That title isn’t a mispelling. See if you can figure it out. I bet Stu will.

Several years ago, while going through an intense Nietzsche phase (from which I still haven’t fully recovered) the thought occurred to me to go back and reread the Bible with more open eyes than those I employed in my earlier readings when I considered myself a devout Christian. I never acted on that impulse, but it recurred to me (how Nietzschesque) as I recently read H.G. Wells’ The Outline of History. By now, my religiously-inclined readers are probably grunting in disapproval of my perspective, but bear with me. After finishing Wells’ somewhat outdated but still worthy Outline, I nearly picked up my Oxford Annotated RSV — but having read through the Bible several times already I knew what a large project that is (1189 chapters plus Apocrypha), and I wanted to read some other things on my shelf, so I put it off.

My son John, who is now teaching English in Korea, corresponds with me by email. Not knowing of my half-baked intentions, he suggested out of the blue that we read the Bible together. John recently discovered a more meaningful connection with Christianity, and if that were all I knew about John I probably would have politely declined. But I also know that John has explored Buddhism and other alternatives, and that he’s intelligent and has a great sense of humor. I enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to spend more time conversing with my son, as well as to revisit an old passion of mine with someone who is likely to contribute to a most interesting discussion.

I don’t think that either of us intends to convert the other. We’re probably both expecting that the text itself will do that. It will be interesting to observe the results. Although I take a critical perspective on the text and I’m a tenacious agnostic, I don’t rule out the idea that I can be changed by this experience. In fact, I embrace it. If Fitzgerald and Henry James can transform me, then it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I might find some personal benefit in the collection of human insights and inspirations known as the Bible as well.

John chose the New Internation Version for his reading. That’s a fine translation, despite it’s somewhat conservative associations — two of my college professors contributed to it. But I chose to use the Oxford Annotated RSV instead, because unlike the NIV I’ve never read through the entire RSV, and I appreciate the notes in the Oxford Annotated volume. Besides, I always think it’s a good idea to compare translations, if for no other reason than to avoid projecting too much into the translator’s choice of specific English words. The RSV is a more literal translation than the NIV, but the latter often conveys the original sense better — so comparing and contrasting them yields food for thought.

Additionally, I dug up my Hebrew text of the Old Testament and my Hebrew lexicon so I could dig deeper whenever questions arose about the text.

John and I began corresponding, and so far our discussion has not disappointed me — although I’ve probably been doing too much of the talking. John has a busy life, so we’ve had to take it very slowly. We’re just through chapter 14 of Genesis now (a fascinating chapter, that). But I don’t mind taking my time. In fact, I decided (after catching myself in a couple of mistaken assumptions about the Hebrew text) to use the opportunity afforded by John’s preferred pace to fulfill a desire from more than thirty years ago: I will simultaneously read the entire Hebrew text in parallel with the RSV.

Last night it occurred to me that while I’m at it I might as well also make use of another volume that’s been collecting dust on my shelf for the last thirty years. As the oldest known translation of the Old Testament into any other language, and because of its influence on the New Testament and later Christianity, I will also read the Septuagint in Greek at the same time. I have already observed many interesting details of this translation — both extremes of cases in which the Greek has been bent into a literalist Hebraism on the one hand, and cases in which the Greek obliterates the Hebrew meaning on the other.

For an example of the former, in Genesis 2 when Yahweh (or Kurios in Greek) instructs Adam not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge for “on the day you eat it, you shall surely die,” the Hebrew for “surely die” is mot tamut, literally “die by dying” — the reiteration is for intensive effect. The Greek translates this literally as thanato apothaneisthe.

On the other hand, the word play of that same chapter becomes lost in the Greek. “Adam” is Hebrew for man, so the term is used interchangeably in the chapter as a name and as a noun. The Greek chooses to render it as “anthropos” exclusively until the injunction against eating the fruit, in which it is translated as “Adam,” then switches between the two afterwards. The whole pun on dust (adamah in Hebrew) is also lost in the Greek chous.

