I really like Christmas music, though I only listen to it during Advent and Christmas.
Ten Christmas songs I like, with numbering for organization and not rank:
1. Bring a Torch, Jeanette, Isabella (Un Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle). It's not really a song that makes a lot of sense, but I think it's pretty. My favorite part is the end of the first verse: "Ah! Ah! Ah! Que la Mère est belle, Ah! Ah! Ah! Que l'Enfant est beau!" Mannheim Steamroller's version makes me happy, too, and I used to play it while stirring sauce for pasta.
2. O, Come All Ye Faithful. This has been one of my favorites for a long time, mostly because when I was younger I liked songs with repetition. I also have a version of this in Spanish that I like -- Spain Spanish. "Venid Fieles Todos." (You can tell it's Spain Spanish because it uses vosotros...)
3. One Quiet Moment. This and the next two songs are sung only by a group called GLAD as far as I know. One Quiet Moment is mostly about Mary and Joseph before the birth and raising Jesus. The chorus is: "And in one quiet moment, a woman and man accepted the part they would have in God's plan -- to give up His glory and be born as a man, in one quiet moment."
4. In the First Light. This and One Quiet Moment are two of my most listened to songs, and definitely my most listened to Christmas songs. It covers birth through resurrection. "In the first light of the new day, no one knew He had arrived. Things continued as they had been while the newborn softly cried." And later: "As his mother held him closely, it was hard to understand that this baby, not yet speaking, was the Word of God to man."
5. All the World Was Waiting. One Quiet Moment and In the First Light are on GLAD's A Capella Christmas, but this is on their Voices of Christmas. It also covers birth through resurrection. "All the world was waiting the night that You were born, God of life eternal in a fragile form Shepherds gathered closer, gazing at Your face, wondering how this helpless child could save a fallen human race." And at the end: "All will be accomplished, our trials and tears will end, and those who’ve longed to see You will never wait, will never wait, will never wait again."
6. I Believe in Santa's Cause. Statler Brothers. "Now there are those who don't believe in miracles of Santa Claus, but I believe what I believe in -- I believe in Santa's cause." This song says perfectly everything I think about Santa.
7. Il Est Ne. (He is Born.) I don't like this song as much in English, but I really like it in French. "Jouez hautbois, resonnez musettes!" And the first verse: "Depuis plus de quatre mille ans, nous le promettaient les Prophetes; Depuis plus de quatre mille ans, nous attendions cet heureux temps!"
8. St. Nicholas by Sheryl Cormier and the Cajun Sounds. This is in French Lousiana Creole, and I don't understand most of it, but the mood is so happy, and I like what I do understand of it. Basically, I love Cajun music.
9. Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow. I first heard this sung by GLAD, but it's in the Faith We Sing, under "There's a Star in the East," since that's the first line. "If you take good heed to the angel’s words, rise up, shepherd, and follow. You’ll forget your flocks, you’ll forget your herds, rise up, shepherd, and follow."
10. Snow Miser/Heat Miser. "The Year Without a Santa Claus" is one of my favorite Christmas movies (along with "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town" -- yay Rankin-Bass!), and these two songs that are basically the same song are my favorites from the movie. Err, tv special, originally. But really: "I'm Mr. 101" versus "I'm Mr. 10 below."
Thursday, December 22, 2011
2011 Book Post
Spoilers ahead. For a lot of novels and plays.
1. American Literature class
My class read All my Sons and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris, and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also read one of the books the other class read, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.
-- All My Sons. This was definitely the play I preferred of the two Miller plays. They both had lots of lies floating around, but this one wasn't half reality half dream. I also love Chris' line near the end: "You can be better! Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and you're responsible to it."
--Death of a Salesman. I just found this hard to read -- not difficulty-wise, but in the way of being something I didn't really want to read. The yelling and the wandering...ack. Between this and All My Sons I had Miller-ish dreams for weeks.
