Oh wait, I forgot, I'm homeschooled. I could say it was Not During School for my on-off twelve years of homeschooling without a qualm, and still say it was very much School, equally without qualm.
Sure, that's just vacuous. And there is, even in the murky grid of the homeschool life, distinction between During School and Not During School and -- hah! there it is, I have been wasting time writing.
(*sigh* I am tired and bored a.t.m. No, actually not bored; writing is a stimulating activity, and I am just off reading David Foster Wallace, who is Caffeine. The two previous nights have been plagued by insomnia. Apologies if I am [exceptionally] incoherent.)
The point I'm trying to get at is I have an extended summer. I don't leave for school (read: College) til August. Extra reading this summer.
But it is borrowed time and it really feels like cheating.
Incipit the list:
1. Poems - Emily Dickinson
2. The Epic of Gilgamesh
3. The Lost World of Genesis One - John Walton.
4. Paradise Regained - John Milton
5. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert - Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
6. The Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes - trans. Robert Alter
7. The Chosen Ones - Alister McGrath
8. Lancelot - Walker Percy
9. Poems - Ranier Maria Rilke
10. Bach, Beethoven, and the Boys: Music History as It Ought to Be Taught
11. The Iliad - trans. Robert Fagles
12. Godric - Frederick Buechner
(Here's where my last post on summer reading ended, and thus resumit:)
13. The Hauerwas Reader - Stanley Hauerwas. Took me roughly a year to read. Provocative undeniably.
14. I Am an Impure Thinker - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy. 50% of this book was miles over my head. The other 50% was kilometers.
15. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600) - Jaroslav Pelikan. A very helpful account of the early development of Christian doctrine, and Pelikan isn't afraid to point out what he sees as problems in the nascent church.
16. Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges. Borges is a hypnotist.
17. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte. I had absolutely no idea that this novel was Gothic, and when I read it I was disabused of the (very embarassing [see? I misspel to make it even more so]) notion that all 19th-century fiction written by women is Jane Austen
6. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert. Confession: I was bored by Flaubert's realism; or was it the translation?
7. Silence - Shusaku Endo. The translation leaves something to be desired, but Endo's story of two priests who attempt to minister to kakure kirishitan (hidden Christians) in a time of persecution in 17th century Japan and his exploration of suffering, apostasy, and silence (the perceived Silence of God in particular) are terrifyingly powerful -- disregard the title. And I keep the image of the book cover as my cellphone wallpaper.
 |
14. Both Flesh and Not: Essays - David Foster Wallace. My first D.F.W., and it was like tasting coffee or Toblerone for the first time over again.
15. Gilead - Marilynne Robinson. The sort of writing in Gilead is something I've seen only in some Japanese novels I've read (not Silence): quiet, and speaking volumes; modest, and more than estimable; restrained, and highly emotional. The protagonist of Gilead is perhaps someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with Atticus Finch as a *human* character who exudes a refreshing Goodness.
16. Some poetry by Keats. (I was very vague with this last post.) I did read some of Keats: "Lamia" and some other poems whose names I've forgotten. He is, I think, a consequence of Dryden. I found the frequent rhymed enjambed lines disorienting, but decidedly brilliant at the same time.
17. The New Life (La Vita Nuova) - Dante. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's translation. The commentary between the poems feels really draggy. But the poems, as they are translated by Rossetti (brother of Christina Rossetti), are marvelous.
18. The Promise - Chaim Potok. I found much to relate with, although I daresay I enjoyed The Chosen more.
19. Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe. Achebe is a dynamic chronicler of the profound change effected (yes, I use "effect" as a verb) by British imperialism. My first African lit ever (I think).
20. A Boy's Will - Robert Frost. Frost's first published collection of poetry, if I'm not mistaken. His poems have classicism (although an evolved one) and simplicity. Very enjoyable reads.
21. Collected Poems - Chinua Achebe. I revisited Achebe after Things Fall Apart. Achebe's verse on war conveyed effectively the harrowing experience of it all.
22. Death and the King's Horseman - Wole Soyinka. A play about a king's horseman in Nigeria who must commit ritual suicide but is stopped by British officials before he can finish. Soyinka dazzled me with his ability to Use Language. The tribespeople use poetry during the intricate ritual; the British imperialists use drab language all throughout. Soyinka effects (I'm going to harp on this) a striking contrast.
23. The Presence of the Kingdom - Jacques Ellul. Papa's notes and highlights are ubiquitous in this book (I think it is one of his favorites). (B.t.w. most of the books on this list are e-books.) Ellul wrote in this in the 1940's, but it is frighteningly relevant in 2015.
24. Girls at War and Other Stories - Chinua Achebe. That's a treble for Achebe on this list (novel, poetry, short stories). I still value Achebe as a chronicler of the African (Nigerian, specifically) colonial and post-colonial experience, but I am not impressed by his writing as much as I was by Soyinka's. Personal preference.
25. A Dance of the Forests - Wole Soyinka. This play lost me. It requires a degree of familiarity with Yoruba mythology, and w.r.t. this I am an ignoramus.
26. Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament - Christopher J.H. Wright. A fine, fine book on Jesus' OT identity, OT mission, and OT values, and how these affect our own identity, mission, and values. It was sort of like a confirmation of my other studies on similar subjects.
What I planned to read but did not (or haven't):
The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays - W.H. Auden
How (Not) to Be Secular - James K.A. Smith
Imagining the Kingdom - James K.A. Smith
Dante's Inferno
The first part of Don Quixote
El Filibusterismo - Jose Rizal
What I am actually reading right now:
Selected Poems - W.H. Auden
Omeros - Derek Walcott
Noli Me Tangere - Jose Rizal. I "graduated" from high school in the Philippines without reading Noli. A reparative read.
Some Carlos Palanca Award-winning short stories
G.K. Beale's big fat New Testament Biblical Theology (at least 1000 pages! Not planning to read through.)
No comments:
Post a Comment