Archives

Reading about World War I

Sep20

Nonfiction for children and young adults:
Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy. World War I and the Christmas Eve, 1914 spontaneous cease-fire. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.
The War to End All Wars: World War I by Russell Freedman. Reviewed at Bookish Blather.
Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher. From a series on various American wars published by MyReportLinks.com (Enslow Publishers).
Remember the Lusitania! by Diana Preston. A children’s/young adult version of the adult nonfiction title by the same author. The books includes lots of personal anecdotes about individuals who survived the sinking of the Lusitania and stories of some of the people who did not. It’s a solid, brief (89 pages with pictures) introduction to the subject, but it felt a little rushed. I hardly had time to get to know the characters that the author spotlighted before the entire episode was over and done with.
Unraveling Freedom: The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War I by Ann Bausum. Reviewed by Betsy at Fuse #8.

Adult nonfiction:
The Proud Tower: A portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914 by Barbara W. Tuchman. I’m working on this one–about halfway through. The author spent about 200 pages on the Dreyfus affair in France, and if nothing else, I feel as if I know a lot more about French modern history than I did before. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman. I started this book once but didn’t finish. I think after I get through with The Proud Tower, I’ll be ready for guns. The Guns of August won Ms. Tuchman a Pulitzer Prize for history. Reviewed at Resolute Reader.
The Zimmerman Telegram by Barbara Tuchman.
Nicholas and Alexandra: The Classic Account of the Fall of the Romanov Dynasty by Robert K. Massie. I read this classic biography/tragedy back when I was in high school or college, and I remember it as fascinating. It’s since been updated with new discoveries made about the bodies that were found and from information found in Soviet archives.
Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea by Robert K. Massie.
Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. Semicolon review here.
The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. Semicolon review here.
Lusitania: An Epic Tragedy by Diana Preston.

Children’s and young adult fiction:
Fly, Cher Ami, Fly!: The Pigeon Who Saved the Lost Battalion by Robert Burleigh. Based on a true story about carrier pigeons used by the U.S. Army during World War I.
War Game: Village Green to No-Man’s Land by Michael Foreman. A longer picture book story of a soccer game during the Christmas truce of 1914.
Winnie’s War by Jenny Moss. Semicolon review here.
The Best Bad Luck I Ever had by Kristin Levine. Semicolon review here.
When Christmas Comes Again: The World War I Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Front, 1917 by Beth Seidel Levine.
Rilla of Ingleside by L.M Montgomery.
Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy travels through Europe instead of going immediately to college after high school, and she sees the arms build-up and the beginning of World War I. Reviewed at Library Hospital.
Betsy’s Wedding by Maud Hart Lovelace. Reviewed at Reading on a Rainy Day.
Kipling’s Choice by Geert Spillebeen. I read this book a couple of years ago, but never got around to reviewing it. It’s a fictional account of the death of John Kipling, son of Rudyard Kipling, near Loos, France in 1915. Here it is reviewed at Chasing Ray.
War Horse by Michael Morpurgo. Joey, the farm horse, is sold to the army and sent to the Western front. Reviewed at Another Cookie Crumbles.
Without Warning: Ellen’s Story, 1914-1918 by Dennis Hamley. Ellen Wilkins becomes a nurse to follow her brother to war.
A Time of Angels by Karen Hesse. In 1918 Boston, Hannah Gold must face her own wartime suffering as the influenza epidemic sweeps through her family and town.
Eyes Like Willy’s by Juanita Havill. A French brother and sister, Guy and Sarah Masson, and their Austrian friend Willy are separated by the war.
After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op last year. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.
My Brother’s Shadow by Monica Schroder. This YA novel is brand new, published in September by Farrar Straus Giroux, and I got an ARC from the publisher. It’s about a German boy, Moritz, towards the end of the war in 1918 and how he comes to see the war and its results differently as he grows up in its aftermath. Moritz’s brother comes home severely wounded from the front, and Moritz must choose between his loyalty to his brother and his mother’s new socialist way of seeing politics and the world. I thought the story was good, but the fact that entire books is written in present tense distracted me. I suppose the intent is a “you are there” feel, but I would have preferred the distance and objectivity of past tense.

Adult fiction:
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
To the Last Man: A Novel of the First World War by Jeff Shaara.
No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry is the first in her World War I mystery/suspense series. I don’t like her writing in these books as much as I did the Victorian Charlotte Pitt mysteries, but if you’re interested in the time period, they’re worth a try.

