Karoline > Recent Status Updates

I have successfully reached the midpoint of the Book About Things That Swallow Men, namely cannibals, the sea, and whales. Which is to say, Death.

Did Terry Pratchett like Moby Dick because I feel like he would.

is this a novel or is this creatively narrated literary criticism on the symbol of the whale/leviathan across history, science, and literature???

good day for some patristic exegesis!

Boersma is doing his best to make Origen less weird and . . . kinda succeeding?

fav chapters so far are "Incarnational Reading" and "Harmonious Reading"

getting some Miltonic vibes here

So the body is a house.

The house is a ship is a whale is death.

The ship is a whale is death.

And a whole sermon on Jonah about how to live in the belly of the whale. Preached from a "ship" that's NOT a whale.

Just met Ahab, but since his leg is also a whale's jawbone, like apparently everything else in this novel ...

I'd say we're supposed to pay attention to the whale's belly.

Just a wild guess.

the male-marriage image must have hit the imaginations of the original readers very differently than it hits mine . . .

I've been very intimidated by this book, but borrowing courage by reading it with my local reading group. Opened the book and started laughing on the first page. Does it continue this way, like a cross between Charles Dickens and Jorge Luis Borges??

surprise! this is really Creon's story!

So Antigone is every YA fantasy heroine for the past 20 years. Same plot. Same cast of characters. Same emotions. Same backstory. Same dilemma.

Maybe every 13-year-old girl should read Sophocles first.

Desperately want to know if anybody has ever staged this as a 1930's screwball comedy played at breakneck pace. It would suit perfectly.

Alternatively, it would work magnificently staged as a Wodehouse comedy. Sir Andrew is Bertie Wooster, Malvolio is The Efficient Baxter, and Sir Toby, Maria, Fabian and the Clown are conspiratorial sidekicks. Orsino, of course, is Bingo Little.

Charlotte Mason friends - quite remarkable to see how Wordsworthian she is. His comments in Book V of The Prelude about nature, "free range" childhood, and allowing children to develop without overcharged maternal anxiety sound very similar to her philosophy!

Which is not surprising when you consider that their lives overlapped, and that Mason lived for years just a mile or two from the former Wordsworth homes.

Love Books 11-12 (sorry CS Lewis)! They're the corresponding balance to Raphael's history before Adam fell - the second part of Adam's education; and they deepen the epic scope to take in the entirety of redemptive history. If Milton's stated purpose is to justify the ways of God to man, he needs this "lump of futurity" to complete his purpose.

"Earth felt the wound; and Nature...sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe"

9.782

Books 5-8 are the wisdom books! Read a comment that Milton innovated by making Paradise a place of activity instead of passivity. Adam is being trained for wise leadership by history, character portraits, advice, and instruction. Makes the coming tragedy so much more poignant to contemplate!

if Marianne Dashwood kept a journal to record her passion for dead leaves, it might resemble Dorothy Wordsworth's passion for skies, mosses, glow worms, and trees

though I doubt Marianne would include quite so many mentions of unpleasant illnesses, pitiful beggars,. never-ending laundry, and failed giblet pie

still finding this journal easy and delightful listening (Sarah Lambie reading)

Book VI and the war in heaven makes me think Milton's most current legacy is urban fantasy and superhero battles

Entirely delightful as read by Emma Lambie ("The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals"), sparseness, gaps, mundane details and all.

I feel so fortunate to have one of the great epics in my own language

Somehow I have never read this play.

I have also, unfortunately, learned that many schools put this on their reading lists because it's short.

Which experience was nearly enough to turn my Shakespeare-loving daughter against the play forever.

Turns out she will be assigned the play again this coming year so we are moving to reclaim it. 😂 Wish us well.

a pleasant narrative introduction to the work, purpose, and history of the Supreme Court with some autobiography - makes a nice audiobook listen

(although, I don't think it's fair to imply that Solomon pronounced his judgments without any reference to past or present case law! Deuteronomy, anybody?)

Dark academia fantasy that's a love story to the wonder of languages and the art of translation.

Or would be, but 80% the footnotes and a quarter of the paragraphs read like a flaunted middle finger to the British Empire and racism. It's feeling less like a story and more like a diatribe.

There are some resonant images and intriguing tensions, so I'm hoping these will move to the forefront and make it a Story.