BITTERROOT

Ahhhhh, the beautiful Bitterroots, those rugged snow-capped mountains of Montana and Idaho, home to the Shoshone Cheyenne,  and “others” including those who need to get away for a while.

What happens when a good man gets an undeservedly bad reputation and those who are eager to enhance their own reputation – and their own pocketbooks – are out to get you, with the law on their side?

The book is full of good guys and bad guys,  the innocent and the guilty, and the moral choices that are forced on all of them.    The good guys sometimes must do bad things.  The bad guys are working on the side of the law.   And “correct” moral choices aren’t too clear to the ones who care.

The hero is a young officer in the US Calvary, whose commanding officer tacitly allows him to “resign” after a captured renegade Indian  escaped.    The rumor was the young officer allowed the Indian to escape.   The rumor was the young officer was half brother to the Indian.    And when some bad guys took offense and tried to kill the young former-officer, they themselves were killed.

And now there is a bounty on his head.   And there are plenty of scoundrels who want that bounty paid to them.

The hero is a likable young man.   The reader can feel his growing dismay and desperation as one bad thing leads to another, and he is forced to kill – in self-defense – which only increases his bad reputation and the bounty on his head.

There is a love story here, too.   Not a sentimental love story, but a complicated one because the girl is no fool and won’t trick or pressure the young man into doing something he doesn’t know yet that he wants to do.

There was drama in each chapter, descriptions of the scenery and of the men and their activities that makes the reader see the Old West.   Cattle drives, blizzards, chuck wagons, a general store in an isolated valley,  the movement of cavalry troops, small town jails, the stalking of the skilled bounty hunter, and the attack of a group of young Indian bucks, earning their place among the men of their tribe.

I learned the ways of the Old West with each incident, and I learned a little bit of wisdom and right thinking as the young hero met each challenge, more or less successfully.

My favorite part is when the young Indians were challenging our hero who was working with the cattlemen, way out on the range, far from any help.   The young man showed courage and restraint as the young Indians came attacking, holding still as they counted coup on him.   The cattlemen watched from a distance, amazed.

But then they saw one young Indian come back,  riding in for an attack with murder in his eyes.   He held a large knife in his hand and it was certain he meant to kill.   Even though he had already counted  and could go home honorably, there was an evil in the Indian’s mind.     The young man took out his gun and shot the young Indian, dead.   When asked why he didn’t engage in a knife fight,  the young man said, simply and realistically,   “Because he might have won.”

Restraint is good.      But when the enemy is out to defeat you,  use your big guns.       Whatever big guns you have.

Why do I like Westerns?    Because the good guys are not weak or morally confused.

BRIDESHEAD – UNKNOWN

Well, it’s Brideshead Revisited, of course,  by Evelyn Waugh.

 

I’ve read about it all my life.  I’ve seen the BBC series on television.   I’ve read  studies on this book in  serious magazines,  both secular and religious.    I’ve owned the book, and it was time to read it for myself.

And – how strange - I couldn’t recognize the book I had always read about in the actual reading of the book.

This is definitely a book of great literary worth, written with skill and artistry;  it is indeed a work of art.   I enjoyed the unfolding of the scenes, the development of the narrative and of the characters , and which in turn necessarily pulled the reader along a kind of development of his own thoughts too as he experiences the world connected to Brideshead.

I can tell you about the plot and about the characters, but I can’t tell you the “meaning” of this book.   For that, you’ll have to turn to all those studies of this book.    And so will I, in order to find out what this book is about.

I hope it’s more than just another literary celebration of modern angst – as all the literary analysts seem to have discovered.

Great book.   Recommended.   But I’m so ready to leave the 20th century!

 

REGRETABLE BEHAVIOR !!

Hello again.

I’m sorry for the long absence here at The Reading Shelf.     I’ve begun to read books and watch movies again, but haven’t been ready to share my thoughts before this.   (Losing one’s husband is somewhat incomprehensible, so reading  but not too much thinking, if you know what I mean….)

