In response to the Book Meme....
that Heather pinged me on....
Reading style: Usually in bed or in my wicker chair, which has been outfitted with very comfy cushions of wonderful deep colors (will have to post a pic of said reading chair...it is unique). Sometimes the couch, late in the afternoon, like a cat.
Last book I bought Buzz Marketing With Blogs for Dummies My first Dummies book. This is the only thing I feel kind of like a dummy about. Most of the time I know a modicum of knowledge, but other than knowing how to manipulate a few things in Blogger, I'm not totally sure how to organize things for the film fest blog. I am hoping to have that content done within the week...before BlogHer this weekend.
Last book I read: yow! Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt and Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardner.
Book(s) I'm reading now: Buzz Marketing (see above); We've got Blog, Rebecca Blood, ed.; Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia; and Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett (yes, I have a thing for noir, both film and lit)
5 Books that men a lot to me:
New Seeds of Contemplation By Thomas Merton. Merton was a fascinating guy--Cistercian Monk who lived in China and absorbed Buddhist thinking, fell in love late in life, after having been a monk for a long time, and while there are point in New Seeds that sound kind of like ravings, the thinks sink in and make sense. I always remember the notion that just when you think you know what God's will might be for you, you really can't be farther from it. Merton also re-enforces the idea that God doesn't always speak to individuals directly and that to lose faith when you don't get your prayer directly answered really isn't faith. Faith is pretty amorphous and tough to grasp most of the time because life, more often than not, has a misery component to it that propels an need to place blame somewhere. The blame, sometimes, should be squarely placed on very fallable human nature. Merton knew fallability and weakness, too...which is what makes his writing a comfort to me.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. I was in my 2nd year at Smith and burnt to an intellectual crisp. I started reading Hammett as a brain break, and discovered how wonderful noir could be. The descriptions are so detailed--right down to a woman's green nylons! and I am always fascinated by how Hammett says something about perversity without saying anything directly. I think, for many subjects, including perversity, we've lost the ability to read between the lines--which, when reading Hammett, is necessary--because nowadays we can just blurt out whatever it is that is perverse. Sometimes with more embarassing detail then is necessary. Perversity has been reduced to a bunch of psychobabble terms, and that, to me, takes the mystery out of it. Reading Hammett puts that mystery back and reminds me of what it really is to "show, not tell."
Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. Okay, I think a lot of it is psychobabble, and there's a lot of stuff in what Bolen says about character traits that's a bit off, but the book is interesting and a fave because it got me to appreciate the parts of myself that I hate and disowned....and taught me that those parts are in every woman, to a greater or lesser degree. I am a curious combination of Persephone and Aphrodite. It makes life tough and explains why I'm such a freakin' drama queen at times. (I have almost no Athena or Demeter traits.)
Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano. Lubrano, a journalist with The Philadelphia inquirer is from a working-class Italian family and went to Columbia. He got ahead. The book (which I blogged on several months ago) chronicles the struggles of many "straddlers" and shatters the myth that everybody wants their kids to get ahead. Sometimes, for those of us on the bottom of the social-class heap, 's bad enough we have to learn a whole new set of social rules and mores, but we also have to contend with our ever-cloying, sometimes not very supportive families. I felt less alone after I read Limbo and I was far less defensive about a lot of things.
Holy Bible (King James Version and Revised Standard Version). I know enough of this book to occasionally, and when necessary, quote it chapter and verse. I will do this mostly when I catch a fundie quoting something out of context or without proper reference to the full context. Or when I find some free thinker talking out of his/her hat. In other words, I never allow a fundie to fuck with me and have no shame in being a damned good biblical scholar, even if it isn't fashionable in a lot of liberal circles. My philosophy: if you have to deal with bible-thumpers (or bible know-nothings), beat them at their own game. They're not going away, and it might behoove a lot of us to know the words they are manipulating--just so we can teach them what "fair and balanced" really means. However, to fully appreciate the King James version, one must also read God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. It should be required reading for any fundie who wants to believe his/her KJV or even RSV is the directly channeled word of God.
Whew! that was great! I'm a bit hestiant to ping anyone else on this (it's fairly intense)...so, what I would like to do is leave it to whomever would like to pick it up. Just let me know you're doing it, because I'd like to read it too.
Reading style: Usually in bed or in my wicker chair, which has been outfitted with very comfy cushions of wonderful deep colors (will have to post a pic of said reading chair...it is unique). Sometimes the couch, late in the afternoon, like a cat.
Last book I bought Buzz Marketing With Blogs for Dummies My first Dummies book. This is the only thing I feel kind of like a dummy about. Most of the time I know a modicum of knowledge, but other than knowing how to manipulate a few things in Blogger, I'm not totally sure how to organize things for the film fest blog. I am hoping to have that content done within the week...before BlogHer this weekend.
Last book I read: yow! Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World by Hugh Hewitt and Top of the Heap by Earle Stanley Gardner.
