Literary Crushes

I had this idea to make a list of the literary characters I’ve had crushes on throughout my life.

heehee!

Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
Handsome, well-dressed (that smoking jacket!), courteous.  OH, and ridiculously intelligent.  Musical talent.  Always gets the bad guy.

Levin. (from Anna Karenina)
I fell in love with him when I read the extremely long account of him cutting hay with his workers.  Loves to work hard, shy, close to nature, a romantic, kind to his wife.

Marius (Les Miserable)
Intelligent (self-taught), brooding, romantic, passionate, writes good love letters.

Ishmael (Moby Dick)
Kind, intelligent, adventurous, accepting of others, an observer.

Strider/Aragorn
I’m still thinking about this one because I only just read the books a while ago.  I’m not sure if I like Strider or the King better.  They’re both awesome.  Stealthy, intelligent, close to nature, strong, kingly.

Almonzo Wilder
Who doesn’t love a pioneer man with a matching team of horses?

I guess there aren’t many modern-day novels/characters…. I suppose I must attribute that to not having read about a certain Edward the Vampire.  I doubt, even if I did read those books, I would like him.  I don’t do vampires.  Regular humans work for me.

Library Catalogue System

Today I was thinking, when Samuel and I are rich and have our own library , how will we arrange the books?

This has always been a problem to me.  I don’t want to have a ridiculously complex number system that will require a catalogue, at least I think I don’t.  But what is a better way?

Organizing by author’s last name is problematic because sometimes it is helpful to have books arranged by subject.  But then organizing by subject makes it difficult to find all of an author’s books.  Then, do I want to separate non-fiction from fiction?  What about when non-fiction relates to fiction, like grouping actual Arthurian Romances with fictional books about Camelot?  And is poetry fiction or non-fiction, or something else?  Also, there is the problem of Odd-Sized Books and Old Books.  Sometimes Tall Books or Long Books don’t fit on the shelf properly, so you can’t put them in the section they are assigned to, while Tiny Books might slip into the back of the shelf and be lost forever.  Old Books I personally find necessary to shelve together, because they look so pretty like that.

And all this doesn’t even consider our Large and Growing DVD Collection.  Do you arrange them by title, date, director, subject, type???

Or the guy in a movie I heard about who arranged his massive record collection autobiographically: in order of when he’d purchased and listened to them.

I guess maybe I just need a card catalogue.  They do look cool, as furniture.  Or maybe I need a computer program.  Does anyone know of a free computer program for cataloging books?
Currently our library is loosely arranged in these catagories:

Tall Books, and Massive Box Sets
Old Books
Children’s Books, and Books that Look Like Children’s Books
Fiction, sort of by author
Non-Fiction, sort of by subject

and DVDs:

Misc.
Swashbucklers
Noir
Disney
Jim Henson
George Lucas
Superheroes
Musicals
Non-Disney Cartoons
Lord of the Rings
Japanese
Other Foreign
TV Shows
Music (i.e. Help!)

Nathaniel, Thoreau, My Lover, and Views

Oh dear, I started reading The House of the Seven Gables and it is soooo boring. Someone was even murdered within the first few pages and it is still sooo boring. Forgive me, Nathaniel. Can anyone encourage me? Leave a comment if you’ve read it and have something encouraging to say.

Speaking of American lit, I just recently cracked open Walden and it was such a blast from the past. That book is from my high school dropout/homeschool days. Those days still feel so firey to me, thinking back. I still feel that way about a lot of things but overall things are different. Having similar emotions for a real, live husband is … life-changing. Compared to my feelings for Samuel, everything else seems so shallow, or muted, or silly. Not enough to make me drop all those things entirely, it’s just that what is most valuable to me is very obvious. I could give up those things. But to give up Samuel would be impossible. People, if you find someone to love, marry them, and love them! Spend your life with them! It makes life so wonderful.
Music I heard with you was more than music
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
-Conrad Aiken

*sigh* Now I am feeling all romantic and wistful.