Of course, there are many, many more books about and set during World War I, but these are the ones with which I have some familiarity.

$500 Million to Fix Five Year Olds Who Can’t Sit Still

May28

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNSNews.com on Wednesday that the administration’s new $500 million early learning initiative is designed to deal with children from birth onward to prevent such problems as 5-year olds who “can’t sit still” in a kindergarten classroom.

Maybe many, if not all, five year olds weren’t meant to sit still in a classroom. Maybe we should modify the curriculum or the environment rather than trying to modify the five year olds.

I had one child who was quite ready to sit and learn to read and do math at age five. I had several children who weren’t. Why are we trying to make five year old “fit” into our own particular cultural and educational jigsaw puzzle instead of working with them as individuals with their own needs and gifts? And who is most qualified to see each child as an individual with his/her own timetable and learning channels?

Hint: I homeschool, and although I don’t believe that homeschooling is the best choice, or even possible, for everyone, I do think that young children are better off and learn more freely and appropriately in their own homes with their own parents teaching and encouraging them. At least they don’t have to be taught to “sit still” as soon as they hit their fifth birthday. And If I did want to teach them to settle down and listen, it wouldn’t cost the federal government, or me, a cent.

HT: Mommy Life by Barbara Curtis

Quotable

Apr27

From a homeschooled student writing a research paper: “This complex topic was a lot less complex when I knew less about it.”

Someone else on another homeschooling blog mentioned “the cover of The Teaching Home magazine,” and I immediately remembered all those covers from the 1980’s of beautiful homeschooling families wearing matching pastel colored outfits and modest smiles. I also remembered this song by Rob and Cindy Shearer of Greenleaf Press, and I wish you could hear it sung. Classic.

Song Lyrics ‘On The Cover Of The Teaching Home’
(to the tune of The Cover of the Rolling Stone by Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show)

Well, we started home schooling, didn’t waste time fooling
Heard the Moores had a name we should know.
Better late than early, we weren’t in any hurry
Kid was 18 months or so…
We went to all the seminars, we talked to all the stars
We had our stuff down really cold.
Now the kid’s gotten bigger and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home.

Chorus:
Teaching Home…. Wanna see my picture on the cover
Home…. Wanna buy five copies for my mother
Home…. Wanna see my smiling face
On the cover of the Teaching Home

Well, I told my bride about Mary Pride,
You know our family was just too small.
You can teach just one, but a dozen’s more fun.
We got desks up and down the hall.
We teach K thru 6, we know all the tricks,
Except for how to see each other alone.
Now the family’s gotten bigger and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home…

(Chorus)

We use Bob Jones, Abeka, and a video school,
We know every phonics song.
We teach from 9 to 5, we got a home enterprise.
What could we be doing wrong?
We got field trips booked until the end of June.
We’ve built a model to scale of Rome
We’re not gettin’ any richer and we want our picture
On the cover of the Teaching Home.

(chorus)
lyrics, copyright Rob & Cyndy Shearer, 1990.

If you remember the covers or the song or both, you’re definitely a veteran homeschooler.

I read this story of how an atheist came to faith in God and thought it was eminently sensible and believable: “I went home and decided that I was going to decide. I was going to either ask God to come into my life, or I was going to end the subject completely and never allow myself to consider the possibility of God again. I was tired of dealing with this decision. I was tired of thinking about it.”

Bitter Melon by Cara Chow

Mar20

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Lisa Jenn Bigelow.

“Frances, a Chinese-American student at an academically competitive school in San Francisco, has always had it drilled into her to be obedient to her mother and to be a straight-A student so that she can get into Berkeley to become a doctor. It has never even occurred to Frances to question her own feelings and desires until she accidentally winds up in speech class and finds herself with a hidden talent.”

Bitter Melon was pitched to me as sort of the “anti-Tiger Mother novel,” the Rest of the Story from the pressured child’s point of view. I would have thought about Ms. Chua’s recent controversial child-rearing memoir as I read Bitter Melon even if the association between the two books hadn’t been brought to my attention. Amy Chua apparently believes (I haven’t actually read her book, Battle Cry of the Tiger Mother) that children should be raised in a very strict, competitive, and pressured environment so that they will learn to achieve their best and be proud of themselves. In her Wall Street Journal article, Chua talks about giving praise and encouragement along with (or after) the initial response to substandard grades or performance which is to ” excoriate, punish and shame the child,” but it looks as if the positive reinforcement and simple love get short shrift in the Tiger Mother model for raising kids. Such methods may work to produce highly competent pianists or doctors, but I would argue that there’s a dark side to to this parenting technique that borders on the abusive, if it doesn’t actually cross over into child abuse.

