Friday Five, Mamas!

1. Favorite thing to read? Anything, literally! I'm an omnivorous reader. I love novels. If I had to pick, they'd come first. But I also read everything else, including cereal boxes. Love my magazines (First Things, Touchstone, Sports Illustrated). The only thing I've practically given up is the newspaper. It makes me short-tempered.

2. Favorite novel? I have to pick ONE????? Can't do it. Let's see. Pride and Prejudice. David Copperfield. The Power and the Glory. Empire Falls. Staggerford. Till We Have Faces. The Little World of Don Camillo. The Violent Bear It Away. Ender's Game.

3. Favorite poem? Journey of the Magi, by T. S. Eliot. Too long to post here. Maybe later on the main page.

4. One thing I've always wanted to read? War and Peace, just to say I've read it. Crime and Punishment, just because I want to.

5. Currently reading? Third book of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy: The Cross. Also reading an odd little murder mystery The Dying of the Light by Michael Dibdin. On deck? Moo by Jane Smiley.

1. fiction is my favorite; but like MamaT, i'll read almost anything. do plays or screenplays count? i especially like reading directions on everyday household items such as toothpaste and shampoo. i 'spose that's nonfiction?
the only things i won't read are the rags in grocery lines. i pretend to read things like better homes & gardens or southern living, only to shove them in front of the twelve year old with her wittle boobies hanging out under the caption "the bisexual in you" on the cover of cosmo girl.

2. shyuh. love among the cannibals, precious bane, with malice towards some, 1984, the screwtape letters, and my all-time fave has to be the little prince.

3. not real big on poetry, but the spoon river anthology is really good. my favorite poem is The Heart by Stephen Crane:
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."

4. dante's inferno, et al.

5. the porpoise, er purpose driven life

Oh, Smock, take the time to read the Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso! I read them 18 months ago--they are so fabulous!!!!!!!

I never read them in school--thanks to the "relevancy" movement during my high school years and the technical nature of my degrees from college and grad school.

1. In-style for the pretty pictures and Novels.
2.This is too hard...GWTW, The Princess Bride, Owen Meany, To Kill a Mockingbird, Where the Red Fern Grows.
3. Bed at Night
In winter I get up at night
and dress by yellow candlelight
In summer quite the other way
I have to go to bed by day,
I have to go to bed and see
the birds still hopping on the tree
and hear the grown up people's feet
still going past me on the street.
And does it not seem hard to you
when all the sky is clear and blue
and I would like so much to play
To have to go to bed by day.
4. Crime and Punishment, too
5. A Diary of Private Prayer and Pride and Prej.

I almost did this same quiz today...but made my own up...

1. Current favorite type of reading is history. Right now, I'm on a biography of Franco, and I've recently finished God's Funeral, From Dawn to Decadence, and The Etruscans. Given my college major (economics), I'm playing catch up on all the stuff I should have learned years ago.
2. Favorite novel is a tough one. There are so many great ones out there. So, I'll go with an unusual selection--The Light and the Dark by CP Snow.
3. Favorite poem is easy--Ash Wednesday by T. S. Eliot (too long to post, and I certainly don't know it by heart). It's lovely. Of course virtually anything by Auden or Eliot is wonderful.
4. The Brothers Karamazov. However, with two young girls, a busy work schedule, and everything that goes with that, I doubt I'll get to it anytime soon.
5. Franco, by Paul Preston. Very detailed. However, the author's very liberal bias comes through loud and clear. To hear him tell it, the Republicans were secular saints, there wasn't a communist in sight opposing Franco, and the support rendered by Moscow was insignificant. But, taken with a large grain of salt, I'm learning quite a bit.

1. Classic Philosophy, especially Plato
2. Once an Eagle, Anton Myrer. Only book I've read that actually moved an acquaintance to name a child after the hero...He was right to do it too!
3. Divine Comedy (the new Esolen translation is great!), and G.K. Chesterton's "Lepanto"
4. Summa Theologiae (only read excerpts...)
5. Currently: St. Augustine, City of God; Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers; Anthony Powell, A Dance to the Music of Time; Ackroyd, Life of Thomas More; Boswell Life of Johnson. Is there a 12 step program that you guys could recommend? I've always been able to juggle, but I think I might be overdoing it...but I could quit anytime I want...

Hi Mommas,

1. Fiction, poetry, biography, some history, science

2. All-time favorite novel--Toss-up between Tom Sawyer and Treasure Island; favorite when I'm trying to be snooty and show everyone up, Finnegan's Wake (which I do love greatly, but I only mention it for show); favorite when being southren AND Catholic The Violent Bear it Away; favorite when being Southren sans Catholic toss-up As I Lay Dying and The Sound and the Fury (yes, I'm sorry, I really love them.); favorite not originally in English toss-up The Sound of the Mountain (Kawabata) and The Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov. In fact, I have so many favorites I return to time and again, Dune Through the Lookingglass and What Alice Found There, David Copperfield, Pride and Prejudice, Tom Jones, The Demolished Man (Alfred Bester) etc.

