My Best Books of 2012

 

I read twenty-five books this year—about average for me; fewer than I’d like to, but not a bad number. These are the best among them.

 

This isn’t a list of best books of 2012—just the best ones I read in 2012. Only a few were actually published during the past year. Some are from recent years, others are much older, but all were outstanding and well worth reading. (They’re given in the order in which I read them, not in ranked order.)

 

• The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. This novel about three recent graduates of Brown University at first seems as though it might be a typical, forgettable story about young people drifting after college, their sexual and other problems; but it is surprisingly deep and rich as it follows the troubled relationship of two of the protagonists—one of whom is struggling with mental illness—and the spiritual quest of the third.

 

• In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson. The chilling true story of an American family in Germany during the early days of the Nazi regime, focusing especially on the daughter, who gets involved in an affair with the head of the Gestapo.

 

• Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov. A sad-comic novel about an elderly professor who is made a figure of fun by his professional colleagues yet triumphs in the end.

 

• Great House by Nicole Krauss. A wonderful novel that follows an antique desk (yes) from the present back in time through the lives of the people who owned it. Krauss is one of our best young novelists; her History of Love was also outstanding.

 

• van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith. A huge, all-encompassing, and compassionate portrait of the great painter and the psychological demons that drove him. van Gogh’s own self-destructiveness is wrenching to read about, as are the many failures he experienced in his life, but his genius always shines through. The book is large but reads like a novel, and it’s liberally illustrated with many of his greatest and lesser-known works, including early sketches.

 

• Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel. I’ve already written about these; my personal best of the year.

 

• The Pickwick Papers. Dickens’ first and most comic novel. The characterizations of Pickwick and his servant Sam Weller alone make this worth reading.

 

• Of Time and the River by Thomas Wolfe. Wolfe’s sequel to Look Homeward, Angel, which I loved. I spent four years looking for this sequel and finally discovered it in a used book store in Philadelphia. Longer and less unified than Angel—probably too long— but still a fascinating look at the young adulthood of would-be writer Eugene Gant, literary stand-in for Wolfe himself.

 

• Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury’s classic about a futuristic society in which books are banned and “firemen” are those whose job it is to burn them. It tells the story of one fireman who eventually joins the rebels—a cadre of outcasts from society who memorize books.

 

• Catherine of Aragon by Garrett Mattingly. Well-written and enlightening biography of Henry VIII’s first and later discarded wife, it shows a woman of education, class, and strength who was loved by her people, loyal to her husband the king, and eventually destroyed by him.

 

• The Seven-Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton. Merton’s autobiography of his well-traveled youth and eventual calling to serve God as a Carthusian monk—an order that observes silence.

 

• Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander. If you’re at all interested in near-death experiences, this is a must read. The author is a neurosurgeon who suffered a ferocious viral attack that nearly destroyed his brain and had him in a coma for almost a week—during which period  he visited the afterlife and came back with the knowledge of perfect and everlasting love.

 

 

So those are my “bests” for the past year. As 2013 begins, I have a store of treasures waiting to be opened and read, beginning with Zadie Smith’s NW. I’m looking forward to another year of great reading, and maybe I can break thirty books this year!

 

Anyone else have lists of their “bests”? I’d love to read them.

 

 

 

 

 

One Word for 2013: Renewal: Part 2

 

Yesterday I posted my one word for 2013: “renewal.” Now here are some specific areas in which I feel the need for renewal:

 

• Writing. Although I began blogging this year, I have not made much time at all for indulging in my love of other types of creative writing. I have been promising myself every year that I would return to the revised draft of my long-ago NaNoWriMo novel, yet so far I haven’t made any further progress on it. This is something I really want to do for my own fulfillment. I don’t have any illusions about finding a professional, commercial publisher for it, although I’d like to try; I’m really thinking of looking into self-publishing, just so I can say I did it. And, since I’m not getting any younger, I’d love to have a workable draft finished before my next birthday in September. So I will make this public here: My first act of renewal will be to renew my zest for writing. And to help me get started, I've signed up for an online writing course.

