Blogging Limerick

There once was a blogging progressive
who judged conservatives too aggressive.
He went on the attack
and they fired back -
isn't Screwtape's scheming impressive?

Pax et bonum

He Sure Liked to Read!

CBS News reported about a man who liked to read.

"After the death in July of their father, Dan Pelzer, at the age of 92, John and Marci Pelzer discovered something extraordinary in his things — a very long list of every book he had ever read. In total, from 1962 to 2023, he read a staggering 3,599 books. The list of all the titles is a book in itself: 109 pages long, single-spaced.

Dan borrowed almost all his books from the Columbus Metropolitan Library. When the library staff heard about Dan’s list, they decided to share it on social media and made Dan’s title collection available as its own list that the library says people have been checking out."

I did check part of the list. He did not achieve his total by reading fluff! And he averaged just under 60 books a year. I salute him!

I started keeping a record of books I read each year beginning in 2013 - when I was 58. Since then, I've read 560 books. I'm up to 44 this year alone. 

I have been a voracious reader since I learned to read, and in my first 50 or so years of reading I suspect I've read several times that total from the last eight years. It helps that I was an English major (with a Philosophy minor) in college, earned a Master's degree in literature, and taught for 25 years.

Since retiring, I've been averaging 65 books a year. If I make it to 92, if my eyesight does not fail me, and I keep up my post retirement pace of 60-70 a year, I'll pass 2,000 since I began keeping records. And maybe a couple of thousand before I began keeping records. So I might come close to Mr. Pelzer's tally. 

Whatever my ultimate total, I applaud Mr. Pelzer.

Pax et bonum

Agatha Christi List

Five years ago, the editors of FORMA Journal selected what they deemed Agatha Christi's 20 best novels. 

And Then There Were None

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Death on the Nile
The Murder on the Orient Express
The ABC Murders
Sleeping Murder
Curtain
Five Little Pigs (or Murder in Retrospect)
A Murder is Announced
Endless Night
Ordeal by Innocence
Crooked House
4:50 from Paddington (aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw)
The Murder at the Vicarage
Evil Under the Sun
Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side
The Hollow
The Body in the Library
They Do It With Mirrors
The Mystery of the Blue Train

I've read a number of them - I bolded the ones I've read. To be honest, I've never even heard of some of the others!

There are other lists out there that include some of the same titles. 

I'll use this one as a guide. I've already got some goals for this year - I'm currently rereading The Lord of the Rings, for example. But now that I've read all the Father Brown mysteries, the Lord Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy Sayers, and the Navajo mysteries of Tony Hillerman, I might tackle this list. I'd also like to find more of the Cadfael mysteries of Ellis Peters. 

Goals for next year?

Pax et bonum

Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Fight Back Against Letitia James Trying to Shut Them Down

Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Fight Back Against Letitia James Trying to Shut Them Down

Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Helped More Than 2.1 Million People Last Year

Pro-Life Pregnancy Centers Helped More Than 2.1 Million People Last Year

Why You Should Not Use Bad Language

Why You Should Not Use Bad Language

Remembering Getting Ready for the School Year

In 25 years of teaching, August 1 was always a significant date.

It marked the end of reading just for fun and pleasure, and writing whatever work had been my focus - a short story, play, that blasted novel I never seem ever to finish.

It was time to get ready for school.

My summer reading had already included new works I would be teaching, or rereading some that I would be teaching again. But now I would begin focusing on works I would be teaching.

Some teachers create detailed lesson plans. They would plot out the entire year. But that was not my style. I would plan what works I would be teaching, so I knew the order and about when I would be teaching them. But day-to-day plans - no.

What I would be doing is researching all the works and history surrounding the literature I would be teaching.

For example, if I know I would be teaching Uncle Tom’s Cabin that year, I’d try to find information about the slave trade, collections of slave songs, descriptions of the Underground Railroad, local links to the Railroad, the poems and essays of other writers dealing with the issue at that time, and so on.

August would also visits to my classroom, ordering needed supplies, making sure we had enough books available for my students, making photocopies, a least one faculty, a department meeting and in-service, and so on.

Later in the month I would go in to set up my classroom. At the last school where I taught, I built bookshelves to hold all the books I wanted to make available for my students. When I retired, I donated those shelves and many of those books to the school.

And now, in retirement, I read only what I want to read or think I should read. No lesson planning or background research, No school workshops and meetings.

I’m enjoying retirement, But part of me misses those days. I miss the students and the camaraderie of fellow teachers.

And I don’t have a handy excuse any more for not finishing that blasted novel!

Pax et bonum