Russell Moore writes at Mere Comments on genetic engineering.
“. . . through in vitro fertilization (IVF) parents are able ‘to detect a predisposition to cancers that may or may not develop later in life, and are often treatable if they do.’ Embryos that do show a predisposition to such disorders may be ‘discarded,’ and the couple tries again.”
Ouch! I didn’t realize we had slid this far down the slope. Someone should write a science fiction novel or story about the implications, moral and physical, of a world in which parents choose to have only “perfect” children, and those who do not choose to make that choice are regarded as negligent at best, criminal at worst. Stories have power, maybe the power to wake us up before we slide any farther into playing God with the lives and genes of our children.

Amy of the Humble Musings has a free book to give away to a homeschooling mom.
Susan Wise Bauer is also offering an ARC of her new book, A History of the Ancient World.

Don’t forget about the Saturday Review of Books tomorrow.

A review by Mother Reader of a new book by Mo Willems, Edwina, the Dinosaur Who Didn’t Know She Was Extinct. Because of some very enthusiastic bloggers, such as Mother Reader and Fuse 8, we read Mo Willems’ Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus for the first time about three months ago. Suffice it to say it wasn’t the last time. We’ve also read Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late and The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog numerous times. And just this week Z-baby’s most prized birthday present was a brand new copy of Don’t Let the Pigeon Stay Up Late of her very own. She just talked me into letting her paint by saying, “What’s a little finger painting in the grand scheme of things?”

Maybe you’re already familiar with LibriVox, a source on the internet for free, public domani, audiobooks. I wasn’t. I think we might try some of these out. Link to NY Times article on free audio books on the internet.

“P.D. James investigates an enduring mystery: just how has Agatha Christie’s best-loved fictional detective survived so long?” Did you know that next week, September 10-16, 2006, is Agatha Christie Week, celebrating the 80th anniversary of publication of The Murder of Rogert Akroyd? How will you celebrate? Any excuse for a party!

The Headmistress takes on Norton’s Anthology of Children’s Literature. It sounds as if the editorial decisions that went into compiling this anthology were somewhat lacking in discernment and taste.

Krakovianka on re-reading Jane Austen.

Krakovianka is an American Christian living in Krakow, Poland. She’s also a homeschooler, and she’s been invited to peak to a small group of pioneering new Polish homeschooling parents. Go over and encourage her.

Sarah at Reading the Past on The 50-Page Rule. Before last year, I almost always finished any book I started, hoping that it would get better. I have, in the past couple of years, given myself permission to give up on a book that I’m not enjoying. However, I just finished a wonderful book, Kristen Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath (actually part 1 of a three part novel), and I couldn’t get interested or get used to the style until I was about a third of the way through this first part. I stuck with it because a good friend highly recommended the book. So, sometimes you should give up, and sometimes you need to keep trying, and who can tell the difference?

Tonia at Intent has a challenge: 30 Days of Nothing. The idea is refrain as a family from buying any non-essential things for an entire month. I honestly don’t think I could talk my family into restricting our buying to only essentials for a month. And I’m not sure how to define “essentials”? The things that Tonia mentions– lattes, movies, books, clothes, fancy hair gel– are already fairly scarce in our family, not that we don’t have our luxuries. (We get most of the books from the library and from the used bookstore.) We buy fast food or pizza occasionally. We spend a great deal of money on classes: dance, karate, outside academic classes for the high schoolers, college classes. I don’t see how we could quit these for a month, but it might be that we ought to consider cutting down on the outside classes in the long term. Nonetheless, I’m intrigued by the idea of a month long fast from materialism. What do you think?

“The truth is that nobody can do everything, and that learning is a lifelong process. Setting goals and celebrating achievements is good; collecting assignments and checking off pages just so you can say you’ve “done it” is not.” Dewey’s Treehouse: Teaching to Standards (found via last week’s Carnival of Homeschooling hosted at Sprittibee.)

“In the fall I’ll be teaching a new course I’m creating for the University of Pennsylvania called “What’s So Funny?” It’s a critical writing course that focuses on understanding humorous writing. Students will be reading essays, articles, reviews, plays, stories, maybe a couple of novels, Internet sites, whatever else I can find, and then discussing the use of humor and writing papers analyzing the whole thing.” Scott Stein, author and teacher, is asking for suggestions on material to use in the course. I gave him my Best Laughs list. Go over and add your favorite humorous literature to the comments.

