Encouraging book review for a rigourous, literature intensive education

[Sebastian (a lady)]

There are times when it feels like I'm really swimming upstream with the amount of reading I want my kids to be doing in school. And from the posts people make here about feeling out of place around workbook orriented homeschoolers or unschoolers, I'm probably not alone.

 

I just read the best book review, 1648 and All That by Roger Kimball, which is a review of Grand Strategies: Literature, Statecraft, and World Order by Charles Hill (the review, alas, is for NR subscribers only). The review would be well worth finding a library copy of the Sept 20 edition of National Review.

 

Since I can't link to the full review, here are some snippets.

 

After asking what you should look for in a well qualified diplomat, Kimball answers,

 

How about a deep acquaintance with the mountain peaks of literature, from Homer, Aeschylus, and Thucydides through Montaigne, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Milton, and Lock, and on to Madison, Schiller, Dickens, Bismarck, Dostoevsky, Kipling, and Hermann Broch?

[ snip]

 

...this last qualification may be as important as all the rest, not least because, if truly accomplished, it argues possession of brains, discretion, etc.

[snip]

The questions "What kind of society should we endeavor to make?" cannot be answered, cannot even be seriously entertained, in the absence of the questions "Who are we?" and "What do we want?" And those questions, Hill argues, have been entertained in the most sustained and penetrating way in imaginative literature - understanding "literature" in the large sense that embraces the works of philosophers and historians as well as novelists and poets. In brief, as Hill writes in his prologue, "statecraft cannot be practiced in the absence of literary insight."

 

at the end of the review, Kimball has a long quotation from Henry Kissinger:

 

We have entered a time of total change in human consciousness of how people look at the world. Reading books requires you to form concepts, to train your mind to relationships. You have to come to grips with who you are. A leader needs these qualities. But now we learn from fragments of facts....Now there is no need to internalize because each fact can instantly be called up on the computer. There is no context, no motive. Information is not knowledge. People are not readers but researchers, they float on the surface. This new thinking erases context. It disaggregates everything. All this makes strategic thinking about world order impossible to achieve.

 

Yesterday I was on the phone with the supervisor of the local personal property office trying to explain to him that we really in fact did actually have thousands of books that fell into military professional gear because of the areas that my husband works with. I always find it so amazing that there is no problem thinking of a specially fitted flight helmet as pro gear, or musical instruments as pro gear for a member of one of the Navy bands, or of medical or legal books for a military doctor or lawyer. But as soon as a more general military officer starts to amass a library of much beyone the Navy reading list and Fleet Tactics you get weird looks.

 

I've had packers threaten to quit over how many books they were having to pack. I've had moving inspectors tell me that they'd never seen so many books in their entire military and civilian career scheduling moves. It gets so tiring to seem like a freak because we think that the world of literature and non-ficiton writing has some purpose beyond the NY Times best seller list.

 

Anyway, I'll be ordering Hill's book and probably clipping Kimball's essay for future encouragement. If you can get ahold of the 20 Sep edition of National Review, you should look up the review (pg 50). And it encourages me to pull out my copy of Pilgrim's Progress and start tackling the Well Educated Mind reading list again.

[Mrs Mungo]

I've had packers threaten to quit over how many books they were having to pack. I've had moving inspectors tell me that they'd never seen so many books in their entire military and civilian career scheduling moves. It gets so tiring to seem like a freak because we think that the world of literature and non-ficiton writing has some purpose beyond the NY Times best seller list.

 

Thanks for this!

 

During our last unloading? I told the movers to stack the book boxes up against the biggest wall in our family room. When they were 5 high and 4 deep, the movers started looking pretty concerned. LOL

[Sebastian (a lady)]

Thanks for this!

 

During our last unloading? I told the movers to stack the book boxes up against the biggest wall in our family room. When they were 5 high and 4 deep, the movers started looking pretty concerned. LOL

 

So we have the big pre-inspection before our last move so the moving company rep can come and take a look at what we've got. We have around 5000 books and about 3/4 were going into storage and needed to be packed up by this guys company.

 

He does the big walk around, oohing and ahhing over the amount of books. When he gets upstairs, he stops, stunned, that there are bookcases up in the bedrooms too. :lol:

 

He gives me the line about how in 25+ years of doing moves in the Air Force and for the civilian company, he's never seen so many books.

 

Then, how many book boxes does he send with the packers, for these 3000 or so books?

 

50.

 

They ended up filling all the book boxes in the first room, going to medium cartons, running our of them and then filling up DISH PACKS with books. :willy_nilly: I will need a whole 6-pack of Mike's for when these come out of storage.