Even more striking, and rather funny, is the phrase “she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.” In Hebrew, woman is ishah and man is ish. The -ah suffix can be used for a feminine as it is here, or it can mean “towards” or “from” — thus the pun. It almost works in English, if you can invent some suitable meaning for “wo-” (it actually comes from the Old English wif “wife, or woman”), but the Greek murders it: she shall be called gune because she was taken out of andros. That must have left a lot of Greek readers scratching their heads.

By reading the Greek also, I’ll make a smooth transition into the New Testament when we get there. At the rate we’re going, that should be in about the year 2017.

Bump, bump! — dropping off the end of the pavement onto the abandoned dirt road. I could almost feel it as I read the words “Here ends Fitzgerald’s manuscript” and continued on through notes he had written about how he intended to finish The Last Tycoon. Up until then, I had enjoyed reading this final novel at least as much as any of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s other works. He was a master of character analysis told through action. It’s a pity that a sudden heart attack interrupted his work.

I have now read four of Fitzgerald’s five novels all in a row. The only reason why I omitted his second novel, The Beautiful And The Damned, is because I don’t own a copy. I received a set of only four novels among other books from my first wife when we separated. I could be making this up, but I think they had belonged to her parents who were Pentecostals and therefore disposed of the one book because of the word “damned” in the title. If they had read the other books, I’m sure they would have gotten rid of them, too.

Of all of Fitzgerald’s novels, my favorite turned out to be — not The Great Gatsby, but rather Tender Is The Night. This story bored me at first, but I stuck with it on the strength of the pleasure I derived from Fitzgerald’s earlier novels and my own stubbornness about finishing a book once I’ve started it. By the end of the first “book,” however, he had me hooked. This story penetrated me in ways that I can’t even talk about yet.

All in all, my journey with Fitzgerald delighted me. As with most popular notions, the picture of the dismal spokesman for The Lost Generation falls far short of the man it’s meant to portray. I’m only sorry he didn’t write more.

After about a year and a half, I’ve finished reading Shakespeare’s works.  I could have accomplished this more quickly, but I consciously slowed down to enjoy the experience.  At my age, I consider it unlikely that I will ever read all of Shakespeare again, so I wanted to get as much as I could out of every play or poem.

Of course, I had read many of these before, some of them multiple times.  One of my high school English classes was devoted entirely to Shakespeare.  One of my teachers gave me a copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, which I read at age 18.  Nevertheless, I discovered new wonders in both the familiar and the novel.

Interestingly, the group of works that I was most sorry to leave behind were the historical plays.  Of these, I had previously read only Richard III, and I had seen Henry V performed twice.  I found each of these plays most interesting, especially Shakespeare’s portrayal of the psychology of the kings.  He makes you feel that they’re very human, and that royalty weighs heavily even on those who desire it most.

Re-reading Hamlet for perhaps the fourth or fifth time confirmed again my high opinion of this play.  I’m always amazed by its depth of characters.  Polonius, who might have been a mere caricature of obsequiousness, displays some fine insights into life.  Even Claudius is not painted entirely in black – we’re given a glimpse of his struggles with his guilt that almost makes us pity him.

Once again I was surprised by how much I appreciated Romeo and Juliet.  If you just rattle off the the plot, it sounds ridiculously romantic.  But Shakespeare builds out both the strengths and weaknesses of his characters in such a believable fashion that you can’t help being taken by the story.

When I reached the Sonnets, I was surprised that in my earlier reading of them (more than thirty years ago) I entirely missed the homoerotic references in many of these poems.  Although some scholars interpret these as hyperbolic praise of a friend, I find it difficult to reconcile Shakespeare’s expressions of physical admiration and jealousy towards this young man as anything less than what he later expresses for the dark lady.  Perhaps Shakespeare wasn’t a practicing bisexual (in one sonnet, he wishes that the young man were a woman so he could make love to him), but he certainly didn’t keep his feelings in the closet.

In Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare gives his most graphic descriptions of sexual desire.  Venus desires Adonis, who is not interested in reciprocating.  Thus, it’s natural that the poem, which is almost told from Venus’ viewpoint, spends more time praising the beauty of Adonis than that of Venus.  Nevertheless, in light of the Sonnets I wonder if Shakespeare may have found Venus’ voice quite natural, especially in expressing her frustration of desire and eventual loss of Adonis, just as he apparently lost the love of the young man of the Sonnets.

