|
Ebenezer
Mar. 8, 2007
Re-reading Childhood Favorites
I recently re-read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Konigsburg, for old times' sake and because Comet was reading it. It was better than I remember it, probably having read it too soon as a child to appreciate the themes, and I might even now say in retrospect that it's better than my all-time favorite book as a kid, The Westing Game.
You know, I think I read a lot of books too soon because I was an early reader and my mom gave me books of the upper-elementary and middle-school level in kindergarten and first, and I think as a result I missed out on a lot of emotional formation through books. I did read Trixie Belden books voraciously, eschewing Nancy Drew (not a lot of profundity either way), but Beverly Cleary offered slightly more challenging fare with Ramona being a character I could relate to at the time I was reading about her. I don't think my mother realized -- or maybe the selection was not so great at the time -- that many picture books are quite sophisticated, both in terms of theme and reading level, but more appropriate for younger readers. I'm not saying that the books I read had anything objectionable in them; it's just that Harriet the Spy, The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time and others would have been more meaningful to me even a few years later. I feel like I missed out on the power of the books, the identification with them, if not the enjoyment.
In fact, another book I read this quarter -- not so much read as used as a resource -- is Some of My Best Friends Are Books, which offers reading lists for gifted readers and thinkers. But it is careful to categorize fiction according to how relatable it is to a particular age group, gifted or not. I found myself remembering some of the listed titles but not remembering at all the themes as the book describes them. I remember the story, lowercase, but not the story. I'm glad for a second chance to read them. Unfortunately, my son blazes through books faster than I can, so I need to learn to read books before letting him even see they're in the house so I can discuss things with him.
The books I listed above are ones I have re-read in the last year or so. I expect I'll do a lot more, especially with the recommendations from SOMBFAB and by going through Sonlight catalogs, but I wonder if any of you have suggestions for juvenile literature that read better knowing what you do now? I'm thinking Cynthia Voigt and Lois Lowry would be good re-reads.
Here's what else I've been reading in the last few months:
Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller. Some have called this book overly simplistic, but that's actually the beauty of it, I think. It strips away all the baggage we religious types carry and confronts us with the reality of being a follower of Christ -- or really, how to relate as Jesus did to people put off by all the church stuff. It's funny, too. I especially was struck by his description of an economy of grace and love that some of us (gesturing wildly at myself here) have that blocks us from true relationship with Christ. To wit: "(A friend) was too proud to recieve free grace from God. He didn't know how to live within a system where nobody owes anybody else anything. And the harder it was for him to pay God back, the more he wanted to hide. God was his loan shark, so to speak. Though he understood that God wanted nothing in return, his mind could not communicate this fact to his heart, so his life was something like torture." I also loved the 'confession booth' during a secular college's drunken revelry: read it, it's not what you might think.
The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield. This book has been blogged to death. In short, I liked it, but it was disturbing. Redemptive story arc appreciated.
The Book of Names, Jill Gregory and Karen Tintori. Essentially, the Jewish (more precisely, Kabbalistic) DaVinci Code. Though DaVinci was not high literature, I found it to be a page-turner. This book was not that way for me, perhaps because I'm less familiar with the ins and outs of Jewish mysticism. And there weren't the anagrams or other puzzles that involved readers in Brown's plot.
Year of Wonders, Brooks. Nothing profound, but an excellent, vivid story about grace in a small English village during the plague.
Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor. She gets a little too Unitarian for me, but as with Miller's book, I felt as if she, too, is hoping for people to stop being just "church people" and start being Jesus people. Neither Miller nor Taylor is ready to scrap theology altogether, but I think Taylor, a former Episcopal rector, is more inclined to do that.
Parenting with Love and Logic, Jim Fay. My all-time favorite parenting resource. The principles are not original to the authors, but the scripts for a parental response to every possible situation your children can dream up work like magic. And it's funny. And Christian, but not in the spare-the-rod sense.
For the Great Books Reading Partnership, I've read Gilgamesh, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Next up: Histories by Herodotus.
For the book club I'm in, I've read:
Everyman, Philip Roth. Depressing, but it led to a great, honest, personal conversation with an older man in our club about faith and what's valuable in life. I think he's seeking something more.
Digging to America, Anne Tyler. As is typical of Tyler, the character development is precise and detailed, and the ending doesn't tie up all the loose ends, just like real life.
Freakonomics, Levitt. This was fun to read, but I don't think all of his conclusions can be drawn from the evidence he presents, particularly in the chapter where he explains the drop in crime rates in the 1990s as a result of abortion being legalized two decades earlier. I'm not saying that's not a factor; I'm just saying that, based on what he presents, I don't think it's the ONLY reason. I don't think he picked apart the demographics of women getting abortions in the 1970s enough to tie it to possible future perpetrators.
I've also read the Sonlight 3 read-alouds, The Hobbit as a family read-aloud, and now half of The Fellowship of the Ring as a read-aloud. |
| • Post A Comment! • Send to a Friend!
|
Comments
|