If you have not seen “A Room with a View” please see it. It is now one of my top….three favorite films of all time. Incedentally it has quite a bit of (male) nudity in it, but it is not at all a sexual situation or anything offensive, in my opinion. In fact, it is one of the happiest, most charming moments in the film. Anyway. It is a beautiful film and the characters are so wonderful, the kind you can think about forever and see parts of them in you and your friends….George is probably my favorite character, or maybe his father.
“My father says there’s only one perfect view, that of the sky over our heads!”

Incidentally, Thoreau is mentioned a couple times in the movie, and that’s why I thought of it.

It is a very romantic movie

And the costumes are to die for. I think they won an award of some kind….

Book Collection: The Americans

I thought some of my friends might find it entertaining to see my “old book collection,” especially Thora, since I know she likes old books too. She actually had these books in her keeping for a few weeks when Samuel and I were between moves, though she probably didn’t realize it. Anyway, thank you Thora and Avram for keeping my books safe!

My collection is not very big or impressive, but I like it. Most of the books in this post I got from my grandma when we helped clean out her attic. That set of books was the beginning of my collection, and the rest I purchased. In another part of my collection that I won’t discuss today (mostly English books) more of them were purchased by me than in this set.

I’ve made sure to state what year each book was printed, and I tried to make it so you can click on the pictures to see them bigger.

Here we have my American books:

Rittenhouse’s The Little Book of American Poets, Printed in 1917. It is in pretty good, readable condition. It includes lots of poems from 17-1800’s by American poets, including the Alcotts, Thoreau, Poe, Longfellow, Greenleaf Whittier, and so on. I do not usually like anthologies that involve lots of different authors but this one is ok. Got this one from my Grandma.

The Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, printed in 1940, very good readable condition. A “Modern Library” book. From Grandma. Sorry for the glare….

The Scarlet Letter, printed in 1893, with a beautifully scripted note in the front cover. I really like this book, and it is in readable condition, although a bit more brittle than the previous few. I bought this copy for $4 at a used bookstore.

Hawthorne again, The House of the Seven Gables, printed in1919. From Grandma. This one is ok although the binding is coming apart a bit.

This one’s called Longfellow, printed in 1878. It is one of my favorite sizes of books. I’ve forgotten my book-printing paper-size terms, but it is 1/4 the size of a piece of regular paper. (I have a boxed set of the plays of Shakespeare all in this size, two or three plays per book. I just don’t like those huge tomes…I like portable books.) It is in sad shape. I don’t know what to do with it. The cover is so pretty…the binding is completely broken, the back cover and half the pages are not attached, the paper is very brittle. But I just can’t bring myself to throw it away. Maybe someday I will just keep the cover and frame it and throw the rest away. People frame all sorts of things, why not a book cover? This one is from my Grandma.

The Poems of Robert Frost, printed in 1946. A nice Modern Library edition. From Grandma.

My beloved copy of Leaves of Grass, printed in 1921. I read this book often. I happened to open to one of my favorite parts for the picture! (Well, first I opened it randomly to a passage from “Calamus” and decided against photographing that page…then flipped the page again and wound up here).

The Sketch Book, printed in 1920. This is the book that includes the story “Rip Van Winkle”. Good condition. From Grandma.

I keep these books because I like the way they look and feel. I read them when I get the chance, and if I think they can take the stress of handling. I like to find old notes from previous owners. Someday when I am rich I would like to get bookcases with glass doors to protect them all. I plan on continuing to add books as I find them.

books again

So while I should be doing Italian homework, I am not. I found this list on a friend’s blog and decided to make it my own.

