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Merton's diaries before he became a Monk, during the time that he was doing graduate work and teaching at Columbia University, trying to get his fiction published, traveling, and wondering about his vocation. It also includes a trip to Cuba, and of course during this time World War II is going on. Merton writes about a huge range of things, from memory exercises to making all kinds of lists, describing his experiences at the movies and art exhibits (including observations of other people and how they reacted to particular paintings), thoughts on books he has read or the news or the drafts of books he is writing or submitting to publishers. I was surprised at how immediately engaging his writing is, and how interesting it was-- although there's quite a lot here, so it still took me a while to finish it.

Early on, Merton has some interesting comments about the act of journaling-- what it means, who it is for. At some point, he finally admits to himself that he hopes it will eventually be published and made available for others, which means that it is okay to edit, which he does-- removing pages, revising, etc.

It's also pretty amazing to kind of travel along with Merton as he's trying to find out if he has a vocation, visiting monasteries and wondering if they will accept him, and deciding whether or not he is willing to give up his writing if that is what he is called to. When he first visits the Trappist monastery at Gethsemani (which is where he ended up, I think), he writes this:

This is the center of America. I had wondered what was holding this country together, what has been keeping the universe from cracking in pieces and falling apart. It is this monastery if only this one. (There must be two or three others).
... This is the only real city in America - in a desert.
It is the axle around which the whole country blindly turns.

When he finally finds out, near the end of the volume, that there is no impediment to his becoming a Trappist monk (there was an indiscretion in his past, before he became a Christian, that kept the Franciscans from accepting him), his excitement is palpable and sincere.

Merton was quite the scholar, and he sometimes writes down quotes from things he's reading in the original language. The editors have provided translations, but since I have a little Latin and French I'd try to read it on my own first, checking my understanding against the translation. I was part of the way through one Latin passage before I realized that I was reading Anselm's famous argument for the existence of God (as the being than which no greater can be conceived), which I remembered from my philosophy course. It was kind of a strange moment, but really cool.

I purchased this several years ago at a discount price after someone had recommended Merton to me, but never got around to reading it until now.

Title:	Run to the Mountain: the story of a vocation (The Journals of Thomas Merton Volume 1 1939-1941)
Author:	Thomas Merton (edited by Patrick Hart)
Date published:	1996
Genre:	diary/journal
Number of pages:	483

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This satirical novel portraying the various players that make up a large university campus is just plain fun to read. Maybe not foot-stomping-knee-slapping fun, but certainly laugh-through-your-nose-smile-quietly-to-yourself fun. The cast of characters is comprehensive: urban students, rural students, faculty in the humanities, professors in the sciences, secretaries, cafeteria workers, provosts, deans, spouses, technicians, even animals. Smiley very deftly swivels points of view and convincingly describes the feelings, instincts, and reasoning of her characters. I was impressed and amused. Add the fact that the university has an agricultural mandate, and I was hooked. The plot is not particularly fast-paced or linear, but as a chronicle of a year in the life of a university, with all of its political, intellectual, and personal intrigues, the book is witty and perceptive.

Several of the main characters, Mrs. Walker, Lionel Gift, Chairman X, Tim Monahan, Nils Harstad, Dean Jellinek, are endowed with an excessive amount of self-importance. Perhaps academia breeds conceit; perhaps university folk are not more prone to it than others but merely have a more visible arena in which to act on it. I found it easy to dislike several of these people but was more sympathetic to Mrs. Walker and Chairman X, probably because I respected the Robin-Hood quality of their actions. Chairman X was perhaps the most compelling person in the book, certainly the most complex: driven by elevated ideals but beleaguered by base desires, drumming up support for his dearest causes but personally repulsive and remote. It didn’t hurt that I identify entirely with his bitterness with the world, where “the forces of greed, carnivorousness, exploitation, technology, and monoculture were everywhere more firmly in control than ever before.”

