Permanent current book reading thread

[Haruo]

[Haruo]

As you can tell from my "Isabel Crawford" thread, I am currently reading . Interesting book, but alas none of the Kiowa hymn texts is given, just English translations, without tunes. But there is a CD that has the singing in Kiowa, just no written text to follow along with.

[Sandy]

[Haruo]

At Mrs. H's suggestion, I'm beginning to read Buggies, Blizzards, and Babies by Cora Frear Hawkins, which is the story of a turn-of-the-20th-century physician in Iowa, as recalled and told by his daughter. I am not sure what the real difference is between the first two entries in , nor why the paperback edition (if such there be) is so much more expensive than the hardcover...

As she also points out, this story is set in the immediate neighborhood of Timothy Bonney's current position; I would call it his "neck of the woods" but my recollection of Iowa suggests asking for woods might be a stretch. Amber waves of grain rule!

[James]

Haruo, I think Jesus would have found another way to stop the stoning. I just think Bailey's solution is logical.

[Haruo]

Went to the Seattle Public Library (Rainier Beach Branch) to drop off a half dozen Christmas carol books, and came away with three Bible books:

Jesus Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible by Bart D. Ehrman
The Book of Books: The Radical Impact of the King James Bible 1611-2011 by Melvyn Bragg
The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today by David Norton

Have any of you read any of these, or Ehrman's eariler Misquoting Jesus? I have begun reading "Jesus Interrupted" and am enjoying it, although there's a fair amount of repetition, probably dictated by the author's suspicion that the reader is coming out of an education that was geared to inculcating the doctrine of inerrancy.

"Book of Books" looks to be a bit of a puff piece, hagiography applied to a book. His worldview is anglocentric and he seems to ignore the other important English Bibles (Geneva in particular) of the century preceding 1611. Haven't really looked at the Norton one yet.

[Haruo]

I've almost finished the Ehrman book, and my judgment stands: nothing much new in it; a fair amount of repetition; a few points I'd quibble about but mostly pretty basic. But someone who knows little of the subject might get a lot out of it. I was raised in a household where Goodspeed (with Apocrypha) and Moffatt Bibles were routinely used in addition to the KJV, the RSV, the ASV, and (for the NT) the NEB, Weymouth and Phillips, and my dad the Baptist minister told me at an early age that the Bible was "basically an anthology", so I have never had to deal with overcoming the inerrancy notion except in others I may talk with. Ehrman, on the other hand, an agnostic or atheist on grounds (it sounds like) primarily of theodicy (which I can understand, having been there), is trying to present the historical critical study of the NT and of early Christianity to an audience of Southern Protestant college freshmen...

[William Thornton]

I have just completed Margaret Mitchell's one and only book, one of the most popular books of all time, Gone With The Wind. I've had an old copy on my shelf for some time (no, not a first edition or you would have seen that for sale here and elsewhere), pulled it down and read it, all 700 pages of it, two columns per page. In other editions GWTW comes out to fully 1000 pages, vastly more than Fox would attempt to read, but I take it that he has hit the Wiki summary of it.

Fie on fictional Yoknapatawpha, I'm sticking with nearby, and quite real, Clayton County, GA, and the imaginary Tara. Look, scads of Japanese make the trek to Atlanta, Mitchell's home and GWTW Mecca, looking for hoop skirts and stays (Scarlett had a 17 inch waist when so dressed and lamented having a 20 inch waist after bearing children), Southern Belles, and plantations. God surely has a sense of humor in that in the popular culture ground zero for slavery, plantations, white columned antebellum plantation houses is Georgia and that the same location is also ground zero for MLK, Jr and the Movement.

What strikes me first is that no publisher would touch GWTW these days, since it is rife with the "n" word - "n" this, and "n" that, "free issue n...s", "house n...s", "field n...s", and more. Even the lesser offending terminology might make modern editors uncomfortable - pickaninny, darkie, etc.

Critics slam the stereotypes, the stout and always present, Mammy "Oh, Miss Melly, it been awful! An' it's gwine be wuss, an' folks gwine talk sumpin' scan'lous." The shifless and indolent Prissy, "Fo' Gawd, Miss Scarlett! We's got ter have a doctah, Ah - Ah - Miss Scarlett, Ah doan know nuthin' 'bout bringing' babies." Toss in Big Sam, oversized field hand, various house slaves, Pork and Uncle Peter, drunken Irish, Gerald O'Hara.

