IT DOESN'T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS!

Those who know me well know that I am a serious lover of The Teaching Company's The Great Courses.  Over the years I have checked out virtually every course, on either video or audio, that my local library has in their collection.  For those of you unfamiliar with what these are, they are series of lectures, each episode a half an hour in length, about a given subject.  Some have as few as six or eight installments, but others have more than thirty, varying dependent upon the scope and complexity of the subject being discussed.  Although the lectures are presented by some of the nation's top college professors they are very accessible, geared towards the adult who seeks to be a life-long learner.  I have also used many from a variety of subjects, with great success, in our homeschool.

The breadth of topics is staggering.  There are courses for virtually any era, event, or major personage from history.  If the arts are your thing you can learn about music from the age of Gregorian Chant to Stravinsky or painters from Fra Angelico through the post-modernists.  Want to learn more about a given author, some of the great classics, or how to get more out of your reading?  Perhaps you want to learn how to do mental math, learn games to make numbers fun, or help a student with their trigonometry.  There are courses for all of those as well.  If you want the concrete facts of science, or the more indeterminate studies of philosophy and religion, courses abound in their catalog.  If you want practical application there are courses in leadership, finance and economics, health and nutrition, communication skills, and critical thinking to name a few.

I have, over the years, posted reviews on some of these courses, even though they are not regular audio books per se.  What has prompted this blog post is the fabulous fact that these courses, at least the ones that are available in audio format, are now available from Audible, an audio book subsidiary of Amazon.  I make it a pretty firm tenet not to outright peddle products or endorse any companies-that is not what my blog is for, and I think my readers don't want to be advertised to-but if you are interested in these courses, you will not find a better source than Audible (who is not paying me either cash or products for this blog post).  Members of Audible pay a monthly fee of about $15.00, and for this you get a monthly credit.  Each credit will pay for one course; I looked up some of the longest courses that I knew of, and none were more than one credit.  Considering that most of these courses cost between $35-$60 if you are a non-member, if you are seriously interested in them, I would recommend joining as a member.  In addition, Audible often offers the opportunity for members to purchase three credits for about $35, making your savings even greater.  You can buy from Audible without committing to a monthly membership, but your costs will be higher than a member's, because in addition to their monthly credit, members also get better deals on items they choose to purchase if they do not have credits available.  Whether you are a member or not, Audible is still the best deal for The Great Courses.  Let me

give you an example.  The course entitled The American Civil War is regularly priced $249.95 on The Teaching Company's website; even on the short once yearly sale you would pay $64.95 (and not every course goes on sale every year).  Audible offers it for $52.95 for non-members and $37.06 for members choosing not to expend a credit.  However, if you are a member you can get it for your monthly credit price of less than $15.00, or a bit more than $11.00 if you are using extra credits you bought on special.

So why, you might ask, should I buy these courses at all if they are readily available from public libraries?  I guarantee you that you will want to listen to them many times over.  They are so information dense that it will take that to truly absorb everything that they have to impart.  And they are so enjoyable that listening more than once is a pleasure.  When we have checked them out from the library I have also had difficulty finding time to listen to the longer series before they are due back, and invariably there is someone with a hold on them so that they cannot be renewed.

If you are interested in learning more about Audible's offerings, here is their URL:

http://www.audible.com/mt/TheGreatCourses/?source_code=AUDOR96CBEM070113

If you want more information of the courses themselves, beyond what is given on Audible's site (it is not very extensive), the URL for The Teaching Company is here:

http://www.thegreatcourses.com/

Exploring The Teaching Company's site is also a great way to discover more about those lecture series that they have available on DVD, which you might want to look for at your library.  Or likewise, you can learn more about the audio versions even if you decide not to purchase them from Audible but choose instead to try to procure them from your library.

I hope that my many reading friends, especially those of you who enjoy non-fiction, choose to give The Great Courses a try.  There is something for everyone, and you will, I guarantee it, enjoy every minute you spend with these top scholars as they share their enthusiasm for their various fields of specialization.

THE SENSE OF AN ENDING by Julian Barnes ✰✰✰✰✰

In 163 pages author Julian Barnes sketches a most insightful book on the passage of time and life history.  Using a plot line that begins with four adolescent friends and a few supplemental characters, and telling the tale with the first person intimacy of one of the young men, an evocative reminiscence takes the reader through school days and into late middle age.