It was very interesting that this book culminates with two marriages – and between couples who have heretofore been perfectly contented to live together or merely enjoy each other on an as-needed basis. Given their unconventional lives (or maybe they’re actually ordinary?), marriage seemed all too conventional. But I found the unions to be symbols of hope and redemption at the end of an ugly semester.

Readers who wish to avoid overly explicit sexual situations would do well just to skip the "Who's in Bed with Whom" chapter.

Title:	Moo
Author:	Jane Smiley
Date published:	1995
Genre:	Fiction
Number of pages:	414

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An Italian catholic activist is called by God to go to the desert. He joins a group called the "Little Brothers of Jesus" in north Africa and some of his thoughts and stories are collected in this book. Life is greatly simplified by his move .. with more time for prayer, for silence, for listening, for slowly traveling from one place to another, for preparing dinner over a small fire under the stars. A life which is simple .. and yet so complex. God has much to say to this man and to question about the way he had been living and what is important in life. Accomplishment, action, power, are all brought into question. Carretto was an activist and did much for God, but once God called Him to the desert it became much more about loving God and being a living example of what it looks like to love God and live the Gospel.

One of the main topics Carretto discusses is that of prayer. Learning to pray in the desert. Prayer as relationship with God. Understanding that it is God who wants us to pray, who gives us energy to pray, who blesses us as we spend time with Him. Acknowledging that as we grow closer to God, sometimes we need words much less than we just need to be present. Prayer as an exercise of love to our good Father. Challenging to read, but also very encouraging. Somehow it's nice to hear that someone who spent years in the desert seeking to love God and love those around him well still has much to learn.

Title:	Letters from the Desert
Author:	Carlo Carretto
Date published:	1972
Genre:	Spiritual
Number of pages:	132
Notes:	borrowed from Diane

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Wow. Finished. That was a great adventure.

As I was waiting for the book and wondering how Rowling would resolve any number of things, I decided it was a matter of trust-- and, based on the care and skill of the first six books, I decided I could trust Rowling to end it well-- and I was not disappointed. I won't go into too many specific details here, because I don't want to mar the experience for those who may not have immediate access to the book. It's a different book, since Harry isn't at Hogwarts this year; it starts with intensity and action right away, and hardly lets up; there is a real feeling of war and oppression-- people in hiding, family members being taken, etc. As in the last one, the stakes are real and there are consequences, including death (I cried at several different points in the book). There are also lots of wonderful resonances with moments from the other books (especially the first), and this book completes and fulfills the series.

Some highlights... finally getting Snape's side of his story; learning more about Dumbledore's past and his family; the role that Kreacher the house-elf plays, and the valiant Dobby; heroic Neville; finally having everything explained; a new (but unsurprising) perspective on Voldemort's soul; Harry coming fully into his own, and the extraordinary power of his love (as Dumbledore tried to tell him repeatedly); the aftermath.

I feel like I should say something about the titles, but don't know what to say without revealing too much. The Deathly Hallows are three magical items (out of a fairy tale) that, when united, make a person the master of Death. They form an interesting parallel to Voldemort's dreadful horcruxes, being both quite different and troubling similar.

Read in about 24 hours.

Title:	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Author:	J. K. Rowling
Date published:	2007
Genre:	Young Adult Fantasy
Series:	Harry Potter
Number of pages:	759

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Vampires seem to be quite prominent in popular culture these days, so for a while now I've been curious to read first major literary incarnation. My mild interest in Dracula was further increased by Alan Moore's take on the character of Mina Murray (Harker) in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The book seems pretty different than what I think most modern readers would expect-- slower moving, and almost a matching of wits between some very clever antagonists. The rules about what vampires can and can't do seems a little different than any I've heard elsewhere, but it seems like every book and every movie has to change the rules or reinvent something about vampires, so I guess it's not that surprising. Thinking about vampires in this Victorian setting also made me wonder why we're so interested in them now, and what (or whether) people think about the spiritual aspects of the vampire, and the damnation of the souls who are turned. There also seems to be an interesting hierarchy of who feeds on whom, which seems like it must be based in Stoker's time-- Dracula feeds on young women, and the women prefer to feed on babies.

