Category Archives: history

Three 2009 Booklists

books, history

I compiled these lists after reading that semicolon is putting a new twist on the first Saturday Review of Books of 2010. Normally one links to a book review on one’s blog, or goes to the Review to read miscellaneous reviews. But this time you link to a list of books. I didn’t have one, but it sounded like a good idea. So I made three. None is in chronological order.


Making a list of books is way easier than writing a review, and I find the idea of doing something easy to start the new year quite appealing! I will get on with writing some reviews after I finish celebrating at least 12 Days of Christmas.


Books I completed reading in 2009:

  1. The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West
  2. Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful by Alan Paton
  3. Long Ago in France by M.F.K. Fisher
  4. How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
  5. The Folding Cliffs by W.S. Merwin
  6. Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff
  8. M.F.K. Fisher and Me by Jeannette Ferrary
  9. The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
  10. The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig
  11. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
  12. Bread and Water, Wine and Oil by Fr. Meletios Weber
  13. Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
  14. A Good and Faithful Servant (Saint Innocent) by the University of Alaska
  15. At Large and Small by Ann Fadiman
  16. Pig Tale by Verlyn Flieger
  17. Towards the Mountain by Alan Paton
  18. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson
  19. The Inner Kingdom by Bp. Kallistos Ware
  20. The End of Suffering by Scott Cairns
  21. Living With the Laird by Belinda Rathbone
  22. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Books I got into but eventually abandoned:

  1. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
  2. Diary by Anaïs Nin
  3. Reading, Writing, and Leaving Home by Lynn Freed
  4. Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee
  5. Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee
  6. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
  7. The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
  8. The Kitchen Boy by Robert Alexander

Books I am still reading at the end of 2009 and plan to keep reading:

  1. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
  2. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology by Michael Pomazansky
  3. The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko
  4. For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
  5. Tree and Leaf by J.R.R. Tolkien
  6. On the Cosmic Mystery of Jesus Christ by St Maximus the Confessor
  7. Mary Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan
  8. Byzantium by John Julius Norwich
  9. Sister Age by M.F.K. Fisher
  10. The Hacienda by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran
  11. The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter

(The photo was taken in Chinatown earlier this month.)

    San Francisco Christmastime

    Christmas, history, , , , ,


    Yesterday friend K. and little T. and I went to The City for our second annual Christmas outing.

    First we stopped by Union Square to see the Christmas tree. My photo is from last year, but this year’s looked just the same. And this year the giant tree was an “85-foot Shasta White Fir from the Carlton Tree Farm in Mount Shasta.”

    The St. Francis Hotel features an elevator with windows looking out on the Square, so we rode up to the 31st floor and down several times.

    Then on to lunch at the famous John’s Grill. The restaurant has good food, and a replica of the maltese falcon from the movie by that name, hearkening to a scene from the movie shot in the restaurant. A couple of years ago the “original replica” was stolen, so this one is new copy.

    John’s Grill is a favorite spot for politicians to meet for lunch, and you can see framed photographs of various famous people all over the walls. Right above our table was a picture of our former-maybe-future governor with a past owner in 1984.

    We rode the cablecar  as we did last year. This time T. was happy to watch the guys adjust the cables at the end of the line and push the car into position for its return ascent.

    After a steep ride that had T. and me hanging on to our post and sliding down the seat nevertheless, we arrived on Nob Hill, where after the 1906 earthquake and fire, big hotels were built and named after the wealthy people whose mansions in that neighborhood had been destroyed. I enjoyed the grandeur of the Fairmont Hotel, its spaciousness and the marble columns.

    fairmont gingerbread G sniff 09

    Even the gingerbread house was on a large scale, and made with real gingerbread and gumdrops, half a ton of ingredients and days and days of work. I was impressed by the silky evenness of the ribbon candy, as I’ve recently been on the hunt for some for my father-in-law. What I found in the supermarket is downright ugly compared with this.

    It smelled rich and gingery, too!

    We were on our way to Grace Cathedral, also on Nob Hill.
    The original church was also destroyed in 1906,
    and the new cathedral not complete until the 1960’s.
    K.’s parents were married here.