-- The Little Foxes. This was my favorite of the three plays we read. I suppose technically Regina's the protagonist, but she's an amazing villain -- smarter than the others give her credit before, hiding behind what she appears to be, so selfish. Zan is awesome, and I agree with Regina at the end; it seems like Zan is just there, can't do anything, and then all of a sudden she has this backbone. . I rather like Ben Hubbard, too: "There are hundreds of Hubbards sitting in rooms like this throughout the country. All their names aren't Hubbard, but they are all Hubbards and they will own this country some day."
-- Snow Falling on Cedars. Sometimes too much scenery description for me, but it was fascinating to watch all the pieces fall together, and Hatsue telling Ishmael to live is gorgeous.
-- A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. The first time I read through this, I liked Rayona, thought Christine was whiny, and was so-so on Ida. Then for a class assignment I was assigned to the group on Ida, and by the end I knew every detail of Ida's section of the book, and she became my favorite character (or at least equal to Rayona). The three sections with all the braiding mentioned is cool structurally and as a symbol.
-- The Poisonwood Bible. I had Miller dreams after reading his plays, and I had Adah's voice in my head for more than a month after reading this. Luckily, I'm okay with that -- Adah's my favorite character and it was evident after reading her first section that she was going to be. I like her intelligence, her bitterness, her references to Emily Dickinson, her backwards writing, her palindromes -- but I love that she grows up, loses her slant but sometimes tries to regain it, wonders where all the bitterness came from, questions the worth of life. "'Tis the night before Christmas and all through the house I am Adah who expects no gifts." I agree with her that we cannot shed our past; we carry the marks and that's important. "We are our injuries as much as we are our successes." "If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles."
Basically, so much love.
Summer Reading
-- Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I have a Russian friend who assures me that this is one of Tolstoy's more readable works. I don't see that as encouraging, because at some points I was suffering through AK. Not all -- there were parts when I wanted to keep reading; it does better than Troilus and Cressida did last summer. At the beginning I liked Anna and Kitty, and I thought Levin could be likable. Dolly was okay. At the end I liked Kitty, Levin, and Dolly, though I didn't really like Kitty's and Levin's moments when they thought they'd discovered the meaning of life and then decided it wasn't worth it and probably wasn't the meaning of life, anyway. I also felt somewhat sorry for Vronsky, whom I hadn't liked at all at the beginning. I was also told by my Russian friend that no one actually reads the parts where Levin waxes philosophical about farming...oops. Except I'm probably supposed to since this is for school, so not-oops.
--Oresteia by Aeschylus. This is actually three plays, but they're meant to be shown together. This was a much easier read than Anna Karenina (and was for Western Civilization, not Literature). It was probably the most interesting summer reading, with the others being AK and Old Testament excerpts. In Civ we've used this to bring up lots of moral issues, discussing Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia and the murders of Agamemnon and Cassandra and then of Clytaemnestra and her lover.
3. Shakespeare
This summer I read King Lear and Macbeth. In both, more happened more quickly than I expected (especially in Lear), but I really enjoyed both. I think I preferred Macbeth -- I found it more quotable, which is something I love about Shakespeare plays. As much as I liked Lear overall, the pity-inducing scenes were less enjoyable. Macbeth lacked that; it's possible but not nearly as easy to feel sorry for Macbeth, even with him so seemingly weary at the end.
4. Matthew/Matthieu/Mateo
For Lent, I read Matthew thrice in three different languages. I still know Luke best, but I think I know Matthew much better than I did before Lent. I'm planning on reading Mark next year.
5. World Literature
Compared to my other high school English classes, we've read a lot. We started by going over AK, and then:
--Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky. I believe this has been the least favorite of almost the entire senior class. It's ranty, self-contradicting, whiny, and very existentialist. There must be people who like existentialist writing; I can't handle it. This gave me (unsurprisingly) the same slimy feeling as Camus' L'etranger.
--Madame Bovary by Flaubert. One of my two favorites that we've read. Emma can be annoying and frustrating (dear girl, stop buying things!), but the realism over romanticism attracted me. I also read parts of it in French, which was awesome. Flaubert writes beautifully and somehow manages to write description that doesn't bore me. I still can't see it, but he writes other senses, too, which makes that easier.
