March

This is the third month of my blog and as I publish this post I realize why waiting till the end of the month to go over my books is ridiculous.  I sit here with 8 books, most of which I would like to discuss in depth.  I think for the remainder of the year I will post as I read books.  This will make posting easier for me and less daunting than trying to go over eight books at the same time, or even more when my work at Yellowstone starts in about 4 weeks.

So here I go:

1. How to Read a Church by Richard Taylor.  237 pages.  This is a very simple book which does exactly what its title says.  One of the biggest finds in here is that Doric columns represent males in a church and Ionic represent females.  I think Corinthian represent the Virgin Mary.  SO when you walk around an old European church and find Doric columns, that church, or chapel, may be consecrated for a male Saint.  THere were other nice bits of information in there as well.

2. The Unvanquished by William Faulkner.  254 pages.  One of my favorite writers, this is a nice collection of stories concerning a family during and after the Civil War.  Faulkner could write about flies eating shit and his language alone would make it a worthwhile endeavor.

3. Mort by Terry Pratchett.  243 pages.  Another fun Discworld enterprise, nothing more.

4.  The Age of Capital by Eric Hobsbawm.  308 pages.  One of the more diffiuclt history books to read.  I wish I could say that I understood over half of what I read here, but I'm not sure ;).  There is a lot here to recommend, but the audience is rather limited to those more educated in history than anything else.

5. The Siege of Thebes by John Lydgate.  150 pages.  A good reason why I read this book, the author was born a mere 20 minute drive from my parents house in Newmarket, and he was also a monk in one of my favorite towns in England, Bury St. Edmunds.  Lydgate considered himself the second coming of Chaucer and fell rather short, but to watch it is kind of funny.  His story telling goes from exciting to digressions so boring you want to skip over whole sections of the poem.  His use of language is redundant and repetitive. His material is Ancient Greece, and yet he imposes his current beliefs onto the past in rather awkward ways.  For example, a prophet of old is swallowed by the ground and falls to Lucifer for worshipping false gods 800 years before Christ.  I just found the 100 lines of digression extremely funny.  I guess you had to be there.  I would read something else by him.

6.  Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons.  233 pages.  Funny, humorous, and silly at times.  This was probably the best book I read this month.  It was a nice comic novel with such great quotations as, "who let the bull out" followed by "it was me"; and "there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm".

7. The Walking Dead volume 6 by Robert Kirkland.  A good graphic novel.

8.  Bridge to Terabithia by katherine Paterson.  163 pages.  A kids novel dealing with death and growing up.  Kind of sad, but I think I should have read something else.  It is a Newberry winner, but it is not one of those children's books that adults also enjoy, like the Hobbit, The Wind in the Willows, or A Clockwork Orange.

So now I have read just 16 books in 3 months.  I am already behind 9 books if I want to read 100 this year.