 

I try to tell them that we've had moves with over 250 book boxes, and they just never want to listen to me. It's as if they think they're the guys with the magical way of making thousands of books fit into a handful of boxes.

 

Sorry, you caught me getting ready for the next move and this is a sore spot.

[Mrs Mungo]

 

Sorry, you caught me getting ready for the next move and this is a sore spot.

 

We are moving in a couple of months too. I'd better make a note. :tongue_smilie:

[Jamee]

Yesterday I was on the phone with the supervisor of the local personal property office trying to explain to him that we really in fact did actually have thousands of books that fell into military professional gear because of the areas that my husband works with. I always find it so amazing that there is no problem thinking of a specially fitted flight helmet as pro gear, or musical instruments as pro gear for a member of one of the Navy bands, or of medical or legal books for a military doctor or lawyer. But as soon as a more general military officer starts to amass a library of much beyone the Navy reading list and Fleet Tactics you get weird looks.

 

I've had packers threaten to quit over how many books they were having to pack. I've had moving inspectors tell me that they'd never seen so many books in their entire military and civilian career scheduling moves. It gets so tiring to seem like a freak because we think that the world of literature and non-ficiton writing has some purpose beyond the NY Times best seller list.

 

Anyway, I'll be ordering Hill's book and probably clipping Kimball's essay for future encouragement. If you can get ahold of the 20 Sep edition of National Review, you should look up the review (pg 50). And it encourages me to pull out my copy of Pilgrim's Progress and start tackling the Well Educated Mind reading list again.

 

I want to thank you for making me feel better about all my books.:D We are currently waiting for the arrival of the majority of them to come out of storage--they were packed up four years ago. When we put the request in this summer, it was listed as boxes like 18-45 or whatever. They sent box 18 and box 45.:001_huh: We only received about 10 of the 40+ boxes requested. Only ONE box of actual books. I am now nervous for I have NO recollection of just what books will be coming and where they'll be going. I have already warned the boys that there may not be a Christmas tree this year. I wonder how much furniture we'll have to leave behind so as to not exceed the weight limit when we move.:lol:

 

Good luck with the pack out. I have found Asian movers to be pretty good. I do not envy the unpacking though.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I find that where ever we go, we have a two fold duty: to make our neighbors' televisions seem huge and to make our friends' book collections seem small.

[Mommyfaithe]

I find that where ever we go, we have a two fold duty: to make our neighbors' televisions seem huge and to make our friends' book collections seem small.

 

:lol:

[Jen in PA]

I find that where ever we go, we have a two fold duty: to make our neighbors' televisions seem huge and to make our friends' book collections seem small.

 

:D This was us until MIL gave us her tv.... Not only did I not want a gigantic television, it ended up only fitting right where I planned to put a new bookcase. Sigh. DH and I have always just laughed when we were told we had too many books -- now I just joke that it's not that we have too many books, just too few bookcases.

[justamouse]

 

I've had packers threaten to quit over how many books they were having to pack. I've had moving inspectors tell me that they'd never seen so many books in their entire military and civilian career scheduling moves. It gets so tiring to seem like a freak because we think that the world of literature and non-ficiton writing has some purpose beyond the NY Times best seller list.

 

Anyway, I'll be ordering Hill's book and probably clipping Kimball's essay for future encouragement. If you can get ahold of the 20 Sep edition of National Review, you should look up the review (pg 50). And it encourages me to pull out my copy of Pilgrim's Progress and start tackling the Well Educated Mind reading list again.

 

My packers were cursing me for all of the books. I have books in every room of my house. I cannot imagine it being a home without them. I have a friend who has NO books in her house. It's the strangest thing you ever saw.

[Heather in AL]

I find that where ever we go, we have a two fold duty: to make our neighbors' televisions seem huge and to make our friends' book collections seem small.

 

Oh my, I love this!

 

While we have only moved once in our married life, we too had a ton of books to move (and this was before homeschooling!). The movers saw our book boxes (packed ourselves for a 3 mile move) and they looked like :scared:.

 

Then, the cable guy came a few days later and saw the unpacked books in dh's study. He walked in, stopped cold and was like :drool5:. He said he was jealous of dh's technical library. :lol: Most of our neighbors (and a few friends) comment on our books, too, but express astonishment rather than jealousy.

 

Dh and I don't spend much money on 'things' (we just got a big TV last Thanksgiving and it was a combo gift for both our birthdays, anniversary, and Christmas), but we are **dangerous** when it comes to books!! In fact, our idea of a 'date night' is to wander the aisles of Barnes and Noble!! :lol::lol:

 

Sebastian, thanks for posting the OP... I'm off to read now..... :auto:

[Halftime Hope]

first of all, your book collection makes mine seem tiny, but hey, I have time! :)

 

 

When we bought and moved into this house, I purged a lot of books of ours and of FIL/MILs (deceased) so what I kept was nothing like what it could have been. (Purged much twaddle of MIL's and "not-keepers" of mine.)

