Reading over break

Usually it's the long breaks from school when I get most reading done. I do a lot of work-related reading (reviewing chapters, reading over new material for classes, reading journal articles, and even reviewing textbooks) during the semester, but when it comes to just sitting down with a book that I chose because I want to read it, rather than because I need to read it, it's down to the breaks.

(I do try to read during the regular semester but that is often relegated to right before bed, and I often find that I'm falling asleep over the book and I often have to go back the next night and reread the last few pages I read the night before. I don't MIND that but it takes a while to get through a novel).

I completed two books and mostly completed a third. (Well, the third was one I started over the summer and never got motivated to finish).

The first book I read start to finish was a novel, "The Candlemass Road" by George MacDonald Frasier. It's an interesting novel and very different both in style and subject from what I ordinarily read. It's a recounting (told by Frey Luis Guevara, a sort of halfway-priest who was there) of a brutal "repayment" of border-reivers on the disputed border between Scotland and England in the late 1500s or early 1600s. (The story and most of the characters in it are fictional but it is somewhat based on real events). One thing I liked a lot about the novel - although it made reading a bit more difficult and requiring more concentration - was that it was deliberately written in an archaic style and vocabulary. And it attempted to mimic the sort of Northern English dialect that would have been used at that time - either in spelling or in pronunciation (for example: "cotch" for "coach" and "potched beef" for "poached beef.") I presume it was more or less correct as Frasier is also a historian and, to use a hated word, it has the feel of "truthiness" to it. (So often when I read novels with dialect I want to throw them against the wall because it somehow rings false or it feels almost like the author is putting on a sort of blackface; in this case once I got past the twists and turns of the different syntax, it made the novel come to life.

The novel is also different in content and style because it really presents as its main story one single event (the attack on the reivers, who had been blackmailing people who were under the protection of the Dacre family) and that it ends rather abruptly - in fact, you have no clear idea (though you can guess) of what happened to one of the main characters. The other way in which the content differed from what I normally read is that it's at times quite violent and bloody - so much so, I found myself inadvertently closing my eyes and trying to skip passages.

But ultimately it was a satisfying read and it taught me a bit about a period of British history I did not know anything about it: the era of the Scots-British border disputes.

I also read (finished on the train coming back here) "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. (Yes, quite a different book from the previous one). It was recommended to me by someone I knew, someone who had had a bit of a conversion experience. I will say I don't agree with Chesterton everywhere (especially his sentiments on evolution, which I suppose might partly be the effect that he was writing in what, 1908? before a lot of the modern stuff - especially the Modern Synthesis with genetics - was known. And, like my disagreement with the modern conservative evangelicals, I fail to see how accepting evolution as a simple natural explanation of how things came about - perhaps even related to a set of natural laws set up, perhaps, by something we call God - is somehow evil and wrong. And I don't see any kind of a conflict between believing in God and accepting natural evolution as an explanation of how the physical parts of things came about). Anyway. I do like some of his observations - the idea that constantly changing the ideal or the goal rather than changing ourselves to better fit the ideal is one of the madnesses of the modern world. I do agree with some of his rebuttals to those who would use "any stick" to beat Christianity with.

One thing I get a feeling from, from reading Chesterton, that I do not get from some of the modern evangelicals, is the idea that faith is huge and wild and almost a little frightening - the idea that it is beyond our comprehension and that we're better off just kind of grabbing hold to what we can and going along for the ride, that we will learn what we need on the way. Some of the more modern, more traditionally "Protestant" Christian writers I read seem to want to make faith into something small and safe and personal, kind of like a clockwork train that runs around on the same track all the time - in the same little circle. I'd rather have a faith that was like a spiral - that kept widening outward and where I could perhaps look back and see some of the things I saw earlier, but see how those earlier things fit in with other things, and how it keeps getting bigger and stranger and I keep having new insights. (Strangely enough I get the same feeling when I try to read about quantum physics; oddly enough it reinforces my belief in God, I guess, becuase I say, "If how things really seem to work could be so weird, then anything is possible, even virgin birth.")

Another thing that gets me - particularly where I live, I guess, in the Bible belt - is the tendency that some have to make everything blatantly about their religion. I've heard people say, "Well, God willed it" about things people did that I'd actually much more likely attribute to the perverse workings of human free will. I guess I get a bit "idgy" with everything and anything that happens being force-fit into some "plan" that the individual doing the fitting can see, even though it's God's plan, and we're specifically told we can't know it. Or whatever. I'm not expressing myself very clearly here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: from Chesterton I get the feeling that we must always strive to live by Christian virtues and Christian commandments, even when (especially when?) we're not specifically letting others know we are a Christian. And one of the problems I have with some modern Christians is that they seem extremely fond of letting everyone know that they are a Christian even when they are perhaps not behaving in a very Christian way. What Chesterton tells me is that doing my best to do what is right is perhaps even more important than others knowing what I believe.

I think I will be reading this one again; I know there are places I failed to understand fully. And I want to understand more whether I agree with the particulars of what Chesterton is saying or not.

The third book - which I had hoped to finish but couldn't quite - is "Founding Brothers" which I've been reading on for like, eight months. I don't know why it takes me so long to read Ellis (the author) but it does. I never finished his book on Jefferson. There's something about his style which forces me to read more slowly and comprehend less than some other authors.

One feeling I get from reading this book is - dear God, how did we ever survive in the early days as a nation? People acted in perhaps even more unhinged ways, politically speaking, than they do today. There was a lot of rumors and a lot of hatreds and a lot of broken friendships and backstabbing. (I do not think I like Jefferson as well as I once did, nor Hamilton. That said, John Adams has risen a bit in my estimation despite the fact that he was apparently precisely the sort of person - a hothead given to impulsive acts and rather closemouthed about policy - that would drive me crazy to work with.)

I don't know. In a way, it gives me hope - what is going on now with the party divides is really no worse than 200 years ago - and yet it also frustrates me - "Can't we have grown past this?"

I'm not sure which history I will undertake next. I have one called "Glory, Passion, and Honor" (that might not be the exact right title) which is sort of a "Founding Sisters" discussing people like Mercy Otis Warren and Abigail Adams. But I also have a couple books on the ancient world (Rome and Pompeii) that I want to read.

And now it is almost back to work, back to less time and less available mental energy to expend on reading...