After no internet access for a week, you'd think I would have gotten more read, but no. I did read Alphonse Daudet's Letters From My Windmill on outbound travels, but almost no reading during the extended-family fun in the frozen north. I'd brought my nifty Oxford edition of War and Peace (Maude translation, super-compact, with teeny onionskin fold-out maps showing the various campaigns!) but am only 200 pages in and now wondering if I'm going to finish. I'm not counting it as a re-read because different translation, right? But now there are so many other books waiting for me. And someone is apparently expecting a cake tomorrow with an enormous number of candles on it. And snow clothes to unpack and clean and put away. Snow! Bison! Skiing! Who had time for books? The Daudet was to be recommended, by the way. Little vignettes of Provence. Very pleasing. (Edited on sudden realization that, while Provençal has a cedilla, Provence doesn't.)

Having an anxious young child with a slew of intense phobias that significantly impact her little life has made book choices interesting. On the one hand, we've had to cull all picture books with death imagery: skeletons, skulls (including pirate flags), or tombstones. Halloween doesn't get much literary attention around here. On the other hand, she really, really loves books with children in terrifyingly awful situations. She says quite openly that she knows that in a book they'll always be happy in the end, and she can flip to the back anytime she wants to see that everything ends fine. I've watched her flip back and forth between Awful Peril and Happy Ending many times, and it's hard not to conclude that she's working out some anxieties that way. Incidentally she can't tolerate movies with child-in-peril, I assume because she doesn't have control over the video pacing. I wonder if some books like Are You My Mother, or even Ping, are appealing because of a childhood need for catharsis? Yes, the worst could happen--mother could disappear, you could be in danger of being eaten and end up with a spanking--but you see it's all right in the end. And the format of books gives the child control, including the option to omit or repeat parts.

I remember Texas in the 1970s, and this was a city with a liberal reputation even then; but I learned the "n-word" and epithets like "wetback" from adults around me early on, and the police forces of Texas towns and cities were notoriously hard on minorities. Today, we have a hispanic Chief of Police, and Houston has a black Chief of Police (and an openly lesbian mayor!); racial tensions with the police in both cities have eased dramatically. My children have never heard the n-word in their lives; I haven't heard it used in many years. I just can't bring myself to believe that Texas is worse for its black or hispanic population than it was when I was a child.

It starts with reading books on Kindles, and before you know it you're downloading filth like Jane Austen from the Intertubes.

In North and Central Texas, precisely because of the soil conditions, many homes are on pier and beam foundations, which don't need to be watered.

I tried. It turns out I'm allergic to electronic books.

Here in Central Texas you dig a bit down and you hit the limestone. I "garden" buy getting plants labeled "hardy drought-resistant native," mulching like crazy, and trying not to mind as they shrivel at the first full-bore imposition of water restrictions. I would recommend a book on xeriscaping.

Another Don Camillo book: Don Camillo Takes the Devil by the Tail. And more Newman essays to atone for the fluff. ;) Now I need to find a lightweight (literally) but sufficiently lengthy book for this week, when I'll be traveling without much margin for extra weight. Newman is too bulky. Looking around....

Very well said.

A one year old! An extra one? Fostering? Well anyway that would indeed cut down on reading time. I'm envious that you have a parish library. What a civilized thing. We have a little gift store.... Just now reading Sermon 5, "Self-Denial the Test of Religious Earnestness." While stuffing myself with leftover King's Cake. On a Friday.

The Nerdy Joke Thread: http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/520378-tell-your-nerdy-jokes-here/?hl=%2Bjokes Sorry about the last few days. :(

Jane, my eye was caught by the title of one of Hoagland's poems in your link. Barton Springs! Brrrrrr. The poem reminded me of a friend I had, Sr. Mary William, now retired to her motherhouse in St. Louis, who swam every day she could in Barton Springs into her eighties. A real polar bear.

Using "the Modern [x]" in a title or subtitle around the turn of the nineteenth century usually meant a (negative) contrast with, rather than a parallel to, the original. "Modern Marriage," "the Modern Woman," "the Modern Quintillian Brothers," "the Modern Janus," "the Modern Oedipus," whatever, you know going in that "modern" isn't meant as a compliment. A reader in shelley's time would have taken the subtitle as something like "not at all like the noble Prometheus."

