Giveaway Ends November 1st

If you haven't entered the giveaway, please do. They are all excellent books. All you have to do is comment on this post for one entry!

Reformation Day is tomorrow! I'm excited about our celebration. I hope you have a good day too. :-)

National Novel Writing Month is approaching. I've never attempted this before, but I have an idea that would be perfect. I'm still trying to decide because I have a non-fiction writing deadline before the end of December. I'm also not sure I want to take that long of a break in the novel writing right now. We'll see...

I'm signed up at the moment, so if your trying, find me and friend me. :-)

And as an added bit of info...my brother turns 23 today! Happy Birthday! You are awesome. :-)

Thanks for reading!
Have a superb Reformation Day!
Miss Pickwickian

Survival in Auschwitz - Primo Levi

Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi

A Touchstone Book

Published by Simon & Schuster

Rating: 7
Readability: Painful.

Impact: We'll see.

Read it Again: I dunno.
Recommend It: Yes.

What to Expect

Primo Levi spent one year in the death camps of Auschwitz. He is an Jewish Italian who was capture after joining the Resistance in 1943.

This is his first book, a memoir of that year.

(As expected, this book does have some nasty bits, but over all is very tastefully written.)

My Squib

Although not as lyrical as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi is a very gifted writer. His book is disturbing, hopeful, and heart breaking.

He gives more of a big picture than other accounts I have read. It was eye opening. You get a much better idea about life for everyone, the confusion of languages, the bartering, etc...

He uses a disturbing amount of colons and writes in present tense erratically. But neither bothered me too much since it did have to survive translation and the present tense was powerful even when mixed with past. It was a good tool for a memoir like this.

From the Book..and more obtrusive squibbing

One interesting thing was his talk about identity. I love it when I'm reading more then one book at the same time and things start to line up. I've been going through Leithart's book on 1 & 2 Kings and he happened to be talking about identity too.

Here's part of what Levi said...

"Imagine now a man who is depraved of everyone he loves, and at the same time his house, his habits, his clothes, in short, of everything he possesses: he will be a hollow man, reduced to suffering and needs, forgetful of dignity and restraint, for he who loses all often easily loses himself. He will be a man whose life or death can be lightly decided with no sense of human affinity, in the most fortunate of cases, on the basis of a pure judgement of utility. It is in this way that one can understand the double sense of the term 'extermination camp', and it is now clear what we seek to express with the phrase: 'to lie on the bottom.'"

Here's part of what Leithart said...

"Some goods, Augustine argues, are such that they can be possessed only when they are given away; they can be possessed rightly and truly only in dispossession, only in recognizing that the self must be centered in God. The self is among these goods. First Kings 11 suggests a similar anthropology: Solomon is himself not in himself but in relation to his Lord, Yahweh, and when he departs from Yahweh he becomes a different Solomon."

So, that doesn't really give all of what Leithart was saying...I didn't think you wanted me to post the whole chapter. ;-) But I'm hoping it gives the idea.

Obviously these are extremely different situations. Levi is talking about things I can not imagine. Leithart is talking about Solomon turning away. But it seems to me that they are both talking about the root of identity. The root of usness. It seems like "finding ourselves" is such a big deal, but we look in all the wrong places and put our assurance on all the wrong things. Don't know if I make sense, but it certainly made sense in my mind. ;-)

There so much puzzling about Jewish life. I think it's an interesting study. Levi is proud of being Jewish, but I can't remember a single mention of God or faith. Near the ending of the book he does mention Providence and luck numerous times and hoping from a miracle from the Bible. But no where does he mention faith or hope.

How could you go through what he went through and come out human without Christ?

Elie Wiesel's books talk about this more. He seems to understand Jesus is the answer to suffering. He is Hope. But Wiesel stays with Judaism. His books talk about his anger at God and later reconciliation, but Primo Levi does not mention anything in Survival of Auschwitz. It's almost more disturbing.

But I am rambling.

Here is another quote...

"We lay in a world of death and phantoms. The last trace of civilization had vanished around and inside of us. The work of the bestial degradation, began by the victorious Germans, had been carried to its conclusion by Germans in defeat."

Another sobering read, but I'm glad I read this book.

Thank you for reading,
Miss Pickwickian

Forever and a Day - The Kruger Brothers

Recently my brother informed me that the Kruger Brother's have two new albums. I am so excited! The Suite is beautiful, but I have it memorized. It's time for more! Now I just need to figure out how to get my hands on them. ;-)

I was excited to actually find an official video on youtube too. This is the cover song to their newest album.