Presumably, references to evil Yankees and assorted carpetbaggers and scalawags are still acceptable.

Mitchell, as seen in the above quotes, uses the actual pronunciations when slaves or freed slaves talk. In my years in Georgia I hear the same vocabulary: 'gwine' for 'going', 'sot' for 'set', etc.

The other thing that strikes me about the book is that all of my impressions about the characters, Tara, Atlanta are forever calibrated to the movie with Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable as Scarlett and Rhett; Hattie McDaniel, who won an Oscar for Mammy; Butterfly McQueen as Prissy. Try as I may, even with the book's authentic dialogue (no not "Frankly my dear, I don't give a ****" but rather "My dear, I don't give a ****." The mental fixation on the movie personalities is why I avoided Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." I'd rather form my own mental images of Jesus, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, than be stuck with Gibson's.

GWTW is safely in the popular culture and references to it pop up everwhere.

[Mrs Haruo]

I read bits and pieces of "Gone With the Wind" before I saw the movie when it was re-issued while I was at the US Navy Photography School. Imagine watching it at a theater full of photography students the first time this Yankee gal had ever BEEN in the deep south! I got swept up into the story as well as hooting as we recognized different cinematic techniques we were being taught at in classes. My partner in class was from Memphis, so I was getting used to drawling, and the fine manners of the Southern Gentlemen, even if they were "Gentlemen by Act of Congress" (officers). My daddy was no drunkard by any means, but I sure identified with Scarlett when her father told her "You will always have the land" as my own father and I looked across our own "Plantation" a year earlier of 7 acres of woods and pastureland and chicken houses and a 36 hutch rabbittry, along with a large vegetable garden and old fruit trees and he advised me to save my money and buy some land as soon as I could. I dreamed of my own "stump farm" with room for more ponies somewhere in the sight of Mt Rainier. (renamed Mt. Seattle Seahawks by the State Senate until midnight tonight).

[William Thornton]

I have enjoyed reading books on WWI, Verdun and the Somme...about 1.7 million casualties between them. And then Blood and Armor, about the WWII battle of Kursk.

I'm in a martial reading mode.

[William Thornton]

But what I've really enjoyed is "Dear Sallie" civil war correspondence of James Jewell, a private in a regiment that also included my great grandfather. Alas, no a single mention of him in the letters but numerous other relatives. This unit served in GA and the Florida panhandle, miserable, disease ridden swamplands. No grand battles like Gettysburg or Sharpsburg but rather malaria, mosquitos, and sand gnats. The unit served at the infamous GA prison, Andersonville, for a time. Since my ancestor was with the unit until the surrender, I can conclude he had guard duty there at some period.

Men in the unit spent a lot of time shipping cheap salt back home to be sold for a profit, there being a lot of salt works on the gulf coast.

After the war my GGfather came home, married, had kids (including my grandfather, whose mother died shortly after his birth of typhoid fever), got a confed pension, and died in 1908.

I know which cemetery he's buried in but his grave is unmarked. I'm having a marker made and will put it somewhere in the old family cemetery. The Sons of Confederate Veterans around here will have a ceremony and place a CSA marker on the grave but I think I'll pass on that,

[Haruo]

How were "confed pensions" funded? And were they at parity with yankee ones?

[William Thornton]

[ET]

[Haruo]

[Mrs Haruo]

I remember reading in Mom's mother's bible (the one who was a daughter of a Methodist minister) of a relative who was listed as dying from "Civil War Fever" whatever that was. A polite euphemism for venereal disease?

[Mrs Haruo]

By the way William, as far as I can tell, all my kinfolk were on the Union side. If any. Some were chasing horses and buffalo around the Canadian Border and being chased by the Cavalry I suspect. Back on the book thread: Today Haruo needed to head to the barber and I tagged along. I showed him where the Old Renton Book Exchange was on the way from the transit center to the barber shop and we emerged awhile later with treasures including "The Complete Book of Hymns- Inspiring Stories about 600 Hymns and Praise Songs" by William and Ardythe Petersen, and Hurlbut's "Story of the Bible". Lots of pictures.

