Reading the Classics

Last night I read this article challenging us to included the classics in our reading for this year.  He challenges us to read one classic for every new book we read.   I love that idea, but there are so many newer books that I want to read too.  I guess I'll just have to read faster.

At this point, there are 6 books on my "currently reading" list and 28 books on my "to read" list.  Of those 28, only 2 are classics.  That means that if I don't read any other newer books this year, I still need to decide on 32 classics to read.  I really think that Les Miserable and Resurrection should count for more than one book each, but I'm going to try to get through 32 others too.

So now I have to choose.  Which ones do I want the most?  I want to include some books for children and young adult, partly because I enjoy them, and also because they are quick reads and will help make up for all the time that Les Miserables is going to take to get through.

I haven't yet decided how exactly I will define "The Classics", but the general idea is that I want to read  books that are at least as old as I am.

Here are a few I may consider.  Some I will be re-reading and some I will be reading for the first time.


Charlotte's Web by E.B. White
The Call of the Wild by Jack London
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (not fiction, but definitely a classic)
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

What do you think about the books on this list?  Which ones did you like?  Which ones should I skip?  What other books should I add?

Book Group: The God Who Weeps Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of The God Who Weeps deals with our existence before this life.  While the authors and I agree that we did exist before we were born on this earth, we have apparently come to that conclusion through different processes.  The bulk of the chapter deals consists of the authors explaining that if we feel X, then a pre-mortal existence is the best explanation.

The authors speak of a longing and of feeling lost, not quite at home in this earthy sphere.  They ask,

Who has never felt the utter inadequacy of the world to satisfy the spiritual longings of our nature?
(page 40)

The answer is me.  Maybe I misunderstood the question. I've often found answers in the world that satisfy my longing and make me feel not so lost.  Nevertheless, I can see how a longing for something more might reflect a memory of something we once had.

One idea that I do agree with is the feeling that I am more than just this body.  There is something that is beyond my body and my mind that is the real me.

The discussion of free will and guilt as evidence of a pre-mortal life did not connect with me.  Again, for some people, and obviously for the authors, this makes sense.

The strongest, most powerful parts of this chapter come at the end when they stop trying to convince us of the pre-existence and just state how we benefit from that belief.  On this, we are in full agreement.

...it suggests that birth into this world represents a step forwarding an eternal process of development and growth, not a descent or regression from a primal goodness.  God's work is therefore first and foremost educative and constructive, not reparative.
(page 52)

We are here to learn and progress.  We are not here because Adam and Eve messed up and because of that all mankind must be punished.  Leaving the garden was a chance for them to grow to progress.

If we existed before, if God did not create the essence of who we are, but merely gave us a chance to move forward, it changes everything.

Soberingly, if we are co-eternal with God, then it is not God's creation of the human out of nothing that defines our essential relationship to him.  It is His freely made choice to inaugurate and sustain loving relationships, and our choice to reciprocate, that are at the core of our relationship to the Divine.
(page 53)

God chose to love us, and we choose to love him, setting love at the center of everything.

Questions for discussion and personal reflection

1.  Do you believe you existed before you were born?  What experiences or ideas brought you to this conclusion?

2.  Do you feel like you have lost something?  Do you have a longing for wholeness that is best explained by a belief in a pre-mortal life?

3.  Do you feel that there is more to you than just your body and mind?  

4.  How do you feel about the idea that God's work is primarily instructive rather than reparative?  

5.  How can God be both co-eternal with us and our creator?  

6.  What things did you like about this chapter?  

7.  What things didn't sit well with you about this chapter?  

Books about Writing

My favorite books on writing are not necessarily the ones that tell you how to be a good writer.  My favorites are the ones that inspire me.  My favorites are the ones that say things about writing that also apply to other areas of my life.  My favorites are the ones that give me a glimpse of the real life of the author.

