6 Months of Books

It's been a while since I have done a post telling you what I am reading, so I thought I'd pull out my trusty book journal and get to it.

First, a few fun stats. So far this year, I have read 44 books. 16 of them have been rereads, which is actually kind of low for me. I guess I have been on a new book streak. 8 of them were non-fiction.

Since I know everyone is dying to know exactly what I read, I think I am going to list all those 44 books and intersperse comments.

January

• The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
• Rhetorica Ad Herennium (in translation) by an unknown author -- (If you are interested in the techniques of persuasive writing, this is a fabulous text. Very old, but very relevant.)
• Greek Declamation by DA Russell
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

February

• De Oratore by Cicero (in translation)
• "A Rhetorician's Vade Mecum" by Lucian (in translation) - not book length
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• In the Arms of Mr. Darcy by Sharon Lathan (Mostly trash, but I just love Mr. Darcy.)

March

• Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Emma by Jane Austen (This time, I think Mansfield Park was my favorite. Oh, Jane Austen, how do always change so, though you've been dead for hundreds of years?)
• Captain Wentworth's Diary by Amanda Grange (Absolute trash, but I just love Captain Wentworth.)

April

• North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (Elizabeth Gaskell is the clear highlight of all the new books I read this year so far. Diana Hsieh recommended her, and I was not disappointed. I liked Wives and Daughters best, but North and South was also delightful. Where else can you find a good man who is also an industrialist in good literature? I didn't like Mary Barton so much as these two. It was too focused on the poor in a dingy town from me to love it. I missed my country characters that you get in North and South and in Wives and Daughters. Fans of Jane Austen should definitely try Elizabeth Gaskell.)
• The Millionaire's Dinner Party: Adapted from the Satyricon by Petronius (in Latin) (Freaking hilarious. Will Ferrell and Adam Sandler have nothing on the Romans.)
• Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, and Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris
• Lanterns on the Levee by William Alexander Percy (This book is the most poetic prose I have ever read. The feelings its author has about the South, about Sewanee, about cemeteries are almost exactly like mine. However, beware the racism. It was written long ago.
• Lives of the Sophists by Philostratus (in translation)
• Institutes of Oratory by Quintilian (in translation)
• On Christian Doctrine by Augustine (in translation)

May

• Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead Reckoning, and Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris
• D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling (What can I even say about this? If you haven't read Harry Potter by now, there is clearly something wrong with you that may be incurable.)
• Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

June

• The Darcy's and the Bingleys by Marsha Altman (Mr. Darcy buys a copy of the Kama Sutra for Bingley on his marriage. Total trash. But have I mentioned how I love Mr. Darcy?)
• Ender's Game, Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, Shadow Puppets, Shadow of the Giant, Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow get the number two spot after Elizabeth Gaskell for how much I adore them and where have they been all my life. I've never read sci-fi like this before. Go read it, even if you don't read science fiction. They are acutally well-written.)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by JK Rowling

July, so far

• Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Bangladesh by Tamara B Orr (I don't really recommend this book or this country.)
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Currently Reading

• Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade (Love this book so far. Lots of newer genetic information confirming or calling into question older theories based on the fossil record and archaeological findings. Very readable.)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
• The Romantic Manifesto and The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand
• Values of Harry Potter by Ari Armstrong (will be reviewing this before too long)
• How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One by Stanley Fish (The exciting and fun alternative to Strunk and White. Stanley Fish is a wonderful writer, and I like his rhetorical way of approaching writing.
• Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (reading it again in research mode)
• selections from Livy's Legends of Early Rome (in Latin)

So, what are you reading?

First Day of School, Yippee!!

After a month long break and a week of snow days that started on the day I expected classes to start, I was REALLY ready to get back to school. I am a huge nerd who loves school anyway, but when I got all my anticipation built up and then was disappointed, it was a hard blow. Thank goodness, I am finally back. Today was my first day of school for this semester.

I had to get up at 5:30 am, a time I have seen in my life about 4 times, and even worse, last night was the rockin' good, but very late, Cake concert. So, at 7 am, I was at the bus stop with my cooler packed with Whole30ish food and a backpack full of crisp new notebooks and exciting textbooks full of magic knowledge.

My new bus ride is amazing. It's a commuter bus, so it's clean and filled with the sort of folks who live in Marietta and go to work downtown wearing heels and wool dress coats. There was a little less local color to be found on this bus, but much more comfort, leg room, and pleasant smells. I will have a fine time reading during the ride to and from school; most days I try to reserve that time for pleasure reading.

My 8 o'clock class was great, but I never had any doubts about it. The professor is the male, very knowledgable version of me: really laid back, dressed slightly slovenly, and very excited about the history of rhetoric. The class is very small, only 7 people, and it's almost all discussion and what the prof calls "thinking through writing."