It was a pretty interesting book, and I was a little surprised at how engaged I was. The whole thing is narrated through the character's diary entries, letters, and newspaper clippings. Sometimes this is a lot less believable than others, as they are recounting entire conversations, and it's a little hard to imagine that in the middle of tracking down and fighting this monster they are taking time to sit and write (or, in one case, dictate to a phonograph). Mina does shorthand and is also a typist-- which turns out to be quite important, because it helps them get the details and put them in the proper order so they can figure out Dracula's plan. This also helps illustrate what an intelligent woman Mina is.

I imagine it's because I have Harry Potter on the brain, but there was an interesting parallel between Harry's connection with Voldemort and Mina's connection to Dracula. Dracula drinks some of Mina's blood and starts to turn her, but then he also forces her to drink some of his, which is meant to give him extra power over her. But this connects them, and as they chase Dracula from London back to his castle in Transylvania, each sunset and dawn Van Helsing is able to hypnotize Mina to find out where Dracula is, what he can here.

Van Helsing is an interesting character, too-- not the dashing young hero of a movie, but an older man, a scholar and a doctor. He is the first to figure out what is going on because he has a more open mind.

The edition I read includes an "Introduction," which I started out reading first-- until it started touching on more and more plot points! This frustrated me, so I skipped it at the time. I read it afterwards, and it was a fairly interesting discussion of all the many, varied interpretations of Dracula (and there are lots, more than even I would have expected). It's an interesting enough essay and overview of the craziness that is Dracula criticism, but I think it fails miserably as an introduction.

I picked this up because I wanted to have something to read while I was waiting for Harry Potter, and I figured I could finish it in a week.

Title:	Dracula
Author:	Bram Stoker
Date published:	1897 (original publication)
Genre:	Horror
Number of pages:	409

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This book is about a young girl who is brought from India to England by her loving father to a boarding school when she is seven. They deeply love each other, but must separate (as is expected in their society in the early 1900s). With his wealth, Sara Crewe quickly becomes the 'pet' of the school .. but with an unexpected turn of events, she loses everything and instead works as a maid, errand runner, teacher for the small children, and lives in a small room in the cold attic. A drastic change .. and yet Sara remains sweet, kind, and confident in who she is and what it means to be a real princess.

Often in literature there are contrasting characters, and Sara finds one of hers in Miss Minchin, who runs this boarding school. Miss Minchin respects money and those who have it, and despises those who do not. Miss Minchin is 'kind' to Sara and her father when they come, but when Sara's circumstances change Miss Minchin banishes her to the attic and hard work unlike anything she has ever known. Whenever Miss Minchen gets angry at Sara, Sara thinks about how a real princess would act and does not yell back at her or cry or strongly react. What a contrast .. a grown-up woman who basically has temper tantrums and is rude whenever she has the chance .. and a young child who is kind and patient and shows real love (not just favoritism or spoiling), and seeks to treat everyone with respect as real humans. Oh, that we would all be princess (and princes) .. choosing wisely and loving well.

Title:	A Little Princess
Author:	Frances Hodgson Burnett
Date published:	1905
Genre:	Childrens
Number of pages:	192
Notes:	repeat reading. a friend read aloud the first chapters for me!

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A book about an island and the people who live there. Who have lived there. Who were all affected by World War Two. Because some of the islanders are American and some are Japanese. And no matter what relationships they might have had before the war .. they were all dramatically changed because of it. Someone dies, and it is believed to be a homicide instead of an accident. A Japanese man is charged and all the history between their two families is brought to the surface, in such a way that the truth is eventually discovered, as well as reasons a murder would be believed by so many.

