pan★★☆☆☆
I'm glad I read this as an influential historical document, but wow! Despite my strict religious upbringing and long-term fascination with traditional Christian culture, I was not prepared for the authoritarian worldview outlined by Benedict's Rule.
p. 21: 'At thirteen, [Orwell] won a scholarship to the most elite [public school] of all, Eton, where he spent another four years, acquiring an accent that marked him as an outsider among the poor without making him an inside among the rich.'
pick★★★★☆
A solid biography from the English-language Bergman authority.
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama
📖 God and the Devil: The Life and Work of Ingmar Bergman by Peter Cowie
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
p. 267: During the filming of Shame in 1967, Bergman was already contemplating his demise on Fårö: 'When I am dead, I want them to stuff me and put me in the cutting room. That's where I'll sit and nod over the desk with the help of an inserted contraption. The summer tourists will put a Swedish crown in a box to see the marvelous display. The money could go to young film producers. But until then, I just pray to be left in peace in my own home.'
Recent acquisitions:
📖 'Norwegian Folk Tales from the Collection of Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe', Illustrated by Erik Werenskiold and Theodor Kittelsen
📖 'Tales of King Arthur Illustrated' by Thomas Mallory, Edited and Abridged with an Introduction by Michael Senior
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Showings (Classics of Western Spirituality) by Julian of Norwich
📖 Understanding British English: Bridging the Gap Between the English Language and its American Counterpart (Revised & Updated) by Margaret E. Moore
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Ireland's Pubs: The Life and Lore of Ireland Through its Finest Pubs by Sybil Taylor
📖 Sweden: Land of the Midnight Sun by Martina Forti Stefania Belloni
📖 The View in Winter: Reflections on Old Age by Ronald Blythe
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272-1377 by Michael Prestwich
📖 Early Irish Monasteries by Conleth Manning
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 W. H. Auden: The Life of a Poet by Charles Osborne
📖 Shakespeare and the Problem of Meaning by Norman Rabkin
📖 Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
p. 80: 'Liv Ullmann has written, "When the camera is as close as Ingmar's sometimes gets, it doesn't only show a face but also what kind of life this face has seen."'
p. 74: 'No director has torn at his open wounds so insistently as Bergman.'
p. 25: '(Bergman) was by nature a maverick when young, and inevitably that collided with the dogma that informed every aspect of life at home.'
pick★★★★☆
It was the experience of a lifetime to be led on a tour of Elizabethan sites in England in June, 2023 by the author, my undergraduate professor many years ago.
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions by Robert Gittings:
📖 Young Thomas Hardy
📖 Thomas Hardy's Later Years
I already had these in a somewhat battered combined edition so I was beyond excited to find these beautiful first edition hardbacks with dust jacket covers at a local charity shop for only a few dollars! To whoever donated them - thank you! They will be cherished for a lifetime!
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
P. 165: The legislative control of sin: 'The protection of the Commonwealth was a secular issue, which made protecting the nation from God's wrath similar to protecting it from a Spanish invasion. It became increasingly important that magistrates protect God's honor lest He rain pestilence, famine, war, and recession on England.'
Page 157: 'To see the Crown and lay people greedily snatching up church property, even if justified by higher ideals, must have bred an opportunistic state of mind and a flexible conscience. To acquire a dissolved chantry and close the village school was not an act of piety. Some people tried to expiate their greed with new schools and other gifts, but the example remained negative.'
Page 153: '[John Donne's] third satire is a pointed interrogation of religion, with its insistence that there is truth but it is not taught by theological factions. "Fool and wretch," he asks, ⬇️
Page 147: 'In practice the communities of England looked less like the New Jerusalem than like confessionally confused commonwealths in which people of various opinions about ecclesiology and soteriology mixed indiscriminately and used religion when it was convenient.'
