More summer reading quotes

"On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think, that is never think of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium-Irksome and the Rare Irksome."

"Nobody attains reality for my mother until he eats." (Ever know anyone like this? I sure have. Miss you, Granny!)

"Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in. For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind. Henry James said young women of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex."

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Oh, what a bright, funny, self-deprecating woman Flannery O'Connor was. I wish I could have known her. Her writing is encouraging me to get back to putting pen to paper and not just relying on the computer for communication. She was a gifted correspondent and obviously a rare gem of a friend.

Quotes from the summer reading list

"Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning..."

"William Carlos Williams said that poets write for a single reason - to give witness to splendor (a word also used by Thomas Aquinas in defining the beautiful). It is a useful word, especially for a photographer, because it implies light - light of overwhelming intensity. The Form toward which art points is of an incontrovertible brilliance, but it is also far too intense to examine directly. We are compelled to understand Form by its fragmentary reflection in the daily objects around us; art will never fully define light."

(bold emphasis mine.)

Beauty in Photography

"Forget writing, it's a trivial matter. But day in day out, when the inarticulate patient struggles to lay himself bare for you, or with nothing more than a boil on his back is so caught off balance that he reveals some secret twist of a whole community's pathetic way of thought, a man is suddenly seized again with a desire to speak of the underground stream which for a moment has come up just under the surface."
The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams

"As they continue to follow the path deeper into the woods, the mother keeps an eye on her daughter, but Josip is staring simultaneously inward and upward, and also connecting to the colors blazing all around him. 'We are so blind, so blind!' he groans, flailing his arms for emphasis, his face flushing, his voice intense with the excitement of this new discovery. 'It's as if heaven is raining miracles upon us, but we cannot see because we do not look. It's as if fabulous birds fall unceasingly from the skies!'

'Peacocks and ostriches?' she laughs.

'No, no, I mean fabulous because they exist - fabulous birds are ---'

At the very moment when he flings out his right arm and says fabulous birds, a flash of blue catches his eye at the end of his hand. Halting abruptly, he gazes along his arm, off the springboard of his hand, and sees the stroke of blue lying in a pile of red leaves. He drops his arms and goes to it, kneeling down to find out what it is. It's a bird. A very little bird that is unfamiliar to him. Miriam kneels beside him as he picks it up in his hand and lets it rest there, as if it were sleeping. It is warm, it has died only a moment before.

'An Indigo Bunting', whispers Miriam. 'I've never seen one before, never this close, I mean.'

...The bird's apparently insignificant form is so elegant, so perfectly shaped for the wind, its form and function so integrated, that the genius of whoever sculpted it is beyond question. Moreover, its feathers are a rare kind of iridescent blue, falling from the turquoise of the head to the dark indigo tail in a perfect gradation through that part of the spectrum, without any discernible transition zones of shade or tone.

'Who designed this little masterpiece?' says Miriam shaking her head in wonder.

Josep lays its body on the ground and covers it with leaves.

'And so death entered the world', Miriam whispers. They walk on, and for a while can say nothing.

Island of the World by Michael O'Brien

Summer reading list

I wasn't going to make a reading list for the summer, but I changed my mind. I wanted to make 2010 my year of reading Flannery O'Connor and I have only read one (yes, ONE) short story and a very little bit of her biography. Summer is the time to make some progress on that plan.

I've also been reading blogs with the idea of adding in some new authors and new titles. It's going to be a great reading summer.



The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor



Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor by Brad Gooch



The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor



Hope Was Here by Joan Bauer
HT: Someone. Do you know who you are? I would love to thank you.



Island of the World by Michael D. O'Brien
HT: Janie and Carol



Suttree by Cormac McCarthy
HT: Allison



Ancestral Shadows: An Anthology of Ghostly Tales by Russell Kirk
HT: Vigen Guroian in this book:



Rallying the Really Human Things
HT: My dear husband, who managed to read this book from start to finish on our get away, and Wes Callihan who found this book in a strange place at our house, and had amazon.com deliver it to his front door before he arrived home. (Note to Self: Do Not Ever Get the Amazon.com iPhone app. Danger Danger!!!!)



Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams
HT: Juliet



Chef (A Novel) by Jaspreet Singh



The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams



Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions/Death's Duel by John Donne
HT: Wit (the movie) and Carol



Bamboo People
HT: Books and Culture, MFS