January | 2015 | dual personalities

January 8, 2015

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over”*

by chuckofish

Well, we are a week into the new year. Now that my girls have returned to their respective homes in the East, I am going to throw myself body and soul into cleaning, organizing and de-cluttering my house. (Here’s an article on Purging the Pantry.)

Because daughter #2 wanted me to keep up the tree and all the Christmas decorations for the BF when he visited, I am way behind in putting away all things Christmas. Oy.

But as I say every year, all this cleaning keeps my mind off my personal pity party. How about you? How do you deal with the ‘Mean Reds’?

*Willie Nelson

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January 7, 2015

“Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading.”*

by chuckofish

It is way to cold in flyover-land to be reading outdoors in a meadow, but it’s a nice thought.

Here’s an interesting article in the New York Times about the best books a list of editors read in 2014. Interesting because Moby-Dick and a biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne show up.

What was your favorite book of 2014?

Mine was probably Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey and my subsequent discovery of Carey as an author of merit.

Who I wonder will I discover in 2015? Well, for now it is back to Middlemarch and George Eliot for me. How about you?

*Rainer Maria Rilke

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January 6, 2015

Under the tree: “Big brothers know everything…Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!”*

by chuckofish

My dual personality blogged about her haul of Christmas gift books the other day, so I thought I would follow suit with a list of mine.

My big brother gave me the new biography of John Wayne by Scott Eyman and I dived right in. (Middlemarch was unceremoniously shoved to the back of the bedside table.)

I read the whole thing and enjoyed it very much. It supported my previously held view that old Duke was the greatest. I always knew he was intelligent, hard-working, kind, humble, and dreamy, but it was nice to have that opinion validated. Here is a good review of the book by Peter Bogdonavich in the New York Times.

When everyone goes home tomorrow and I am bereft, I am going to binge-watch John Wayne movies. This is what I call good therapy.

My sister gave me a new book about Raymond Chandler–another favorite of mine–The World of Raymond Chandler in His Own Words edited by Barry Day.

Chandler, as we all know, wrote not about crime or detection, as George V. Higgins once observed, but about the corruption of the human spirit. He is a man after my own heart: “Philip Marlowe and I do not despise the upper classes because they take baths and have money; we despise the upper classes because they are phony.”

As you can imagine, this book is chock-full of great quotes by the master of simile. “Soot…was down-drafted into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot.” (The Big Sleep)

An old friend (and a reader of this blog) gave me

which is full of good things to remember:

And, of course, I can always count on daughter #2 to give me something intellectually stimulating. This year it was a copy of

I can’t wait to delve into this one! Emerson is one of my favorites and you know I always like to look at the spiritual side of things.

“Travelling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern Fact, the sad self, unrelenting identical that I fled from.” (Self-Reliance)

(P.S. I received some wonderful non-book presents and I hope the people who gave me these will not feel slighted that I did not mention them today.)

What are you reading?

*Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking by Charles M. Schulz

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January 5, 2015

Arise, shine, for your light has come

by chuckofish

Well, what a two weeks this has been! It has been filled with trees, lights, decorations,

trips to the airport,

multiple church services, social events, family,

friends and guests,

dance parties, and way too much food and drink.

But I took very few pictures. I will try to do better as I return to my routine. I am a routine person after all. Meanwhile, it is back to school today! Arise, shine–the days are getting longer after all. Thank goodness.

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January 3, 2015

Start as you mean to go on — 2015 edition

by chuckofish

Over the course of a December birthday and Christmas I have received several wonderful books. And what better way to start the year than with lots of new books to read? First, we have the Danish murder mystery that my youngest son gave me for my birthday.

Not your typical dour and depraved Scandinavian thriller, this book was both impossible to put down and pleasantly devoid of graphic violence. That’s not to say that the crime wasn’t unpleasant, but the book struck me as surprisingly PG-13 in a world of increasingly gratuitous NC-17 (if books got ratings that is). AND it’s part of a series, so I can look forward to more of the same.

I also received a couple of wonderful biographies, which I haven’t started reading yet.

I’m really looking forward to this one. James McPherson, famous Civil War historian, has this to say about it (quoted at Amazon): “To his family and friends he was Cump; to his soldiers he was Uncle Billy; to generations of Southern whites he was the devil incarnate. But to biographer Robert L. O’Connell, William T. Sherman was the quintessential nineteenth-century American: full of energy, constantly on the move, pragmatic, adaptable, determined to overcome all obstacles, a nationalist and patriot who teamed with Grant and Lincoln to win the Civil War and launch America as a world power. This readable biography offers new insights on Sherman as a husband and father as well as a master strategist and leader.” Sherman is a really fascinating character, don’t you think?

Going back a couple thousand years, we have the new biography of another iconic figure, Augustus, Rome’s first Emperor.

I have several more of Goldsworthy’s books, including his biography of Julius Caesar, a history of the Punic Wars, and a book about the Roman army. This author is a favorite of mine; he always takes his subjects on their own merit and puts everything in context. No post-modern, “the past is unrecoverable so we can make it up” history here. What a pleasure.

Another, more specialized Roman history book that I received is a new investigation of how the Romans dealt with military defeat.

This is actually a really interesting topic that combines military history, memory studies, politics, and culture …and it’s very readable. In any case, it’s good to be reminded that even the Romans suffered defeats from time to time (and during the 2nd Punic War, a lot).

All my reading does not focus on history or mystery, however. I also got (as I had asked) a lovely interior design book by Lisa Borgnes Giramonti, whose blog, “A Bloomsbury Life” I follow.

An artist and bibliophile, Borgnes decided to put her love of literature together with her love of beautiful interiors. The result: a book that takes “over 60 classic novels and find[s] modern homes that match the aesthetic described-down to the last chintz flower”(Architectural Digest). Think loads of gorgeous pictures and nice quotes plus some great decorating advice.

As you can see, I have received quite the treasure-trove of reading material. I’ll count myself a super lucky girl when I find the time to read all of this. Despite this wonderful backlog, I’m always looking for recommendations. What are you reading in 2015?

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January 1, 2015

Happy New Year!

by chuckofish

Can you find the pixilated Dual Personality in this festive bunch?

I give you an old reliable–but still wonderful–poem for the new year by Alfred Tennyson. Nothing much has changed since he wrote it in 1850. I mean people are still people and it is good to keep that in mind. Tennyson was writing about the “faithless coldness of the times” back then too.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darknss of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.