 

The former lady of this house and I had gotten to know one another quite well over the course of our purchasing the house, their moving and building, my forwarding mail to them and so on. At one point, perhaps six months after we moved in, she asked how I liked the house. (Very well, thank you, now that I got rid of the forest green paint in the room -- JKJKJK!!:lol:) I told her that I liked it very much now that the 75 boxes of books were finally all unpacked and in their homes.

 

There was complete silence and then came one question, her tone laced with incredulity and even a bit of horror.

 

"Where did you put them all?"

 

"We have bookcases all over the house, and in everyone's room."

 

"Oh my."

 

 

I had never thought of our beloved books as being someone else's green paint.

Edited November 16, 2010 by Valerie(TX)

[elegantlion]

We're in the process of moving. Just put several boxes of books in storage and managed to bring what I could for now. I managed to downsize over 100, but probably have 50 waiting for me at my parent's house. :lol: DH is not a big reader but he never complains about the books, he has tools, which take up more space than the books.

[Guest]

And it encourages me to pull out my copy of Pilgrim's Progress and start tackling the Well Educated Mind reading list again.

 

After NaNo...and maybe Christmas :tongue_smilie: I wanted to get started on this again, too.

[MBM]

Thank you for the suggestion. Oh, how I wish more politicians -- and voters -- would see the benefit in what that article is discussing. Where is the intelligence, the wisdom? Anyway, I'm going to go see if I can find that magazine at our library. Thanks again for bothering to post it.

Good luck with the move, too. :)

[flyingiguana]

We finally got a bigger TV -- someone had put it out in the trash, as they had gone digital. Now we can finally read some of the print that has been getting tinier and tinier and tinier. But the TV is so big, we have no place to store our tapes, which had been on top of the old TV.

 

And just last week I had a librarian get me a few VHS tapes. He was concerned that I might not have the right equipment. "These are tapes, you know," he said. "Not DVDs."

 

But I wasn't able to find performances of Medea and Antigone on DVD anywhere. So the tapes will have to do.

 

Books? Um, I'm already stacking them two high and two deep on the shelves. Can I go to three deep? The only room in our house that does not have books is the bathroom. I won't store them there. The moisture would be bad for them.

[LibraryLover]

Tangentially related: When I went into in labor with my first child, dh and I went to a book store for a couple of hours. My water broke at 6 am, so we had to wait a couple of hours before it opened. ;) It was the best way I could think of to help pass time. The owner of that book store still has a smile for me, all these years later. When we found out we were pregnant, we went to a book store. When we go out to dinner, we go to one next door to a bookstore. Instead of pre-dinner cocktails, we do pre dinner browsing.

[HLDoll]

I'm tickled to hear that someone else goes to bookstores on date night. My husband and I have made a habit on our date nights of going out for a nice dinner and then a stroll through Borders with an froo-froo overpriced coffee. Our basement is lined on 3 walls with bookshelves (all full!) and there are shelves and baskets in every other room of the house as well. Long live the bibliophiles!

[FaithManor]

Mrs.Mungo,

 

I love your moving story! Priceless!

 

To the OP, thanks for posting this.

 

Faith

[Catwoman]

I had never thought of our beloved books as being someone else's green paint.

 

:D:D:D:D

 

Cat

[Sebastian (a lady)]

My packers were cursing me for all of the books. I have books in every room of my house. I cannot imagine it being a home without them. I have a friend who has NO books in her house. It's the strangest thing you ever saw.

 

We've been spending some time on the internet trying to scout out houses for after our move. DH and I both tend to have an immediate affinity for any house that shows loads of book cases in the pictures.

 

Of course we also spend ten minutes trying to figure out what class of submarine the model on one mantel was. We are pretty weird.

[Sebastian (a lady)]

first of all, your book collection makes mine seem tiny, but hey, I have time! :)

 

 

I had never thought of our beloved books as being someone else's green paint.

 

DH has a colleague who came over for dinner once. He's rather eccentric, but in a "weird like us" way. He showed up a half hour early, before dh had even gotten home, came in and immediately walked over to the bookshelves to checkout what we had.

 

He spent about the next 15 minutes there, while I was finishing up dinner, with a running commentary about which books he also had, which books we had multiple copies of (dh likes to give away a few titles to other people) and which books he hadn't heard of (which he made note of so he could get them).

 

He hasn't moved in a very long time and has over 16,000 books. DH and I sort of think of him as our bibliophile role model.

 

 

And I love the books as green paint metaphor.