[William Thornton]

I have one family line who were relocated New Englanders, moved south to Georgia around 1840. My great grandfather in that line was prime soldier age at the beginning of the Civil War. The family sent him from Georgia to Massachusetts to attend school during the war. He sat it out.

Hey, we lost. I get that.

[William Thornton]

. The harrowing story of five men who were sent into a dark, airless, miles-long tunnel, hundreds of feet below the ocean, to do a nearly impossible job—with deadly results...

I like some adventure stories, polar exploration, mountain climbing, jungle exploration, undersea stuff, etc. and picked this book up. After I got home and looked over the cover blurb I wasn't too interested...until I started to read a few pages. It was a riveting book. The villain happened to be an engineer who designed an experimental breathing system for divers to use in a dry, underground tunnel, one way, dead end, ten miles long under Boston harbor. It failed. Two divers died. It kinda spooks me thinking about going ten miles one way knowing that you depended on some breathing apparatus. At the end of the tunnel the workers faced a two hour trip back to the open end.

Gotta watch those engineers...

[Stephen Fox]

I called in NPR chat about the book yesterday and blogged at www.foxofbama.blogspot.com. My next read as I was a fan of her 90's National Bool Award Winner, Charming Billy.

[Haruo]

[Mrs Haruo]

I was delighted to see Haruo bring home "Roadside Geology of Washington". I took a year of "Earth Science" in 9th grade, and remember my teacher, Mr. Jacobsen very fondly. He showed a number of interesting science films put out by Moody Institute, and near the end of the year, we had a day long field trip around the state where we made several stops to view spots of geologic interest and gathered specimens for our own rock collections. That was the guide book he used for the trip. It became a popular book in our family as my father did a double major in chemistry and mining engineering, and my older brother went to college on the GI Bill when he got out of the Navy and ended up with a B.S. in Geology. Mr. Jacobsen was no "Bible Thumper", but he definitely was a quiet witness for Christ. The last stop of that long drive over several mountain passes and up several side roads was at a rest stop in a parking lot called "The Roadside Chapel". There were picnic tables and the usual outhouses, but there was also a cute tiny church with seating for maybe 12 inside, and a box of "Daily Bread" devotion books with "Please help yourself" written on the front. I took one and mailed in a card to subscribe. Our family didn't go to church, and I was a young teen with lots of questions that weren't being answered at home. It opened me to the Bible and got me curious that when I was invited to church a few months later, I was ripe for the picking

[James]

I'm reading two books right now that might be of interest to some of you. The first is Bunker Hill by Nathaniel Philbrick published a few months ago. It is about the battle of Breed's Hill. One interesting tidbit from the book is that over 20% of British officer casualties for the entire war occurred in this battle. The second is that if the Rebels had not run out of Ammunition, the war could well have ended right there. The British mistook an ammo shortage for a lack of colonial courage to face a bayonet charge and thus, continued the war.

The second book is Bullwhip Days edited by James Mellon. The book consists of transcribed interviews with former slaves conducted by representatives from the writer's project of the WPA in the 1930's. I've just started this one, but there are facets of slavery unknown to me in these pages. I do not claim to be an expert on the anti-bellum south or the Civil War, but I took every course Bell Wiley taught at Emory and he was an expert. So I am always pleased to learn something new on a familiar subject.

[William Thornton]

See John Grisham's novels for an occasional excursion into Mississippi's huge prison farm. Sordid history. Not a new book but interesting. Photos of convicts, all black, in striped prison garb in "the long line" a hundred or so cons with hoes chopping cotton in unison, to a chant.



PBS has a on this that I haven't watched. Will do that soon.

The biggest private individual landowner in Georgia was a planter, entrepreneur near me, James Monroe Smith. He leased convicts to work his 20,000 acre farm, sawmills, grist mills, operate his railroad, etc. Was at his farm a couple of days ago. His is out of print (and worth a bit of money, I have a copy). Reviewer describes the biographer as a "discredited Southern Apologist."

The business of convict leasing was a sordid, squalid, corrupt, brutal business. Enslavement, called "peonage" of African-Americans by whites continued as late as WWII. The big mining and steel companies in Alabama who leased convicts and put them in coal mines and other parts of the industry, was especially barbaric.

Can't say I knew much about this prior to reading these books.

[ET]

Thanks for posting William. I'll be interested to watch this. Wish it was on TV instead of online.