Y'all

First things first: I have moved on to Moll Flanders. It's not the most compelling read, although it's better than I expected. Definitely slow going. I'm trying to be okay with that.

At the moment, though, I am not reading. I'm listening to this old episode of Lexicon Valley about modernizing Shakespeare (a discussion we won't enter into at this moment) and I just learned (how did I not know this already!) that "thou" was, way back when, the English second-person (and familiar) singular.

I use "y'all" more frequently than you might expect from a Midwesterner. I got in the habit of using it when I was taking Latin, because my professor used it as a simple way to differentiate the translation of second-person singular and plural verbs. I have continued to use it when I need a second-person plural (especially in group emails at work - it emphasizes the fact that a message is going out to more people than just the reader) and I occasionally get teased about it. I always explain that it's the best second-person plural we've got in English, but now I can be even more obnoxious and offer them a lecture about linguistics and then give them a choice between my using "you" and "y'all" or "thou" and "you."

(I'm really fun at parties.)

The project continues apace

I'm just coming to the end of Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. For all that I (sincerely) extol the virtues of classic literature, this is the kind of book I dread a little when I begin it. When I started writing here, lo these many years ago, I talked quite a bit about David Copperfield, which I wound up really enjoying, but that kind of lengthy, meandering, Dickensian work still makes me a little uneasy as I see it looming on my TBR list. I don't think it's actually the thought that I won't enjoy it. I think it's the rest of that TBR list. I think it's the knowledge that it will take me some time to get through that book, no matter how enjoyable I find it, and during that time, the rest of those books will be staring me in the face.

This is, for me, particularly true in the summer. This is largely my own fault - I start the summer with a (long) list of books I want to read and, though I don't reasonably expect to get to the end, it is my goal to get as close as possible. This summer, that list is somewhere around 50 books, about a third of which are part of that reading-my-shelves project (like The Woman in White) and tend to be lengthy classics (Collins is the last of my C authors, which means Defoe, Dickens, and Dostoevsky await).

Anyway, maybe this is good for me. For all that I've loved reading a metric ton of YA and middle grade stuff over the last 5 or 6 years, it might be a good idea to be forced to slow down a bit and revisit that other side of myself as a literary consumer. Not to mention, those books tend to wind up being pretty great. The Woman in White has been pretty great. It is suspenseful and thrilling and often quite funny, and it's two of my favorite funny lines that I'd like to close this with:

On Mrs. Vesey and vegetables:

"Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all."

And this, which I think I'd like to include in some variation on any invitation I send from this point forward:

"My hour for tea is half-past five, and my buttered toast waits for nobody." 

A Project

I think I've mentioned that I have a reading project in the works quite a few times now without actually expounding on what that project is. All of which makes it sound quite ambitious and complicated. It actually does feel rather ambitious, but certainly not complicated.

I am reading my shelves. I own so many books I haven't actually read and I keep adding to that number and I've decided it's time to work on lowering that number instead. I began in fiction, where I'd say I've read about 2/3 of my collection, and I'm just going through alphabetically and reading what has not been read. (While also reading some of this year's new books from my work library, as well as books for our summer book camp.)

I've made it through the A's and B's and am into the C's - Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness at the moment. I have some rather daunting mountains to climb down the road, but so far it's been quite satisfying. I really enjoyed Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and I was reminded of how much I like Willa Cather while reading The Professor's House.

As I said, today I'm reading Heart of Darkness. Not really my jam thus far, but as has so often been the case since the election, I've come across a passage that sheds some light on these current times. Marlow is fixing up his steamer and the Eldorado Exploring Expedition has appeared. He describes them in a way that sounds awfully familiar to this reader, who continues to watch with horror as American democracy is gutted from the inside out:

"Their talk, however, was the talk of sordid buccaneers; it was reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity, and cruel without courage; there was not an atom of foresight or of serious intention in the whole batch of them, and they did not seem aware these things are wanted for the work of the world. To tear treasure out of the bowels of the land was their desire, with no more moral purpose at the back of it than there is in burglars breaking into a safe."

Fireworks

It's late, so I'll keep this short.

Today I finished the third book on my summer reading list (of 47, which even I know is probably unrealistic). That book was Kate Milford's middle grade take on Patrick O'Brien, The Left-Handed Fate. It took me awhile to get into it (more my fault than Milford's - I was distracted by soccer games and congressional hearings), but it ended with a literal bang and I wound up keeping myself up this late so I could finish it.

In the interest of keeping this short, I will just share this quote that I wanted very much to share with somebody. It comes right at the end and it is (kind of) about fireworks and it sums up quite nicely why I like fireworks so darn much (and eclipses and anything else that stops people in their tracks with awe):

"Wonder is great and important. And wonder at the visible - at what can be seen and shared, that requires no nationality or belief to experience - that is a special kind of phenomenon."