Tony Webster is in his sixties when he is left, from an unexpected source, an unusual bequest which causes him to reexamine his life.  In doing so, he brings the reader along through what on the surface seems to be a very ordinary chronicling of a very ordinary life.  However, the reader quickly discovers that while Tony gives all the commendation for life’s deeper moments to others, he is far more discerning than he gives himself credit for.  Through Tony, Julian Barnes funnels some of the most profound components of the human journey, including the lesson that life is seldom as transparent as it appears to be on the surface.

Julian Barnes’s writing is so fabulous that I think I wrote more quotes in my journal than I have from any other book.  Here are a few of my favorites:

He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought.  Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reason to justify it.

But time...how time first grounds us and then confounds us.  We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe.  We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly.  What we call realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them.  Time...give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical. (ellipses included in original text)

When you’re young-when I was young-you want your emotions to be like the ones you read about in books.  You want them to overturn your life, create and define a new reality.  Later, I think, you want them to do something milder, something more practical: you want them to support your life as it is and has become.  You want them to tell you that things are OK.  

It is a very, very infrequent occurrence that I say that I think a book is destined to become a classic, but this one bears many of the hallmarks.  The themes of friendship and love, the slide of time that cannot be held in check, and the life elements universal to every generation make this a read that will feel just as relevant to my grandchildren as to me.  I loved this book and recommend it for all readers high school and older.

THE UNLIKELY DISCIPLE: A SINNER'S SEMESTER AT AMERICA'S HOLIEST UNIVERSITY by Kevin Roose ✰✰✰✰ 1/2

Generally, I do not read books that revolve around religious issues unless they are written by a member of that faith.  I have zero tolerance for faith bashing, no matter who the target may be.  As a member of a faith frequently under fire (I am a Mormon), my thought is that people develop many misunderstandings about my faith from reading writings of those outside it, and while some of them are amusing, the majority of the time they are very derogatory.  I hope people choose not to read those types of books on my faith, and in exchange I refuse to read books that injure the reputation of other churches.

After reading two excellent reviews of Kevin Roose’s book, which chronicles his experience as he becomes a sort of “foreign” exchange student on what he terms his “semester abroad”, I decided to add this book to my TBR, given that both reviewers mentioned how nonjudgemental and evenhanded his writing is.  Kevin was three semesters into his English degree at Brown University, a bastion of liberal thinking, when he decided that he wanted to embark on a bit of an ethnographic experiment and spend a semester at Liberty University, the school affiliated with Christian evangelical Jerry Falwell, a school at the polar opposite of his liberal upbringing and education.  He went into the experience knowing that he wanted to write a book about his semester.

Right from the beginning it is very apparent that Kevin is very willing to be open-minded, wholeheartedly engaging personally in all aspects of Liberty students’ religious and campus culture.  The book is very funny, without ever being derogatory; it easily passes my litmus test for that criteria.  It is readily apparent when the author disagrees with his classmates and professors on issues, but his handling is such that as a reader I never felt that he disparages people, just respectfully questions their beliefs as being different from his own.  A very tough road which time and again he handles with aplomb.

All aspects of life at an evangelical Christian university are covered.  The reader follows Kevin in all of his coursework; Liberty is a full curriculum liberal arts university, but Kevin chose to take all religious themed courses while he was there.  In addition, life in the dorm and the friendships he built there (some very close ones), extra-curricular activities, dating and sex, spring break in Daytona Beach (not the usual variety), church attendance, and other related topics are discussed.

Several factors make this book well worth a read, chief among them being how honest Kevin is about his own thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors and how he is affected by being immersed in a culture so foreign to his own.  In the end, because he is so open-minded, he produces a thought-provoking look at life on the other side of the liberal/conservative and faith divide.

My one warning about the book would be that it is not really appropriate for an audience younger than college age, as there are discussions about specific sex acts to which some parents might hesitate to expose younger children.

Overall, this is a very well-written, tightly edited look at a sensitive topic handled with candor, wit, and grace.  I definitely recommend this one for all adult readers.

ROOFTOPS OF TEHRAN by Mahbod Seraji ✰✰✰✰

As a westerner, when you think about the word “romantic”, the image of red roses might come into your mind, and you might smile and think of candlelight and proposals and happily ever after.  To a Persian, the word has a vastly different connotation.  Romance to Persian sensibilities is something which is worth giving your life for, something bigger than yourself.  That is what the rose stands for to the Persian.  And that is the premise around which Mahbod Seraji built his lovely debut Persian “romance” novel, Rooftops of Tehran.

