All you people (Emeth, The Dane, Rick, Moriah, who else?) hooked on LibraryThing.com amaze me. Sounds really neat and horribly fascinating, and all, but how in the world do you have time to catalogue all the books you own? We can hardly find places to set them (Nathanael has been in the back yard right all afternoon buildinig bookshelves) let alone go through each one and copy out all the identifying information.

The men’s prayer breakfast at Trinity Pres. is reading and discussing The Man God Mastered, a biography of Jean Calvin, by Jean Cadier. Previously, we’d been studying a biography of Luther, and I believe that next we’ll be studying a biography of Knox - a rather limited list of Reformers, but immensely helpful nonetheless. It’s so much easier to understand the doctrines that have shaped the Reformed church when one can understand the situation from which they arose. Being able to look at the letters of men has always been of great benefit to me as well - I guess that I don’t pick up on themes in literature as well as I ought (this is probably because I am usually a skimmer), so being able to read apologies by the authors is quite nice. At any rate, though this particular biography is somewhat lost in translation - a number of sources are purposefully left out, the translator tried to soften the scholarly feel of the book, etc. - I highly recommend reading biographies of men like Calvin and Luther.

On a side note, another biography that I found worthwhile was The Education of James Madison, which I mentioned a couple years ago here. Does anyone have a biography that they’ve read which really chanegd their opinion of an historical figure or changed their point of view on a subject - not as easy as that gun on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

I. Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
II. The Crocodile, Dostoevsky
III. Holidays on Ice, David Sedaris
IV. The Turn of the Screw, Henry James

Read a lot of magazines and stared as the wall a bit much this month, I guess.

I. Fathers and Sons, Turgenev; tr. Ralph E. Matlaw
II. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
III. Elizabeth Costello, J.M. Coetzee
IV. The Man God Mastered, Jean Cadier; tr. O.R. Johnston

Not so sure about N. Fear & Loathing and a lot on and by John Calvin.

In the interest of keeping track of the books we’ve read this year, the ways we’ve passed our time, and what images have crept into our head and reside there without notice, the monthly listing:

Sarah
I. The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
II. Can Poetry Matter?: Essays on Poetry and American Culture, Dana Gioia
III. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
IV. Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, Alice Munro
V. Walking to Martha’s Vineyard, Franz Wright
VI. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, James Joyce

On my way, I hope, to reaching fifty for the year.

Nathanael (you’ll have to correct this later)
I. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, James Joyce
II. A Biographer’s Tale, A.S. Byatt
III. Lots of books of forest gardening?
IV. Mission to Asia, Christopher Dawson