3. Too long--Rime of the Ancient Mariner

4. Democracy by Alexis de Tocqueville

5. Mystic Sweet Communion On the Passion of Christ The Sadness of Christ Purity in Death, and The Codex (This is the short list--the long list includes four medieval mystics, Utopia (By Lincoln Child, not St. Thomas More), and others as a few spare minutes come to hand.

shalom,

Steven

1. Varies hourly depending on mood! News is depressing. As Kathy Shaidle wrote, "The news, like modern jazz or bridal showers, is something most people only pretend to enjoy."

2. What is your favorite novel?
East of Eden at this moment.

3. Do you have a favorite poem? (Share it!)
Oh there's so many. Richard Eberhart's A New England Bachelor. Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Suess. The Rose Tree by Yeats:

"O words are lightly spoken,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea."

"It needs to be but watered,"
James Connolly replied,
"To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride."

"But where can we draw water,"
Said Pearse to Connolly,
"When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree."

Sentimentally, The Long Voyage by Malcolm Cowley:

Not that the pines were darker there,
Nor mid-May dogwood brighter there,
Nor swifts more swift in summer air;
It was my own country.

Having its thunderclap of spring,
Its long midsummer ripening,
Its corn hoar-stiff at harvesting,
Almost like any country.

Yet being mine; its face, its speech,
Its hills bent low within my reach,
Its river birch and upland beech
Were mine, of my own country.

Now the dark waves at the bow
Fold back, like earth against the plow;
Foam brightens like the dogwood now
At home, in my own country.

4. What is one thing you've always wanted to read, or wish you had more time to read?
It's awful that I haven't read the entire bible yet nor the Confessions by St. Augustine.

5. What are you currently reading?
God Rides a Yamaha by Kathy Shaidle.

1. I'd read the phone book if you set it in front of me. I am a true bookworm, but if I had to narrow down my real favorite genre, I would say that nonfiction edges out fantasy/sci-fi by a nose.

2. Favorite novel? The kid in me loves any one of the "Harry Potter" series, but the adult in me was really gripped by "Angela's Ashes" when I read it back in the late 90s.

3. Poetry? I just don't like it, period. I've tried to learn to appreciate it over the years, but it was just so savagely rammed down my throat as a kid in school that I've never acquired a taste for it. If I HAD to pick one, it would probably be Longfellow's "Midnight Ride of Paul Revere".

4. I'd like to re-read Shakespeare's MacBeth, but I would need lots of time in uninterrupted silence and someone else to read it simultaneously so I would share my thoughts with them, both of which I am lacking.

5. Current reads: "A Miracle for St. Cecilia's" by Karen Valentine and "This is the Faith" by Canon Francis Ripley. Just finished Hillbrand's "Seabiscuit" and LOVED it!

Chris,

I would be more than happy to reread Macbeth again. Just let me know when, I can add it into constantly shifting kaleidoscopic array of reading I'm doing and it even fits within my Lenten promise.

shalom,

Steven

Steven, I love The Sound and the Fury, too. Very moving--plus Jason and the mama make me laugh. He's the only one who doesn't think in stream of consciousness!

Gee, I feel like crying now...

1) Anything. Books, newspapers, mags, cereal boxes. I think I must be compulsive.

2) Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

3) It's hard to pick a favorite.....and the only lines that come to me now are

You can tell a man who boozes
by the company he chooses.
And the pig got up and slowly walked away.

MacCauley's(sp?) Horatius at the Gate is good too.

4) The Encyclopedia Britanica

5) Fire of Mercy - Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel according to St. Matthew by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis.

about #2 - depending on my mood, I would also say A Confederacy of Dunces and Breakfast of Champions.

kudos, MamaT, on a wonderful friday five!

1. Cookbooks. I love cookbooks.
2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
3. A pointy bird
A pointy pointy
Anoint my head
Anointy nointy
4. Hmmm, a book called From Poor Law to Welfare State by Walter Trattner
5. Wolves of the Calla by Little Stevie King

Okay, well it is now Saturday, which just makes me late, as usual!
1) I have to go with--anything I can get my hands on. I too am a compulsive reader. I do love novels, though I have toned it down some lately, but everything beckons.
2) I absolutely can't pick just one. I can't get Alexander Theroux's D'arconville's Cat out of my head though, so maybe it is my current favorite. No wait, What about John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, or Amy Tan's The Bonesetter's Daughter or Jane Urquhart's Away, or...I just can't!
3)I can't pick it right now. Tried three different one's but none felt right.
4)St. John of the Cross Complete Works. I work at it, but I wish I could just go away from the world for a few months and just study and reflect, so it is the"more time" that is operative here.
5)St John's Sayings of Light and Love, St Teresa of Avila Interior Castle, John Irving Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, Jeanne Boylan Portraits of Guilt.