2025 Readings 116

 On Christmas Day we drove down to Pittsfield, Massachusetts to visit Janet's mom in her assisted living center, have a holiday meal, and then hang around the next day to take her on an extended Walmart shopping extravaganza. (maybe more on on that later). On the way day and back we listened to Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. This is hardly the first time I've read or listened to that classic, but I've been deliberate and consistent in recording all of my readings for the year, so it was essential to include this one. Every year we tend to pick out a different performance, and this year I downloaded Tim Curry's rendition. It's a very well-thought of version, although I would argue a bit too highly praised - some of the voices were a bit too similar to each other, and often Scrooge's voice was pretty whiney. I'm actually completely OK with having someone read it without giving voice to the different characters, but if you're going to do it then I suppose you should be judged for it. It's still really solid, and, well, it's Dickens, so you really can't go wrong. As I've often opined, you could make a very compelling argument that A Christmas Carol might be the most influential book written over the last couple centuries. Obviously, highly recommended, and I can't imagine a holiday season that would not include another reading of one of my all-time favorite pieces.

Holiday Breakfast of Excellence

 Going an tire month (that is, our Christmas break in the unreal world of academia) without seeing my friends is, of course, impossible (what happens next year is anybody's guess). Consequently, it was necessary to schedule a Holiday Breakfast of Excellence at the TASTee Grill. As usual, the topics of conversation were varied and excellent, including an inspired discussion of what makes a great biography.

Sanford, appearing as either an Old Testament prophet or a Marxist theorist.

Erik and Kevin, two regular members of the BofE, enjoying the holiday festivities.

A rare appearance from the excellent Steve.

Afterward I had to make a quick run by Santa's for some homemade Christmas cookies and frozen scrapple (appropriate for a Philadelphia-born elf).

Layering Up

 This series of pictures came together rather organically, as Janet and I had to laugh at the layers of CFL swag that I was naturally putting on to prepare myself to go dig out the cars after yesterday's snow storm. Seriously, why doesn't Canada just go ahead and give me citizenship already?

Winnipeg Blue Bombers t-shirt: check.

Edmonton Elks long sleeve t-shirt: check.

Toronto Argonauts sweatshirt and Hamilton Tiger-Cats toque: check.

2025 Readings 115

 After so much anguish and so much mourning, so many tears and so many tricks, so much hate and injustice and despair, what are we to do?

I just finished Ignazio Silone's Fontamara, the first book in his Abruzzo Trilogy (the second is Bread and Wine, which I reread a couple weeks ago). Much like Bread and Wine, Fontamara includes a goodly amount of humor to somewhat balance out the unrelenting misfortune doled out to the cafoni (peasants) by the townspeople and officials and the Catholic Church during the Mussolini dictatorship. Early in the book those in power, even petty power, make it clear that they're not worried about the cafoni because always suffer and the no how to suffer, which only justifies more suffering.

Jokes of that kind are not easily forgotten, even if the town loafers constantly think up new ones. So our first thought was that the diversion of the stream was a practical joke too. After all, it would be the end of everything if men started interfering with the elements created by God, and diverted the course of the sun, the course of the winds, and the course of the waters established by God. It would be like hearing that donkeys were learning to fly, or that Prince Torlonia was no longer a prince, or that cafoni were no longer to suffer from hunger - in other words, that the eternal laws of God were no longer to be the laws of God.

Sadly, what hit me while reading was how true this sentiment still was in so much of the world, and how the wealthy and powerful in America were equally guilty of believing it to be true.

This book, and this trilogy, is highly recommended. I'm looking forward to reading more books by Ignazio Silone.

Endless Swag

 And here's a present that I gave myself for Christmas, a sweet Nathan Rourke BC Lions jersey. I generally think that the Lions have the ugliest uniforms in the CFL, but I'm sold on this alternate version. I'm getting desperately close to having jerseys for every team in the CFL.

For some reason these alternate jerseys were on sale, which you find about if you're an insider for the team and you get email updates - of course, I'm an insider for nine teams.

