Classics Considered

Chesterton's England, ca. 100 years ago, is home to a de facto group of patriots, a Robin Hood renaissance.  There's the lawyer, Mr. Robert Owen Hood, whose name itself harkens back to the leader of the Merry Men.  His friend Colonel Crane is a quiet soul with a fiery past, plus a penchant for studying indigenous tribes and their religions.  Among the other five members, the aviator Hilary Pierce stands out as a brash aviator, someone full of antics which he carries out with great seriousness. Their goal?  To achieve impossible things, and to save England from despots.  So Mr. Hood sets the Thames on fire, Colonel Crane eats his hat, and Hilary Pierce makes pigs fly, all in the name of rescuing the common man from the evils of either greedy aristocrats or corrupt bureaucrats.  Sly politicians, doctors, and scientists stand in their way, but the League of the Long Bow prevails with one promise: it always does what it says it will do. When I think of ...

Every so often, I get an urge to do something crafty.  "Crafty" here means having to do with crafts, not cunning plans (though it may amount to the same thing).  Today was one of those days, so I stopped by ye olde curiosity shoppe Dollar Tree and picked up some frames, because I'm cheap that way. Remember this quote from Heretics ?  I couldn't find a great graphic of it online, so I decided to make one.  Here's the printout (click for full size): ( The flourish is from Pixabay - I know they don't require attribution, but I always feel like I should...habit!) I picked up this little blue frame because it goes with my color scheme, but I wasn't sure what picture to put in it.  I finally settled on the plans for the Nautilus (Disney version), along with Nemo's motto, Mobilis in Mobili ("moving amidst mobility").  Completely nerdy, but I love it.  :) Last bit of craftiness: I love triptychs, so thought I'd try creati...

This year's reading is off to a good start, not so much in terms of speed (work and other activities have put the brakes on that) but in terms of content.  I've just finished G. K. Chesterton's Heretics , a light book for heavy hearts of little-'o' orthodox Christians who happen to be classic literature nerds.  Since I fall under that category, I found Heretics to be a bracing read and surprisingly relevant for the current times.  Chesterton is a hit-and-miss author for me; this book was definitely a "hit." George Bernard Shaw, Hilaire Belloc, and G. K. Chesterton. Heretics (1905) comes under one of my favorite niche genres - authors writing about other authors.  In this series of essays, Chesterton critiques such literary luminaries as Rudyard Kipling , H. G. Wells , and George Bernard Shaw, as well as others who have since fallen out of readership.  Imperialism, Nietzsche's Superman, human progress, and other topics of the day are covered he...

“I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story.” A great Chesterton quote from a book of his I've yet to read ( What I Saw in America ).  It is easy enough to view people through the narrow lens of our interactions with them, but to view them in the context of their own life story is another thing.

When I joined this challenge a year ago, I had every intention of branching out and reading books from multiple counties.  As it turns out, I stayed in familiar territory and read London for all three books (Level 1). The Mint was a fitting sequel to Seven Pillars of Wisdom .  For some reason I went into it expecting a novel, but it's actually a journal-like memoir of T. E. Lawrence's peacetime experiences in the military.  After his campaigns as "Lawrence of Arabia" - and, as importantly, after his attempts to deal with politicians - T.E. was sick of being a leader and wanted to disappear from the public eye.  He joined the service under an assumed name, and that is where he found a place of security and camaraderie, the R.A.F.  The Mint is a coarse novel, written in a modern voice (for the times) and full of all the profanities and vulgarity that Lawrence encountered around him.  I found myself unable to rate the book, because it came across as an hones...

If it is difficult to review a book that is nonfiction and follows a less-than-linear outline, then it is doubly difficult to review such a book from the Christian apologetics genre.  And, naturally, one must explain a rating of 5 out of 5 stars . G. K. Chesterton 's Orthodoxy is an account of how he came to hold Christian orthodox beliefs.  By the term "orthodoxy" (the lowercase 'o'), he is not referring to a branch or denomination of the Church, but rather ". . . the Apostles' Creed , as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed." I happened to read Orthodoxy during or just after my 20th cent. Brit. History course, which included references to H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and other people of letters.  There was not one mention of Chesterton, despite his friendship with both Wells and Shaw; he does not fit neatly into the agenda presented in su...

By LoKiLeCh [ GFDL or CC-BY-3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons Of G. K. Chesterton 's several thousand essays, the one I stumbled across most suddenly on Project Gutenberg was Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State.   I do not go out of my way to read essays, but the topic had been on my mind recently and, of course, Chesterton's nonfic is even more renowned than his novels.  I thought this would be a good place to start. Eugenics, in short, is "the study of methods of improving the quality of the human race, esp by selective breeding" ( Collins English Dictionary ).  The most well-known example of eugenics on a large scale took place in Nazi Germany; however, a more historically obscure example was the support for and practice of eugenics by doctors in the US and Great Britain, pre-WWI--and, in the case of the US, even up through the 70s. Background is key in Chesterton's book.  I must admit I was hoping for an argument tha...

If there's one thing that ticks me off about this book, it's this: The Club of Queer Trades is a parody of Sherlock Holmes.  From the protagonist, Basil Grant--who scoffs at facts --to his younger brother Rupert--a wannabe private detective patrolling lamp-lit London-- G. K. Chesterton takes a not-so-subtle jab at the Sherlock Holmes series and the science of deduction.  Basil Grant's tools of the trade?  A touch of insanity, healthy intuition, and uproarious laughter. In fact, I can forgive Chesterton and his maniacal character just for the laughs I got reading this book. Chesterton's word choice is very quirky and witty throughout most of the six short stories and especially the first half.  If you're looking for a light read set in Victorian London, you could give this a try.  The basic plotline is this: Rupert, Basil, and Mr Swinburne (the narrator/Watson) never agree on who is a suspicious-looking character.  And if either Rupert or Basil sees a su...

© Daniel J Maxwell In the last few days, I've been perusing two radically different books: G. K. Chesterton's The Club of Queer Trades (a first-rate audiobook ) and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (my beloved publicity copy ).  The first is a humorous collection of adventures in Victorian London.  The second is a profound, psychological study set in Africa under British imperialism.  Two books could not be more unlike.  But while I was reviewing some of the more outstanding quotes today, it struck me both books have similar things to say...on the subject of facts . It's a weird coincidence.  I have a habit of reading multiple books at once, but between books of different genre, there is rarely such a complete, simultaneous overlap of message/meaning.  If it doesn't bore you to tears, read the excerpts below and tell me if I'm just seeing things:    "Facts," murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, " how facts obscure ...