Not all cultural traditions are equally moral, virtuous, and yes, Christ-like. The Chinese and other Asian cultures may have many things to teach the West about principled behavior, honoring parents, and even teaching children to excel, but shaming children and beating them and controlling their actions by force and by emotional manipulation even into young adulthood are not right ways of treating the children that God has placed into our families, no matter how brilliantly it makes them perform. Love is not, or should not be, based on performance, and our children should never wonder whether we will continue to love them if they fail.

Sadly enough, Frances in the book Bitter Melon sees herself making a choice between pleasing family (her mother’s expectations) and speaking her own truth. She writes, “Then the question of whether to choose one’s family at the expense of oneself or oneself at the expense of one’s family has no easy answer. It is like choosing whether to cut off one’s right hand or one’s left hand.” There is a third way: we can teach our children that they are ultimately responsible before God to praise, enjoy, and glorify Him forever. It’s not all about me. Nor is it all about family and making my parents happy. Life is about accepting the love of the One who created me, loving Him with all my heart, mind and strength, and glorifying Him with my talents and abilities, serving others as if they were the Lord Jesus Christ, and honoring my parents even if I must defy their expectations. It’s still not an easy answer, but it is right, and God’s way of living transcends culture, both East and West.

Bitter Melon is a good novel, and a good antidote to the poisonous temptation of making human excellence and/or filial devotion one’s god.

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana by Patti Wheeler and Keith Hemstreet

Nov27

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt is something different in the world of children’s books. At least, I’ve never seen a book or a series quite like it. Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana is the first book in a prospective series of fictional travel adventures featuring homeschooled twin brothers, Gannon and Wyatt Wheeler, sons of the co-author Patti Wheeler. The idea, as I understand it, is to take the adventures of real brothers, Gannon and Wyatt, and cast them into a story that will hold kids’ interest and at the same time teach them something about the world and its inhabitants, both animals and people. In this first book the brothers go to Botswana where they see and photograph all kinds of wildlife on safari and encounter the most dangerous animals of all, human poachers.

So how successful is this first book in the series? Well, great literature it’s not, but Ms. Wheeler and Mr. Hemstreet do tell an engrossing adventure story featuring a couple of intrepid young explorers. The story unfolds in the form of journal entries, alternating between Gannon’s voice and Wyatt’s. Each boy tells the story of their African adventure from his unique point of view: Gannon, the philosophical people person and Wyatt, the scientific fact gatherer. The boys have a LOT of adventures for one book: seeing all of the Big Five (lions, cafe buffalo, rhinos, leopards, and elephants) and also several more dangerous and fascinating animals, visiting a Bushmen village, rescuing a wounded lioness, and foiling poachers, among other events. Wyatt gets sick at one point in the story with an unknown African illness, and he almost dies. Gannon is charged by an aggressive lion, and then when they run out of food on safari, the boys get a taste of roasted black mamba.

By the way, mambas seem to be popular in kidlit this year. Trendspotter that I am, I’ve noticed the prominence of the nasty poisonous buggers in three of the books I’ve read so far for the Cybils Middle Grade Fiction: Mamba Point by Kurtis Scaletta, Belly Up by Sturart GIbbs, and now Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana. I also learned a lot about hippos from this book and from Belly Up!. Did you know that hippos are among the most dangerous animals in the African bush and that they have a penchant for overturning boats? Both books agreed on this fact, so it must be true.

I think boys in particular who have a yen for travel and adventure will get a kick out of these books. The first book comes with a DVD with video footage of the real Gannon and Wyatt on their trek through Botswana. And if kids are really into the whole travel/adventure/series thing, they can go the Travels With Gannon and Wyatt website where they can join the Youth Exploration Society, read the boys’ blog, or purchase Gannon and Wyatt merchandise. Future books in the series will feature Gannon and Wyatt in The Great Bear Rainforest, Egypt, and the Serengeti.

Other takes:
Carrie at 5 Minutes for Books: “I found Travels with Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana to be imaginative and engaging. It reads like a positive adventure story with lots of geographical facts thrown in so the reader is picking up information on the country or continent in focus.”