Lest anyone think that I’m homophobic, I admire Shakespeare’s ambiguity on this point.  I don’t happen to share his apparent desire for a man, but I honor his honesty and ability to express it without explicitly “taking sides” on the issue.  Shakespeare is first and foremost a complete human – and he shows us all aspects of humanity as brilliantly as anyone ever has.

This morning I read the third Scene of Act IV of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.  Though this is my first time reading the entire play, I memorized this one scene more than thirty years ago when our Community Players Association performed it.  Reading it again after all these years brought back a flood of memories.

I played the Clown.  Unlike many clowns in Shakespeare, this one is completely clueless.  He gets fooled by the rogue Autolycus, who picks his pocket.

I don’t know why the Association chose this particular scene to perform, while leaving the rest of the play unexplored.  Autolycus was played by a member of the faculty of Chatham Hall, a private prep school for girls located in the same town as our theater.  So when this school hosted its Elizabethan Festival, my friend Autolycus booked our act as part of the festivities.

I had never visited Chatham Hall before.  I was eighteen years old, and not a bad looking guy – and the raging hormones of high school girls who had been kept from contact with all males except their professors certainly operated to better effect than beer goggles or other aphrodisiacs.  For the first time in my life, I understood how cheapening it feels to be the subject of wolf whistles and suggestive comments from the opposite sex.  Not that I complained.

After our scene was over, it didn’t take long to hook up with one of the spectators to create a little scene of our own.  I was still in costume (as the fool), and apparently still in character as well.  Her blue-green eyes held my attention much better than Autolycus’ act – while she stole my heart.

I had a car, and she got me to promise to give her a ride to her father’s house for the weekend.  He lived in a little chalet in the hills north of Charlottesville, a good two hour drive.  In consideration for my trouble, I was invited to stay the weekend — and to share her room.  I found this arrangement so agreeable that I gladly repeated it on three additional weekends.

Continuing my role as the fool, I proposed.  She accepted.  I was in heaven, for a while.

But we were very different people.  She wanted to pursue a career in the Foreign Service, make lot of money, and use sex to her advantage.  I was into drama, music, literature, and religion.  I was in my Bach phase, but she couldn’t get enough of the Commodores.  I wrote a couple of piano pieces for her, but she found them uninteresting.  She wanted me to go into engineering instead.  I often think how funny it is that years later I ended up in software development quite by accident.

She had the sense to break off our engagement.  I, like a fool, wanted to hang on.  But eventually I had to let go.  Going to college out of state helped.

Jog on, jog on, the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a:
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.

My life: often ridiculous, never dull.

Lately I’ve been reading Shakespeare with breakfast.  I’m almost done with the comedies, and I’ve been enjoying them immensely.  Shakespeare is the master of puns, as well as plot-related comedy.  He knows how to create humor by what a character doesn’t know, but the audience does.

But this morning, my wife and son were reading aloud together in the kitchen:  Henry and the Clubhouse, by Beverly Cleary.  She’s such an entertaining author that I just listened and laughed — I didn’t even miss my Shakespeare.  If he had been there, I bet he would’ve put down his quill and listened, too.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of my first post on TechRepublic’s IT Consultant blog.  While they pay me enough to make it as worthy of my attention as any of my other clients, the real value for me has been demonstrated in the more general principle of “if you really want to learn something well, write about it for a public audience” — especially one that can respond immediately in comments.  I’ve learned a lot from my fellow consultants, along with the research and thought that go into writing each post.  It’s made me a better consultant.  I’m happier about the work I’m doing, and I’m making more money at it.  My thanks to Jason Hiner and Toni Bowers for hiring me after I lambasted TR.  And of course, much of the credit for the blog’s success goes to my excellent editor, Mary Weilage, without whom I would be likely to brazenly split infinitives, use phrases whose subject don’t agree with their verb, and leave prepositions dangling off.  Actually, she does much more than correct my grammar:  she includes relevant links, SEOs the titles, and organizes the posts.

Today I finished reading The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester.  Wow.  I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t read it, but I’ll make one comment about the ending.  I like where Bester left it, because to go any further would almost be impossible by definition — so he leaves the sequel to your imagination instead.  Reading this story has rekindled my interest in Science Fiction — stories that start from a “What if?” but inevitably lead back to an examination of the human condition.  So, I decided to finish the anthology in which Bester’s story was included — which begins with Re-Birth, by John Wyndham.