Guterson does a wonderful job of weaving past with present. Chapters flow in and out of each other, as well as relationships both in past and present. Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with the murder and has been in jail since he was charged until the trial, some few months later. The complex relationships between Americans and Japanese americans are gently laid open in such as way that this trial becomes a microchasm of much more. Those who perhaps have lost hope or purpose for one reason or another find something which helps them to begin hoping again. There are some details and passages the book could have done without, but overall it is well done and worth the read.

Title:	Snow Falling on Cedars
Author:	David Guterson
Date published:	1995
Genre:	Historical Fiction
Number of pages:	460

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A collection of letters from the 17th century French priest. The letters are short, usually only a page or two, and always very encouraging. These are real letters written to real people (many of them women) struggling with real spiritual issues. I was amazed at how encouraging Fenelon's words were, and how many times what I read was perfectly appropriate to something I had been going through. (Although I did note in myself a tendency to more easily accept the compliments and encouragements written to others; when there was criticism, I discovered that I was more likely to think it only applied to the original recipient and not to me). Fenelon's letters are thoughtful and beautifully written, and repeatedly encourage the reader to greater simplicity and greater love of God. The book also includes an introductory overview of Fenelon's life, which I found very interesting and impressive, and made me only more intrigued by his letters.

As I read these, I jotted down particular lines or passages that spoke to me-- and I ended up filling two entire pages in the small notebook I carried with me as I read the book. There were times when I could have almost copied down entire letters.

Here are a few of the things I jotted down.

• Do not add to the cross in your life by becoming so busy that you have no time to sit quietly before God.
• ... the life of faith is the most penetrating of all deaths. Death is only painful to you when you resist it. ... Self-love fights with all of its strength to live.
• It is easy to mistake a vivid imagination for true spiritual experience.
• Agree with Him about all things - even those you cannot understand.
• Occupy every spare second with God.
• You will accomplish more by quietly working in the presence of God than by the restless activity that comes from your old nature.
• It does not take much time to love God, to renew yourself in His presence and to adore Him in the depths of your heart.
• ... you must let all these attitudes drop like rocks in water.
• You can die to yourself in the course of everyday life-- you don't need to go out into the desert or on some high mountain to be spiritual.

And, since this is a book reading site, a book related quote (even though I don't know quite what to make of it):

It is not enough to like good books. You must be a good book yourself.

Read over several months, usually reading one entry on my morning commute.

Title:	The Seeking Heart
Author:	Francois de Fenelon
Date published:	1992 (from letters written in late 1600s to early 1700s)
Genre:	letters, religious
Number of pages:	182
Notes:	gift from S. Apostel

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This volume starts out in a red desert with people speaking a language with foreign characters-- I thought maybe it was Arabic, but it turns out they're on Mars, in the middle of a battle that is a prelude to an invasion of Earth. The Martian tripods crash to Earth, and the League is summoned to deal with them. The invisible man turns traitor (decides the invaders have better odds, especially with his help), and Mina and Allan Quartermain are sent to retrieve a weapon from Dr. Moreau (no longer on an island, but still conducting experiments). In a twist on the original, the invaders are destroyed not by the common cold but by an biologically engineered virus.

Some interesting things along the way-- I particularly like the discovery of a certain kind of rapport or sympathy between Mina and Hyde. He thinks she doesn't fear him; she admits that she does, but she has seen something more fearful and terrible than him (it's never spoken, but of course she must mean Dracula).

This volume includes a couple of sexual encounters that I thought were unnecessary and a little too graphic for my taste (one of them rather violent). I don't think I enjoyed this one as much as the first volume-- it just didn't hold my interest as well, and certain aspects were off-putting.

Includes a very long "travelogue" of all the extraordinary places on the globe, organized by continent. Sometimes this seemed a little dry, but other times it was quite fun-- especially when it referenced books I know (whizzing past Garcia Marquez's Macondo, or mentioning a small town in New England with a deadly yearly lottery). Early on it has a long section on the other side of the story of Alice in Wonderland (what everyone else must have thought). When they get to the Arctic, they encounter a land of sentient polar bears who mention that they had been approached by the representatives of a soda company to participate in an advertising campaign. The travelogue affords an opportunity to tell a little more of Mina and Allan's story, as many of the places are described in Mina's journal. Descriptions of other parts are taken from writings of members of earlier incarnations of the League.