Told in the first person, through the eyes of Pasha, a seventeen year old Iranian, the novel takes the reader into the heart of Tehran on the brink of revolution, as discontent against the Shah is roiling. The reader will meet the inhabitants of one neighborhood and feel how their simple lives are impacted when one of their own becomes a target of the feared and hated SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police.

A love story, the book explores the Persian cultural practices regarding courtship and marriage through several families interactions, but primarily in a love triangle involving Pasha and the girl he loves, Zari, and the man she has been engaged to since childhood, as well as in the relationship of another couple, Pasha’s best friend Ahmed and his girlfriend.

The greatest aspect of this novel, I think, is how much it has to teach about the beautiful Persian culture.  Whether the discussion is marriage, dealing with death, extended families living under the same roof (Including those just graduated teens that Persians think it so odd that we cast out when they need our guidance the most.), education, or medical practices, the reader will find ethnic lore woven seamlessly throughout the tale.  This book made me pull out my copy of Hafiz poetry and take a fahll, a delightful indulgence I haven’t done in a very long time.  Hafiz is a very famous Persian poet, and a fahll is a tradition in Iran and practiced by Persians everywhere, where you make a wish or ask a question and then open your copy of his poems, and whichever verse your eye lands on, that is the answer to your problem.

There are times when the writing in the novel, given that it is a debut novel, is a little rough (that is what cost it a fifth star from me), but the plotting is excellent, the characters are fairly sound, and the cultural aspects outstanding.  Overall, I definitely recommend this one, and would like to thank my reading friend Regina for her strong recommendation of this one for me.  You were right, Regina, this was a great book for me!  I am happy to report that although the author is currently working on something else, he does plan to write a sequel at some point in the future.

I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith ✰✰✰✰

Mr. Mortmain had it all.  He was the celebrated novelist who had written the thinking man’s novel, the innovative “it” novel that everyone wanted him to come and lecture about, even in America.  The problem is, that was more than a decade ago.  And he hasn’t written anything since.  And the writers block has driven him into hiding in a castle in the English countryside with his artist’s model wife, young son, an adopted young man, and two teenage daughters.  

Royalties have dried up and genteel poverty really isn’t so very genteel when you are a teenage girl.  Narrated through the eyes of Cassandra, the middle child and youngest daughter of the family, who aspires to be an author and keeps the book we are reading as a journal (although it doesn’t read as dated journal entries), we follow the sorry plight of the Mortmains as they struggle to put food on the table and inspire Dad to write again through whatever means, fair or foul, they can devise.

To further complicate their lives, their landlord dies; so enter their young (of course) and handsome (what else?) new property owner on the scene to inspect the premises and meet the tenants.  Cassandra’s sister, Rose, and step-mother, Topaz, are quickly hatching a plot to marry Rose off to the new landlord (Did anybody think to ask his opinion?) and solve all their financial woes in one fell swoop.  Romance (?) and hilarity ensue.  Never fear, there is romance for our own dear Cassandra as well.

This book has a plethora of plot twists and turns to keep the reader engaged and delighted, but the one element that I like the best is that the ending is not all tied up in a bow.  There are enough hints given that if a reader wants to make assumptions you can, but if you choose not to go that way, you do not have to.  I enjoy that aspect of the novel, that after crafting so many machinations in the plot Ms. Smith isn’t afraid to leave the ending just a tad bit nebulous.

After reading the book, I decided to watch the movie as I had heard that it was quite well done.  My feelings are mixed.  Much of the nudity and innuendo in the movie seem to me to be purely gratuitous and avoidable-unfortunately they took a humorous 1950s family read and twisted it into an R-rated 21st century movie.  That said, it is quite a decent rendering of the novel into film for an adult audience, albeit with a bit too much emphasis on the hormones for my taste, and for what I believe the novel really implied.  The acting, characterizations, costuming, etc., are all very fine, as one would expect from a BBC production.

This is a fleet, poignant, romp of a read that is appropriate for all ages middle school and up.  A wonderful modern classic that I definitely recommend.  As for the film, you might want to save that for the grown-ups in the household.

NORTH AND SOUTH by Elizabeth Gaskell ✰✰✰✰

With her novel North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell, a contemporary and friend of Charles Dickens, attempted to take on many of the same themes that he addressed in his own novels.  However, if you have tried and found Dickens to be daunting, don’t let that put you off Gaskell.  I would class her work as something of a cross between Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, although I found her prose somewhat easier to read than Austen’s, and I would call her social philosophizing “Dickens lite”.