Tomorrow my wife and I go on diets.  She’s going for an Atkinsesque low-carb ketosis induction, in contrast to our recent habits which she affectionately calls the “no carb left behind” diet.  I’m going back to a strict interpretation of the Blood Type Diet for myself.  It has worked for me long-term, but over the past year I’ve let some bad habits creep in.  For instance, as I write this I’m sipping my last cup of coffee for the foreseeable future.  It’s back to Green Tea for me tomorrow.  Fortunately, as a Type O my diet is pretty compatible with Atkins, so we won’t have to eat in separate rooms — except for when she wants to escape my stinky breakfast.

Extra points for connecting this post’s title and subject matter.

Several weeks ago I finished reading The Ruby Way, Second Edition, by Hal Fulton.  For an 800-page book about a programming language, it was very easy to read from cover to cover.  For one thing, the Ruby language itself is fascinating and fun.  This entertaining subject matter is matched by Hal Fulton’s playful style — the example code is worth reading just for its humor.  Most importantly, Hal makes even the most advanced Ruby concepts easy to understand.  In the spirit of Reg’s What I learned from Language X that makes me a better programmer when I use Language Y, while I was reading this book I thought of (and implemented) three ideas for using the new object syntax in Synergy/DE — each of which was inspired by something I read in The Ruby Way.  I highly recommend this book to anyone who would like to know more about the Ruby language, as well as anyone who ponders programming languages in general.

Then for something completely different, I read Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.  I found this quite entertaining as well, although the ending was less than satisfying to me.  Without spoiling it for you, I’ll just say that the morals of the story seem to be “Don’t thwart true love — you’ll regret it and you’ll turn someone into a monster” and “If you’re patient enough to wait out your troubles, they’ll blow over some day.”  Perhaps in a way, Emily Brontë was ahead of her time in this novel about struggling with inner demons that seems completely devoid of any redemptive transformation.

Next, I had planned to read The Art of the Metaobject Protocol on recommendation from Reg, but I thought that I should finish Paul Graham’s On Lisp first — on the principle that reading two Lisp books at once might cause my head to explode.  I’ve been reading the latter very slowly, mulling over each chapter before moving to the next.  At the rate I’ve been going, I should finish it by Christmas.

Meanwhile, I started The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester.  This was my Dad’s favorite sci-fi novel.  I had attempted to read it once when I was too young, and got lost in the details of it.  The last time I visited my mother’s house, I saw the anthology that contains this story sitting on the bookshelf and I asked her if I could have it.

This time through, I’m finding it most enjoyable.  Because it was first published over 50 years ago, reading it involves the added mental activity of comparing the future the author predicts centuries from now with what has already transpired since.  I had to laugh at the notion that Montgomery Ward would still be in business, for instance — but it’s not so laughable to think that retail sales could still be a dominant economic force.

Almost from the start, I began to be annoyed with how quickly the story moves.  It seemed too fast – jumping from scene to scene with shortened dialogue and description.  Then it occurred to me that Bester’s rapid style mimic’s the accelerated lifestyle he’s describing — a lifestyle stemming from the ability to be physically almost anywhere within moments.  It’s interesting how similar his predicted issues of privacy, protection, and marketing seem to those we face in today’s world in which we can be almost anywhere virtually.  Bester’s style has grown on me, and now I’m enjoying his jaunting from place to place.  He certainly knows how to build suspense, and I have a hard time putting it down.

He fair like’s he langs tuh set his brazened face agean ‘em!

That’s the fifth sentence on page 123 of my copy of Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë — one of the books I’m currently reading.

It’s part of a longer passage spoken by the servant Joseph in his Yorkshire dialect.  He’s been describing how his master Hindley’s lifestyle has descended into drunken wickedness, and concludes that rather than fearing those who might judge him in the hereafter, Hindley acts as if he longs to face them.

I picked out this sentence in response to a meme tag from Teeni.  To participate, you grab any book, go to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and blog it.   Then tag five people.

