Faust: 15% Complete

I'm still enjoying Faust.  One of the things I like best about it so far is how Goethe (I'm assuming this is a product of the original German, not something added into the translation) mixes different styles of poetry and prose depending on the mood or the character.  Some of the characters use very short, clipped rhymes and meter and some use longer, more sonnet-like poetry when they speak.  It adds a whole other dimension to an already complex fabric of words and emotion which I'm really enjoying.

 

This quote I just like because of the images it conjures up, and because it talks about reading classic literature, obviously a soft spot for me!

 

"Excuse me! in these olden pages

We catch the spirit of the by-gone ages,

We see what wisest men before our day have thought,

And to what glorious heights we their bequests have brought."

The word of the day is "famulus" which is "an assistant or servant, esp. one working for a magician or scholar." (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary).

 

I hope all my American readers had a happy Thanksgiving.  Let the Christmas festivities begin!

Faust: 9% Complete

I'm slowly but surely working through Faust which I'm thoroughly enjoying.  It's actually a little bit more difficult to read than I was expecting, but I find if I slow down and really pay attention to the words and the rhymes and the lyrics, it's really enjoyable.

 

As far as a quote goes, I could pretty much quote the whole piece as I've read so far; it's that poetic and lyrical.  But I managed to select one.  This quote is God talking to Mephistopheles (the demon).  Mephistopheles points out that Faust is not the most loyal follower that God has, and God says,

 

"He serves me somewhat darkly, now, I grant.  Yet will he soon attain the light of reason.  Sees not the gardener, in the green young plant, that bloom and fruit shall deck its coming season."

 

The word of the day is "stager" which is an archaic term for an actor.

 

This Thanksgiving I'm grateful for the access, the education and the time (however scarce) that allows me to read these wonderful works of literature.  At no time in history has wonderful literature been so available to us at our fingertips, and this is a wondrous thing.

 

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Faust: Beginning

Well, I'm back.  Basically I lost my motivation to work on the project for a while, and then I started nursing school and that has eaten up a lot of my time.  But I'm getting better at studying now so I have a little free time and I figured I could work on the project a little at a time.

I know I left off in the middle of A History of the English-Speaking Peoples but I will come back to that at some point.  The problem is, I had to check it out of the library so the setup was not very conducive to my slow reading pace.  So I've decided to move on to a Kindle book, and then come back to Churchill when I have more time.

A quick update on me, since so much has happened since I last was here: I got married in September, I started nursing school two weeks later (my husband is also a nursing student) and I turned twenty-five four days after I got married (it was a busy couple of weeks).  This officially means I have less than five years to finish the project, and I haven't done the calculations yet, but I'm sure I'm way behind pace.

So the next book I'm going to tackle is Faust by Johann Wolfgang van Goethe.  This is a tragic play in two parts written in German in the mid-1700's.  The version I am reading was translated by Charles Timothy Brooks. 

The play tells the traditional German story of Heinrich Faust, a dissatisfied scholar who sells his soul to the devil.  According to Wikipedia, this play is considered one of the greatest works of German literature.  Franz Liszt, the great Hungarian composer, wrote a symphony called Faust Symphony and Charles Gounod wrote an operatic version as well.  There is apparently a musical version by Randy Newman and there are Czech and Russian film adaptations as well.

The Kindle version I have has 226 pages and will probably take me a while to finish because nursing school and work are eating up the majority of my time.

But at least I'm back!

I'm baaaaaccck!!!

Hello faithful readers.  As promised, I am back in blogging land, and will shortly be back with an update on progress with The History of the English-Speaking Peoples.

 

I enjoyed my mostly restful couple of weeks off.  I finished up my finals so now I have just over three months before I start nursing school.  During the two and a half weeks since I last posted, I have read (in no particular order):  Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday (five out of five stars), All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith (five out of five stars), Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift in the Psych E.R. by Julie Holland (three out of five), The Intern Blues by Robert Marion (three out of five), Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling (four out of five...actually I loved this book because I love Mindy Kaling, but objectively, it's just a four out of five.), Heads in Beds by Jacob Tomsky (three out of five), Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps by Kelly Williams Brown (five out of five) and Trauma Junkie: Memoirs of an Emergency Flight Nurse by Janice Hudson (four out of five).

 

By the way, the rating scale I use roughly looks like this:

Five out of five: Awesome book! Someone I know is probably getting a copy of this for Christmas

Four out of five: Very good. I would recommend it.

Three out of five: It was entertaining, but not anything special.

Two out of five: Meh, not very good/wouldn't recommend.

One out of five: I probably didn't finish it, or just I skipped to the end to see what was going to happen.