Finished my second book for 2016! This is a cracking pace, for me; but then the first was started in the old year, and the second was very light reading: Don Camillo's Dilemma. Dh checked out several of Guareschi's books from Big State U.'s library for me, so I have some easy reading for a while. However it's time for Hamlet, again, as it's time to teach it to the next child. And then, thanks to ... Jane? Someone else? I don't remember who first brought it up--I've pulled out my dusty 1721-page Parochial and Plain Sermons of (Bl.) John Henry Newman, which is quoted from in Brave New World, though somehow I didn't notice when I read that book myself. Jane's yeomanlike reading of Jacobus de Voragine's Legenda Aurea straight through has convinced me to copy her feat and go straight through P&P. We'll see how long I last. Despite the admittedly dull implications of the title, these sermons--written while an Anglican, and better thought of almost as essays--contain some of Newman's finest thought. Bluegoat, I dangle a challenge here....

Twelfthnight party on the Fifth, with cake and hidden silver coin (okay, dime) and crowns. Mass next day, blessing of chalk, and chalking of new year over house door. Happy + 2 + 0 + C + M + B + 1 + 6 + !

The discussion of the Childhood of Young Americans series is making me feel guilty about where I get my books. (1) My city has multiple Half Price stores, and I live minutes from the main one. It's huge and stocked with everything under the sun. Just the clearance section has hundreds and hundreds of books, and always a few I'm interested in. (2) Even closer is the also well-stocked library discard store, where every children's book is fifty cents and other books are one or two dollars. All donations, as well as books the library doesn't want anymore, go there. (3) Dh has infinite-checkout privileges at one of the country's largest university libraries. On the rare occasion that a book I especially want isn't there, he's gotten it through university intralibrary loan. (4) I regularly get to browse at COAS bookstore in Las Cruces, and the secondhand bookshops in Edinburgh, for those UK-only books. Besides having far too many books, as a result the girls have a shelf full of the CoYA series: both the old orange cloth-covered ones and the newer blue softcovers. I especially like the one on LBJ. And Mad Anthony Wayne.

Thanks! Looks intriguing.

The Diary I just read is abridged. I don't have it in me to slog through all the volumes. While it's full of fascinating and engaging narrative, Pepys didn't write it for publication, and so there's a lot of very abridgeable content also. (The editor btw is the poet Richard Le Gallienne, best known in this house as the father of actress Eva Le Gallienne, who wrote Flossie and Bossie, the best children's book ever.) ETA: I read Journal of the Plague Year last year, and it would be a great companion book for Diary as Pepys lived in London during the Plague and ensuing Great Fire, and writes about them.

More from Pepys and his book habits: he buys a copy of Samuel Butler's Hudibras, decides it's not so good after all, and gives it away. Everyone raves about it and insists it's cutting and hilarious, so he goes and buys another copy-- to give it a second chance. This sounds as familiar as his continual failed resolution to get his TBR pile ("press") under control.

A bit from Samuel Pepys' Diary, where he makes a New Year's resolution to cut down on his book buying: ------------ January 10th. Thence to my new bookseller's, Martin's. The truth is, I have bought a great many books lately to a great value; but I think to buy no more till Christmas next, and those that I have will so fill my two presses that I must be forced to give away some to make room for them, it being my design to have no more at any time for my proper library than to fill them. January 18th. At the office all the morning busy sitting. At noon home to dinner, where Betty Turner dined with us, and after dinner carried my wife, her and Deb. to the 'Change, where they bought some things, while I bought "The Mayden Queene," a play newly printed, which I like at the King's house so well, of Mr. Dryden's, which he himself, in his preface, seems to brag of, and indeed is a good play. February 8th. Away to the Strand, to my bookseller’s, and there staid an hour, and bought the idle, rogueish book, “L’escholle des filles;†which I have bought in plain binding, avoiding the buying of it better bound, because I resolve, as soon as I have read it, to burn it, that it may not stand in the list of books, nor among them, to disgrace them if it should be found. February 9th. Up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office doing business, and also reading a little of “L’escholle des filles,†which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world. ---------- Pepys frequently resolves to drink less, to not buy so many books, to not go so often to the theater, and to stop womanizing; and promptly and completely fails in his resolutions. A very human diary.