Tangentially, I’m interested in what makes writing funny. I’ve read that one thing that makes us laugh is incongruity, something startling or unexpected. However, a gunshot or a clap of thunder can be unexpected; it’s not usually funny. My reaction to the thunder might be funny. What do you think makes humor humorous?

Is a school that requires boys to do nothing but memorize the Koran all day acceptable in America? Spunky says it is, although she’s not a fan of Islam, and I agree. If parents believe that memorizing the Koran is the best education they can offer their young men, then they should be free to send their boys to Koran school. I don’t like the idea, but some people wouldn’t like what I’m teaching (or not teaching) my children either.

Rebecca lists kid-friendly hymns, a much better and more enjoyable and more valuable thing to memorize than the Koran, in my humble opinion.

Finally, in honor of Fine Art Friday, I’ll leave you with a beautiful watercolor painting by a self-taught artist. I think she’s quite talented, and I’m not a bit prejudiced.

Tim Challies writes that Stephen Lawhead has a new novel coming out in September, Hood, the story of a Welsh Robin Hood. No fair, why can’t I get a review copy of a Stephen Lawhead book!

Kate on Criteria for Culling the Collection. I have trouble with this task as I think most bibliophiles do. My house is full of books. I can’t shelve all of my books. But I have another reason for keeping certain books that Kate doesn’t mention: I think, “Yes, I’ve already read it, but my children will want to read this book someday. All eight of them. Or my grandchildren will read it.” I don’t have any grandchildren yet. So I keep the books, lots of books.

A Small Death in Lisbon not only sounds like a good book to add to the LIST, but this marketing by chance and word of mouth story is a good story. Authors and publishers take note. Handselling and interpersonal publicity does work sometimes, but you can’t really control it. Only encourage it.

Martin O’Malley on reading slowly.

“I feel no guilt whatsoever about being a slow reader, or about not having read all the great books, or about abandoning a book halfway through because I’m bored. There are two things in life one must never do out of a sense of duty, and one is read.”

Here’s another link to the list of the best 100 Penguin classics from The London Times. It’s divided into categories, five books in each category. I will be dissecting and commenting soon; in the meantime, what do you think of the list?

A Reading Garden. I’ve never heard of such a thing, but what a wonderful idea!

On a different note, consider yourself warned by this rather frightening article: Global Homeschooling: A Spunky Exclusive.

Steve Riddle of Flos Carmeli on Aesthetic Tyrants. I agree wholeheartedly. What he said.

The Headmistress of the The Common Room on being a chain-reader and a binge-booker. Are you either or both?

De at Thinklings has an excerpt from a Beliefnet interview with Ann Coulter. I hereby declare my independence from aesthetic tyrants by saying that I like Ann Coulter. I think she’s funny. I also think after reading the entire interview that she’s a Christian, however imperfectly she lives her faith. (However imperfectly I live, and I do, my Lord still loves and saves me. “Except for grace by which I stand . . .”)

Jen Robinson has a new list of 175 Cool Boys of Chidren’s Literature. Check it out.

The teacher-bloggers at A Year of Reading are compiling a list of Cool Teachers of Children’s Literature. Go over and add your contributions.

What fun! Google has a tool that can translate your blog from English into several other languages. Or if you come across a German blog that you want to read, Google translates it into English for you. I had my blog translated into Spanish, and I don’t know how readable the electronic translation was, but it seemed understandable, but a little rocky, to me. I wonder how that last sentence would translate. ¿Cómo una piedra?
HT: Kim at Hiraeth

Amanda Witt writes, lovingly and poignantly, about a relative who has Alzheimer’s. Also, from Amanda, you always have a choice. I quoted Edith Schaeffer about this very issue a few days ago, and Amanda says it again. We are finite human beings. We make choices. We can’t do everything, have everything, but we can have something, do something, create something. Make a choice and live it to the fullest.

This memoir about using poetry to cope with grief and suffering sounds interesting.

However, this book, Three Bags Full, just sounds odd, almost odd enough for me to try to scare up a copy and read it. From a review in The Guardian:

The crime-fighting sheep in Three Bags Full derive their particular genius from George the shepherd having read to them every evening – mostly romantic fiction featuring red-haired women called Pamela, a genre which the sheep naturally refer to as “Pamelas”, a phrase clearly worth stealing for one’s own.

Yes, you read that correctly, it’s a German sheep detective novel, translated into English, in which a flock of sheep solve a murder mystery. I guess they’ve exhausted all the possible human detectives. What next? The Frog Detective?