 

• Health and fitness. This is something everybody identifies with. Two years ago I had thyroid disease that really took a toll on me; last year I had a lingering virus and a fall and concussion. So I haven't been paying enough attention to exercising in a while. I’m reasonably healthy now but I need to concentrate on getting more fit and (hopefully) losing about 10 pounds. During the nice warm weather I find it pretty easy to go out and jog, but I get completely lost in the winter. So I need to find indoor exercises. And just this morning I went out and bought myself some pretty new workout wear, just to help get in the mood!

 

• Return and recommitment to blogging. Last New Year’s Day I began this blog in a rush of enthusiasm. I was constantly looking for things to write about and managed to find quite a few. As weeks and months passed, I discovered a wealth of wonderful blogs and wonderful people blogging, and I really enjoyed reading and meeting all of them. I tackled the A-Z Challenge with enthusiasm. But in time I found that I was beginning to neglect both my own blog and those of others that I had enjoyed and signed up to follow. Yes, time does get scarce sometimes, but this year I want to form the habit of blogging at least once a week, as well as visiting other blogs at least once a day. I enjoy having this outlet for my thoughts, feelings, enthusiasms, and sorrows, and I don’t want to lose that.

 

• Faith. I strongly believe that God saw me through the trials of these past years; I certainly called on Him often enough. I’ve found sustenance from attending Mass and being part of my church community, but I also want to explore and deepen my faith by learning more about exactly what faith is and how God’s presence is manifested in our lives. I finished up this year by reading The Seven-Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton and Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, both of which gave me a lot to think about. I plan to continue my reading in this area.

 

• My love of learning. From advancing as a crocheter to returning to my passion for English history, I hope to spend this year constantly learning—one of the things I originally planned to focus on in this blog. I also want to learn to cook and bake more than I do rather than relying on the same recipes all the time. And who knows what other opportunities there may be to learn? I hope to stay open to them.

 

• Being and becoming a more giving person. This is one area in which I feel I benefited from the experience of caregiving. Since caring for my mother, I feel as though I’ve opened up much more to the world and other people. I’m still shy and introverted, but now I think there are really things I can do within those limits to help others: the prayer shawl ministry I joined at church; the Christmas-caroling group, again at church, in which we visited nursing homes; and the day my husband and I spent working for Habitat for Humanity are just small examples.  I really believe that every one of us can do things to make life easier for those who need help.

 

• And of course maintaining and renewing my ties with family and friends.

 

 

Again, I wish all of you a healthy, happy, and prosperous new year, and may you achieve all of your own goals!

 

One Word for 2013: Renewal

 

While thinking about how to write a New Year post and to celebrate one year of blogging, I came across the One-Word Challenge.

 

The challenge is to choose just one word to describe what you want this year to be. So here is my word for 2013:

Image by Melanie at Only a Breath

After five difficult years that began with my brother’s death and culminated in the loss of my mother in August, I feel the need to renew my life, my spirit, my peace of mind, my health, you name it. I’ve been looking forward to this year to do that, but until now I hadn’t wrapped it up in a single word. I think this one is perfect.

 

At the most stressful times during caregiving for my mother, I found strength in knowing that it couldn’t last forever, that someday I would be able to breathe easily again, to be free from worry about her; at the time I felt a little guilty and selfish about those feelings. But I knew I would need to find renewal and new purpose once my life was no longer entwined with hers. In the days after she passed, I had a sense of calm and peace in knowing that she was safe now and that I had done well by her. Now that the months since have given me some solace and perspective, my hope for this year is to extend that sense of peace and to return to finding the core of loves, interests, and maybe even talents that define me to myself.

 

I’ll write more about this tomorrow. In the meantime, I invite you to visit the link given above and consider choosing one word to define the year 2013 for yourself! When you find one, visit  Melanie, and she will generously make you a beautiful button like mine with your very own word on it!

 

And please feel free to share your words here.

A happy and successful New Year to you all!

 

“What Should I Do?” 

Many, many bloggers have been writing about the horrific tragedy in Connecticut. I didn’t think I wanted to add to the number. But last Sunday’s Gospel reading in church really hit home, and after a week of reflection, I decided to write down some thoughts.

