38/365 A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

It would be hard to overstate how much I love this man's writing.   To give you and idea of the quantity of love we're talking about here, I suppose saying that this:

Was basically the high point of my life.
He is, without doubt, my favorite non-fiction writer.  He most certainly lives with C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse and Dorothy Sayers in my top people of all time worship list.

He really can make anything interesting.  I have almost zero interest in science, yet I just finished a 400-odd page book about it.  Besides the whole "he can make any sentence into an oh my gosh I'm going to pee my pants it's so funny situation", he throws the shallow reader like me good bones every once in a while, and gives side notes about peoples' private lives and characters.  School books would ever mention that so-and-so did fieldwork naked on hot days, or that even Marie Curie's cookbooks are pulsing with radioactivity and have to be handled with care - yet those are the things that make it fun for a person like me.  Bill Bryson ruins you for textbooks.

Whether or not any of it sticks in my head, I come away from his books feeling more intelligent, which is a rare and extremely pleasing feeling.

On a side note, I have one of these thingys:

And it saved my sanity during the drive my the family made from California to Arkansas.  On the other side, it says, "Written and read by the author."  Which makes me chortle and shake my head.

CONCLUSION: I love Bill Bryson.  But I already knew that.

P.S.  I also think that cover rocks.

27/365 The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis

Gee whiz, I love C.S. Lewis.  Poor "Gaius and Titius".  Sort of awful to be remembered that way.

I've read this before - but, as with all C.S. Lewis, it never gets old. Every time I re-read his books something finally, really clicks or some sodden, dusty corner of my brain gets a little flash of light and a burst of pep.  He explains things so well.  Even I can understand most of what he's talking about.  Not all or it, but a good piece.  Which is more than I can say of most books.  I feel the terribleness of my own writing rawther keenly when I come out of his books.  I wish I could have heard it in its original lecture form!

I can't really say much about the content of this book, because I will end up sounding like a complete moron.   It's good.   I like how you see the same subject showing up in his other books.  When you read about an idea in three different books, all presenting it through different styles or metaphors or whatever, it has a way of broadening your understanding of the idea.  At least, it does for me.

CONCLUSION:  I ought to read Miracles and The Problem of Pain and The Pilgrim's Regress.  They're the only Lewis books I haven't read, and it's been stupid of me.

25/365 And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I LOVE MAIRA KALMAN.
I love her.  Her pictures make my day better, and make me dress better. She makes me want to get out and do something.  Visit a museum, take lessons, travel, enjoy the neighborhood.  I LOVE her books.  
Her curiosity is... I don't know... delightful!  I think she's so great because she doesn't present herself as some lofty intellectual who is just too well-read and well-educated for you - she writes like a human being.  A smart human being, but still definitely human.  She can still be inspired by things.  Admire people.   She seems humble, I guess.
I hate reading books - popular books of literary criticism in particular - where the author won't come out and tell you that they like something.  I like gushing!  I like hearing that people like the authors I like! Like, a lot!  (Mom, that's why I thought The Magician's Book was so great.  Now you know.)  Blah blah, books about books are supposed to be dry and precise - but literature seems such an imprecise art to me!  I will never agree that this or that novel is the best on earth - never.  Because, at root, the person asserting that Moby Dick is the best ever is still at least a teensy bit biased because they liked it.  Now, if  I said that Moby Dick is the best novel ever you could believe it because I hated Moby Dick.

SO!  I'm sorry I'm so dithery and distracted.  I'm about to go for a swim and I just got home from work and I got a new dress this afternoon (I'm wearing it over my jeans right now) and the Kooks are playing in the background, so focus is a little on the short side this fine day.

CONCLUSION:  I need to check out Spinoza and De Tocqueville.  Spinoza because this is the second book of hers I've read that mentions him, and De Tocqueville because I read about him again today in the intro to The Crucible, and two times is too much of a coincidence.   I LOVE MAIRA I LOVE MAIRA.

13/365 Dear James

This book made me feel somewhat less terrified to start art classes in the fall.   So many worries I've got about a possible future career in illustration were addressed.  The advice was really quite fantastic.