If You Want to Write:  A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit

When I first started grad school, my voice teacher recommended a book that has become my favorite book on writing.  In her instructions, my teacher said, "Just substitute sing every time she uses the word write."  It worked.  Brenda Ueland's If You Want to Write changed the way I look at singing and at life.  A few years later, when I decided to really jump into writing, it was one of my guideposts.  My copy now shows the markings of several different highlighters and colored pencils indicating the places that spoke to me each time I read it.  Here is one of my favorite quotes:

I want to assure you with all earnestness, that no writing is a waste of time, --no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work.  With every sentence you write, you have learned something.  It has done you good.  It has stretched your understanding.  I know that.  Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.
 (pages 15-16)

I love this.  It's been so long now, that I can't remember if I felt it before, or if I learned it from her.  It is part of me now, though, and gives me a lot of peace.  All my blogging and all of the writing I do each year during NaNoWriMo helps me grow.  I want to do it--I need to do it--even if no one ever reads it.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott's book Bird By Bird came to me in a similar manner.  A woman who was speaking at a major voice convention read passages from it and recommended the book, again stating that you just needed to substitute singing for writing and it all applied.  This book is wonderful, but the most important thing I took from this book was a love of Anne Lamott.  I have since read several of her other non-fiction books and they have changed how I view writing, spirituality, and life.  I love this quote about perfectionism:

Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.  Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground--you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip.  Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's going to get.  Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.
(pages 28-29)

As I've participated in NaNoWriMo, this has been particularly helpful.  If you are trying to be perfect, you are never going to get those 50,000 words in one month.  It's just not possible.  You dump everything you can think of into the novel, and sort the mess later.  The beautiful thing is that when you let yourself just write, sometimes when you go back and re-read, you discover that it wasn't as awful as you thought, that there really are gems sprinkled through the mud.

No Plot? No Problem!

And since NaNoWriMo keeps coming up, maybe it's time to introduce Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem?, written specifically for participants in NaNoWriMo.  The first section of the book gives general hints and tips for getting through, I mean succeeding and having a great time with NaNoWriMo.  My favorite quote from this sections is:

The quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy.
(page 32).

The second sections gives week by week advice on how to keep going with your novel.
He perfectly describes my NaNo experience with this paragraph from the introduction.

The biggest success stories of Nation Novel Writing Month, though, are rarely the published ones.  These are the stories of everyday people who, over the course of one frantic month, discover that literature is not merely a spectator sport.  Who discover that fiction writing can be a blast when you set aside debilitating notions of perfection and just dive headlong into the creative process.
(page 20)

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I loved this glimpse into the mind and history of Stephen King.  The man is brilliant.  I love many things about his writing, but I haven't read much of his fiction in several years, mostly because it is so real, and I just need more positive stuff in my life right now instead of things filled with darkness and swearing.  (I looked for the place that he talks about why there is so much swearing.  I couldn't find it, but the idea was that you write what you know, and in real life, people swear. On the positive side, I don't think he just throws it in for no reason.  It fits.  It creates the characters and the situations.) I haven't read this book in a long time, and it's clearly time to pull it out again.  The first time I read On Writing, I checked it out from the library.  Bad idea.  There is so much wonderful stuff in here that it really needs to be read with a highlighter in hand.  

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others:  read a lot and write a lot.
(page 139)

Zen and the Art of Writing:  Essays on Creativity 

This is another book that I really need to re-read.  (I love how this post just keeps adding things to that list!)  Ray Bradbury writes in ways that make me listen.  He teaches me to trust the process and to trust myself as a writer.  I think that this paragraph is quite insightful, even out of the original context.  

I went back to collecting Buck Rogers.  My life has been happy ever since.  For that was the beginning of my writing science fiction.  Since then, I have never listened to anyone who criticized my taste in space travel, sideshows or gorillas.  When this occurs I pack up my dinosaurs and leave the room.
(page 52)

This quote is one that I actually had posted by my writing area for quite awhile.  I'm not sure what happened to it.  Maybe it's time to make a new sign.  

So again and again my stories and my plays teach me, remind me, that I must never doubt myself, my gut, my ganglion, or my Ouija subconscious again.
From now on I hope always to stay alert, to educate myself as best I can.  But, lacking this, in future I will relaxedly turn back to my secret mind to see what it has observed when I thought I was sitting this one out.
We never sit anything out.
We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.
The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.
(page 111-112)

Letters to a Young Poet

This small book containing the letters of the great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke to a young poet who had asked his advice, was also recommended by my voice teacher.  I read this translation.  Choosing a favorite quote from these letters is not easy, but here is one that speaks to my heart today.

