catch up...

School getting in the way again of keeping this journal up, however, I have been reading still which is somewhat of an improvement. In the past couple weeks I’ve finished:

Anya Seton’s Green Darkness

Interesting – I didn’t like it as well as Seton’s Katherine but it was enjoyable. I think Katherine had more historical references… maybe they were equal but I know that I will reread Katherine I don’t think I will reread Green Darkness. However, there was a quote I liked, in the first part when the 20th century Celia is in the hospital and the East Indian guru doctor is talking to his old medical school buddy:

“If you can believe in television, Arthur, you can believe in anything, don’t you think? Invisible pictures, words, vibrations, continually surrounding us, and only made manifest by turning buttons on a properly tuned receiver.”
– Akananda (pg. 97)

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter

I loved this book. I don’t read a lot of American literature so I was surprised that I liked this, although, it is probably because it is set pre-revolution. Hawthorne’s vocabulary is fabulous and he can be so poetic in his prose, it made me think of the prose version if the Odyssey I read once. He was very Homeric/Virgilic when it came to simile and lyrical lines.

John Tosh’s The Pursuit of History

This was required reading for my historiography class this semester. I liked it, it was a little textbookish at times but I do like how Tosh surveys theory and primarily uses British history for examples. We actually weren’t required to finish it for the class but I thought I should finish the last 50 pages. I guess that must mean I liked it or was getting something out of it. I didn’t feel right about not finishing it, normally I don’t care if I finish a school book if it hasn’t been required (and even sometimes when it has). I’ll try to delve into some of the theory stuff later; I’m trying to figure out where I fit theoretically… I think I’m somewhere in-between some theories or maybe have a theory that hasn’t yet been named.

(Also read Ian Mortimer’s Essay on “What History Isn’t” where he asserts the idea that postmodernism is pretty much dead and a new theory [if theory is really the right word since he almost seems against the usual “line in the sand” attitude of theory])

And I just finished today:

Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Fascinating. I like Capote’s short stories but this was, dare I say? Even better than Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Maybe it is better to say they are equal yet different. What really stood out to me was his ability to describe even the most mundane detail in a captivating way; the color of a car, the layout of a common kitchen, the daily weather.

“the ‘Bible Belt,’ that gospel haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces…” --pg. 34