Enjoy,
Miss Pickwickian

Christ in the Storm on the Lake of Galilee - Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

Deep Comedy - Peter J. Leithart

Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, & Hope in Western Literature by Peter J. Leithart

Canon Press

This is another book I am totally unqualified to review. I'm going to try anyways because I want you to be inspired to read it. (If you haven't...I know I'm always shamefully behind.:-)

It's quite simply amazing.

We had a wonderful Sunday school class talking through David Bentley Hart's book on beauty. Deep Comedy was mentioned and I knew I wanted to read it. :-) I have an awesome mama and a brother who works at a book store, so it was diligently acquired. Thanks Mama! I know your going to like it as soon as you get done with Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl...already. ;-)

This book was both easier and harder than I anticipated.
Easier because Leithart is a gifted and hard working genius and can make the difficult clear and direct so people like me can understand.

Harder because I'm not very sharp and don't know very much about many of the people and stories he mentions.

Still, I could understand the concepts he was writing, even if I didn't always understand the people he was quoting or arguing against. I never felt completely lost, just vaguely stupid.

I loved the book. It wasn't a hard read. I read all but the last 10 pages in two sittings and I'll want to read it again.

It's direct and eye opening. It is laced with good humor (I literally LOLed in several parts). It is a book about story and about hope. By the end I was feeling disgustingly cheerful. :-) It was amazing.

Since I know I'll fail at trying to paraphrase I strongly suggest you pick the book up yourself. It's only 157 pages. Anyone can manage that.

Leithart crams a lot in. I really can't begin to summarize. He gave me a whole new dimension to understanding the way our faith in the Trinity shapes our world view. He gave me a clearer understanding of story and all that goes along with it. It was simply thrilling. :-)

I know I'm raving now, so I'm going to move on.

Here are two of my favorite quotes...

"If the Gospel is true, if new life was unleashed in the world on Easter morning, then we would expect there to be some signs that this is the case."

Unleashed. I love that. How often do we think of new life as unleashed?

"Satan digs a pit for the merry, but Satan falls into the very pit of merriment. And it tortures him forever."

And here was a quote that really got me thinking...

"Christian literature not only produces deep comedy but also, and for precisely that reason, deep tragedy. Christian tragedy can no longer mean what ancient tragedy meant. There are still sad stories, but Christians cannot believe the world is a sad story without abandoning their fundamental convictions about the triune God and the incarnation of the Son. So I should add to this book a companion book on deep tragedy."

I hope he does.

I particularly liked what he said about Christian tragedies. It seems like too much modern Christian thinking tries to ignore sad stories because it spooks them. We know that life isn't a tragedy but sometimes we can't understand why tragedies happen. We try to ignore them so we write fuzzy feel good fiction or try to shelter ourselves from reality.

He also mentions in passing that many "Christian" tragedy's are even sadder because there was an unrealized hope of redemption.

This helped me understand myself in relations to The Mayor of Casterbridge. I'm not sure where Thomas Hardy was when he wrote it. I know he was bi-polar when it came to his "faith" but I think the movie gives an interesting interpretation. It is so extremely sad because there was hope of redemption. He could have turned around.

Like Saul, which he resembles, Henchard is given a good life (numerous times) and good friends, but because of his sin and pride he will not repent and be reconciled. And it's absolutely, terribly heart rending!

The story is not meaningless. It is not a story meant to depress you. It shows the stupidness of sin. The depravity of man. But also the mercy of God. Henchard is blessed over and over again, he just never gets it.

And in the end the long-suffering daughter gets a good life with a righteous man (whatever is ultra-weird, irrational behavior towards woman comes in).

My conclusion seemed to be this-- Christian stories can be sad (even sadder then non-Christian) but they can not be ultimately depressing.

I know I'm not explaining this very well, but it helped things line up in my mind...

Okay, one last quote (sorry about the longness, but it's worth it).

"The conclusion of the matter is this: for the ancients, for the moderns, and for postmoderns, human existence is fundamentally tragic. The world is built for tragedy. As a matter of sheer observation, we all die, and this is one of the few things that can be guaranteed about life. Time marches toward death and in the end we all die. Change can perhaps be good, but change is ultimately decay, because in the end we all die. Desire is either fulfilled in the motionless statis that might as well be death, or is never fulfilled leaving us frustereated, and in the end we all die. Law gives a semblance of order to the process of decay and the forces of chaos, but law is uncertain, and in the end we all die.
With their tragic narratives of human history, Hesiod and Ovid give mythical expressions to the story of the world that ancient, modern, and postmodern all tell.