Title:	The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2
Author:	Alan Moore
Date published:	2004
Genre:	Graphic Novel
Series:	League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Number of pages:	228

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In Harry's sixth year at Hogwarts, he begins taking special lessons from Dumbledore-- you could call them "Voldemortology," since Dumbledore is sharing all the painstaking research that he has done in collecting memories and tracking Voldemort's movements. All this is done to give Harry as much help as possible for when he eventually must face Voldemort. Harry also gets an old potions book owned by someone who called themselves "the Half-Blood Prince," and who left all kinds of interesting notes in the margin-- adjustments to the directions for potions that make Harry look brilliant (and Hermione very frustrated), spells in the margins, and the like. All year long, Harry suspects that Malfoy is up to something, but no one quite believes him. Harry's instincts are usually pretty good, and in this case (unfortunately) it turns out he's right.

It's interesting how much Harry trusts the scribblings of the Half-Blood Prince (in spite of previous experience with dangerous books). He randomly tries out on Ron a spell scribbled in the margins of the book, which, as Hermione points out, is really pretty stupid. Later on he uses a spell that the prince had labeled "for enemies"; the spell is horrible, dark magic and Harry feels betrayed. Near the end of the book you find out (don't read if you don't want to know!) that Snape was the Half-Blood Prince-- which gives a real sense of how brilliant Snape must have been, to fix potions directions and invent his own spells (however terrible).

Dumbledore seems a lot weaker in this one. His hand is blackened and shriveled, a memento from destroying one of Voldemort's horcruxes. Especially at the end, it seems like he makes some poor decisions-- but we don't have the whole picture, so perhaps (hopefully) there's something we don't know. As with Snape-- Dumbledore had some reason for trusting him (and I think it is more than what Harry says), but it hasn't been revealed to us yet.

The horcruxes are, of course, the crux of how Harry must deal with Voldemort. In his fear to death, Voldemort split up his soul into seven parts and stored those parts in various objects. Reading this again, I had a real sense of pity for Voldemort-- so afraid of death that he has maimed himself repeatedly to protect against it. Perhaps it's no wonder that he no longer looks or seems human, since he's only got a seventh of a soul. And, of course, that there could be a power in a soul that was whole and pure.

The ending... is crazy (and comes with a heartbreaking loss). It really leaves you wanting to know what Rowling isn't telling us, which side Snape is playing for, and how Harry will do without Dumbledore's direct guidance (I suspect he will still have Dumbledore's guidance indirectly, in some form or other). Fortunately, I guess, I don't have to wait so very long to find out.

I feel like I've timed my reading all wrong! Now I have to wait an agonizing week and a half before I get to find out what all this means. (How did I wait after I read this last time? I guess I kind of forgot about it.)

Finished in about four days.

Title:	Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
Author:	J. K. Rowling
Date published:	2005
Genre:	Young Adult Fantasy
Series:	Harry Potter
Number of pages:	652
Notes:	second reading

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A collection of speeches from American history, organized chronologically and sometimes excerpted to keep them to a reasonable, readable length. I was actually a little surprised at how much I enjoyed reading the speeches-- it felt like I was getting a taste of real history. For each speech, there was a short paragraph with a little bit of context about the speaker and the speech, which I found very helpful, and in one case was amazed to read that an antislavery speech by Angelina Grimke was given in a building surrounded by a violent, angry mob. For me, it heightened the sense of these speeches as an active part of our history. Unfortunately, as the speeches get closer to our modern day they were more disappointing; I became less and less convinced that they were either "great speeches" or given by "great Americans."

Some surprising synchronicity with these speeches and other things I have been reading at the same time. When I got to the civil war section, I was inspired to re-read Lincoln's Dreams; other books connected with the world wars, etc.

