Feeding the Life of the Mind

I was talking recently to a young woman who said that she used to read a lot of classic literature, but now that she was in law school, she did so much heavy reading for her classes that now she only felt up to reading fairly weightless stuff in her down time. Mystery series involving chefs, with recipes in the back, that kind of stuff.

It strikes me that my life demands the opposite task. I spend most of my time doing necessary, but exceptionally mundane tasks, things that don't demand great intellectual exertions. And, too, I'm inert by nature and sedentary by inclination. I need a daily kick in the pants to get me moving, and a daily kick in the brain to get me thinking, and a daily kick in the spirit to get me praying. If I spent my downtime consuming a lot of literary cotton candy, I'd get mental cavities, and eventually, holes in my head where my wisdom teeth rotted out.

That's not to say that everything I read is Grade-A, but I try to keep up a steady diet of substantial books for my own health. Darwin has been urging me for a while to keep a reading list on Goodreads, so now I can track what I've read since the beginning of the year.

Finished:
Two Under the Indian Sun, by Jon and Rumer Godden

Notes on Directing: 130 Lessons in Leadership from the Director's Chair, by Frank Hauser
At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess In Victorian England, by Walter Dean Myers (a Christmas present to my 13-year-old, that I picked up and read while standing in her room)

Anne of the Island, by L.M. Montgomery

And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie

How Fiction Works, by James Woods

In progress:
On Moral Fiction, by John Gardner
The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis (again, and again)

Readalouds with the kids:

Just finished:

The Life of Moses, by Gregory of Nyssa

The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux

Just started:
On the Incarnation, by St. Athanasius
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope

Just before the turn of the year, I read Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow, and A Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller.

On the list:
Tooth and Claw, by Jo Walton (another of my daughter's Christmas presents)
Cromartie vs.the God Shiva, by Rumer Godden (my brother-in-law sends me Rumer Godden books on gift-giving occasions, and I enjoy her style)
Areopagitica, by John Milton
Common Sense , by Thomas Paine
The Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay

And of course, sitting on my nightstand like a big albatross is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman , and his poor mother is still in labor with him, and may be yet for a few years, at the rate I'm making it through.

***

As Darwin ramps up to the end of his novel, I've been writing less, simply because we can't sustain that dual level of writing energy in the house. But I've been trying to read more, not just the above books, but (as part of a program of reading the entire Bible in a year) several Psalms a day through the Christmas season. I started in Advent with Isaiah; next I go on to the Wisdom books. Monday through Friday I read the daily Mass readings with the kids and discuss them.

For years, I've tried the rosary, the chaplet, the Liturgy of the Hours, and none of the forms of prayer has ever become second nature to me. But reading, reading I can do. So this year, I'm going to read the Bible. The Word of God is living and effective. It goes forth and does not return empty-handed. Reading scripture stirs up all kinds of fascinating insights and connections for me, and though I chew on them during the day as a kind of prayer, I don't write them down. Humility or laziness? Perhaps that's the next form of discipline to embrace.