Just for fun, I’ll do the same exercise for the other book I’m (slowly) reading — Paul Graham’s On Lisp:

Now let’s look at the original definition of for in light of the new rule for identifying capturable symbols:

(defmacro for ((var start stop) &body body)      ; wrong
   ‘(do ((,var ,start (1+ ,var))
           (limit ,stop))
         ((> ,var limit))
      ,@body))

It’s a little more difficult to explain the context of this passage, especially for those of you who may be unfamiliar with Lisp.  You’d probably have to read the whole book up to this point in order to get it.

One more, from The Ruby Way: second edition, by Hal Fulton — a book I just finished:

Because this can be confusing, I recommend using this feature sparingly.

A surprisingly representational passage.  I’ll have to post a review of this excellent book sometime soon.

Meanwhile, I must tag five more people.  Going for variety:  Alyx, Morgetron, Paul, Haizum, and Emily.  You each need only to do one book, and even if you don’t respond at all I will still be your friend and subscriber — honest.  Anyone else who’d like to join in, feel free!

Stu Savory participated in a meme that caught my attention, being the type of person who loves to brag about discuss the books I’ve read.

The list below contains the top 100 books most often marked “unread” by LibraryThing‘s users.  To participate, copy the list into your own post and decorate the text of each entry as follows:

• Bold the ones you’ve read on your own
• Underline the ones you read for school
• Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish
• Asterisk the ones you own but have not yet read*
• Strike thru the ones you’d burn  (Stu’s addition)

Here are the books:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights*
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary*
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre*
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair*
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius*
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
Love in the Time of Cholera
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man*
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo*
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath*
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (like Fillyjonk, I read the Purgatorio and Paradiso, too)
The Satanic Verses*
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray*
Mansfield Park*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables*
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Sound and the Fury*
The Prince
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Beloved
Dubliners
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame*
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers*

Only 28 out of 100.  Stu has read 65 of them.

A few things stand out for me when comparing my list with Stu’s.  First of all, my schools seem to have required much less reading than the ones that Stu attended.  Second, I have a lot of reading to catch up on.  Third, I rarely leave a book unfinished.  Fourth, I’ve never heard of some of these.  And fifth, I wouldn’t burn any of them.

I’m almost finished reading The Ruby Way, by Hal Fulton (2nd edition).  It’s an excellent book, and I’ll hate to put it down.  I was planning to pick up a volume of the complete plays of Shakespeare next, but perhaps instead I should read one of the unreads in the list above.  Which one would you recommend?

I’ve been reading Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and I’m constantly amazed at Tolstoy’s understanding of human nature and his ability to describe it. For instance, from Part Five, Chapter 13:

Golenishchev’s conviction that Vronsky possessed talent was supported by the fact that he required Vronsky’s sympathy and praise for his articles and ideas, and felt that praise and encouragement should be mutual.

Try applying that observation to yourself as you glance down your blogroll.

In Part Five, Chapter 14, Levin is adjusting to married life:

At every step he took he felt as a man would feel who, after admiring the smooth happy motion of a little boat upon the water, had himself got into the boat. He found that besides sitting quietly without rocking he had to keep a lookout, not for a moment forgetting where he was going, or that there was water under his feet, and that he had to row, although it hurt his unaccustomed hands; in short, that it only looked easy, but to do it, though very delightful, was very difficult.

Don’t rock the boat, baby!

The very first sentence of the book:

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

This statement provides a framework for the entire book.

Tolstoy has the uncanny ability to make me empathize with his main characters by planting thoughts and feelings in their heads that I’ve experienced before, but which I had assumed were unique to me. I’m often left thinking that in order to describe them so well, Tolstoy must have experienced the circumstances that surround those impressions. But the characters are so varied in their experiences and motivations that it seems impossible for all of them to be extensions of the author — especially the title character, Anna. It seems to me that Tolstoy possessed a keen perception of the thoughts of others, and combined observation with empathy to construct his characters.

It’s been over 20 years since I last read Tolstoy. That was War and Peace, which is one of the few books that really changed me. When I finished that epic, it was as if life itself were coming to a close. I hardly knew what to do with myself, and couldn’t forgive Tolstoy for ever ending his story. Maybe that’s why I waited so long to pick him up again.