But now  to a delightful British series I’ve been introduced to,  P.G. Wodehouse’s  “Wooster and Jeeves.”     Jeeves, so much more than a butler!   He calls himself a Man-servant;  or Mr. Wooster’s Man.    He and his fellow man-servants know that it is their job to preserve  the Upper Class, which means quite plainly, to save them from themselves…to coddle, protect, to educate the Upper Class and to see that it continues.

All this is wrapped up into a little exchange between Jeeves and Wooster as they were motoring one day in the countryside:

Wooster has just exposed his befuddlement with Americans after an escapade with a rich American father – and his daughter!    The American wealthy class do not behave with restraint and dignity that the British expect, and Jeeves, explains  these Americans’ behavior while in England  -

Jeeves:  “Foreign travel is known for emotions best kept in check, sir.”

Wooster:   “Ahhh…mmm….”

Jeeves:    ”And the air of North America is notoriously stimulating in this regard, as is well-known from their regrettable behavior in 1776.”

Wooster:  “Oh?   What happened in 1776, Jeeves?”

Jeeves: ” I’d prefer not to dwell on it, if it’s convenient for you, sir…..” 

Jeeves.   He knows that one can say too much.

APACHE LANDS

Two books for the price of one post – but only one photo:

The second book cover looks just like that, but with a different soldier in uniform and with the words “Apache Shadow.    Many of the same characters though.

Just two months ago I was in Apache Territory.   Son and I drove through the very country that played an important part in the story of these two books.   In fact, as we were driving through the mountains and deserts that Cochise and  Geronimo and the Chiricauhuas lived in, it was easy to imagine that I was still in their territory.

As I looked at this land, I wondered if that strange rock formation could have been a landmark as the Apaches traveled across the desert.  I wondered if that mountain range was a familiar home to some small Apache band.  I wondered if that dried arroyo had ever been a pathway that young Apaches had usecd to creep up on their prey.    Did the Apaches smell the same wonderful desert winds and wrap up against the same cold desert night air and did they look up at the same amazing star-filled sky?   Did they hear the same small noises that I did – and could they identify them easily, as I couldn’t?

I can’t say this is a “great” author nor that these were “wonderful” books,  but he is a good author and these were pretty good Westerns.    I did write down some notes as I read these books,  but the quotations were those that would illustrate the themes that you would find in a good Western:       good and evil;   right and wrong;   black and white;   courage and cowardice;   male and female;    wonderment at Creation and a different kind of wonderment at the deeds of men;   life beginning and life ending.

The stories in these two books held my interest and were thought-provoking and realistic and were true to the land I had just driven through.     What more can you ask from light-reading Westerns?!

A TINY BIT OF READING

So sorry The Reading Shelf has been bare lately. 

The sudden death of my husband has made reading seem impossible for a while.   His death was not unexpected.   We had been battling his heart disease together for many years.   But it was unexpected.

Because it really happened.

“Words mean things”  I often say.  And this time the doctors’ words meant what they said some day would happen.

I’ve gone through many, many belongings, possessions, drawers, files, cabinets…so much to do to tidy things up.    While I was going through things, I came across this, from my grandmother.

I’m holding a tiny little brown book that she brought me from her trip to Finland.  It has tiny little words in it.

The name of the book is the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, in poem form, meant to be spoken, just exactly.  I’d say meant to be sung or chanted, but that’s what the Finnish language sounds like when spoken.   I went to a Finnish Festival  one year, and one of the speakers explained that every word in the Finnish language has its accent on the first syllable.   That gives it its sing-song sound.

I could have told him that.  My grandma spoke Finnish.    It was strange to my ears, but I knew how very expressive its vocabulary as well as its sounds are.

The Finnish language is a perfect vehicle for the Kalevala.  Both the language and the tale it tells brings the listener into another world of dark forests, deeps lakes, lovers, and longings, and true life.   “Let us clasp our hands together,   that we thus may best remember….”     I remember those words from my childhood.  I’m glad to have known the world they  introduced me to.

The Finnish national epic called the Kalevala has been declared a World Treasure by the United Nations.    It’s the only literary work that has been given that honor.

I READ A CARTOON

  During my college years, I took more than the average number of classes each semester and worked 40-44 hours per week at the local hospital,  but every Saturday morning I would take time off to watch Warner Brothers cartoon, eat a TV dinner, and then enjoy a grainy black-and-white TV broadcast of the soccer game from South America or Europe.   