Book(s) I'm reading now: Buzz Marketing (see above); We've got Blog, Rebecca Blood, ed.; Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia; and Nightmare Town by Dashiell Hammett (yes, I have a thing for noir, both film and lit)
5 Books that men a lot to me:
New Seeds of Contemplation By Thomas Merton. Merton was a fascinating guy--Cistercian Monk who lived in China and absorbed Buddhist thinking, fell in love late in life, after having been a monk for a long time, and while there are point in New Seeds that sound kind of like ravings, the thinks sink in and make sense. I always remember the notion that just when you think you know what God's will might be for you, you really can't be farther from it. Merton also re-enforces the idea that God doesn't always speak to individuals directly and that to lose faith when you don't get your prayer directly answered really isn't faith. Faith is pretty amorphous and tough to grasp most of the time because life, more often than not, has a misery component to it that propels an need to place blame somewhere. The blame, sometimes, should be squarely placed on very fallable human nature. Merton knew fallability and weakness, too...which is what makes his writing a comfort to me.
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. I was in my 2nd year at Smith and burnt to an intellectual crisp. I started reading Hammett as a brain break, and discovered how wonderful noir could be. The descriptions are so detailed--right down to a woman's green nylons! and I am always fascinated by how Hammett says something about perversity without saying anything directly. I think, for many subjects, including perversity, we've lost the ability to read between the lines--which, when reading Hammett, is necessary--because nowadays we can just blurt out whatever it is that is perverse. Sometimes with more embarassing detail then is necessary. Perversity has been reduced to a bunch of psychobabble terms, and that, to me, takes the mystery out of it. Reading Hammett puts that mystery back and reminds me of what it really is to "show, not tell."
Goddesses in Everywoman by Jean Shinoda Bolen. Okay, I think a lot of it is psychobabble, and there's a lot of stuff in what Bolen says about character traits that's a bit off, but the book is interesting and a fave because it got me to appreciate the parts of myself that I hate and disowned....and taught me that those parts are in every woman, to a greater or lesser degree. I am a curious combination of Persephone and Aphrodite. It makes life tough and explains why I'm such a freakin' drama queen at times. (I have almost no Athena or Demeter traits.)
Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano. Lubrano, a journalist with The Philadelphia inquirer is from a working-class Italian family and went to Columbia. He got ahead. The book (which I blogged on several months ago) chronicles the struggles of many "straddlers" and shatters the myth that everybody wants their kids to get ahead. Sometimes, for those of us on the bottom of the social-class heap, 's bad enough we have to learn a whole new set of social rules and mores, but we also have to contend with our ever-cloying, sometimes not very supportive families. I felt less alone after I read Limbo and I was far less defensive about a lot of things.
Holy Bible (King James Version and Revised Standard Version). I know enough of this book to occasionally, and when necessary, quote it chapter and verse. I will do this mostly when I catch a fundie quoting something out of context or without proper reference to the full context. Or when I find some free thinker talking out of his/her hat. In other words, I never allow a fundie to fuck with me and have no shame in being a damned good biblical scholar, even if it isn't fashionable in a lot of liberal circles. My philosophy: if you have to deal with bible-thumpers (or bible know-nothings), beat them at their own game. They're not going away, and it might behoove a lot of us to know the words they are manipulating--just so we can teach them what "fair and balanced" really means. However, to fully appreciate the King James version, one must also read God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson. It should be required reading for any fundie who wants to believe his/her KJV or even RSV is the directly channeled word of God.
Whew! that was great! I'm a bit hestiant to ping anyone else on this (it's fairly intense)...so, what I would like to do is leave it to whomever would like to pick it up. Just let me know you're doing it, because I'd like to read it too.
posted by Tish Grier at 12:35 AM
3 Comments:
The Seven Story... Mountain? Castle? I think is Merton's most widely known work. Read it a long time ago and liked his looking-within approach to religious life.
Generally speaking, I like monasteries more than churches. A Christian contemplative and a Buddhist monk are on pretty similar wavelengths...
Cool book list! I enjoyed Goddesses in Everywoman. Most of the others I haven't heard of, I'll have to look for them. Thanks for the bra advice too. :)
Paul...Merton's bio is "The Seven Story Mountain" :-) It is surprisingly relavent to the way things are today for many people. In some ways, we are still living a certain legacy that was launched in the 1920's...
I'm more given to contemplative belief systems myself. My priest-friend from my days at Smith wa first to peg me as "naturally contemplative." It lead me to consider becoming a nun...but I couldn't separate the Roman from the Catholic to my liking....and then there was sex...
Heather
The great thing about book memes are that we all read different things and it gets us to share about stuff we might not otherwise have blogged about. When I think about it, I could write blog entries on each one of the books I mentioned. And you should *see* the number of books I have! I should really start posting pics of my domicile. People would be surprised how small it is, and how it's overloaded with books!
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