From the Reading Pile

I haven't been reading on the net as much as at the first of the year. I don't know if that is good or not. I have been conitnuing to get books from the library. Many that I do not even get more than a couple glimpses at and then have to return. We have a 2 week check out period. I often renew but have been forgetting, resulting in overdue fines. I dislike being so careless but that is how it's been lately.

Anyway, some bits from some books I've recently checked out or what I'm reading.

The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry. I actually got this book because I didn't notice there was a second 'the' in the title. I've wanted to read some of Berry's works for awhile now and also have been trying to be more intentional about commonplacing. This book isn't about that. But it's a good book {so far} nonetheless.

What I am sharing from this book is Berry's thoughts on moving back to his small Kentucky home after being in the big city, New York, I believe. His boss is trying to convince him that he'd made it and by moving back to Kentucky, he'd be doing more harm than good.

Finally, there was the assumption that the life of the metropolis is the experience, the modern experience, and that the life of the rural towns, the farms, the wilderness places is not only irrelevant to our time, but archaic as well because unknown or unconsidered by the people who really matter- that is, the urban intellectuals.

I was to realize during the next few years how false and destructive and silly those ideas are. But evene then I was aware that life outside the literary world was not without honorable precedent: if there was Wolfe, there was also Faulkner; if there was James, there was also Thoreau. But what I had in my mind that made th greatest difference was the knowledge of the few square miles in Kentucky that were mine by inheritance and by birth and by the intimacy the mind makes with the place it awakens in.

Reading so far as made me aware of the places I've lived that have had a place in my heart and mind. Other books I've been reading lately have also started me thinking of my memories. I haven't taken out my memories in a long time. I've been surprised, mostly in good ways, of the memories.

From the Winter 2015 issue of The Classical Teacher, an article written by Martin Cothran, who is telling the influence and importance of stories in childhood, especially ones read aloud:

Each book was a fairy wand, waved over our home...When additional children were added to our merry band, they too were taught the consequences of kissing a frog, and not to talk to strange wolves on the way to grandmother's house. They knew better than to build their houses out of straw and to have a healthy fear of giants, poisoned apples, and old women living in houses made out of candy. And none of them suffered any doubts about whether the dish ran away from the spoon...[Books carried] instruction and admonition in practical wisdom...[Children] were not only learning by listening; they were learning to listen. Listening, like reading and writing and calculating, is a skill.

In the last paragraph it tells how his wife, while cleaning, wonders some if the books should go. After all they do not have kids at home any longer. But then, there will be grandchildren who will love the books anew.

Some of them may need to go. But someday our grandson- of his future siblings and cousins- may walk by those shelves, and some of those books may be moved to his own bookshelves at 1122 Bedroom Lane, Storybookland. And that's why they can never be sold- for silver or gold.

This is why I've started our home library again. We've been aquiring books since 2009 but many have come and gone. It's important to me now to have these for my grandchildren, and maybe even great grandchildren. Somehow I had forgotten the magic of books- and reading aloud (even to older children).