as well, but maybe he can have a child with someone else. Being a control freak, she takes matters into her own hands and picks out a woman for husband and arranges for them to try to conceive a child together. Of course, after she succeeds she’s not to pleased. This story always makes me think of soap operas. I know times were different back then, but does Sarah really think that’s going to turn out well? God admonishes them, but keeps his promise and Sarah does give birth to a son, Isaac.

Something interesting that crossed my mind when reading this was about their ages. I recently read Nomadby Ayaan Hirsi Ali (review to come soon!), and she mentions that her grandmother counted years by seasons, not actual years. That’s how people has recently as a generation ago counted time in Somalia, and possibly that continues in other areas today. I wonder if these lengthy lifetimes we see in the Bible are actually counted in seasons instead of years. I’ve always assumed there was some sort of explanation like that, since our calendar has only been in place a few centuries. In the middle east the seasons usually meant rainy seasons, which varied from year to year, so it would probably not be possible to guess an actual age from the ages listed in the Bible because it wouldn’t be consistent, but it’s interesting to think about.

Finally, I started The Story of Artof E. H. Gombrich by reading the introduction. Over two-thirds of this book are beautiful photos of the artwork discussed. This is normally a textbook, but I have the “pocket” version (not that it would fit in anyone’s pocket!). I thought it was nice that it comes with two bookmark ribbons, one for tracking your place in the text and the other for the photo section. That makes flipping back and forth easier. In the textbook, they photos are interspersed in the text. Although that’s the way Gombrich preferred it, it’s kind of nice to have them separated. I focus on the photos more than I would if they were together since I have to flip to another section. It causes me to pause and review them longer rather than just glancing at them and moving on. I like his writing style from the intro and am excited to get further into this one!

One goal I have for this renewed attempt at keeping up my book blog is to write more posts that aren’t a direct book review. The mast majority of posts will remain reviews, but I’d like a few more conversational posts, things like talking about various literary issues or project updates. I think this will keep me from feeling like I’m stuck in a rut with blogging, which is part of what happened before I took a break.

First up, I’ve added a new page to my blog that lists some of the books I’d like to read this year. It’s a slightly insane list, but that’s okay with me! I started reading the major works of British literature chronologically along with relevant nonfiction works about two years ago when my husband began planning a trip to England. We ended up cancelling that trip as there were layoffs at my work and I preferred to save that money in case I got laid off or ran away screaming and quit unexpectedly. I didn’t get laid off, but I did end up taking a job that paid a lot less and then job hopped again, and my husband got a new job around the same time so with all of that going on we’re just now planning the trip again, to take place hopefully on my 30th birthday in November.

Anyway, I reread Beowulf and the unabridged Canterbury Tales and a whole bunch of other stuff before getting stuck in the Henry VIII period. I apparently felt the need to try to consume every book about him, Anne Boleyn, and that time period. That was probably a year ago and I’m still reading stuff from that time period! I’ve limited myself to finishing the two books about them I’m reading now and then calling it quits until after I finish the rest of this list. I’m actually fairly sick of it now, but I bought every book I saw about this period for several years and had so many sitting in my TBR pile that I felt guilty skipping ahead.

One of the side goals of my list is to finish reading all of Shakespeare’s works. I’ve read about two-thirds of his works and once had to read 16 of his plays and all of the sonnets in one semester (while juggling other literature courses), so I think this is reasonable but if I get bogged down I’ll just pick a few and maybe come back to him later to finish him off.

After that, the list should get easier because it’s my favorite literature – Austen, the Brontes, Dickens, Thackeray. I want to read a little deeper into those authors that I love and reread a few my favorite works as I plan to visit some of the authors’ homes.

Finally, there are few non-British books on my list. These include Moby Dick, which I’m shocked to discover I’m enjoying, because it’s one of those books that scare me (mostly because I hated Melville’s other works that I’ve read as opposed to the length).

I think I will plan to do a project list update once a week to help keep me on track. If I know I have to post something publicly with an update I will hopefully stick to more books on the list and stop getting so many books from the library! (Don’t get me wrong – I love the library. But, having over 10 books checked out most of the time is probably not a good idea if I want to get through my list!)

And, feel free to check out my list and let me know if there are any major British authors you think I should add or a different book for an author than the one I have listed. Even if I can’t get to all of them, it will be interesting to see what people think I’m missing and I could read them after the trip.