With the more contemporary speeches I found myself more skeptical-- sometimes about the speeches, sometimes about the editor. I know that political speeches these days are written by other writers, so it seems less immediate, less honest. However, I don't know when that practice started or which speeches in this book it might apply to. Other times, I wondered if the speakers really believed what they were saying; e.g., Nixon claiming he was stepping down for the good of the nation, so that it not get involved in a long, drawn out impeachment process; or when Truman announced the dropping of the atomic bomb, did he have any idea of the scale and kind of destruction it would cause?

The other problem when history intersects the current time (the last speech is from Jesse Jackson in 1992) is that it's hard to be objective, and it seemed that the more modern speeches were somewhat skewed to a more liberal perspective. In some cases there were interesting speeches that maybe should have been influential or important, but it's not clear that they made much of a difference; e.g., Newton Minow encouraging television producers not to cater to the lowest common denominator in their audiences but to continue to use the medium of television to educate; or Ralph Nader's speech about the legal profession encouraging law school graduates not to get bogged down in materialism.

It also seemed like there have been some modern events that should have given rise to some great, important speeches, but they weren't in this book. While the speeches from further back in our history were more tied to events and issues that our nation was struggling with, the more current speeches (which take up more of the book) seem to be all over the place with ideas and issues. Again, probably the perspective problem-- perhaps only later generations will know which of those were most significant in the long-term.

Read over several months, usually reading a speech or two in the evening.

Title:	Great American Speeches
Author:	Gregory R. Suriano (editor)
Date published:	1993
Genre:	Speeches, American History
Number of pages:	308
Notes:	gift from Mom

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Angry Harry. For various reasons, Harry spends the bulk of this book, his fifth year at Hogwarts, being very irritable and the slightest provocation will start him raging and shouting. Hermione and Ron seem to take turns patiently reminding him that they're on his side and would he please stop taking it out on them. And Harry has some pretty good reasons for being so on edge, the biggest of which is that Voldemort is back, and Harry's scar is twinging all the time (and flares up and really hurts whenever Voldemort is particularly angry or happy). The Ministry of Magic is trying to suppress rumors of Voldemort's return, using the newspapers to make Harry out to be an attention-seeking liar, and even interfering at Hogwarts in the form of the despicable Dolores Umbridge. There are also some interesting ideas about how seeing death alters your perception.

One of the things haunting Harry is Cedric's death at the end of the last book. While there has been plenty of death and loss in Harry's life, he's never exactly witnessed it first-hand, and in this world that changes your perception. The most obvious way we see this is the Thestrals-- beasts which have invisibly pulled the carriages from the train to Hogwarts every year, only now Harry can see them (along with the delightful character of Luna Lovegood). Later on, when they are in the Hall of Mysteries, there is an arch with a veil-- and only Harry and Luna can hear voices whispering behind the veil, calling to them. There are some pretty interesting ideas about death here, and I guess we will get to learn more about Rowling's ideas of death in the last book.

One of the really great things in this book is the Defense Association (aka Dumbledore's Army). Umbridge steps in as the ministry-appointed Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, and decides to give them a "purely theoretical" course-- designed to keep them from practicing any practical magic that might be used against the ministry. At Hermione's instigation and encouragement, they start an underground group led and taught by Harry to learn Defense spells. It's clear that Harry really enjoys teaching this stuff, and is a good teacher (the other students are able to conjure Patronuses, which Lupin wasn't sure Harry would be able to do in book 3). It made me think that if Harry survives his final encounter with Voldemort, he should eventually come back to Hogwarts and teach.

The DA is the source of the group that eventually goes with Harry to the Ministry of Magic and ends up facing off against the Death Eaters (along with some help from Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix). Seeing Harry and his classmates practicing and learning made me see that the DA is sort of the next generation of the Order of the Phoenix.

Finished in about five days.

Title:	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Author:	J. K. Rowling
Date published:	2003
Genre:	Young Adult Fantasy
Series:	Harry Potter
Number of pages:	870
Notes:	repeat reading

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