Apart from the Gospel, what other story is there?"

I consider this book invaluable to readers, writers, and Christians.

Now, if you haven't, go read it. :-)

Thanks for reading.
Miss Pickwickian

The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway

The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

Scribner Paperback Fiction

Published by Simon & Schuster

Rating: 5

Readability: 7

Impact: Hopefully I got something good out of his writing. We'll see...

Read It Again: I don't think so.

Recommend It: If you want an experience with Hemingway, maybe...

What to Expect

A highly acclaimed book by Hemingway with all the characteristics of such.

My Squib

I didn't know anything about this novel. I wanted to taste Hemingway and this book was the only used one on the shelf. I liked the title too. I love Ecclesiastes. I thought it was high time I knew what all this Hemingway stuff was about and the price was right, so I brought it home.

I later learned that The Sun Also Rises is one of his highest acclaimed novels next to For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms. So I think I got a pretty good sample of Hemingway.

I did enjoy the style. I realize that Hemingway revolutionized a majority of English prose, and it's easy to see the influence.

His writing is certainly unique. You would learn in direct detail about things like the roads, the scenery, how many times someone went swimming on vacation, and the crowds that lined streets. But you were left confused and guessing to what anybody was thinking. It had the feeling of a journal. Like the writer assumes you already know what's going on, or he just doesn't know himself. Many sections were very similar to a travel log.

I thought it was very interesting. It didn't get the book less emotion, but more.

The way he strings sentences together kept me going.

He has a lot of dialogue and sometimes it's disorienting, but it helps things feel real. The characters spoke too much the same to keep strait and the tags were used so sparingly I was a little cunfuseld. Someone is always "feeling like hell" or "all right" and "nice" is so smeared across dialogue and narration that it would send Mr. Tilney to the hospital in a seizure.

So, on the whole, I did like his style.

As far as the story...It was so not my favorite.

Basically every man in the novel is in love with Lady Brett Ashley who is an unfeminine, unabashed hooker. She's already married as well as being engaged. Not sure how that works. By the end she runs off with a totally new guy who, at nineteen, is fifteen years her junior. Icky... She ends up leaving him because she doesn't want to ruin his career as a bullfighter. A little late and a little lame.

The main character (it is written in first person) is in love with Brett, but seems in other ways to be an upstanding dude. Unfortunately by the end he is helping her run off with the bullfighter and trying to get drunk. He is Brett's standby. She knows he will always help her into a jam or pull her out of one. He drives her home at the end and they lament how it would never work out for them to be together.

There's of course more to the story (mostly a great quantity of alcohol), but if your really all that interested, it's a cheap paperback.

I'm not sure what Hemingway meant with this novel.

He seems to have got the message of Ecclesiastes that life is a vapor, but not the purpose and hope of the book. The characters indulge in complete laziness, a lot of wine and self-pity, but no labor and true rejoicing...and absolutely no hope. I hope he wrote this book as an illustration of our stupidity away from Christ, not a representation of how he saw the world. That would be truly tragic.

From the Book

You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get you money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had.

Perhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.

This book certainly gave me some food for thought. I'm glad I read it. I'm not going to read it again.

Thanks for reading. I hope the review (of sorts) made sense.

Miss Pickwickian

A Selection from Photo Shoot

So...

Suzy took some awesome photos. Here is just a few she was obliging enough to send me. Thanks Suzy! (You can see more of her photography at her blog, Life's too Short Not to Wear Red Shoes.)

If you missed it (I know it was so terribly exciting) you can read about this particular Bible in My Week in Pennsylvania.

Here is the inscription at the front.

This is a cross that my Mama passed on to me that belonged to my Great Grandmother.

"Now faith is the substance of tings hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

Suzy having fun. Where'd the Bible go? :-)
I picked this cross out in Mexico with Grandy less then two months before she graduated to Heaven. God was so gracious to let us have that time with her.

Another...

Bible, cross, and scarves.

1 Corinthians.

So, yes. I like my Bible. And Suzy is a good photographer in training, don't you think?

Thanks for looking,

Miss Pickwickian