How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the begin of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses?  Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just one, with beauty and courage.  Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.
(page 92)

The Right to Write

I picked up this book because it was about writing AND it was by Julia Cameron.  I have a couple of other books by her that I really like.  In the introduction, she explains that this book isn't really a book explaining how to write, but it is a book explaining why we should write.  

We should write because it is human nature to write.   Writing claims our world.  It makes it directly and specifically our own.  We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.   

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living.  Writing is sensual, experimental, grounding.  We should write because writing is good for the soul.  We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

We should write, above all, because we are writers whether we call ourselves writers or not.  The Right to Write is a birthright, a spiritual dowry that gives us the keys to the kingdom.  Higher forces speak to us through writing.  Call them inspiration, the Muses, Angels, God, Hunches, Intuition, Guidance, or simply a good story--whatever you call them, they connect us to something larger than ourselves that allows us to live with greater vigor and optimism.
(page xvi)

The Rest of the Library (in no particular order)

 How to be a Bestselling Novelist:  Secrets from the inside  by Richard Joseph

How I Write:  Secrets of a Bestselling Author by Janet Evanovich with Ina Yalof

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card

Writing Fiction by Gotham Writers' Workshop

Fingerpainting on the Moon:  Writing and Creativity as a Path to Freedom by Peter Levitt

The Midnight Disease:  The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W.
Flaherty

Writing Down the Bones:  Freeing the Writer Within & Wild Mind:  Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg

What are your favorite books on writing?  

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2013 Book-related New Year's Resolutions

1.  Buy another book case, or figure out a way to use the under the bed bins for paperback books.

Seriously, I have a problem with book storage.  Once again, the shelves are beyond full.  But I can't get rid of anything.  Books are knowledge.  And besides that, every time I have given away or sold my books, I've regretted it later when I wanted to look something up.  Nope.  I'm not getting rid of them.  Maybe I will need to get rid of a few other things though to make room for more books.

2.  Read books daily.

I am a reader.  I read everything, including shampoo bottles and the backs of cereal boxes.  If there are words on it, I read it.  Unfortunately, I've let myself spend too much time on FB and other online groups.  It's not totally a bad thing, but I've let my personal reading slip as I've kept up with other peoples' lives.  I'm going to try more scanning of FB for things of interest to me rather than reading every little thing.  Then the time I save will be put back into reading real paper books (OK, and a few Kindle books too. They are easy to haul around.)

Since I started this blog and have made myself write about my reading, I have read more and felt more energized and less stressed.  I need this.  I don't care if nobody ever reads this blog.  It is good for me.
Speaking of blogs...

3.  Do at least one short blog post per week.

These may end up looking more like Facebook or Twitter posts, but writing something, even a little bit, helps me process, remember, and learn from what I am reading.

Do you have any book-related New Year's Resolutions?

Book Group: The God Who Weeps--Chapter One

It's taken me awhile to get back to the book group postings for this book, and I think that was a good thing.  I needed a chance to live with what I had read.  I needed a chance to re-read.  Each time I read a book, I use a different colored highlighter to mark things as I go.  This chapter is now orange and purple, and many of the things I marked this time were not the things I marked the first time.  Once again, I'm shown that we learn what we need to know when we are ready for it.  But enough about me.  Let's talk about the book.

Chapter 1 begins with exploring reasons for believing or not believing in God.  Then the authors ask an important question:

If God exists, does He deserve our worship?
(page 14)

Then they explore beliefs about God through the ages, and ultimately come to this:  the God that we can worship, that deserves our worship, is not a god of violence and punishment, but a

more perfect embodiment of the morally good that we recognize and seek to emulate
(page 18)

They then go on to explain that our god is a god of tenderness, sensitivity, compassion, and empathy.  He is a god that feels our pain and weeps with us and for us.  His vulnerability, His weakness (or what our world sees as weakness), is what draws us to him.

For God the Father, as for the Son, whatever power or influence He wields over the hearts of men, it is not the power or influence known to the world...God draws men to heaven "by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;  By kindness, and pure knowledge."
(page 32)

I've often thought that one of the reasons we see such a difference between the vengeful god of the Old Testament and the message of love and compassion in the New Testament is that life here on Earth in a mortal body gave Christ an understanding of our suffering and struggles that he could not have completely understood before.