In the news in India, Shakespeare goes to Bollywood? I’m not finding it too difficult to imagine Ophelia or Desdemona in a sari, but near the bottom of the article it says that one Indian director is planning a Bollywood adaptation of Little Women. I am finding that hard to envision.

Blog-friend Melissa Mental Multivitamin asks some question today in this chapbook entry that I can’t answer in her comments because she doesn’t have them. So I’ll answer here:

1.

Many people have had this experience, I think, especially where music is concerned. We become steeped in the notion that if we can’t excel, there’s little point in pursuit.

Quoting from Bachelors Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast by Bill Richardson, MM-V asks “What do you think? Is there little point in pursuing an interest if there’s no chance you will excel?”

I answer with these words from Edith Schaeffer’s wonderful book, The Hidden Art of Homemaking:

Man, because he is limited, has a very limited choice. He is limited by time, as well as talent. He is limited by the resources at his disposal as well as in the skill to use what he has. We do not all have the talent to produce all the ideas that come into our minds. . . A man might think of some great painting in his mind, but not be able to execute it on canvas at all, because he does not have the talent to paint.

We are limited by time and by areas of talent and ability. So our creativity is not on God’s level at all. His creativity is unlimited and infinite. Nevertheless, we have been created in His image, so we can be, and are made to be, creative.

One more:

You are not a great musician, but you do play an instrument –or you did. . . All the music you make is in your daydreams of some remote future success, when you burst upon audiences as an established talent, or surprise your friends by letting them know you have been “discovered.” Your musical talent and your creative possibilities are in a cast, and the rest of your body and personality are suffering from the lack of freedom. . . Even if musical talent is “just” used within a family, someone is appreciating what is being produced, or is sharing in the enjoyment of producing something together.

Read the book if you’re still of the opinion that art is only for the notably gifted and the highly talented. Read the book anyway to be inspired to pursue your own art.

2. MM-V: “What poems have you ‘learned by heart’?”

I’m nobody. Who are you? by Emily Dickinson
Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe
The Raggedy man by James Whitcomb Riley
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow from Macbeth by Shakespeare
600 lines from Shakespeare, some of which I still remember.
Always Sprinkle Pepper in Your Hair by Shel Silverstein

A rather eclectic collection, don’t you think?

3. MM-V again: “What Thurber have you read? And which books bridged your childhood and adulthood reading?”
In answer to the first question,Many Moons, the story of a princess who wants the moon and a few cartoons. I think I read Walter Mitty a long time ago, but I may have only seen Danny Kaye enacting it. In answer to the second question, I have no gap between my childhood and adult reading. As a child, my parents allowed me to read anything I wanted to read, and now I do the same. I float between picture books and young adult fiction and so-called adult books, and I sometimes find more maturity and depth in the children’s books than in the books written ostensibly for adults. I suppose I do remember the first book I read in which two of the characters engaged in premarital sex. It was Exodus by Leon Uris, and I was shocked. I still disapprove and think those particular characters made a poor decision, although I like the book very much. Call me a prude.

4. Final question: “Do you subscribe to Reader’s Digest?”

From the quotation above the question, I gather that it’s unfashionable and unsophisticaated to read Reader’s Digest. If so, I plead guilty although we no longer subscribe. I ran out of money about three or four years for magazine subscriptions, and I haven’t found any extra lying around. I do have an entire long shelf of old Reader’s Digests that I have considered mining for blog posts because I think the magazine could be a blog nowadays. If I start posting entries with titles such as “I am Joe’s Colon” and “Ten Things I Learned While Delivering Pizzas”, you’ll know what I’ve been plagiarizing. No, on second, thought, I’d give credit where credit was due. I’m not ashamed of my shelf of digests.

Can anything good come out of New York City? Well, yes. Fuse #8 has two lists (and you know how I love book lists): The 25 Best American Picture Books Written in the Last 25 Years and The 25 Best American Children’s Fiction Books Written in the Last 25 Years. At the risk of sounding like a snob, I must ask one question. Captain Underpants???? The rest of the “blogger-compiled, librarian-enthused,” list is much better than the superhero-in-underwear book.

Becky at Farm School lists some dangerous, and handy, books for boys. See, I’m not opposed to guns and knives and explosive devices in books for boys. I just don’t like books about heroes in underwear.

Jared’s new favorite novel. I tried a Graham Greene novel once. I didn’t like it. I was probably too young for it. I must try again.

The Common Room has the Brothers Judd’s list of the 100 Best Books of the Twentieth Century. I may copy the list over here sometime and go through it, but in the meantime check it out over there if you’re interested in that sort of thing.