 

I guess eight books in eighteen days isn't too bad.  Anyway, they were all light reading, so my brain is all refreshed.  Out of all of the above, I laughed the most reading Adulting, was most inspired by Trauma Junkie (I'm considering becoming a flight nurse after I finish nursing school) and objectively think that Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is the best one up there (and the movie with Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt is fun and quirky and good).  All Roads Lead to Austen a must-read for Jane Austen fans and I think they should make it into a movie.  Maybe starring Julia Roberts or even Meg Ryan (is she still making movies) in the lead.  But I digress.

 

Anyway, I'm getting back into Churchill now and I'll give you an update when I have read some more.

 

Happy reading!

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume 2: 75% Complete

Yes, I am woefully overdue for an update.  The truth is, I'm going to take a little sabbatical from the project for a couple of weeks.  Between working and school, I find I'm just too brain-dead at the end of the day to read anything with any weight.  The good news is, though, that I only have three weeks of school left.  My last final is on June 14th, so once that's past, I will resume work on this project. 

 

I have been doing some reading, however, just not books on the list.  I'm catching up on some newer, lighter reading books that I've wanted to read for some time.  In the past week and a half I've read: Wild by Cheryl Strayed (four out of five stars), Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin (five out of five), A Final Arc of Sky by Jennifer Culkin (four out of five), Once Upon a List by Robin Gold (two out of five) and The Girl She Used to Be by David Cristofano (three out of five).  Right now I'm working on Salmon Fishing in the Yemen by Paul Torday.

 

So I will bid you farewell for a couple of weeks, but rest assured, just like the Terminator, I will be back!

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, volume 2: 75% Complete

Many apologies, dear readers, for my prolonged absence.  As many of you have gathered, I am a full-time student, a hospital volunteer and a certified nursing assistant.  The past couple of weeks I have been working 40+ hours a week in addition to going to school and my volunteer shifts.  The nature of my work has been such that I've been able to do quite a bit of reading while I'm there, a luxury I am thoroughly appreciating, but I haven't had much time for blogging.

 

So I finished volume one and I'm most of the way done with volume two now as well and still loving it. 

 

I have a confession to make.  When I was reading on Kindle, I found it easy to look up words that I didn't know, but with a hard-copy book, I've been too lazy to do much of that, especially when I'm at work without a dictionary.  So I don't have a vocabulary word for you today.  But I do have a couple more quotes (I've been folding the corners of the pages over to mark them.  In a library book. *gasp* I promise I'll fold them back up before I return the book.  It's like the book version of "be kind, rewind."  But I digress...)

 

First of all, an example of Churchill's often-biting commentary:

 

"Indeed, no fact stands forth more unchallengeable than that the overwhelming majority of the nation was convinced that Richard [III] had used his power as Protector to usurp the crown and that the princes had disappeared in the Tower.  It will take many ingenious books to raise this issue to the dignity of a historical controversy."

 

And from volume two, an example of his poetic writing:

 

"The pamphlets  [of the Puritans in the 1500's] are loaded with coarse, effective adjectives, and the sentences lumber along like the hay-cart in which the press itself was at one time concealed."

 

And lastly, an example of the humorous bits that Churchill throws in without warning (maybe it wasn't supposed to be funny):

 

There is no surer way of rousing popular excitement than the holding of General Elections in quick succession.  Passions ran high; beer flowed."

 

Politics and beer.  Now that's a time-honored tradition.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, volume I: 62% Complete

My apologies for going so long between updates.  I'm really enjoying A History of the English-Speaking Peoples.  Churchill's writing is funny, engaging and opinionated.  I do a lot of my reading in between classes at school and a couple of times, I have nearly laughed out loud while sitting in my classroom.

 

There haven't been many vocabulary words that I haven't known, but I do have one for you.  The word is "hypocaust" which is "a hollow space under the floor of an ancient Roman building, into which hot air was sent for heating a room or bath"  (definition from The New Oxford American Dictionary).  I was familiar with this concept, but I didn't know that word for it.

 

I have run across so many quotes which are entertaining or interesting or both, but I have to choose a few to share with you.

 

First, from the beginning of the book, as the Bronze Age gives way to the Iron Age:

 

"At this point the march of invention brought a new factor upon the scene.  Iron was dug and forged.  Men armed with iron entered Britain from the continent and killed the men of bronze.  At this point we can plainly recognize across the vanished millenniums a fellow-being.  A biped capable of slaying another with iron is evidently to modern eyes a man and a brother.  It cannot be doubted that for smashing skulls, whether long-headed or round, iron is best."

 

(On a side note, shouldn't the plural of millennium be millennia?  But who am I to correct Churchill...)

 

On the subject of King Arthur:

 

"And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round."

 

Could it be that perhaps Churchill saw himself as a second Arthur, if you will?

 

In the next quote he has just related a rather romantic (in the older sense of the word) story of a love triangle involving Henry II, his wife Eleanor, and a woman simply called "Fair Rosamond."

 

"Tiresome investigators have undermined this excellent tale, but it certainly should find its place in any history worthy of the name."

