Sarah tagged me awhile back for a book meme. I started writing this in August and then forgot about it. Sorry, Sarah:
1. One book that changed your life: Five Aspects of Woman
2. One book that you’ve read more than once: Anne of Green Gables. Many, many times.
3. One book you’d want on a desert island: Collection of Flannery O'Connor's short stories
4. One book that made you laugh:Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
5. One book that made you cry: Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Marcia Marquez
6. One book that you wish had been written: The Place of Justice and Fairness in a Christian Worldview
7. One book that you wish had never been written: I thought long and hard about this, and I don't know. I would have trouble thinking a book was boring or offensive enough to wish it had never been written. Movies and music, sure, but books are the bodies of ideas that would probably be out there floating around anyway. The ideas or the presentation of them might be bad, but to say the book shouldn't have been written seems kind of silly.
8. One book you’re currently reading: War & Peace (I don't know if that counts--I've been reading it off and on for at least a year now, and that's after I started it for the second time. I have to say that Anna Karenina is much, much, much better.) Also, How to Argue and Win Every Time and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read:
Ulysses
10. Now tag five people:
Dad
Tirzah
Becky
And whoever else wants to do it. I don't think there are many other people out there who read my blog. :)
Some friends from church loaned me a DVD of the Verbier Festival & Academy 10th Anniversary Piano Extravaganza, and I am watching it right now. The music is very good, and, of course, poppish, but the thing that strikes me the most about it is the way the personalities of the musicians shines through in the tight camera angles. I've become so used to performances of any sort on my television being very visually polished with beautiful people taking part in them. Professional pianists and string players are not usually very beautiful people, and they are also not used to people watching them perform at close range. Jowls are jiggling, heads are bobbing, teeth are grinding, knobby hands are pounding, and frizzy hair is flying--everyone is having fun making beautiful music, and it shows in such a genuine, transparent way. After the first movement of the first piece--a piano duet--you can clearly see one pianist lean over and whisper to the other, "That was good." Their outfits don't match one another at all. They range from a white tux to a black suit with a red tie to an emerald green evening gown to some sort of bright blue silk top with white pants, but it doesn't matter. The goal is to perform something that sounds exquisite, and everyone is so wrapped up in it that all you see is how absorbed everyone is in the music. It's a far cry from, oh, Jessica Simpson, who can't sing but sure looks darn good while she's doing it. I think music is so much more moving and entertaining when the musicians are clearly enjoying it for its own sake and sharing that enjoyment with their audience.
I realized today that we are approaching the year 007, but I have yet to refer to any year in this decade using the word "aught" in a conversation. Shame on me. That is my goal for the rest of this decade. (I set high standards for myself.)