Roberta at Wrapped in Foil: “It becomes apparent the adventures in the book are fictionalized. The boys would have to be pretty unlucky to encounter all the things that befall them. Starting out with a close call with a mother white rhino that knocks their own mother out of the vehicle they are riding in, the boys run up against everything from frightening giant crocodiles to being held hostage by an angry poacher.”

Travels With Gannon and Wyatt: Botswana has been nominated for the 2010 Cybils Awards in the Middle Grade Fiction category.

If you could travel anywhere, where would you go first? Civilized or wild? Culture and history or wildlife and roughing it? You probably already know I’m in the first category. I’d head straight for London and Oxford and Stratford-on-the-Avon if I could. But I did enjoy reading about Gannon’s and Wyatt’s exploits in the African bush.

I, Emma Freke by Elizabeth Atkinson

Oct12

I, Emma Freke pushes some of my buttons: homeschooling, family reunions, community. So let’s take them one at a time.

Homeschooling: Emma Freke, age twelve, has a mom, Donatella, who acts about fourteen. When Donatella decides to give Emma the birthday present of being homeschooled, the result is not pretty. Homeschooling is not a choice between child neglect and authoritarian scheduling in a school-like environment. It really is possible to have children who are free to learn at their own pace and even choose many of their own areas of study and who are also required to to be responsible and work at their education. And most people like Donatella don’t last long at homeschooling, which is what happens in the book. I also didn’t like the implication that people tend to homeschool in order to use their children as free labor as Donatella does when she leaves Emma to tend the bead shop. I know lots of homeschooling families, and none of them have their children at home in order to enslave them to the family’s business.

Family reunions: Emma attends a family reunion in Wisconsin in order to get away from her negligent, selfish mother and to meet the extended family of the father she’s never met. The entire Freke family is about as dysfunctional in the direction of controlling and domineering as Emma’s mom is in the opposite direction. In fact, The Freke family is so uptight and scheduled that they’re borderline unbelievable. Again, family is not usually a choice between a mother who’s so permissive that she should be hauled in for child neglect and a father’s family that’s so authoritarian that rebellion is the only option for anyone with a sense of self at all.

Community: The theme of the book is finding home, finding the place where you can fit in and feel accepted and loved for yourself. Emma, with her strange name and her height (six feet tall at age 12) and her advanced intellectual abilities and her odd family, doesn’t fit in anywhere. She’s not only a Freke, but she feels like a freak. And don’t we all sometimes? Especially young teens? This aspect of the story really communicated to me, and I felt as if the target audience, middle school readers, would identify, too.

I’m not sure about the portrayal of homeschooling as an alternate lifestyle for neglectful parents nor about the family reunion that’s too structured to be true, but the story transcends these lapses. The supporting cast in the book, Donatella, Aunt Pat Freke, Nonno, Emma’s grandfather, and others, all tend toward caricature. However, Emma Freke is a great character, and she deserves the happy ending that she gets at the end of the story.

I, Emma Freke is nominated for the 2010 Cybil Awards in the the Middle Grade Fiction category.

Homeschool Educational Opportunities

Sep26

NASA is announcing the application process for High School Aerospace Scholars (HAS) for Texas students (juniors in high school). This unique program includes a free six-day residential summer experience. Applications must be submitted by November 15.

Humans in Space Symposium Youth Art Competition Youth 10- 17 are invited to submit their ideas about the future of human spaceflight and why it is important via visual, literary, musical or video art. The winning art will be displayed at the Humans in Space Symposium, to be held in Houston April 11-15, 2011. Deadline for submission has been extended to October 31, 2010.

To support the homeschool community, WriteGuide, the writing curriculum source that I reviewed last week, founded the Homeschool Literary Quarterly, an online publication that will publish and promote literary works written by homeschool writers. We’ll publish poems, essays, stories, memoirs, and articles. The publication will be 100% free. Like any literary magazine, The Homeschool Literary Quarterly is very much a community endeavor. The magazine will need skilled writers to submit their work for publication. They will need artists and eventually, student-editors. The first edition will be out by Christmas!

WriteGuide: Individualized Writing Instruction for Homeschoolers

Sep20

About a month and a half ago, the director of Writeguide, an online writing course for homeschoolers, asked if I would be interested in reviewing their program here at Semicolon. I looked at the website, thought it sounded like something that would be of interest to many homeschool families, and asked if one of my urchins could do a trial run.