    The crèche was my favorite part of our time in the cathedral.
    Chinatown brought us back to the hustle and bustle.

    This year’s oddity was these dragons made out of rope…

    …and in another window, this year’s winner of the Christmasy Shoes contest.

    Last year I snapped pigs resting in a Chinatown window. They were there again yesterday–or had they ever left? Those pigs prophesied of this morning, when I slept late, dreaming that I was writing a novel.

    A relaxed outing, a lazy morning…. it’s the last I’ll see of those for the next week. I’m going to enter the fray in earnest, now.

    Homesick in Our Homes

    church, history, home, poetry
    Christmas Poem by G.K. Chesterton

    There fared a mother driven forth
    Out of an inn to roam;
    In the place where she was homeless
    All men are at home.
    The crazy stable close at hand,
    With shaking timber and shifting sand,
    Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
    Than the square stones of Rome.

    For men are homesick in their homes,
    And strangers under the sun,
    And they lay their heads in a foreign land
    Whenever the day is done.

    Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
    And chance and honour and high surprise,
    But our homes are under miraculous skies
    Where the yule tale was begun.

    A child in a foul stable,
    Where the beasts feed and foam;
    Only where He was homeless
    Are you and I at home;
    We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
    But our hearts we lost—how long ago!
    In a place no chart nor ship can show
    Under the sky’s dome.

    This world is wild as an old wife’s tale,
    And strange the plain things are,
    The earth is enough and the air is enough
    For our wonder and our war;
    But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
    And our peace is put in impossible things
    Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
    Round an incredible star.

    To an open house in the evening
    Home shall all men come,
    To an older place than Eden
    And a taller town than Rome.
    To the end of the way of the wandering star,
    To the things that cannot be and that are,
    To the place where God was homeless
    And all men are at home.

    Thanks to semicolon where I found this poem today, a good reminder of important truths of the season.  This Advent period is when we remember how we are “homesick in our homes.” The reality of that estrangement and fallenness and longing is a good bit of why we get physically sick, or sick and tired of various features of our earthly life.

    O Come, O Come, Emmanuel!

    Colorful, Loud, or Quiet Traditions

    art, crafts, family, history, home, people

    It wasn’t unusual to hear sirens in the neighborhood this evening. We aren’t far from the thoroughfare down which most fire trucks travel on their way to emergencies. But from the kitchen the sounds were a little different this time, and I wondered if there was an emergency on our street, so I went out front and indeed, there were the flashing lights, just two houses down.

    Next door I could see the shape of my neighbor, so I crossed the grass and asked her what was going on. It’s Toys for Tots, she said. They do this every year. The fire truck leads a procession including Santa and reindeer, and makes stops in different neighborhoods each night to collect toys for needy children. The well-off neighbor tots were running out of their houses to donate gifts and get a chance to hop up in the sleigh for a picture with Santa.

    Sure enough, I read the several days-old newspaper when I came back indoors and found out that this has been going on under my nose–or in my front yard, to be exact–for many years. I’m embarrassed to let on how out of touch with the town events I am. My nose was in a book or sniffing a pot of soup, I suppose. Or maybe we were driving around town with the children to see all the houses with their fancy light displays.

    I have been enjoying the beginnings of decorating. So many of our beloved tree ornaments have been gifts from someone, and I usually can’t remember who! The little Czech doll at top I know came from our dear little Czech lady friend, no longer with us, and the the lamp-shaped glass ornament is very old, having been used by B.’s family for decades before it came to our house.

    When the children were young, they and I would make various kinds of ornaments, and one of the early projects was a choir of angels made from wood shavings. They have been very durable and the largest always graces the top of the tree.
    But for the last several years my favorite ornaments are real or glittery glass pine cones, and birds, like this staring owl given me by H. Much if not all of his plumage is made of bark and other plant fibers; she’s also given me wooden birds whose feathers are real feathers.
    So…I’ve gotten started installing our traditional and longstanding Christmas decor. I hope soon to show my newer cozy and festive elements. And I have to say, I’ve been enjoying looking at photos of Christmas all over Blogland. Thank you all!