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July 26
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (Paperback)
by Michael Maren
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Paperback)
by Kathleen Norris
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recommended for: people who love rural places
read in January, 2006
Louisa said:
"I loved this book & love this writer. Here is how it starts: "The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob's angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before i...more
I loved this book & love this writer. Here is how it starts: "The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them. Like Jacob's angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing. This can mean driving through a snowstorm on icy roads, wondering whether you'll have to pull over & spend the night in your car, only to emerge under tag ends of clouds into a clear sky blazing with stars. Suddenly you know what you're seeing: the earth has turned to face the center of the galaxy, and many more stars are visible than the ones we usually see on our wing of the spiral.
"Or a vivid double rainbow marches to the east, following the wild summer storm that nearly blew you off the road. The storm sky is gunmetal gray, but to the west the sky is peach streaked with crimson. The land & sky of the West often fill what Thoreau termed our 'need to witness our limits transgressed.' Nature, in Dakota, can indeed be an experience of the holy.
"More Americans than ever, well over 70%, now live in urban areas & tend to see Plains land as empty. What they really mean is devoid of human presence....
"Dakota is a painful reminder of human limits, just as cities & shopping malls are attempts to deny them. This book is an invitatiion to a land of little rain & few trees, dry summer winds & harsh winters, a lind rich in grass & sky & surprises. On a crowded planet, this is a place inhabited by few, and by the circumstance of inheritance, i am one of them. Nearly 20 years ago I returned to the holy ground of my childhood summers; I moved from New York City to the house my mother had grown up in, in an isolated town on the border between North & South Dakota."...less
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
The Man Born to Be King (Paperback)
by Dorothy L. Sayers
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recommended for: people who are interested & like plays
read in April, 2007
Louisa said:
"This is an amazing book that I underestimated for a decade.
When I first tried to read it, i was already skeptical because of the sickly sentimentality of the cover (which makes the book look, in the best case, like a christmas book); i skipped ...more
This is an amazing book that I underestimated for a decade.
When I first tried to read it, i was already skeptical because of the sickly sentimentality of the cover (which makes the book look, in the best case, like a christmas book); i skipped the introduction & fairly early came upon Jesus described as "that man with the golden hair"... i couldn't take it and put the book down.
BUT THESE ARE NOT SERIOUS, ENDEMIC PROBLEMS and the book turns out to be enchanting (I did make a cover for it out of some William Morris wrapping paper).
They were radio plays covering the entire life of Christ (hardly christmas at all!!) done in Britain in the middle of WWII (in 1942 Sayers may well not have realized yet how creepy it was to give Jesus "golden hair," and at any rate it doesn't come up again).
The plays themselves are wonderful, and almost as wonderful are her instructions to each actor of how to play his or her character or what the characters are thinking.
But i think i can do no better with this review than to quote from Sayers' amazing introduction, worthy of reading by itself.
"A loose & sentimental theology begets loose & sentimental art-forms; an illogical theology lands one in illogical situations; an ill-balanced theology issues in false emphasis & absurdity. Conversely; there is no more searching test of a theology than to submit it to dramatic handling; nothing so glaringly exposes inconsistencies in a character, a story, or a philosophy as to put it up on the stage & allow it to speak for itself...."
However, she continues:
"In writing a play on this particular subject, the dramatist must begin by ridding himself of all edificatory & theological intentions. He must set out, not to instruct but to show forth; not to point a moral but to tell a story; not to produce a Divinity Lesson with illustrations in dialogue but to write a good piece of theater...
"For a work of art that is not good & true in art is not good or true in any other respect & is useless for any purpose whatsoever--even for edification--because it is a lie, and the devil is the father of all such. As drama, these plays stand or fall."...less
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
84 Charing Cross Road (Paperback)
by Helene Hanff
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recommended for: people who love books
read in January, 1995
Louisa said:
"this 97-page book is a completely wonderful series of 20 years of (short and often funny) letters between the writer and the owner of a little London rare books bookstore. I don't want to write cheesy things about a friendship blossoming by mail bet...more
this 97-page book is a completely wonderful series of 20 years of (short and often funny) letters between the writer and the owner of a little London rare books bookstore. I don't want to write cheesy things about a friendship blossoming by mail between a brash and exuberant new york writer and a stuffy and sweet old londoner, but you are practically forced to write such things about this book, which at any rate transcends cliche. a must read.
Here is how it begins:
Oct. 5, 1949
Gentlemen:
Your ad in the Sunday Review of Literature says that you specialize in out-of-print books. The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat as I equate 'antique' with expensive. I am a poor writer with an antiquarian taste in books & all the things I want are impossible to get over here except in very expensive rare editions, or in Barnes & Noble's grimy, marked-up schoolboy copies.
I enclose a list of my most pressing problems. If you have clean secondhand copies of any of the books on the list, for no more than $5.00 each, will you consider this a purchase order & send them to me?
Very truly yours,
Helene Hanff...less
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
The Three Incestuous Sisters: An Illustrated Novel (Hardcover)
by Audrey Niffenegger
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
Giving Up the Gun: Japan's Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879 (Paperback)
by Noel Perrin
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
First Person Rural: Essays of a Sometime Farmer (Paperback)
by Noel Perrin
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
Pastured Poultry Profits (Paperback)
by Joel Salatin
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Louisa
gave
   
to:
The Omnivore's Dilemma (Hardcover)
by Michael Pollan
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