Among other things, he talked about how:

• You have to be relaxed to do good work (which is not rocket science, yet I still try to sit down and force myself to, "just draw something good, dang it!")
• Judging whether you're meant to do something by saying "would I die if I couldn't do this?" is ridiculous, 
• It's okay to be interested in lots things. 

Which are three of the major things I was worrying about.  He said going to a liberal arts college as opposed to art school (like I'm doing) can give you, "an enlarged frame of reference," which in turn, "gives breadth to an image. "  Which is a nice thing to hear, for sure, even if I don't know what it means.

So, I enjoyed this book.   If I do become an artist, I'm going to tack up some of his quotes on the wall.  It would have been perfectly nice as a straight essay, but the format he put it in (letters to an imagined young illustrator, just starting out) made it more engaging.   If it had been letters to a just-starting-out mathematician I wouldn't have read it.  But in my present, panicky state, I'd be happy to clutch at any applicable advice I can find - be it much duller reading than this.

CONCLUSION:  Good advice is a nice thing.   I need to go work on my signature.  Apparently a good signature is important.  Should I go for a pen name of some sort?  (Are they called pen names for artists?  It makes sense.)  My name isn't snappy and charming.  Chopped to first initial and last name for the mysterious touch?  I have no idea.  I don't even have a nickname I could write with a facetious slash of the pen.   I don't know why it would be facetious.  I'm proud that I can spell facetious.

P.S. What a good girl I am.  I began reading this at about six, and now (after some interruptions) I'm finishing the blog post at nine.  I will be in bed before one o'clock.  I am so proud.

12/365 The Four Loves

"That our affections kill us not, nor dye." - Donne

I think I made up for Mrs. Tittlemouse.  By, George what a book.

I almost can't say anything because there is too much to say.  About 40 pages in I began tearing bits of newspaper to stick into the pages I just had to remember.    Yet:

And I was discriminating. 

I adore C.S. Lewis.  He can explain anything.  Just from a shallow enjoyment standpoint he is probably my favorite writer purely for his style or voice or whatever you call it.  A review on the back of this book declares that he, "writes with one of the most self-effacing and congenial pens in the language".  His writing makes me want to weep, it is so perfect.  

Anyways, I liked this book.  I accompanied every other page with a ghastly soundtrack of "Oh my gawsh that makes so much sense!" noises.  I really can't say much else, because if I try to just hit highlights we will be here all night.  (And I really made an effort to be diligent and was done reading by 11:00.  Be proud of me, imaginary readers.)  Much was explained to me.  Learned much, I did, Master Yoda.  I won't say it was a breeze to read - I had to go over a few sentences several times before I got them.  But then, my usual literary fare isn't particularly strenuous.  

His books always throw my balance off, or something like that.  They mess with the ideas I was standing on, make me really evaluate where I am.  Dash it all, they make me go wacko for at least a week.

For me, reading a C.S. Lewis book usually results in, among many other things:

1. Better living.  This is sort of to be expected. 

2. An increase in thoughtfulness.  Not, like, being nicer to people - I mean thinking more.  (Writing more coherently is, unfortunately, not a side effect.)

3. Exponential increase in my awareness of my own ignorance.  Just being confronted with how little I've actually read, thanks to his constant (though never obnoxious) literary references, makes me want to crawl off and hide under my blanket.  I was proud of vaguely recalling that I read Lovelace in British Lit a year or two ago  - and I couldn't tell you the name of the poem (yes, singular) we read to save my life.  By and large, I have no idea what he's talking about.  Most of the time I fancy that, for a slightly lower middle class kid, I had a jolly good education - but C.S. Lewis is very shattering.  Dorothy L. Sayers too.  Major ouch.

4. Lots of tweed-wearing.

Okay! I have to stop now or I never will.  

CONCLUSION:  HOW HAVE I NEVER READ THIS BEFORE?  It was rather good.  I love, love, love, C.S. Lewis.  Imaginary readers, if you haven't read it, I urge you to check this book out.  And everything else he's written too, while you're at it.