So I supposed it’s appropriate that I post this book-reading experience today,  Saturday morning.   Makes me feel better for having read this book all the way to the END !

Cartoons are made to be watched, of course.   They are full of action and visual effects – most of which just don’t happen in real life.    I once had a friend who was blind.  We could enjoy movies together if I narrated the action.  It seemed to work well.    But if we were watching a cartoon,  the words I would be saying to her would be the type of words I found in this book:I posted its photo before when I was musing that I had noticed two books side by side on a shelf, both with such similar names.    I chose to read this one first.  I was curious how an evangelical believer would handle End of the World action.    

Well.    I’m not going to be as critical of the book as I first thought I’d be.    Not quite.    The author believes quite literally in all the images in the book of Revelation and Daniel, with a little Ezekiel thrown in.    I mean, he believes the images will be fulfilled in a literal, actual way, right down to the detail of the hordes of demons with the long feminine hair and the faces like lions and the bodies like horses;   and giant scorpion type insects.  

Well, I’m not about to try to “prove a negative,”   but taking the literal interpretation of the images,  the author proceeded to create a narrative which incorporated these images and had them interacting with human life as the world comes to a violent end.      The dialogue was fairly stereotyped and cartoonish too.  It made me go back and look at when this was published — people just don’t really talk like this, except in old, old TV programs and in cartoons which are caricatures of human society. 

So….what made me continue on with this book?     Well, I began to take it on its own terms.   Of course, the theology was all wrong.    An assent to the “plan of salvation”  does not “take Jesus into your heart”   and then instantly preserve you from Hell’s fury.     But that seemed to be all part of the evangelical stereotype that was so well caricatured….

What kept me going was the idea that I was reading another version of the Apocalypse  (the book of Revelation).  It was simply a retelling of those chapters using a modern setting and almost modern technology.   (I’m almost waiting for a sequel in which the author uses the technology available to us in the second decade of the 21st century.   Now that would be chilling indeed!)

So, we’ve retold the Apocalypse as predicted in the Bible, using a different setting and different terms.   Nothing wrong with that.     It was actually quite charming.    And it re-confirmed my firm belief that this world will end some day, somehow,  and there will be a final battle between good and evil, between the Lord Jesus and Satan.   And it won’t be pretty, and it won’t be easy.

It just won’t look exactlly like the words in this book, nor like the words of St. John the Divine.    

If I want another high-tech action-adventure edge-of-my-seat thriller,  I’ll go grab the nearest Ludlum or Clancy.    

 

If I want to prepare myself for the End of the World,  far more effective for me is to continue to read what has been revealed to us about the God Most High – in the portions of the Bible, Isaiah, for example, or Exodus, or the apocalypse, where the Heavens open up,  and visions of the Great Throne are recorded.   Or I will turn to later visionaries:  St. Mary of Agreda,  St. Gertrude,  St.  Julian of Norwich, Ann-Catherine Emmerich…..Oh, I can never list all the wonderful glimpses of Heaven that have been given to us.

That is what would make me ready for “anything” — as this world ends.

A LITTLE AQUINAS MYSTERY

I was reading this book in the library today.

The Aquinas Prescription  by  Gerold Vann
It’s my book, not the library’s, but I needed a quiet place to read today, away from the demands of homemaking.   I had a nice big library desk for reading and taking notes.     After a while a lady came by and asked in a whisper  if she could take the chair that was on the other side of the table.  

No problem.   She exchanged it for another chair she was using.  

A little while later she walked by again and caught my eye and, nodding toward my book, whispered “That’s a good author.”    Uh.    I was caught off guard.  I whispered,  “Yes,” and smiled, a little puzzled.

I’ve been reading a lot of Aquinas lately, and books about Aquinas,  which help me understand the magnitude of his genius and   holy inspiration.   I had started this book a couple of months ago, but it seemed as though the author,  Gerald Vann, had an agenda,  that of presenting Aquinas to the 20th century in a way that promotes an openness to the modern idea of syncretism.  Gerald Vann lived and studied and wrote between 1906 and 1963, so he could have a modernist outlook, but this book was published by Sophia Press, who are guardians of tradition.  I thought I could try it again.