 

“What should I do?”

 

This is the question that was asked repeatedly of  John the Baptist: “What should I do” to prepare for the coming of the Messiah.

 

Since last Friday, many people are asking, “What can we do?” It’s natural for us all to feel helpless and impotent in the face of such horror. But although nothing can bring those innocent children or courageous teachers back, there are some things--perhaps small, yet meaningful--that each of us as individuals can do. All it takes is the will.

 

At first I was going to write long paragraphs exhorting everyone to stand up for the two major issues here: gun control and mental health and illness. But those conversations have been in the air for days now, and I don’t think I need to add to them. People are already thinking about them, hard and seriously, and this is a very good thing.

 

My fellow blogger Sharon Hodor Greenthal, on Empty House, Full Mind, has linked to some excellent resources concerning gun control and mental illness. I urge you to check out her blog post.

 

There are still a few things, though, that I would like to emphasize, things that any one of us can do. Both could be ways of reforming our culture.

 

Stand up against our culture of violence. We have to take a good look at ourselves and ask ourselves if we really want the kind of society that builds its entertainment industry out of bloodshed and death. There is a lot of solid evidence that children who grow up watching violent media are more likely to become violent adults. Our movies are becoming more and more bloody, promote more and more calloused attitudes toward violence, and promote vengeance as a virtue, and they rake in millions of dollars. One easy step that anyone can do is to STOP putting money in the pockets of exploiters who produce these kinds of things. The same goes for television shows, video games, and music. This is one area in which the people, not the government, hold all the power. If these things stop making money, they will stop being made. It’s simple economics.

 

Keep beauty and love in the world.  

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There are things every one of us can do to help to heal ourselves and the world. Judaism has a lovely phrase for this: tikkun olam, “mending the world”.

 

Spread the power of beauty. Terrible events like this can make us despair, but don’t let despair grow into hopelessness and helplessness. Fight destructive actions with constructive ones. Creation negates destruction.

 

Make something beautiful. Make handicrafts if you have the talent and desire. Write poetry and songs. Plant beautiful flowers in a garden, and share them with others. Write thoughtful, heartfelt letters to people you love.

 

Fight against the hollow of negativity by doing positive things. Give love. Volunteer to do something good for people who need it, people you don’t know.

 

Adopt a pet and give it the love it needs, and the love it gives you will be a blessing and comfort.

 

Pray. The power of prayer has been demonstrated. Pray for the victims and their families. Pray for our country and for humanity. There’s an old saying about war: “There are no atheists in foxholes.” This is a time to contemplate and reconsider whether we have the ability to humble our pride and call on a higher power—whatever you may believe it or him/her to be—and admit that we need help, as a people, as a country, as individuals.

 

Share all the positive things and beautiful things in the world and in life with others. Don’t let ugliness control you or sicken your mind. Believe in beauty and in hope, and do your best to bring them about. Mend the world, in your own little ways.

 

Join the “Kindness Movement.” Ann Curry of NBC recently posted on Twitter a call for “26 Acts of Kindness”, asking people to do one kind act for every one of the victims. I think this is a wonderful idea, and I’m already thinking about what I can do. For more details, see: http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/18/15999109-if-you-do-good-youll-feel-good-ann-curry-explains-origins-of-26acts-of-kindness?lite

 

Are you in?

 

 

 

Enabling Henry:

Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies

 

Book Review

 

 

 

 

 

Mountains of books, fiction and nonfiction, have been written about Henry VIII and his wives, particularly Anne Boleyn. But Hilary Mantel’s novels are unlike any of them.

 

 

 

First of all, they aren’t about Henry at all. Their main, viewpoint character is Thomas Cromwell, a commoner who rose from blacksmith’s abused son to become arguably the most powerful man in England. Second, they are complex and beautiful literary works that well deserve the Booker Prizes they both won.

