What I'm Reading

I like to talk about books and music. Today it's books. Hopefully you like to read about books that I like to talk about. So, here's what I'm reading:

Emma, by Jane Austen.
I don't know exactly why I read Jane Austen. In some of her books, the dialogue is so snappy (as snappy as Victorian dialogue can be), and the plot twists and characters so memorable and entertaining. For me, those books are Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion: Elizabeth Bennet, Mr. Darcy, Anne Eliot and Captain Wentworth.
With Mansfield Park and Sense and Sensibility, I don't think it was quite the same, and I'm getting that feeling with Emma, too. I have this detrimental tendency of skipping ahead a paragraph or two when I'm confused with something, hoping it will all be explained clearly in the end. (Never read Da Vinci Code like that.)So, now that I'm more than halfway through the book, I realize that I should have taken better care with figuring out who's Emma's suitors are: I'm pretty sure it was Frank Churchill and Mr. Elton, and I can't remember if it was Mr. Elton or Mr. Knightley who led Emma on and then married another lady. Or did he lead Emma's friend Harriet on? The whole plot of the thing is that Emma is the self-appointed match-maker, and has vowed to never marry, but the match she set up went wrong, and the suitor went for her instead of Harriet. I've gotten that bit. The sad thing is that I usually understand Austen stories better when I watch the BBC/PBS miniseries FIRST and the book later, which is kind of backwards from my personal philosophy of reading, then watching. And Emma is the only one I haven't watched on tv. But, other than being slightly confused at times, I like Emma. It just doesn't seem as strong as Austen's other novels to me.

Walking on Water, by Madeleine L'Engle.
I never read L'Engle's novel A Wrinkle in Time, but I've always known about her from all her works that my mom and grandma keep on their shelves. And when we were at Thanksgiving the other week, this book was lying on the coffee table. I dipped right into the middle of it just for the heck of it, and was instantly drawn in. In Walking on Water L'engle melds her Christian perspective with the search for meaning in the vocation of being an artist, and what that vocation means for us. I've never found a book like this before, and it seems to have appeared to me at the right time in my life: When I know what I love and want to keep doing it, but wondering if it can give me the stable life I want. In her own words L'lengle emphasizes that artists are the only ones that don't need to be told to believe or have faith in God, in the world, like little children, as we're told in the Bible. She says to keep that sense of learning and wonder in us. We don't need to be told this, because that way of living comes to us naturally in whatever thing we decide to create, be it music, sculpture, or novel. We search for meaning in the world in a totally different way from others, and it effects everything in our lives. Even though L'engle is a Christian, and writing largely from those influences, I find it not insufferable like other Christian books I've read. God is God in her book, not a superhero. Madeleine L'engle is Madeleine L'engle, not a prophet sent to save others. She's not ashamed, but she's not converting.

Corduroy Mansions, by Alexander McCall Smith
I have friends who see me reading all these books and they say, "What do you read for fluff?" I give them a blank stare. I'm very against fluff. "You know," they continue, "light reading?" What they really mean is stuff not by Nelson Mandela and Sinclair Lewis.
I won't say that McCall Smith's books are fluff, though it's definitely in the light-hearted comedy category of my mental bookshelf. Thing is, he's a lawyer by training first, and author of humorous serial novels second. He's a bioethics expert. People like this can't write fluff. They just can't. A few of his characters show an unnaturally good taste in expensive French wine and can talk for paragraphs about it. And about Scottish art and architecture. And Aristotelian philosophy. This is not ordinary light reading. This is light reading for smart people who don't want their brains to leak out their ears to have a good read.
The plot here revolves around a group of people all living in the same apartment building in London, Corduroy Mansions. William is a middle aged widower who's 24 year old son Eddie tries his best never to move out and get a job. William's tried everything, and is about to get out the big guns: Eddie can't stand dogs, so his father buys one, a former airport bomb sniffing terrier named Freddie de la Hay.
There's a group of roommates with boss and relationship problems, (one of which works for a nasty politician named Oedipus Snark, who's mother is writing an equally nasty biography of him), and...that's all that I can tell you, because I haven't gotten too far into the story yet. I do love his style of writing, though, how McCall Smith writes chapters from everybody's point of view, even the dog.