This should really be a jersey for our entire CFL fantasy league since everyone of us chose Nathan Rourke every week (unless we went with Bo Levi Mitchell - or, sadly, when Jack and I chose a player who was sitting on the bench that week).

Another Birthday

 Friday was Janet's birthday, so we headed out of town for the day. We both like Manchester, down in southern Vermont, and so this has become our go-to place for close getaways. Mainly, I was taking her there to treat her at Northshire Bookstore, but also to grab a great meal. It was an absolutely lovely time, and we're already talking about what we'll be doing on her birthday in Sicily next year.

I've never really been a Bed and Breakfast type, although the Inn at Ormsby Hill was nice.

I ended up sitting out here in the living room reading to my heart's content. They had a wonderful collection of books. I don't think they left the great books in the Library so that the patrons in the other room could enjoy them.

We stay in what was called the Library, although all the really nice books were out in the living room. The book in the Library room were mainly there for aesthetic effect, although, if you're a book lover, it was a nice room.

The Mystico Italian restaurant is our default choice in Manchester, and, as always, the meal was fantastic. Plus, it's like a hundred feet from Northshire Bookstore. Most importantly, my lovely wife had a wonderful time.

Janet's directions were to select as many books as she wanted, and I kept sending her back to get more. She had just finished the Donna Leon Brunetti series, so she picked up Leon's book about writing and her life in Venice.

And, somehow, I walked away with three books, as usual, raiding the New York Review of Books series.

2025 Readings 114

     "You should understand, Mr. Blodget, that one thing I have come to trust is that people find what they are looking for, what they believe on some level that they either need or deserve. I think this is proven moment to moment, so I take it as more than mere happenstance that you are here. I take it as a measure of your will, which honors us and obliges me to be honest."

     Blodget looked up from the Tibetan pieces to find the doctor's eyes directly upon him. "Please."

     "Well. Something else I've come to trust is that truth is provided in precisely the measure and form appropriate to each of us individually. I find, more over, that the disposition of truth is not, as it may sometimes seem, to withdraw and then appear. That is a function of our concentration. The disposition of truth is to remain constant. That way, when a man chooses to look, directly at whatever happens to be surrounding him - whatever it may be - he will find the truth there waiting. Am I clear?"

Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden

This morning I finish my latest, I'm guessing my fifth, reading of Brooks Hansen's The Chess Garden. As always, I sobbed. I didn't cry because the ending is sad, although it is in a way, but because of its almost crushing beauty. As I was saying to my great friend Sarah this morning, The Chess Garden is, to me, a remarkably generous gift. I mention Sarah mainly because she's the only person that I've recommended the novel to who has loved it like I do. Seriously, we can't talk about it without getting misty-eyed. Every other person I've recommended it to (and I've dragooned so many people into reading it) have either not finished it or tried to gracefully cover up how mystified they were by my love for the novel. It's on that short list with Dickens's Bleak House or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past or Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet (if that's actually a novel) or Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio for the designation as my favorite novel. I don't know if I completely understand it - or that I'm supposed to understand it - although I also feel that I come a little closer with every reread. Recently I purchased an Emanuel Swedenborg (his life and philosophy play a huge role in the novel) reader, hoping that will give me more tools for my next reread. In the spring I'm going to start my latest reread of Remembrance of Things Past, although this will be my first with the new translation, with the more appropriate title In Search of Lost Time, I recently acquired. My plan was to finish the reread so that I wouldn't feel the pressure to take all seven volumes in my suitcase this summer to Sicily. My logic was much the same with The Chess Garden, especially since my copy is falling to pieces. However, the thought that I would go anyplace without the novel is madness. Obviously, The Chess Garden is remarkably, impossibly highly, recommended, and I'll apologize in advance. I would like to point out that Doctor Uyterhoeven, who is talking to Blodget above, and I share the same birthday. Like Doctor Uyterhoeven, I plan on leaving my cane hanging from the apple tree outside the cabin when I head overseas.