“These are the top one-hundred-six books most often marked as ‘unread’ by LibraryThing’s users. As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. Add an asterisk to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list. “

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : A Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote (well….most of it)
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad*
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : A Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (yes, I did make it past the babbling stream-of-conscious beginning. That was actually the part I enjoyed most.)
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange (made me a little sick)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : A Novel
1984*
Angels & Demons
The Inferno*
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park
One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time*
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse Five
The Scarlet Letter*
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : A Novel
Collapse : How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : An Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid*
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Madeleine L’Engle

Madeleine L’Engle died recently at age 88. She is one of my favorite authors. She is probably my favorite modern Christian author. I love reading her books because they are so thoughtful and spiritual. The families in her books, although some critics say they are “too perfect,” are what families should generally be like. The husband and wife love each other, and are affectionate. They love each of their children and talk to them about what is important and spend time with them. The children love their parents and siblings and are devoted to them, although they may get annoyed with each other at times. Each member has different interests and different schedules, but the family still spends time together often because it is enjoyable to all.

My favorite L’Engle book is A Ring of Endless Light. I also like the other books about the Austins, although the earlier ones are kind of cutsey and don’t deal with very heavy topics. But when I was a kid I liked them. I also like the Wrinkle in Time books, and L’Engles autobiographies, especially Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage.

Here is a really nice article about L’Engle’s life, books, and death.

books

I would like to invite everyone who is “on facebook” to add the Books application. Or, if you are not on facebook, make a list or spreadsheet of all the books you’ve read, starting with your favorites that you can think of right away. Be sure to make little notes about why you like the book and other things you need to remember about them.

As I was adding books to this book-lister on facebook, I became overwhelmed with joy and lovely rememberings. “Memories flooded in” as I listed each book and realized how much each one has created me and continues to influence me. I went to look at my books on our bookshelves to jog my memory and gasped in shock and amazement whenever I came across a book I had forgotten to list as yet.

Ah, enough sentimentality. I will say “I love books”, though. Now it is enough.

And here is something you readers may want to try as well:

Describe Your Life in 10 Books or Less

Imagine you had to convey the essence of yourself using only a list of books… what books would you choose?

It could be a list of books that all mean something to you now, or a list of books that were milestones along the way in life. They could be books that made you see life in a new way, books that you enjoyed escaping into, or even books that you don’t love, but remind you of a significant time and place.

Here’s mine (in no particular order):

1. The View From Saturday -E. L. Konigsburg
(Some children are smarter than many adults, and they know it, but are very polite about it. Also, tea time).

2. Little Women -Louisa May Alcott
(My sisters are a great source of love and inspiration in my life).

3. A Ring of Endless Light -Madeleine L’Engle
(I collect books. My family is a lot like the Austins. I enjoy thinking. There is something else about this book that I cannot seem to convey).

4. Leaves of Grass -Walt Whitman
(For those moments of brilliancy when I feel like a wild banshee, “not a bit tamed…untranslatable” and want to sound those barbaric YAWPs.)

5. Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass -Lewis Carroll
(Treacle? They couldn’t have done that, you know. They’d have been ill).

6. Moby Dick, or, The Whale -Herman Melville
(I truly love Ishmael. I can relate to him. This may sound strange, since Ishmael is a sailor man from more than a hundred years ago and I am a young lady student wife in a landlocked state in 2007. However, it is true. He narrates the book in a way that is really my style, notices the types of things that I tend to notice, and has the same basic ideals. All the descriptions of whaling, live whales, and dead whales are written of in a way that I find very wonderful and interesting and not boring at all. The book did not seem long to me, although I took a year to read it).

7. Les Miserables -Victor Hugo
(Really an inspiring book. I love the characters Jean Val-Jean and Marius, especially).

8. The Enormous Room -e. e. cummings
(My frustration with bureaucracy is manifested in this book, and my love for strange, beautiful people).

9. The Little Prince -Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(This book gives me peace of mind. I like the old, British translation best. The translator used the phrase “matters of consequence,” instead of some boring phrase I can’t remember, and the word “tippler,” instead of “drunkard,” among other things).

10. Two-Part Invention, The Story of a Marriage -Madeline L’Engle
(A beautiful memoir-book about L’Engle’s marriage that made me look forward to being marrie d).