Violet Crown
-
Posts
5,471 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blogs
Classifieds
Store
Posts posted by Violet Crown
-
-
I started it as a read-aloud once and discovered it was shockingly anti-Catholic, even by the standards of the time. The Roman Papists are the enemies of free thought and liberty, etc. That didn't work for our family.
-
1
-
-
Hello friends!
This week I obligingly read one of dh's favorite books, Francis Beaumont's satirical play The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607). If the title makes you snicker, it was supposed to. Jacobean drama always reminds me how people tend to think that the arc of history is especially easy to read backwards: today we're frank about sex and violence, whereas the Victorians were prudish, and the Puritans more prudish still, and so we can just keep extrapolating backwards culturally with our three data points. But in fact the English Civil Wars and the Puritan Interregnum had a pronounced effect on English culture. There was a reason the Puritans of the 17th century promptly banned the theater, and the sex and violence of Beaumont's time never really came back.
Currently reading William Langland's great satirical allegory Piers Plowman. I've read it before in Middle English; this time I'm going through it quickly in a modernized version for Middle Girl's English course. I was going to quote a bit but MG is off somewhere with it.
-
7
-
-
I have not finished anything. It hasn't been a week for reading, as a previously difficult situation has gotten significantly more difficult. I may need to take a break from the boards for a while.
ETA: @aggieamy, I'm glad John got to have a normal trick-or-treat. Middle Girl and one of her friends put a card table on our porch, taped one of those social-distance-stand-here floor stickers to the walkway at a 6-foot distance, and used a pair of replica trebuchets to launch candy into small children's buckets (or heads). A good time was had by all. I sat inside with MG's friend's mom, a/k/a my friend, and talked to her about everything and drank the wine she thoughtfully brought. So that was all good.
-
1
-
7
-
-
-
Order placed! Would it be too much to inquire what people ordered from BWB?
-
2 hours ago, aggieamy said:
What an interesting eclectic list! You seem to be doing really well with your 10x10's this year.
This is so funny and reminds me of a conversation Sophia and I had today. She fainted during Mass at school today (don't worry ... it's just one of those things that happens at Catholic school ... there seem to always be a kid that passes out from not eating breakfast or something ... today it was my kid but she's fine). I had to go pick her up at school because she was too shaky to drive home. The nurse, a secretary, and a teacher we passed as I was helping Sophia out of the school all commented on how extremely pale Sophia looked and how they hoped she got feeling better. As soon as we get in the car Sophia turns to me and says, "Don't these people realize this is my natural color!" And she's right. She's got dark hair and hazel eyes but is very pale.
Poor Sophia! On the other hand, I was always able to be excused to go home by saying I felt weak and dizzy - "Oh dear you're so pale I can see you're really ill!"
I'd be doing great with my 10x10's this year if they were from this year, but they're from 2019.
-
4
-
-
Wait, I buy books frequently from Better World, usually at <$1 plus shipping. I didn't see any minimum book price. Can this be true? There's an asterisk by "free shipping" but I can't find what it is asterisking.
-
19 hours ago, negin said:
Hunter-gatherer tribes, such as the Gabra in northern Kenya or the San people in the Kalahari Desert, whose way of life has changed little over the past thousands of years, sleep in a biphasic pattern.
Medieval writings from Italy to England refer to "first sleep" and "second sleep." It was taken for granted that sleep was biphasic, and the awake time between "sleeps" was, at least in England, thought of as a time for conversation and reflection (and of course propitious for conception), as one was rested from the labors of the day but the new day's work couldn't be started. I've run into the modern notion that one of the ascetic rigors of medieval religious life was sleep deprivation from rising in the middle of the night to pray (Nocturns/Matins); but this was simply a natural waking time and so marked by prayer before returning for second sleep.
When I had my first baby, I was struck by the emphasis in "mommy" books and discussion on the difficulties of teaching the baby to sleep through the night, and thought how strange that would have seemed to the medievals. I wonder if this is our last vestige of cultural awareness of biphasic sleep.
-
7
-
-
It needs "England calls Ireland to come help. Ireland walks up behind England and punches it in the kidney."
-
@Little Green Leaves Catherine of Siena sounds fascinating. Still looking for an affordable copy.
What I did find a copy of was a lovely little 1908 edition of Yonge's The Daisy Chain, thanks to being its sole bidder on Ebay. So that's on the stack.
-
6
-
-
23 hours ago, Spudater said:
How are you liking Iota Unum? I was wondering how it would compare to Sire's Phoenix from the Ashes.
After this week I'm thinking of ordering Fr. Ripperger's books on magisterial authority.
I haven't read Sire, nor Ripperger. I read earlier this year the recently deceased Fr. Cekada's book on the New Rite, which touched on some Vatican 2 issues but didn't have much new to say there. I'd gotten tired of reading critiques of the New Rite that used Fr. Cekada's original research without crediting him, presumably out of concern for guilt by association, and wanted to see for myself what he had to say. His research is well-documented and his conclusions from it are convincing, except for his key conclusion of invalidity, which relies on a singularly unconvincing (to me) line of argument. Of course as a sedevacantist, Fr. Cekada cuts the Gordian knot of magisterial authority, though not in a way I can agree with.
Iota Unum is a very different book. Amerio was an academic, and writes like it; some sections are eye-glazing. But he is devastatingly thorough, and had available to him a wealth of untranslated primary sources in Italian, French, and German. It may take me a while to get through it.