Wolf Hall, published in 2009, deals with Cromwell’s youth and rise to power under Cardinal Wolsey and then King Henry, his family life, and his maneuvering in bringing about Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon. Bring Up the Bodies, published in 2012, deals with Henry’s disillusionment with Anne, his attraction to Jane Seymour, and Cromwell’s unscrupulous means of ridding the king of Anne and her troublesome family.

 

 

Henry VII

and Catherine of Aragon

Jane Seymour

 

In these novels Mantel accomplishes the kind of revision of history that only fiction can. She dares to take on a historical character who is almost universally reviled and make him into a many-layered, complex human being. The world knows Cromwell, to the extent it knows him at all, as Henry VIII’s closest advisor, marital strategist, and hatchet man. He is not generally as well known as his later kinsman, Oliver Cromwell, but what the world does know is mostly repugnant. Grasping, self-interested, ruthless, scheming, ambitious without scruples, selling his ability and loyalty to whoever can benefit him the most, be it Cardinal Wolsey or King Henry—all of this is received wisdom about Thomas Cromwell. And though it may all be true, Mantel has managed to temper that perception of him for at least as long as the reader is under the spell of her writing.  

Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey

The secret to her success may well be her manipulation of point of view. She uses a close third person that somehow reads like first person yet maintains a crucial distance between reader and character. By referring to her protagonist as “he,” even the first time we meet him, she puts the reader inside Cromwell’s mind yet still manages to withhold just enough so that we don’t feel we really know the inmost soul of him. It creates an effect similar to first person without the degree of self-revelation that first person provides.

 

This device does tend to create some pronoun confusion, particularly in Wolf Hall, forcing the reader to stop and reread to understand which character is being referred to. Probably this slight flaw was pointed out by critics, because she makes an effort in the second novel to clarify more—to say “he, Cromwell” when there’s chance of confusion. But it works just as well, so nothing is lost.

 

This use of point of view manipulates the reader—in the best manner of great fiction—by causing us to forget or skip over the elisions in Cromwell’s story, the things Mantel partly withholds from us, including the most base elements in Cromwell’s character and the real nature of his maneuverings. These things, filtered through Cromwell’s mind as part of the duties he owes his king, become almost unremarkable, mixed in as they are with such duties as his handling of the royal treasury.

 

 Thomas Cromwell

In Wolf Hall Mantel shows us a man who has become self-made, who has worked his way up from the roughness of his childhood to somehow become educated and erudite, a man who has traveled Europe and worked in many professions, eventually becoming a lawyer and protégé to Wolsey, who was then the most powerful man in England after the king. She shows us Cromwell’s devotion and loyalty to the cardinal, a genuine feeling that curves back in a surprising way during the events of Bring Up the Bodies.

 

She shows us a loving family man who is devastated at the loss of his wife and two daughters to the plague, a man who takes in orphans and destitute people, shares his home with them, makes several of them proteges of his own. It’s a startling look at the man that doesn’t fit our preconceived notions of him. And in making Cromwell actually sympathetic, Mantel hides much of his cruelty and horrid deeds; so that when, in Bring Up the Bodies, we see all of his terrible ruthlessness come out in his persecution of Anne and her putative lovers, it’s even more chilling coming from this character we thought we knew.

 

Mantel makes us want to believe that Cromwell wasn’t the monster that history paints him as, makes us wonder whether his case might be more like that of Richard III; will these books spawn a Thomas Cromwell Society, dedicated to erasing the stains of history from his name? Of course, the history of the Tudor regime and the sixteenth century is documented just about down to every stitch of clothing; it doesn’t seem likely that Cromwell has been too unfairly represented. Yet these books carry the message of inscrutability that much great fiction illuminates: that the human mind and heart are always a mystery. Psychology has taught us that a person’s actions are mediated by context, by time and place, by the society he or she lives in and what’s necessary to survive in the world, nearly as much as they are by character and personality, and this is especially true of times as brutal as that of the Tudors. Was Cromwell an unfeeling monster, or was he a man who had decency in him that was corrupted by his insular world? Mantel raises the question and leaves us to try to answer it.