The novel is set in 1850s England, originally in the south, both in London, where Margaret Hale was raised with her cousin Edith, and in the quiet country parsonage home of Margaret and her parents, where she returns to live after Edith’s marriage.  However, Margaret’s father comes to the decision that he can no longer in good conscience continue as a minister, and so he gives up his living and moves their family to the manufacturing town of Milton, in the north of England.  Here the reader is introduced to many new characters on both sides of a clearly written social divide, laborers and masters, as Margaret and her family struggle to adapt to the drastic changes in the viewpoints between the northerners and their own southern way of seeing things, and as the Hale family wrestles with trying to find their own social standing in this new society.  As the novel progresses bridges are built, between people of different classes, between men and women, and between a grieving man and his enemy’s children.

Character development was the absolute high point of this novel for me.  Characters who began proud and inflexible slowly evolved into something utterly changed, but in such a way that it was completely believable.  Other characters remained true to form, and yet that seemed right for them.  I felt that Gaskell picked her evolving characters well.  I also loved the plot: there was romance, a social message, a couple of legal entanglements, and a great deal of suffering (which was realistic for the era and place).  At the end of viewing the mini-series my kids were ticking off on their fingers all the characters who died, and ultimately they decided that given how many of them there were they could put up with the main characters at least getting to kiss in the end!  Kids not being into the “kissing parts” you know! :-)  Very generous of them.

What cost the book its fifth star was a very slow beginning-it took me almost a hundred pages to get into the story.  However, in the book’s defense, it might have been the mood I was in when I read the print version, because when I listened to the audio it did not strike me as being quite as tedious as my initial impression. 

In addition to reading this novel in print, I also purchased a copy of the audio book.  The Clare Wille narration had come recommended to me, but when I listened to a sample on Audible I found the sound quality to be very poor-rather tinny sounding.  Since there was another version available from one of my very favorite narrators, Juliet Stevenson, I unhesitatingly went with that one and can recommend it without reserve to all listeners.  Each voice was differentiated; Mrs. Thornton was given a wonderfully in character, lower tone; and the northern accents were spot on and distinctive among the classes.

I also highly recommend the BBC mini-series to all who have read Gaskell’s work.  Fine performances are turned in by Daniela Denby-Ashe (Margaret Hale), Sinead Cusack (Mrs. Thornton), and Brendan Coyle (Nicholas Higgins), but Richard Armitage does no less than breathe John Thornton to life out of the pages of the novel-an absolutely masterful performance.  

Whether you choose the print or audio, follow this one up with the mini-series; it does take some liberties, but the characters are very true to the novel, and it is just a wonderful way to round out your Gaskell experience.  Invite your family to join you-all of my kiddos watched the movie and enjoyed it.

HOUSEKEEPING by Marilynne Robinson ✰✰✰✰

Ruth and Lucille experience a rather severe lack of parenting, losing first their father, who abandons them, then their mother, who after leaving them on their grandmother’s porch proceeds to drive off a cliff (no spoiler-this is on the back of the book).  Unfortunately for them, their situation doesn’t greatly improve.  Despite her love of them, the grandmother’s advanced age shortens her time in their lives and soon leaves them in the care of two aged great-aunts, who, feeling out of their league, and not the least interested in raising two young girls, track down, post-haste, the girls’ transient-living (for that read a nice way to say “hobo”) aunt and prevail upon her to return to her hometown and do her duty by her sister’s daughters.  Within a day of the aunt, Sylvie’s, return, the elderly aunts decamp, leaving the young girls abandoned to her less than exemplary, if willing, care.

Through beautiful prose Marilynne Robinson paints a picture of two sisters who come to see in their aunt a picture of who their mother might have been, and some of the demons that might have haunted her.  It is clear that Sylvie is mentally unstable, and the narrator of the tale, Ruthie, seems to feel and show some leanings in that direction as well.  As the story progresses, Lucille craves normalcy and strikes out on her own to find it, but Ruth loyally cleaves to family and the memories that surface for her of her own mother when she is with Sylvie.

There are so many gorgeous quotes in this book, but here are a couple examples:

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow.  For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it?”

“There is so little to remember of anyone-an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming, habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

This is a lovely work, laden with pathos; you watch these two young lives slowly spiral downward, and you ache for them.  I highly recommend reading it in one undisturbed sitting (it is a fairly short novel-a little over 200 pages), allowing the complete flow of the narrative to spin.