And  by now a lot more words of Aquinas have sifted through my mind as well as a lot of words about Aquinas, and I felt mentally stronger to deal with this book a little bit better.           

I read and read until my eyes were blurry and discovered that this was really quite a good book.   The author was showing how the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas fit in with history and the development of theology.

And that’s when the woman walked by and said that “that is a good author.”

Who did she mean?

HEALTHY CHILDREN

Here’s the book I’m sending out to San Francisco where my daughter lives:

It looks rather old and tattered.    Worse, some pages on the inside.   I used it a lot when  I was pregnant for  my daughter and son and used it a lot when they  were infants.    Never  gave them  bottles, formula, or store-bought baby food.  

Garbage in – Garbage out.   Works for your mind, body, and spirit.

I was going to buy a new used copy on Amazon, but I think maybe she’d rather see the original.  Maybe some of her own dribblings are on it.   You never know.   

This should be a posting about saving good old books.   Sometimes an author or the ideas are hard to find 30 or 40 years down the road.     You’ll never know that either.    Saving a worthwhile book is always a worthwhile thing to do.

I can’t write any more about hanging on to good old books.   I’m a little distracted by remembering the contents of this book….and by an announcement I have to make on The spruce Tunnel…….

KRIS, A KINDLE, & THE KEYSTONE COPS

Birthday time.   My wonderful kids got me a Kindle.    (Did I drop them a hint?)   That’s just a  cover screen in the photo, I’m not reading any Jane Austen right now.   Each time you turn the Kindle on you get a different screen.    

Now that I’m using it, I love using it!    Highly recommended it for your Christmas Wish List.

But it wasn’t easy getting started….    I’m very, very sensitive to Wi-Fi, as in not being able to think a straight thought or walk a logical line when I’m “under the influence.”    I had just had an overdose of EMF and  RF and Wi-Fi and all that nasty stuff;  some days are like that.      And then I got my Kindle.   I could NOT get it registered using the USB port.    The Kindle just wanted its Wi-Fi.

After  several frustrating hours of going back and forth persuading it to use its own USB port,  I made plans to go to our local library and use the Wi-Fi there.   Nice quiet place to read the directions and pay attention to each step — and find out what I was doing wrong.

Which is just what I did, for nearly an hour in the library.    Getting dosed with more of its Wi-Fi.    But it was the day before we had to leave for an unexpected trip to Ohio, to see Hubbie’s doctors….and so on the way  I had to also run around and buy things, pack things, and clean things….and buy a new cell phone….Back and forth I went all around our little town, into and out of Wi-Fi areas, getting more and more confused.  With time running out and the  feeling of urgency increasing, I probably looked like the old Keystone cops in those silent madcap movies.    Our little town saw a lot of zig-zagging of  my  Little Red Car that day.

Back to the library and more time with the unawakened Kindle.   I finally asked  the  librarian “Have you ever seen anyone with a Kindle?”     (My questions probably  didn’t make any sense to him, but eventually he got the idea.)  I felt better when he couldn’t get the little K-gadget to stay connected either.   Then he finally remembered:    “Oh that’s the way we set up the Internet connection -   no one can use their electronics in the library.”       That was a very long day for such an easy answer…..

He sent me on to the nearest coffee shop….     About five SECONDS later,  the Kindle was registered and I was happily downloading books. 

My new phone  (for which they still make batteries, unlike my older phone)  does everything.    Just everything.     But the Kindle wins.    It’s given me many  happy, quiet, cozy, thoughtful hours  now.

And you can turn OFF its Wi-Fi.

BOOKS SHOULD BE FREE !

No photos necessary this time.   Just a helpful Website for you.

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com

That’s it.  BooksShouldBeFree dot com !!   And so they should be, at least the classics, those written by authors who no longer need to earn their daily bread from the income their books may produce.

This Website has many, many audio books to download.  Listen to them while you work at your computer or burn a CD or put a book in your  MP3 player and take the books with you.   

There are good books there.  Imitation of Christ.   Story of a Soul.    Good ones, like that, for you to find.

….Enjoy!     And thank you to those responsible for the site!