I've taken a brief break from everything to join in Robin's challenge for this week
On 10/25/2020 at 1:37 PM, Robin M said:Read a book with ghost in the title or picture on the cover.
and am reading this evening Plautus' comedy The Ghost. Said ghost is of course not an actual ghost, but a ploy by a clever house-slave to protect his dissipated young master (and himself) from the wrath of young master's father, a rich merchant just returned from years abroad, who will learn how his son and slave have been wasting the merchant's fortune on wine, women, and feasting. In other words, a variation on essentially the same plot as every other Roman comedy.
-
6
-
-
I found this to be helpful in keeping the countries straight. No, seriously.
-
4
-
9
-
-
Of course people can be overwhelmed, and express it in what seem to be minor complaints. That's exactly why I would find a "21 Days of Judging Others' Complaining" challenge to be inappropriate.
My own complaining, though, is usually of the "That reminds me of this sub-optimal thing someone did a few years ago, did I ever tell you that story?" type. I'm happy to take up the challenge of thinking before I babble for a few weeks.
ETA: I started exactly one of those complaints yesterday evening (a few hours after signing on to the challenge), and Middle Girl interrupted with "Oh Mom's gotten started on that one again." 😬 Teenagers are like consciences with extra snark.
-
5
-
-
double post.
-
1
-
-
Last week I finished my October read, Richard Marsh's The Beetle. It was published the same year as Dracula, and is actually fairly similar. The ancient, insinuating foreigner who is actually a monster; the hapless Englishman abroad who encounters it and, returning to England, inadvertently causes it to follow him, where his pure English beloved falls prey to its exotic (and frankly sexual) ravishings; the assembled group of sturdy Englishmen who chase the monster down as it attempts to flee back to its own land; the ultimate showdown, ambiguous rescue, and equally ambiguous demise, or not, of the foreign demon. I'm just going to let everyone draw her own conclusions about what this tells us of the Victorian English and their anxieties about the Empire.
Still working on Iota Unum, but also some lighter reads as I have to read so much non-fiction for Middle Girl's courses.
Not that that's a complaint.
-
7
-
-
2 hours ago, MercyA said:
Yes, I'll join in, Pen. A worthy goal and very much in line with Philippians 2:14.
Not to mention Matthew 12:6. I'm in.
Please don't anybody start any challenges tackling any more of my vices.
-
3
-
6
-
-
The Junior Great Books series. Modern editions are quite diverse and easy to find used to save a few $ (though they're reasonably priced new).
-
1
-
-
Just now, Slache said:
This isn't starting until November 1st. I need you to chill.
😥 Fine...
-
2
-
2
-
-
1 minute ago, Pam in CT said:
Nonetheless you may not count either miles, or kilometers, logged in before November 1. I don't make the rules.
Dang.
It's nice to get some appreciation though. Dh is a distance trail runner and is not very convincing in his admiration of my incremental plodding.
-
1
-
6
-
-
Can I join in? Can I count the 5 km I ran this morning? Can I seize this opportunity to show off that I just finished running Hadrian's Wall and got a nifty medal in the mail?
5 hours ago, Pam in CT said:Sure! It'll hopefully give me a boost to do it OUTSIDE. When the days get dark my exercise motivation ebbs.
Dark is the best time to exercise. Nobody can see you.
-
6
-
2
-
-
Thanks for the thread bump, @Matryoshka! I have made peace with the Subjunctive. So Middle Girl decided to rattle me with the Supine. She said her professor was very excited this week to encounter the supine "in the wild." Mirabile dictu!
-
2
-
-
On 10/21/2020 at 1:31 PM, Dreamergal said:
@Violet Crown So lovely that attendance in your congregation has nearly doubled. We too are church prodigals hoping to find a home and this pandemic has broadened our church "visits". Praying we find our church home too.
May you find fertile soil for flourishing! I do think the closures will prove to have accelerated the movement of people from, to, and within religious traditions.
On 10/20/2020 at 9:25 PM, Kareni said:That's a significant jump in attendance, Violet Crown! I can well imagine that people are hungry for fellowship.
I agree. Our pastor's first response was to add a second service time -- a development we'd been requesting and praying for before Corona! -- because the bishop required churches to limit congregants to every other pew in order to socially distance. But soon both services were overflowing, and people who came late had to be turned away. Services in our Rite were begun in a town to the south, and recently in another town to the north, in an attempt to absorb the numbers. And this is with some of our regulars (especially the elderly) not yet attending.
-
5
-
-
31 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:
I started reading Catherine of Siena, a biography of Saint Catherine by Sigrid Undset. I bought this book by mistake. I'd meant to order Kristin Lavransdatter, by the same author, after @Penguinhad recommended it on a different thread. But here I am with Catherine.
This book appeals to me enormously but also leaves me feeling like I'm on strange territory. I am not religious and in fact I was raised by pretty committed atheists. I am not an atheist at all, but a book like this one still makes me feel how much of the world I dont know about. It's hard to explain! I'll read more 🙂
Well now I'm going to have to get a copy of it.
-
5
-
-
Thank-you card, definitely. Baked goods seems like a good idea. I had first thought flowers, but friend is male and I can't think of a manly flower.
Book a Week 2020 - BW45: Ladies of Fiction bookology - Jayne Ann Krentz and Cherie Priest
in The Chat Board
Posted
Book Friends,
After many years of posting at TWTM, I think it's time to be done. I didn't just want to disappear from Book a Week, though. Robin, thank you for your years of keeping this thread going.