Aaaaaa I'm still two or three pages behind on the previous book thread! Post now, VC, go back and read when The Holidays are over. Currently reading Samuel Pepys' Diary, which is wonderful stuff. All three of my girls and dh have already finished books in the New Year. (Middle Girl picked up and read through in one day a book I had in my purse that I was just going to get to. It's almost like one of us is very very busy and others have time weighing heavy on their hands.

Reading statistics! Nationality English 17 American 14 Texan 6 Scottish 5 Italian 5 French 4 Russian 2 Roman 2 Australian, Spanish, Czech, Danish, Greek @ 1 Chronological range Euripides, Alcestis - 438 BC Paul Veyne, A History of Private Life: Vol. 1 - 1992 AD Genre Novels 28 Other non-fiction 8 Drama/libretti 7 Short stories 5 Poetry/epics 5 Autobiography/memoirs 4 Biography 2 Borges 1 Chunksters 8

I read 60 this year, same as last year and about what I expected. Didn't read some things I meant to read; did read some I didn't (... Jane ...). Six by women, which isn't as good as last year as I recall, but better than my first year when I read zero. My reading patterns are horribly sexist and Anglo-centric. Things I learned this year: I thought I didn't like Walt Whitman, and I was right. Libretti are an easy way to boost your book count; and then you don't need to read the supertitles during the opera. Henry James is still the Best Novelist Ever. Jane has reliably good taste in literature. There's a reason everyone likes Christina Rossetti's poems better than her brother's. I've reached the age where I can be halfway through a book before realizing I've read it before. I blame children. Scotland produces better literature than the U.S. Tragedy ages well; comedy doesn't. 1. Darwin, The Origin of Species 2. Doyle, The Adventures of Gerard 3. Maugham, Of Human Bondage 4. Andrey Platonov, The Foundation Pit 5. Charles Siringo, A Texas Cowboy 6. Graham Greene, The Quiet American 7. Henry James, The Princess Casamassima 8. Marlowe, Doctor Faustus 9. The Stories of J. F. Powers 10. Don Giovanni [libretto] 11. Whitman, Leaves of Grass 12. J. Frank Dobie, Coronado's Children 13. Henry James, The Golden Bowl 14. Krzhizhanovsky, The Letter Killers Club 15. Poems of Dante Gabriel Rossetti 16. Conrad, Lord Jim 17. Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana 18. Henry James, The Europeans 19. J. Frank Dobie, Rattlesnakes 20. Poems of Christina Georgina Rossetti 21. St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life 22. Patrick White, The Aunt's Story 23. Hilaire Belloc, A Conversation With an Angel & Other Stories 24. Dante, Hell (Sayers trans.) 25. Henry James, The Other House 26. Borges, The Book of Imaginary Beasts 27. Eudora Welty, Losing Battles 28. Grassic Gibbon, Sunset Song 29. Saint-Exupery, Southern Mail 30. E. F. Benson, As We Were 31. Ian MacPherson, Wild Harbour 32. Dickens, David Copperfield 33. T. H. White, Farewell Victoria 34. J. McDougall Hay, Gillespie 35. Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson 36. Orkneyinga Saga 37. Tobias Smollett, Roderick Random 38. Gertrude Stein, Three Lives 39. Charles Haines, Charles Dickens 40. Paul Veyne, A History of Private Life, Volume 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium 41. O. Henry, Selected Stories 42. Saul Bellow, Herzog 43. St. Catherine of Genoa, Purgation & Purgatory; The Spiritual Dialogues 44. Edward Bulwer Lytton, Paul Clifford 45. J. Frank Dobie, The Ben Lilly Legend 46. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca 47. Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym 48. Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton 49. Aida [libretto] 50. J. H. Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine 51. Henry James, The Wings of the Dove 52. John Henry Faulk, Fear on Trial 53. Giovanni Guareschi, Don Camillo and the Flower Children 54. Euripides, Alcestis 55. Jaroslav Hasek, The Good Soldier Svejk 56. Moliere, The Doctor Despite Himself 57. Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa 58. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler 59. Terence, The Fair Andrian 60. Terence, The Mother-in-Law

Yeah. Makes you wonder what kind of a civilization thought that kind of thing so very funny. The past sure is a foreign country.

Ooh! Wish I could catch that.