What do you reread?

Here are a couple of quotes to start us off...

" 'Tell me what you read and I'll tell you who you are' is true enough, but I'd know you better if you told me what you reread." Francois Mauriac

" Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative value of the books themselves." Russell Banks

Ok, so what books do YOU reread? Can't finish? Hated in spite of it? Loved in spite of it? Here's mine:

Books I reread: (I'm not counting the Bible here, simply because that's something I read often , but not in one sitting or even from cover to cover. Bits and pieces as the Lord calls.)

Every so often I go on a Narnia kick and sit down and read the entire Chronicles of Narnia from start to finish, and then I drag out those awful old videos and watch them too. I can hardly WAIT until the movie comes out next month!

Anne of Green Gables, again start to finish, and polishing it off with whatever videos I happen to have on hand.

Ditto The Lord of the Rings, starting with The Hobbit of course.

The Peaceable Kingdom, by Jan de Hartog. This fictionalized account of how the Quakers got started never fails to stir my soul. I recently told a friend that if I could only take two books to a desert island, this would be the second one (The Bible being the first, of course.) I identify greatly with Margaret Fell, who turned out to be another "kindred spirit," and "Champion of the Underdog." And once I've finished that book I will probably go on to the other two books in the trilogy: The Lamb's War and The Peculiar People.

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Honest!

Margaret Frazer's Sister Frivesse mysteries.

Desiree' by Annemarie Selinko. Think France, Napoleon, and a silk merchant's daughter of Marseilles. I inherited this book from my Aunt Della.

Poetry: Edna St. Vincent Millay (My candle burns at both ends...) - Ella Wheeler Wilcox (Laugh and the world laughs with you) - Billy Collins (Picnic, Lightning)

Children of the Twilight by Emma-Lindsay Squier. Native American stories from the Puget Sound area, written about 1924.

St. Elmo by Augusta J. Evans. Copyright 1866 "Ah! the true rule is - a true wife in her husband's house is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of the highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; all this is dark in him she must purge into purity; all that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth; from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace." John Ruskin

Silent Guests by A. E. Forrest. Copyright 1927. "A mysterious thing, the human mind. Can it keep a secret indefinitely? Here I find myself committing to paper things which I had determined never to divulge - sacred things long hidden; intimate privacies having their roots in the soul."

Julian's Cat by Mary E. Little, being an imaginary history of the cat belonging to Julian of Norwich.

A Modern Magi by Carol Pearson. This is one of those books that after you've read it you want everybody you know to read it. Bring Kleenex.

And from time to time I peruse anew books by Thomas Merton, Julian of Norwich, Henri Nouwen, C. S. Lewis, Rudyard Kipling, Agatha Christie. And every so often, I even reread my own stories, though I'm too close to them to really appreciate them. I rarely pick up my published works, (been there, done that, don't need to relive it, thank you), but I do enjoy my short stories - a couple even make me cry, and I wrote them!

Books I hated: True Grit (I finished it, but only because I just didn't believe a book could be that awful.) * In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. I just didn't want that stuff in my head - too graphic for my tastes. * I just stopped a book in the middle because I didn't care about the characters by then, The Last Days of Dogtown, but Anita Diamant. It was disappointing because I LOVED The Red Tent. Oh well, you win a few, you lose a few.

Well, that about does it for now. So, tell me, what do YOU read? What do you REREAD? And why?

Movies I watch again and again:

Miracle in the Rain, with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson
Anne of Green Gables, as above
Narnia, as above
Lord of the Rings, as above
Shirley Valentine, with Pauline Collins
The Snake Pit
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (about St. Francis of Assisi)
Fiddler on the Roof
Red Dawn (probably the only war movies I've ever liked)
Fantasia
The Green Mile
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
Exodus
Little Women ( the old version)
Arsenic and Old Lace
Lassie Come Home
Madame X
Showboat (either old version is fine)
Song of the South (remember Zippidee do dah?)
Singing in the Rain
South Pacific
The Passion of Joan of Arc (Black & White, silent, 1920's I believe. Renee Falconetti gives such a performance that I literally sat and watched with my mouth hanging open in amazement.)
And last, but certainly not least, The bookworm, a Twilight Zone episide.

Well, I guess that's about it for me. How about YOU?

Love and Blessings, Phoenix

I wonder...

I wonder:

Just what IS the purpose of underarm hair?

How do dogs know what time it is? They sure come around at the same time for dinner!

Who figured out that if you leave wine alone long enough it will turn into vinegar?

What was God thinking when He created the fly?

What happens to the tears you don't cry?