--Heart of Darkness by Conrad. The jungle/darkness description got old. This was probably the easiest to *read* up to this point, but I was less willing to sit down and read than I was to read MB. We spent a lot of time on this in class, especially for it being rather short.
--Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce. Necessary note: My World Lit teacher loves Joyce. She spent six weeks one year studying Ulysses in depth with a few other people. I was not so fond of Joyce. Sometimes better than Conrad, sometimes not. The first two parts of five were pretty hard for me to read, but then it got easier -- yes, even the going on and on and on about hell was easier than reading little boy Stephen. (However, perhaps the best quote of the book is about wetting the bed.) Favorite line: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe..."
--As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. This is my other favorite from this semester. It's a very easy read, and Faulkner writes rural Mississippi accents beautifully. The characters are very frustrating, but really I was sympathetic to everyone but Anse, the father. I know people who despise the book, mostly because the family acts so stupidly, but I enjoyed it. Then again, being one of my favorites from this semester isn't saying much.
6. Special Project
For Western Civilization I am working on a History Day project about Euclid and the establishment of rigorous mathematics. I read parts of several books for the project, and at this point I've come to the conclusion that Euclid was not the originator of rigorous proof or the structure of mathematics, but he was the one who made it popular and established the structure as standard through the Elements. However, plodding through large sections of Euclid's Elements has not made me like geometry much more than I did before.
7. Other reading
--Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans. This is a history of ballet, and I talked about it far too much for a couple of weeks. The first two or three chapters were very dry, but then it quickly became more readable. I knew nothing about Danish ballet, so I found that chapter very interesting, and a lot of my conceptions of Italian and Russian ballet were very off. I disagree with the epilogue -- Homans argues that ballet is dying, titling the chapter "The Masters Are Dead and Gone." I don't think ballet is dead; in fact, I think it's very much alive. Around here, at least, the local ballet company was near dead four years ago and has almost completely recovered.
--Telling True Stories. This is an anthology of short essays about (mostly) narrative journalism by lots of narrative journalists. I don't write that much nonfiction, but this was still really interesting. A lot of the advice about writing and research applies to fiction, as well, and the section on ethics (perhaps the part that is least applicable to fiction) was one of the more interesting sections.
--Mastiff by Tamora Pierce. Third and final book in the PD trilogy, released five years after Terrier and two and a half years after Bloodhound. Finally. Parts of this book I really loved, and parts were disappointing. I like Farmer/Beka better than any other Beka pairing, and I in general really like Farmer, so that made me happy. I thought Tunstall turning traitor could have been executed much better, though.
--Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. This is Carson's first book, and I enjoyed it. (Adding it late because it was a Christmas gift!) Well-written strong girls rock, and Elisa fits that... well, eventually. Not so much at the beginning. She's an atypical heroine in a lot of ways, though, and I like that. It disappointed me some that her increased confidence was correlated with her weight loss, though the two were more results of the same thing than one causing the other. (So correlation not causation.) While the prophecy that everyone knows about except the one of whom the prophecy speaks isn't that original, the fact that it was the result of a translation disagreement made me happy. I was also impressed by the world building -- I love the language, religion, and history.
--Disney Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios. I think I own every Imagineering Field Guide that's been written. I like seeing some of the concept art and the intent behind the attractions -- it's actually really interesting to see what was trying to be accomplished with some of the attractions that haven't been very successful, like Narnia.
--Rogue Crew by Brian Jacques. The last Redwall book, and I actually haven't finished it, and I won't until 2012 because I left it at school. So far, I'm enjoying it, and the Rogue Crew of otters is mysterious and awesome, especially with the Long Patrol along.
1. American Literature class
My class read All my Sons and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, The Little Foxes by Lillian Hellman, A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Dorris, and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I also read one of the books the other class read, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.
-- All My Sons. This was definitely the play I preferred of the two Miller plays. They both had lots of lies floating around, but this one wasn't half reality half dream. I also love Chris' line near the end: "You can be better! Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and you're responsible to it."
--Death of a Salesman. I just found this hard to read -- not difficulty-wise, but in the way of being something I didn't really want to read. The yelling and the wandering...ack. Between this and All My Sons I had Miller-ish dreams for weeks.