 

I love how Churchill, while writing a history book, puts the excellence of the tale above the "tiresome" factual history.  He seemed to be rolling his eyes in disgust at anyone who might suggest that this story didn't actually happen.

 

And lastly, not a quote, but an interesting tidbit.  I was, of course, familiar with the name Plantagenet, applied as a sort of surname to the kings and queens of England from Henry II to Richard III.  But apparently this name comes from the emblem of Henry II's house, the broom (plant, not cleaning instrument specifically), which in Latin is called the planta genesta, literally broom plant.

 

Before I close, I want to send out my sympathies to all those affected in the bombings in Boston and the plant explosion in Texas.  May you be embraced by peace and comfort.

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples: Beginning

The next book I'm going to tackle is A History of the English-Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill.  (N.B. On the cover of the book, there is no hyphen between "English" and "Speaking;" however, as there should be one and as it does appear on the title page, I will be putting it in.) For some reason there is no copy of this book for Kindle, as far as I can tell.  Fortunately, the Seattle Public Library has them so I am borrowing them from there, in hard copy. This gives me a chance to use the lovely bookmark my sister gave me for Christmas. (One of the few downsides to Kindle, I've found, is that you don't get to use bookmarks.) 

 

The book was originally written by Churchill (who was, of course, prime minister of the United Kingdom during and after World War II) in the 1930's.  It's publication was delayed by the war, however, and it was not published until the mid-1950's.  The book is four-volumes long (although there is an abridged, one-volume version available) and covers the history of Britain and it's former colonies from the invasion by Rome in 55 BC to the beginning of the first World War in 1914.

 

The book tends to focus mainly on military history and political movement, rather than social or economic history.  Another British prime minister, Clement Attlee, suggested that the book should have been titled, "Things in History that Interest Me."  Nevertheless, the book has endured the test of time for it's judgment of war and politics and for Churchill's lively writing style.  It was one of the books mentioned when Churchill won his Nobel Prize for Literature.

 

This is a book I've been interested in reading for a long time but have put off because of it's length, but I'm excited to begin.  Because I will be reading each volume separately, and because I don't know the page lengths of all the volumes, I will report my progress through each volume as a percentage of that volume's total length, not a percentage of the whole book.

On the Origin of Species: 100% Complete

Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples came in at the library, and I was so excited to start it that I buckled down and finished Darwin over the weekend. 

 

I also had some good news this week! I got a job as a certified nursing assistant at a retirement home and I found out I got accepted to nursing school beginning in the fall! So I'm going to try to do a lot of extra reading between now and September so I will have a little wiggle room once I start nursing school.

 

Overall, I enjoyed this book and I understood more of it than I expected to.  It did seem to be a little repetitive occasionally but not annoyingly so.  I found Darwin's rather conversational writing style refreshing.

 

The final vocabulary word from this book is "fecundate" which means to fertilize.

 

One thing I enjoyed about Darwin was his rather "grass-roots" experimental methods.  In my biology class last quarter, my teacher shared a story about Darwin putting dead birds in his bathtub full of salt water to see how long they could theoretically float in the ocean before sinking.  In some cases, he had rotting birds in the bathtub for more than a month or two.  I can just imagine how enthusiastic his wife was about that.  So when I came across this passage, I once again pictured Darwin conducting his "experiments" with his characteristic enthusiasm:

 

"In the course of two months, I picked up in my garden 12 kinds of seeds, out of the excrement of small birds, and these seemed perfect, and some of them, which I tried, germinated."

 

Next up: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples!

On the Origin of Species; 56% Complete

I'm still plugging through.  Despite my initial cockiness, I have to admit I'm understanding less and less of this book as I work through it.  But I do understand some and those parts at least are still interesting. I put a hold on the first volume of Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples at the Seattle Public Library (it's not available for Kindle), so I want to wrap this book up so I can start reading that when it comes in.

 

The word of the day is "fecundate" which means to fertilize.

 

I have another interesting story for you that Darwin tells:

 

"One of the strongest instances of an animal apparently performing an action for the sole good of another, with which I am acquainted, is that of aphides voluntarily yielding their sweet excretion to ants: that they do so voluntarily, the following facts show.  I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphids on a dock-plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours.  After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to excrete.  I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one excreted; I then tickled and stroked them with a hair in the same manner, as well as I could, as the ants do with their antennae; but not one excreted.  Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit them, and it immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to be well aware what a rich flock it had discovered; it them began to play with its antennae on the abdomen first of one aphis and then of another; and each aphis, as soon as it felt the antennae, immediately lifted up its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop of sweet juice, which was eagerly devoured by the ant.  Even the quite young aphides behaved in this manner, showing that the action was instinctive, and not the result of experience.  But as the excretion is extremely viscid, it is probably a convenience to the aphides to have it removed; and therefore probably the aphides do not instinctively excrete for the sole good of the ants."