Christ's life in the flesh gave Him an empathy transcending the theoretical...Christ's empathy then is not some inherent attribute of the Divine.  It was dearly paid for, each day of His mortal life...
(page 27)

The final section of this chapter is about joy, God's joy, and the joy we can experience.  The authors quote this beautiful thought from Rachel Givens:

God's power rests no on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.
(pages 33-34)

God doesn't purposely put us into horrible situations to teach a lesson.  But He can helps us to learn something from any experience.

Questions for discussion or personal reflection:

1.  Why do you believe in God (or gods, or goddesses, or the Divine, or universal energy)?  How did you come to your beliefs?  

2.  Do you worship because you are supposed to, or because you are drawn to someone or something bigger than yourself, someone or something that you want to become like?  Is there some other reason you worship?  

3.  Does the idea of a vulnerable god scare you or empower you?  

4.  Even Jesus Christ had to learn empathy.  Where are you in this learning process?  Are you quick to judge, or can you see those you disagree with as Children of God, and feel compassion for them?  

5.  What other ideas from this chapter spoke to you?  

Book Review: Genesis A Living Conversation

To be completely honest, Genesis: A Living Conversation by Bill Moyers has been on my currently reading list for a couple of years.  I started it as a way to move deeper into my scripture study. Then life got busy and the book got buried under a pile of other things and I forgot about it.  Maybe that was supposed to happen.  Like I mentioned in yesterday's post, I believe that we find what we need when we need it.  When I started reading it again a few weeks ago, and as I picked up the book to finish it last night, I found exactly what I needed to hear at those moments.  I found the ideas that tied in so well with the other books I'm reading or have read lately.

This book is a companion book to the PBS series of the same name hosted by Bill Moyers.  I picked it up because I absolutely love the book Healing and the Mind where Bill Moyers talked with numerous people from different walks of life about healing.  It was literally life changing for me.  I was hoping for a similar format and experience here.  I was not disappointed.

Bill Moyers brought together 38 people with different religions and philosophies, created unique and dynamic small discussion groups, and talked about the book of Genesis.  Each group tackled a particular section or story from Genesis, sharing their knowledge and perceptions of what it meant to the people of that time and what it means to us now.  In the epilogue, Moyers gives suggestions for starting your own group, and I think perfectly describes what happened with these groups.

Dialogue is about telling and listening.  As I participated in these discussions, I noticed several things that contributed to the pleasure and excitement.  People listened to one another without censure and disagreed without denunciation.  No one tried to mask his or her own religious beliefs, but respected the integrity and boundaries of the religious traditions of all others in the group...
Furthermore, although some participants were ordained or formally trained in biblical scholarship, no one resorted to expertise to claim authority over the others. Participants approached the story in the spirit of the great theologian Martin Buber, who urged people "to read the Bible as if they had never seen it."  Even the most faithful believers kept themselves open to surprise; the admission of not knowing exactly what the passage means made possible an unexpected visitation, revelation.
(pages 349-350)

I write to process what I am learning.  I learn through writing, but I also learn through talking things out with other people.  Whether the discussion happens online or in person, I grow from hearing other people's perspectives and opinions, even if I don't always agree.  I crave the kind of discussions that the groups have in this books.

In the discussion of exile, Burton L. Visotzky makes this statement:

The words are just there on the page.  But as communities of readers, we get together and when we talk, when we debate, when we get heated, that's when we hear the words of God.  That's when the text becomes revelation.  Revelation, which can happen in a secular community as well as a religious community, is a very powerful thing.  It's that lightbulb going on over your head.  You hear someone else with a different point of view, and that person doesn't even have to convince you so much as to show you that there's more than one reading of the text.  (pages 335-336) 

Let me repeat the most important part,

...when we talk, when we debate, when we get heated, that's when we hear the words of God.  That's when the text becomes revelation. 

Yes, personal study and thinking about it alone can bring knowledge, revelation and peace.  But, the words come alive when we wrestle with them, when we share what we think and open ourselves to other possible meanings.  It's too easy in Sunday School to answer a question with "THE LIST".  You know the list:  read your scriptures, pray, go to church, listen to your leaders, serve others, etc.  It's time to ask hard questions.  It's time to explore answers that might not be in the teacher's manual.  It's time to open ourselves to all of the possibilities of what God is saying to us through the scriptures.

Anyone want to join me?  Anyone want to warn my Sunday School teacher?