 

As a lover of English history, I’ve always tended toward the Plantagenets and hated the Tudors. But since reading these books I’ve read biographies of Catherine of Aragon and of Thomas Cranmer, Henry’s archbishop of Canterbury; I have found a sudden fascination for the people who surrounded the Tudors, who aided or were victimized by them. The real achievement of a historical novelist is to make her readers think and reconsider what we know or thought we knew about a person or a period, to excite our curiosity to learn more; this is Mantel’s achievement in these novels. And I was thrilled to find out that she is writing one more novel to make a Cromwellian trilogy; I can’t wait for it to be published. Bring up the next book!

The Tower of London--where Henry's enemies ended up.

What I Learned...

WHAT  I LEARNED FROM THE OCTOBER PHOTO-A-DAY CHALLENGE

 

This past month, for the first time, my blog and I participated in Fat Mum Slim’s photo-a-day challenge. This was the first time since the April A-Z blogging challenge that I committed to doing and sharing something every day.

 

As it turned out, I didn’t end up doing it every day. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun and learned a few things along the way.

 

• I discovered creativity in myself. Although I had printed out her list of topics for photos and spent a few days thinking about it, I had pretty much decided against it, largely because the prompt for the first day of the challenge was “take a picture of where you’re standing.” That didn’t sound very inspiring to me. Then, as I was going down my stairs, I stopped on a step and looked down, and the light of imagination came on. Right in front of me, an interesting picture of where I’m standing! Voila—I was in. So I began to look at things differently.

 

• I found myself noticing creativity by others. This was one of my favorite photos from the challenge. These gourds were on the table in a restaurant where my husband and I had dinner in Troy, New York, and when I saw them, I had to take the photo. I love the creativity of whoever put them there and set them this way, like cuddling swans!

 

• I carried my camera with me more often, on walks with my dog, to restaurants, looking for things I might not ever have noticed otherwise, and found them.

 

• Even though I “cheated” a little sometimes by using photos I already had in my files, I discovered a new purpose for these pictures and a new way of looking at them. They became more than just random shots; they became part of a project. And I learned to think selectively and creatively through the process of finding photos to fit a given idea. Now I’m thinking about possibly organizing my photos according to theme and—do something(?) with them!

 

• I learned that I like taking pictures at restaurants.

 

• And pictures of signs.

 

• My favorite topics were the ones that were sort of abstract: shadow, light, angle, color. These let me really use my imagination.

 

• This is the first digital camera I’ve had, and I’ve had it a little over a year. It’s fun and easy to use, but it has its limitations. I’m used to using an SLR, and I like having a long telephoto and especially a macro lens. I had some trouble with the “closeup” prompt;  I wanted to take a very close shot of one of my medieval coins, but I couldn’t get close enough to get the detail without blurring. So I may eventually considering getting a digital SLR. 

 

• Now the negative lesson, or as a better term, self-insight. I have trouble following through on things over the long term. I tend to start enthusiastically but then lose momentum later on. I found that this happened with this challenge as the month went along. I began skipping days. Mostly these were days on which the prompts didn’t really catch my interest, but I also became too lazy to really think about them and try to find a creative angle.

 

Looking back, I see that I missed about six days’ worth of photos. There were no rules for this challenge, but still I feel I let myself down a little bit. I know that I can do things in month-long stretches; I’ve completed NaNoWriMo and the A-Z blogging challenge. So the next time I decide to do this, I hope to be able to finish all of it.

 

Finally, doing this challenge has reminded me of why I began this blog: as a way of celebrating the things that we don’t always notice, the small things that may not seem important in themselves but that all together give life its richness. I know that many of my posts this year have dealt with sadness and loss, but those things are also part of the richness of life, because without them, we wouldn’t know how to appreciate what we have. Another purpose of my blog was to celebrate lifelong learning…so this is what I’m doing here! And I’m sure I’ll take up this challenge again in some future month.

October Photo a Day Challenge: Day 31

 

My photo-a-day challenge entry for today.

 

Day 31: Photographer’s Choice

Prompt for the last day of October: take a picture of anything you please.

 

Chinese lanterns, taken on our trip to Philadelphia. Aren't they cheerful?