So what did I read in February?
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
There's a little bit of personal history with this book I should mention first. When I was young, my brother used to play basketball at the Boys and Girls Club in Indianapolis (I think). Before the game started I'd be waiting in the sort of lobby/game room area for the kids. I remember ping pong tables, a TV with a Nintendo and explicit "do your homework first" instructions attached, a very old style free to play arcade basketball game with a Centipede style track ball controller, and a small rack of books. One stuck out in my mind. It had this cover:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle
There's a little bit of personal history with this book I should mention first. When I was young, my brother used to play basketball at the Boys and Girls Club in Indianapolis (I think). Before the game started I'd be waiting in the sort of lobby/game room area for the kids. I remember ping pong tables, a TV with a Nintendo and explicit "do your homework first" instructions attached, a very old style free to play arcade basketball game with a Centipede style track ball controller, and a small rack of books. One stuck out in my mind. It had this cover:
It freaked me out, but entranced me. The back cover description only increased my curiosity:
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger. "Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract." A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book.
Having the book scared to spoil itself stuck in my brain. But maybe I was too scared, didn't want to ask, or something but I never tracked down the book. Yet every time the thought came to me to look into the book, I deliberately avoided spoiling anything of it for myself. So despite being aware of the book since I was young, I knew virtually nothing about it going in, aside from it being a science fiction/fantasy book of some kind. I was also aware that L'Engle including some Christian themes in her books.
Reading it, I can say the experience was certainly sufficiently weird, even dream like, though not so much I didn't understand. Some have commented that the book is basically a beginner introduction to quantum mechanics. I can't speak to that but the concepts here are rich, the story is fun, and it resists the clomping foot of nerdism, creating a captivating world without explaining everything to the point of mundaneness. I say go ahead and try it out, I enjoyed it a lot.
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger. "Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract." A tesseract (in case the reader doesn't know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L'Engle's unusual book.
Having the book scared to spoil itself stuck in my brain. But maybe I was too scared, didn't want to ask, or something but I never tracked down the book. Yet every time the thought came to me to look into the book, I deliberately avoided spoiling anything of it for myself. So despite being aware of the book since I was young, I knew virtually nothing about it going in, aside from it being a science fiction/fantasy book of some kind. I was also aware that L'Engle including some Christian themes in her books.
Reading it, I can say the experience was certainly sufficiently weird, even dream like, though not so much I didn't understand. Some have commented that the book is basically a beginner introduction to quantum mechanics. I can't speak to that but the concepts here are rich, the story is fun, and it resists the clomping foot of nerdism, creating a captivating world without explaining everything to the point of mundaneness. I say go ahead and try it out, I enjoyed it a lot.
How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Been meaning to read this for a while. The style is easy, if dry at times, textbook style. Some people are going to complain that this 'takes the fun out of reading,' but I disagree. We should think critically about what we read, and do our best to get the most of our reading experience.
Been meaning to read this for a while. The style is easy, if dry at times, textbook style. Some people are going to complain that this 'takes the fun out of reading,' but I disagree. We should think critically about what we read, and do our best to get the most of our reading experience.
The Shadow Hero and American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang Two graphic novels. I re-read ABC and enjoyed it just about as much now as when I read it then. Shadow Hero builds on the ideas common to most of Yang's works: Chinese American history and identity, finding yourself when you're a bit of an outsider, being comfortable with how God made you. Great stuff and ABC especially is something I would recommend to people as an example of comics as literature.