Karate Kid (age 13) was the guinea pig. He hasn’t done much formal writing, lots of reading but not much writing. We signed up for a one month course, and then promptly it got really busy around here and we managed to forget when the course started! (One month’s instruction at WriteGuide is $75.00, which would be a bargain for many homeschool families who often tell me how intimidated they are by the task of teaching kids to write.) Because it took us a few days to get on track in starting the program, and because I didn’t remind Karate Kid as often as I should have to communicate with his personal writing consultant, he was only able to complete one piece of writing over the course of the month. Nevertheless, I was quite pleased with both the process and the product.

Karate Kid’s assignment, an assignment that I gave him, was to write a process paper explaining how to do something that interested him. The WriteGuide writing tutor will work with your child on an assignment given by the parent, a writing task in the particular curriculum you are using, or a piece of writing that the writing teacher, the parent, and the child decide together that the child needs to complete. For example the homeschool parent could ask the WriteGuide teacher to work with the student on basics of the SAT essay or a research paper or simple paragraph writing, whatever fits the particular student.

Students enrolled in our Individualized Writing Course work with their own private writing teacher (called a writing consultant), Monday through Friday on papers and projects of their parents’ choosing. Your child’s writing consultant will provide 100% individualized, hand-tailored instruction to meet his or her precise needs as a writer. The course takes the form of a friendly, daily (Monday through Friday) exchange of letters, papers, instructions, lessons, and feedback between the student and his or her writing consultant. All aspects of the writing process, including generating ideas, prewriting, outlining, research, taking notes, drafting, controlling tone, sentence and paragraph structure, literary and stylistic devices, grammar, punctuation, mechanics, editing, proofreading, and the process of revision.

Students, parents and tutor communicate via protected, on-site email. As I said, Karate Kid’s writing teacher was great. She communicated with him daily, M-F, as long as he kept up with the assignments and revisions she suggested. (Sometimes he didn’t answer her for a couple of days, and therefore we may not have used the course to its full potential.) KK wrote a rough draft of his paper, and his WriteGuide tutor gave him specific suggestions to improve the writing, grammar, and structure of his paper. Here’s the end result: How To Make A Bird Bolas by Karate Kid. Remember that although KK is in eighth grade, he has done very little formal writing and had almost no writing instruction, although he has been taught basic grammar and sentence structure. And he has done a lot of reading.

Because I teach literature and history classes at our homeschool co-op, parents come up to me all the time in a panic about teaching writing. In fact, I see writing and science instruction as the two scariest subjects for homeschool parents who are entering the middle school/high school years. My new response will be to recommend WriteGuide as a resource for those who can afford it. Even if you can only do one month’s worth of instruction with WriteGuide, it would be a valuable month’s investment. I plan to sign up for another month’s writing consultation in the spring when KK writes his research paper.

WriteGuide also offers a three month long Introduction to Grammar class that I didn’t try out. However, if your child needs a basic foundation in English grammar, you should look at this course.

Sunday Salon: More Fascinating Stuff

Aug15

1. I told you I’m a C.S. Lewis fanatic. And I could always use some writing tips. Thanks to Jessica at Homemaking Through the Church Year for the link to 8 Writing Tips from C.S. Lewis. Lewis wrote this advice on writing in answer to a letter from an American schoolgirl, so it ought to be about on my level.

2. Homeschooling and finishing the race from Cindy at Ordo Amoris:

“It would be easier to not read the Little House series aloud for the 4th time. It would be easier to let those young boys sit at the computer or watch DVDs all day long. But homeschooling and child training are not hobbies for me. They are my calling. If I was purposeful and eager 25 years ago, I want to be ever so much more so today. It is going to take a lot more prayer and way more caffeine. I have lost a whole boatload of naiveté.”

3. “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ~Howard Thurman. I love that quotation. What makes you come alive?

4. The Night Gift by Patricia McKillip, recommended by Peter at Collecting Children’s Books despite its outdated illustrations, deals with some of my fascinations: mental illness, secret rooms and hideaways, young adults acting like adults. I know I’ve read something by Ms. McKillip, but I can’t remember what it was. Anyway, I’m adding The Night Gift to my TBR list.

5. Language and how it works and different cultures seeing things in different ways are also subjects that interest me. So, I found this article from the Wall Street Journal about the influence of language on thought patterns to be, well, fascinating.

“Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?”

I read once that the ancient Hebrews thought about words as living entities. If your words “fell to the ground,” they were not only untrue but also dead. How does this idea affect the language used in the Bible to describe Jesus as “the Living Word of God”? Amazing stuff.

6. Susan Wise Bauer on what to look for and what not to look for as you send your homeschooled or conservatively educated student to college:

“I’m often asked how home educated students stack up against others in my classes. My overwhelming impression is that they’re more fragile. They’ve got little resilience; I can’t push at their presuppositions even a little bit. Maybe they’re afraid those presuppositions will shatter.”

I would very much like for my young adults to be resilient, thinking, teachable students by the time they get to college. But I’m not always sure how to get there from here. I think two of my already graduated students fit that description, and the other two don’t. And I further believe that the two who think deeply and respond to challenges well got that way mostly as a result of their own attitudes and desire to learn. You can lead a horse to water . . .

7. Lists, lists, lists. Love lists.Miss Rumphius reviews a book, 100 Ways to Celebrate 100 Days, and gives some other links for ideas for celebrating the 100th day of school. She says that day generally falls around mid-February, so I’m looking forward to taking a day off about that time and having a 100 days party.

8. Another list: important dates to memorize.

9. I’m really interested in this (free) class:

I’m not much of an artist, but I would like to make a journal/photo album for my husband’s family for Christmas using old family photos and excerpts from my father-in-law’s old journals. Wish me luck.

10. More Lewis and Tolkien and England and Oxford: fish and chips, bobbies, The Kilns, tea, Tolkien’s gravesite, Addison’s Walk, Piccadilly CIrcus, Les Miz, even a little Shakespeare. Bill of The Thinklings got to go to London and Oxford to visit his son Andrew who is studying there with a group from Baylor. When will it be my turn?

11. Morbidly fascinating: Augustus St. Clair, Pro-life Hero. Can you guess what newspaper published an article with the following opening statement? (Medical malpractice was a euphemism for abortion.)

“The enormous amount of medical malpractice that exists and flourishes, almost unchecked, in the city of New York, is a theme for most serious consideration. Thousands of human beings are thus murdered before they have seen the light of this world, and thousands upon thousands more of adults are irremediably robbed in constitution, health, and happiness.”

12. Science and religion. Scientists creating religion. Science masquerading as truth. All of these are definitely fascinating. See this NY Times oped for more information on kooky scientists and their confusion concerning what man really is and what separates us from machines.

. . . a great deal of the confusion and rancor in the world today concerns tension at the boundary between religion and modernity — whether it’s the distrust among Islamic or Christian fundamentalists of the scientific worldview, or even the discomfort that often greets progress in fields like climate change science or stem-cell research.

If technologists are creating their own ultramodern religion, and it is one in which people are told to wait politely as their very souls are made obsolete, we might expect further and worsening tensions. But if technology were presented without metaphysical baggage, is it possible that modernity would not make people as uncomfortable?

Returning to Fascination #3, if we begin to speak of robots and algorithms as human entities, will they become human in our thinking, or will we become less than human and unable to realize the potential for which God made us?

Difficult Books

Jun29

An article by Alistair Harper in The Guardian‘s book blog asks: “Do you avoid difficult reads, or seek them out? Which tomes are worth the pain, and which are best left on the shelf?”

I would answer that David Copperfield, Les Miserables, Anna Karenina, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, Moby Dick, Le Morte D’Arthur, and The Lord of the Rings are all worth the time and effort, but if it’s too much effort after the first 200 pages or so, then I guess any one of those is just not for you. Try something else.

After having dipped into all of the following authors, I will leave them on the shelf and off my reading list for the duration: James Joyce, Joyce Carol Oates, Thomas Mann, E.M. Forster. I also find Steinbeck and a lot of other twentieth century classics not difficult so much as just . . . boring.

I’ve never read Proust, and I don’t know that I’ll get around to it. I read Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which won the Man Booker Prize last year, but I didn’t really care for it and found myself skimming about midway through.

I’m reading The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt right now, and I’m not sure. The odd punctuation is annoying me, and I’d like for the pace to pick up a bit.

What about you? Which classic or noted authors do you find worth the work? Which “difficult books” have you tried and found wanting? For which difficult books do you find that persistence pays dividends? Which ones have you given up before finishing?