Oxymorons....
>
>1. Is it good if a vacuum really sucks?
>
>2. Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?
>
>3. If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?
>
>4. If Webster wrote the first dictionary, where did he find the words?
>
>5. Why do we say something is out of whack? What is a whack?
>
>6. Why do "slow down" and "slow up" mean the same thing?
>
>7. Why do "fat chance" and "slim chance" mean the same thing?
>
>8. Why do "tug" boats push their barges?
>
>9. Why do we sing "Take me out to the ball game"when we are already there?
>
>10. Why are they called "stands" when they are made for sitting?
>
>11. Why is it called "after dark" when it realy is "after light"?
>
>12. Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" make the unexpected expected?
>
>13. Why are a "wise man" and a "wise guy" opposites?
>
>14.Why do "overlook" and "oversee" mean opposite things?
>
>15. Why is "phonics" not spelled the way it sounds?
>
>16. If work is so terrific, why do they have to pay you to do it?
>
>17. If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
>
>18. If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
>
>19. If you are cross-eyed and have dyslexia, can you read all right?
>
>20. Why is bra singular and panties plural?
>
>21. Why do you press harder on the buttons of a remote control when you
>know
>the batteries are dead?
>
>22. Why do we put suits in garment bags and garments in a suitcase?
>
>23. How come abbreviated is such a long word?
>
>24. Why do we wash bath towels? Aren't we clean when we use them?
>
>25. Why doesn't glue stick to the inside of the bottle?
>
>26. Why do they call it a TV set when you only have one?
>
>27. Christmas oxymoron: What other time of the year do you sit in front
>of
>a dead tree and eat candy out of your socks?
>

Hurtling towards the end of the year

There is a time, the Bible says, for every season. And as I turned over the calendars this morning - November! - it struck me how time flies, even if you're not having fun.

November already. It doesn't seem possible, since just a few days ago it seems we were all complaining about the heat. But now the fallen leaves are blanketing my front porch, and I can almost see the house of my neighbors to the rear of our property.

I love this time of year. I love the cooler weather, the riot of color, the heavier clothes, the holidays. I'm not much of a summer person (I don't have the figure for it), and I tend to wilt in the heat, but fall and winter bring out the homebody in me. The cooler weather encourages me to bake more, to spend more time in quiet activities like quilting and reading, to just be.

Time seems to slow down just a little in the Fall. Even though I know I'm going to blink and Christmas will be upon us, there is still a hint of "slow down, you're movin' too fast" in the air. Fall reminds us how very precious our time is. We only have a limited amount of time on this earth. We are barely a blip on the radar of time; an eyeblink in the grand scheme of things. Knowing this, however, we still want to make our mark on eternity. We want to be remembered after we're gone. We write books and journals; we do good deeds (or bad ones); we invent and create and discover. Most of us will be long forgotten after our bones are dust - that's just the way of it.

But some of us will live on. We will have invented something, or done something, or written something that will survive after we have passed over to whatever lies beyond this earth. We will be a Thomas Edison, an Alexander the Great, a Mother Teresa perhaps. Or a Mark Twain, a Mister Rogers, or a Jack the Ripper. Some of us will become household names that everyone knows, but the vast majority of us? Probably not. And I think it is not the thought of death that scares us so much as the thought that we won't be remembered. We all want to live on after our deaths.

I'm no different. I'm currently working on my 32nd journal. I write something in my journal almost every day. Future generations, should they care to read, will know what my life was like at this time in history. When I read the diary of Samuel Pepys, for example, I am struck by how similar in some ways our lives are to the way life was when he was alive. Human nature remains the same throughout history - we have the same loves, the same hates, the same ambitions. None of us want to be forgotten.

So, as we hurtle on towards the end of the Year of our Lord 2005, I would encourage you, as I encourage myself, to examine your life. Write down what makes you tick, what you think, how you feel. Speak of whom you love. If prosperity looks at the journal of your life, what will history make of how you lived it? Will history say, "ah, now there was an honorable person?" or "what a rogue!" We have a choice, you know.

Today is All Saints Day. Begun perhaps as early as the year 270, All Saints has commemorated the lives of those who professed faith in Christ and have entered into the joy of their Lord. In the early Middle Ages, Gregory Thaumaturgus refers to a festival of all martyrs, though he doesn't date it. Ephrem the Deacon mentions such an observance on May 13th, and John Chrysostom, who died in 407, says that a festival of All Saints was observed on the first Sunday after Pentecost in his time. The church remembers its own on All Saints.

There is a song in our hymnal for All Saints Day. The words are attributed to Lesbia Scott, born 1898, and the music to John Henry Hopkins (1861-1945). It goes like this:

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green;
they were all of them saints of God and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and his love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus' sake,
the whole of their good lives long.

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast;
and there's not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn't be one too.

They lived not only in ages past,
there are hundreds of thousands still,
and the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus' will.

You can meet them in school,
or in lanes, or at sea,
in church or in trains
or in shops or at tea,

for the saints of God
are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

Have a wonderful Autumn season, everyone, and as we hurtle towards the end of the year I wish you much happiness and a blessed holiday season.

Love and Blessings, Phoenix