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them by Robert A. Orsi
📖 The Hiding Places of God: A Personal Journey into the World of Religious Visions, Holy Objects, and Miracles by John Cornwell
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
so-so★★★☆☆
I bought this and read it to explore the clash of native worldview with Christianity in early mediaeval Ireland. The story was interesting and the writing was moving at times. It would have earned a higher rating if 1) it's central framing device wasn't that a pagan woman's writings somehow survived mediaeval Christianity into modern times in order to be translated by Horsely (so very unlikely that it borders on fantasy), ⬇️
Recent acquisitions:
📖 London's Lost Rivers by Paul Talling
📖 Suffolk Summer by John T. Appleby
#UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Harvest by Jim Crace
📖 Eight Modern Writers (Oxford History of English Literature) by J.I.M. Stewart
📖 Kristin Lavransdatter III: The Cross by Sigrid Undset
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Lindisfarne Gospels by Janet Backhouse
📖 7 ½ Lessons About the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 George Orwell: A Life by Bernard Crick (on my wish list for a few years)
📖 Another Brick in the Wall: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song by Cliff Jones (read this 25 years ago!)
📖 Atheism (20th Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism) by Étienne Borne
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Badger Knight by Kathryn Erskine
📖 Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Monarch Notes)
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent Penguin Monarchs acquisitions (only $2 each!):
📖 Stephen by Watkins
📖 Henry II by Barber
📖 Richard I by Ambridge
📖 Henry III by Church
📖 Henry VI by Ross
📖 Edward IV by Pollard
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
pick★★★★☆
Ingenious. So completely outside my normal reading. Recommended by my friend, Shawn.
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Essential Erasmus: Selected and Translated with Introduction and Commentary by John P. Dolan (gift from my good friend Shawn)
📖 Ecohumanism (Volume 15 of Humanism Today) edited by Robert B. Tapp
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman
📖 The Conquerers by Thomas B. Costain
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent fiction acquisitions:
📖 The Sword with the Golden Hilt by Margery Evernden
📖 The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans #LetUtahRead
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The English Mediaeval Parish Church by G. H. Cook
📖 My Latin Mass Prayer Book by Bart Tesoriero
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
The new library building where I work opened to the public on Monday morning (this photo taken 36 hours earlier). Casually talked about for 25 years, seriously talked about for 15 years, actively created for the last 4 years. I'm so happy and so tired. #LitsyLibrarians
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Caxton: The Description of Britain: A Modern Rendering by Marie Collins
📖 Imeall am Domhain: Walking at the Edge of the World by T.P. O'Conchúir and Aimee Ericson
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Monastery Mornings: My Unusual Boyhood Among the Saints and Monks by Michael Patrick O'Brien
📖 The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha (New Revised Standard Version)
📖 Twenty One Saints by Aloysius Croft
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens
📖 Common Sense by Thomas Paine
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks (this is a rare case of buying the book after having read it. ★★★★★)
📖 The English Nation: The Great Myth by Edwin Jones
📖 Clem Attlee: Labour's Great Reformer by Francis Beckett
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
so-so★★★☆☆
I listened to the audiobook. I didn't engage as deeply with its ideas as I would have liked. I hope to re-read it at some point.
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Getting Started with Latin: Beginning Latin for Homeschoolers and Self-Taught Students of Any Age by William E. Linney
📖 Brian Boru: Emperor of the Irish by Morgan Llywelyn
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 My History: A Memory of Growing Up by Antonia Fraser
📖 Essex Churches and Chapels: A Select Guide by Members of the Friends of Essex Churches
📖 How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
📖 The Ring of the Nibelung by Richard Wagner, translated by Andrew Porter
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
I'm honoured to be the recipient of the 2024 Cache Valley Library Association Library Hero Award, presented each January to someone who has given "notable service to libraries in Cache Valley."
I love this organisation and have so much respect for its members and the good work they do in our area. Long may it continue.
https://cachelibraries.blogspot.com/p/library-heroes.html
Recent acquisitions:
📖 The Owl Service by Alan Gardner (recommended by Robert Macfarlane & @Bookwomble)
📖 Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
Recent acquisitions:
📖 Broken Signposts: How Christianity Makes Sense of the World by N.T. Wright
📖 Medieval Lives: Eight Charismatic Men and Women of the Middle Ages by Norman F. Cantor
#fREADom #UniteAgainstBookBans