My 11 o'clock was also good. The professor was suspicious of me at first; he hasn't taught me Latin (and this is an upper level class), and I came unprepared. Turns out I should check my email during snow days and do the first assignment before class. Woops. By the end, though, he was begging me to audit his Greek class. No one on earth is as desperate as a classics professor; their programs are always on the verge of being cancelled, and any interested person will be hunted down and chained to a chair. I wish I could do the Greek class, but it doesn't fit into my schedule. I think now that he knows I am competent and well educated in classics, he and I will get along fine and dance our way through some hilarious Petronius excerpts.

My 2:30 was wonderful, too. Are you tired of hearing that? Too bad. This professor is possibly my favorite ever. She is the sweetest, kindest little old Southern lady, and she is the smartest, most knowledgable scholar I know. She loves eighteenth century literature, Sacred Harp singing, gardening, and old books. She has a refreshingly positive outlook, both on her students and on the beautiful world we live in. She's teaching me Practical Grammar this semester, and I know it will be fun. It's like Sudoku for English nerds.

So, I have been translating my Latin homework (and it's going well, so thank you, Sex Vultures), reading Rhetorica ad Herennium (a Roman rhetoric textbook from the first century B.C.), and contemplating how wonderful my life is.

Why Reading Medieval Latin Is Central to the Purpose of the Atlanta Objectivist Society

Every Saturday morning, 4 or 5 of us meet at a bookstore. We drink coffee and read passages from the Vulgate Bible. We've read the Prodigal Son, some Ecclesiastes, and the Ten Commandments. We also argue over deponent verbs forms and whether to translate "legis" as a genitive noun or as a second person singular verb. We aren't a Bible study group. We are the Latin Club of the Atlanta Objectivist Society.

Why do we read the Bible? Because we are all pretty much fascinated by Medieval Latin. But don't worry; we are going to read other things too. Next in line are The Legends of Early Rome by the Roman historian Livy. (No, I did not name my child after him.)

This blog post is about the importance of groups like ours for a community Objectivist club.

The Latin club began with one of my periodic language acquistion whims. I'd been wanting to refresh my Latin and so had a friend from our club. I talked it over with him, and we thought, "Why not open it up to our members? Probably noone else will want to do it, but we might as well ask." As it turns out, there are way more nerds in the AOS than we imagined.

A lot of times, the focus of an Objectivist club ends up on philosophy. Lectures, book discussion groups, and political arguments are par for the course. And there is nothing wrong with those things, of course. But if these clubs are going to be a real social network for the members (kinda like the social network of a church is my goal), there must be room for people to do optional values together. Our Latin group has almost nothing to do with Objectivism, but it provides the members a way to pursue an unrelated passion with people who share their values. AOS has several other groups that meet that same optional value need: Oist Playgroup (for parents and kids to get together every other week and socialize), Econ club (for nerds of another stripe to talk over inflation, investing, and the Fed), and a monthly movie night (with social time before and after the movie). Basically, our idea is that if you are gonna watch movies or conjugate verbs, why not do them with like-minded people?

These optional value groups create ties beyond "Hey, we share a philosophy." Because they are smaller groups, more introverted members of AOS get to live in their comfort zone sometimes (not just mine, which is the huge monthly social!). They give people a chance to get to know each other while pursuing values, very specific, shared values, and as we all know, once you have read the Bible together and cracked jokes about Tolkein and South Park based on Latin, you have really forged a bond.

There are several members of the Latin group that I don't see at other functions very often, and that tells me that they do want to be a part of our community, just not in the more traditional activivites. We have several members who aren't Objectivists, but just folks who are interested in Ayn Rand's ideas (the pre-req for AOS). I like that the Latin club shows them that we are not Randroids, that we have favorite books outside Atlas Shrugged, and that we have values that aren't Objectivism. It's a kind of outreach to provide a setting for interested people to see us as normal, as regular people who do regular things. If translating Latin can be called normal and regular. :)

Here at AOS, we love the Mini-Con, the lectures, the study groups, and the large socials, but I think what will make our organization into a great social network are the optional value groups popping up. I would encourage other clubs to start as many of these as possible; I know that some already have hiking groups and probably others. Our policy is that if you want to get together for anything (no matter how obscure, as the Latin club illustrates), all you have to do is organize it. We will promote the group for you, through email and the website. We think that this grassroots kind of organizing benefits our club by getting members more directly involved with running it and by guaranteeing that we will have more groups than Jenn and I could have thought of on our own.

I'll end with this Latin biblical quote, which is the motto of my alma mater and the atmosphere I think optional value groups create in the AOS:

Ecce quam bonum et quam iucundum habitare fratres in unum. (Psalm 133)

"Look how good and how joyful it is for brothers to live in unity."

The Cicada and the Ant

I just translated my first French poem, "La cigale et la fourmi" by Fontaine. It was his version of the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. What fun! It has been many years since I have been pouring over a text with a dictionary in hand, struggling through a foreign language. And French is totally new to me today. Tres cool.

You can hear a reading of the poem here.