Completed two Books

Among my repetitive semi-annual initiatives have been reading and writing targets.  There are conditions attached to each, such as submission of articles and types of books.  Writing usually gets written, iffy on submission.  Reading always exceeds target, as it does this cycle.  Never complete two on the same day until now, to the best of my recollection, since early grade school when books were short and could be completed at a single sitting.  But yesterday I finished both The Book of Mormon and Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic on the same day.  The scripture took months at two chapters a day.  The poems and illustrations took days at ten pages per sitting, or really lying as I read it in bed.

Most Mormons probably have not read the text of their sacred text, even though it is written in most of their native language.  I've been making an effort to pace myself through the sacred Western texts, leaving only Chronicles of the Old Testament unread while completing the New Testament and the Quran in their English translations, four chapters at a time for the NT, two per day for the Quran.  Each took months and my level of recall wouldn't come close to that of a clergyman whose training would interrupt the text to explore established commentary and presumably assignments or exams to assess understanding.

A Light in the Attic comes from the library's juvenile section.  Some arbiters of morality left over from Old Dixie who control school libraries thought this volume should be removed from the shelves, though the poems have probably been read to their own kids at bedtime with some delight.  Why they targeted this children's classic got my attention, so I signed it out and read each of the poems plus an additional twelve added since the original 1981 edition.  One poem references our Darwinian forebears.  Another couple include naked bodies, either washing each other's tushes while crammed in a bathtub or unable to get to the closet to pick out clothing due to a clutter of birthday gifts blocking the path.  Neither prurient and probably something that would make little ones chuckle, as they undoubtedly have for forty years.  A more serious observation, mine though likely not the censors, was the unflattering way aging was described.  Old people were largely stereotyped as impaired geezers who appeared physically in decline, and sometimes emotionally.  The book had a couple of verses dealing with death, sometimes vindictive death.  Unlikely that any child tackling this from their school library would incur lasting mental trauma, though.

I still have a couple more books in progress, but don't think I really want to finish the Old Testament by plowing through the two Books of Chronicles.  Some political reading may be overdue.  I enjoy George Packer's analysis in The Atlantic so took his book The Last Best Hope from the library for admiration of his writing and thinking ability.  And for a second banned work, Art Spiegelman's Maus, another classic that caught the wrath of the Christian Right after being widely read for forty years with mostly admiration.

And then there's my own writing which needs to be more consistent but is greatly enhanced by the breadth and elegance to which I engage in what the masters have assembled.