-- The Little Foxes. This was my favorite of the three plays we read. I suppose technically Regina's the protagonist, but she's an amazing villain -- smarter than the others give her credit before, hiding behind what she appears to be, so selfish. Zan is awesome, and I agree with Regina at the end; it seems like Zan is just there, can't do anything, and then all of a sudden she has this backbone. . I rather like Ben Hubbard, too: "There are hundreds of Hubbards sitting in rooms like this throughout the country. All their names aren't Hubbard, but they are all Hubbards and they will own this country some day."
-- Snow Falling on Cedars. Sometimes too much scenery description for me, but it was fascinating to watch all the pieces fall together, and Hatsue telling Ishmael to live is gorgeous.
-- A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. The first time I read through this, I liked Rayona, thought Christine was whiny, and was so-so on Ida. Then for a class assignment I was assigned to the group on Ida, and by the end I knew every detail of Ida's section of the book, and she became my favorite character (or at least equal to Rayona). The three sections with all the braiding mentioned is cool structurally and as a symbol.
-- The Poisonwood Bible. I had Miller dreams after reading his plays, and I had Adah's voice in my head for more than a month after reading this. Luckily, I'm okay with that -- Adah's my favorite character and it was evident after reading her first section that she was going to be. I like her intelligence, her bitterness, her references to Emily Dickinson, her backwards writing, her palindromes -- but I love that she grows up, loses her slant but sometimes tries to regain it, wonders where all the bitterness came from, questions the worth of life. "'Tis the night before Christmas and all through the house I am Adah who expects no gifts." I agree with her that we cannot shed our past; we carry the marks and that's important. "We are our injuries as much as we are our successes." "If chained is where you have been, your arms will always bear marks of the shackles."
Basically, so much love.
Summer Reading
-- Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I have a Russian friend who assures me that this is one of Tolstoy's more readable works. I don't see that as encouraging, because at some points I was suffering through AK. Not all -- there were parts when I wanted to keep reading; it does better than Troilus and Cressida did last summer. At the beginning I liked Anna and Kitty, and I thought Levin could be likable. Dolly was okay. At the end I liked Kitty, Levin, and Dolly, though I didn't really like Kitty's and Levin's moments when they thought they'd discovered the meaning of life and then decided it wasn't worth it and probably wasn't the meaning of life, anyway. I also felt somewhat sorry for Vronsky, whom I hadn't liked at all at the beginning. I was also told by my Russian friend that no one actually reads the parts where Levin waxes philosophical about farming...oops. Except I'm probably supposed to since this is for school, so not-oops.
--Oresteia by Aeschylus. This is actually three plays, but they're meant to be shown together. This was a much easier read than Anna Karenina (and was for Western Civilization, not Literature). It was probably the most interesting summer reading, with the others being AK and Old Testament excerpts. In Civ we've used this to bring up lots of moral issues, discussing Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia and the murders of Agamemnon and Cassandra and then of Clytaemnestra and her lover.
3. Shakespeare
This summer I read King Lear and Macbeth. In both, more happened more quickly than I expected (especially in Lear), but I really enjoyed both. I think I preferred Macbeth -- I found it more quotable, which is something I love about Shakespeare plays. As much as I liked Lear overall, the pity-inducing scenes were less enjoyable. Macbeth lacked that; it's possible but not nearly as easy to feel sorry for Macbeth, even with him so seemingly weary at the end.
4. Matthew/Matthieu/Mateo
For Lent, I read Matthew thrice in three different languages. I still know Luke best, but I think I know Matthew much better than I did before Lent. I'm planning on reading Mark next year.
5. World Literature
Compared to my other high school English classes, we've read a lot. We started by going over AK, and then:
--Notes from the Underground by Dostoyevsky. I believe this has been the least favorite of almost the entire senior class. It's ranty, self-contradicting, whiny, and very existentialist. There must be people who like existentialist writing; I can't handle it. This gave me (unsurprisingly) the same slimy feeling as Camus' L'etranger.
--Madame Bovary by Flaubert. One of my two favorites that we've read. Emma can be annoying and frustrating (dear girl, stop buying things!), but the realism over romanticism attracted me. I also read parts of it in French, which was awesome. Flaubert writes beautifully and somehow manages to write description that doesn't bore me. I still can't see it, but he writes other senses, too, which makes that easier.
--Heart of Darkness by Conrad. The jungle/darkness description got old. This was probably the easiest to *read* up to this point, but I was less willing to sit down and read than I was to read MB. We spent a lot of time on this in class, especially for it being rather short.
--Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by Joyce. Necessary note: My World Lit teacher loves Joyce. She spent six weeks one year studying Ulysses in depth with a few other people. I was not so fond of Joyce. Sometimes better than Conrad, sometimes not. The first two parts of five were pretty hard for me to read, but then it got easier -- yes, even the going on and on and on about hell was easier than reading little boy Stephen. (However, perhaps the best quote of the book is about wetting the bed.) Favorite line: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe..."
--As I Lay Dying by Faulkner. This is my other favorite from this semester. It's a very easy read, and Faulkner writes rural Mississippi accents beautifully. The characters are very frustrating, but really I was sympathetic to everyone but Anse, the father. I know people who despise the book, mostly because the family acts so stupidly, but I enjoyed it. Then again, being one of my favorites from this semester isn't saying much.
6. Special Project
For Western Civilization I am working on a History Day project about Euclid and the establishment of rigorous mathematics. I read parts of several books for the project, and at this point I've come to the conclusion that Euclid was not the originator of rigorous proof or the structure of mathematics, but he was the one who made it popular and established the structure as standard through the Elements. However, plodding through large sections of Euclid's Elements has not made me like geometry much more than I did before.
7. Other reading
--Apollo's Angels by Jennifer Homans. This is a history of ballet, and I talked about it far too much for a couple of weeks. The first two or three chapters were very dry, but then it quickly became more readable. I knew nothing about Danish ballet, so I found that chapter very interesting, and a lot of my conceptions of Italian and Russian ballet were very off. I disagree with the epilogue -- Homans argues that ballet is dying, titling the chapter "The Masters Are Dead and Gone." I don't think ballet is dead; in fact, I think it's very much alive. Around here, at least, the local ballet company was near dead four years ago and has almost completely recovered.
--Telling True Stories. This is an anthology of short essays about (mostly) narrative journalism by lots of narrative journalists. I don't write that much nonfiction, but this was still really interesting. A lot of the advice about writing and research applies to fiction, as well, and the section on ethics (perhaps the part that is least applicable to fiction) was one of the more interesting sections.
--Mastiff by Tamora Pierce. Third and final book in the PD trilogy, released five years after Terrier and two and a half years after Bloodhound. Finally. Parts of this book I really loved, and parts were disappointing. I like Farmer/Beka better than any other Beka pairing, and I in general really like Farmer, so that made me happy. I thought Tunstall turning traitor could have been executed much better, though.
--Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson. This is Carson's first book, and I enjoyed it. (Adding it late because it was a Christmas gift!) Well-written strong girls rock, and Elisa fits that... well, eventually. Not so much at the beginning. She's an atypical heroine in a lot of ways, though, and I like that. It disappointed me some that her increased confidence was correlated with her weight loss, though the two were more results of the same thing than one causing the other. (So correlation not causation.) While the prophecy that everyone knows about except the one of whom the prophecy speaks isn't that original, the fact that it was the result of a translation disagreement made me happy. I was also impressed by the world building -- I love the language, religion, and history.
--Disney Imagineering Field Guide to Disney's Hollywood Studios. I think I own every Imagineering Field Guide that's been written. I like seeing some of the concept art and the intent behind the attractions -- it's actually really interesting to see what was trying to be accomplished with some of the attractions that haven't been very successful, like Narnia.
--Rogue Crew by Brian Jacques. The last Redwall book, and I actually haven't finished it, and I won't until 2012 because I left it at school. So far, I'm enjoying it, and the Rogue Crew of otters is mysterious and awesome, especially with the Long Patrol along.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)