Author Archives: wjduquette

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About wjduquette

Author, software engineer, and Lay Dominican.

Most Attempted, Least Read

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Jaq has a post on a meme that originated with LibraryThing. They had folks mark the books that they owned and meant to read but hadn’t gotten around to yet. Here’s the top list. Following Jaq’s lead, I’ve marked those I’ve read, those I’ve read for school, those I’ve started but not finished, and those I own and really expect to read some day. I found his typographical conventions a pain to read, so I’m going to use my own. Titles I’ve never read and don’t own will be printed as is. Those I’ve read all the way through will be bolded. And I’ll added annotations–in English–for everything else. Jaq also marked the ones he never expects to read; I decided to accentuate the positive and not do that. Here they are.

  • Anna Karenina
  • Crime and Punishment
  • Catch-22
  • One Hundred Years of Solitude
  • Wuthering Heights
  • The Silmarillion. More than once.
  • Life of Pi: a novel
  • The Name of the Rose. More than once.
  • Don Quixote. Started a couple of times, but that was
    many, many years ago. Ought to try again.
  • Moby Dick. Started. Liked it until they got on board
    the Pequod.
  • Ulysses
  • Madame Bovary
  • The Odyssey. I’ve read parts of this; I’m not sure I’ve
    ever read the whole thing.
  • Pride and Prejudice. A personal favorite.
  • Jane Eyre
  • A Tale of Two Cities
  • The Brothers Karamazov
  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human
    societies    . This one was interesting.
  • War and Peace
  • Vanity Fair
  • The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • The Iliad. I’ve read portions of this, in several
    translations, but I’ve never it made the whole way.
  • Emma
  • The Blind Assassin. ???
  • The Kite Runner. ???
  • Mrs. Dalloway. ???
  • Great Expectations. High school.
  • American Gods
  • A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. ???
  • Atlas Shrugged. Multiple times; I was in High
    School. I think some of her diagnosis is right, but her
    prescription is not.
  • Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books. ???
  • Memoirs of a Geisha
  • Middlesex
  • Quicksilver. ???
  • Wicked: the life and times of the wicked witch of the
    West    . Not badly written, and an amusing conceit, but on
    reflection I think it’s subverting something that didn’t need to be subverted.
  • The Canterbury Tales. Portions.
  • The Historian: a novel. ???
  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
  • Love in the Time of Cholera
  • Brave New World. OK, I’ve read this; no need to
    read it again.
  • The Fountainhead
  • Foucault’s Pendulum. Multiple times.
  • Middlemarch
  • Frankenstein
  • The Count of Monte Cristo. Multiple times.
  • Dracula
  • A Clockwork Orange
  • Anansi Boys
  • The Once and Future King. Multiple times, but not
    in over ten years.
  • The Grapes of Wrath. High school. Probably
    should try it again.
  • The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
  • 1984. Multiple times, including for school.
  • Angels & Demons. Not likely.
  • The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise). Read
    the Inferno for school; haven’t read the others.
  • The Satanic Verses
  • Sense and Sensibility. A favorite.
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray. Started.
  • Mansfield Park. Wanted to like it; didn’t, much.
  • One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Multiple times.
  • To the Lighthouse. ???
  • Tess of the D’Urbervilles
  • Oliver Twist
  • Gulliver’s Travels. Started, never finished.
  • Les Misérables. Neat book.
  • The Corrections. ???
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
  • Dune. Multiple times. Have never been able to
    get through the sequel.
  • The Prince
  • The Sound and the Fury
  • Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
  • The God of Small Things. ???
  • A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
  • Cryptonomicon
  • Neverwhere
  • A Confederacy of Dunces. Sticks in my mind, but
    I’ve no real desire to re-read it.
  • A Short History of Nearly Everything. ???
  • Dubliners
  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being
  • Beloved. ???
  • Slaughterhouse-Five
  • The Scarlet Letter
  • Eats, Shoots & Leaves
  • The Mists of Avalon
  • Oryx and Crake: a novel. ???
  • Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed. ???
  • Cloud Atlas. ???
  • The Confusion. ???
  • Lolita
  • Persuasion. Another favorite. The retired
    captain reminds of Jack Aubrey.
  • Northanger Abbey.
  • The Catcher in the Rye. I am so not a boomer.
  • On the Road. Ditto.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame
  • Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
    College class, originally, but I re-read it a number of times.
    Probably won’t ever again.
  • The Aeneid. College.
  • Watership Down. A favorite.
  • Gravity’s Rainbow
  • The Hobbit. A favorite
  • In Cold Blood
  • White Teeth. ???
  • Treasure Island. Read it aloud to the boys last
    year; was the first time.
  • David Copperfield
  • The Three Musketeers. Multiple times; fun book.

Natural Ordermage, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

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This is the latest in Modesitt’s Recluce series, and though the pattern is well-worn it’s an interesting outing nevertheless. As so many times before, a young mage, not fully in control of his skills, is ejected from Recluce to make his way in the world. As such, he’s following in the footsteps of Dorrin, Justen, and Lerris, and possibly others I’m forgetting. The tale is set in the time between the founding of the city of Nylan, in Dorrin’s day, and that of Justen. It’s an interesting period of time, when the balance of power in Recluce is shifting from the Council, founded by Creslin, to the Brotherhood which is emerging in the engineers’ city of Nylan.

The book differs from its predecessors in some interesting ways. First, the typical hero in this series is a good-hearted, generally virtuous, though callow, youth. While not understanding everything he should, he usually tries his best, and works for the greater good. Rahl, by contrast, is generally out for himself. He uses his order-skills to charm girls to their detriment, he lies to his parents when he can get away with it, and is hardworking and obedient mostly because it’s the easiest way to get what he wants. On top of that, his order skills are of a sort that the training techniques that have been developed on Recluce don’t work for him, and yet he has to be trained if he’s not to be a loose cannon. Away from Recluce he goes! (There’s some skullduggery involved, to, though it’s not entirely clear why.)

Next, instead of being sent to Candar, like Dorrin, Justen, and Lerris, Rahl is sent off to the Empire of Hamor, a milieu we’ve seen almost nothing of in the series to date. The Empire is devoted to the judicious use of power—if society is stable and prosperous, so is the throne. Order, in the social sense, is maintained by the mage-guards, a police-force of order and chaos mages who work solely for the empire. Any Hamorian citizen who shows any degree of mage skills is immediately co-opted into the guard—or put to hard labor. In fact, any Hamorian citizen who steps out of line is likely to be sentenced to hard labor. Hamor is a pragmatic, strict, and not very forgiving place.

So there’s a lot about this book to like, despite the familiar premise, and I’m quite curious to read the the forthcoming sequel. (In The Magic of Recluce, Lerris is told that the current Emperor of Hamor is the descendant of a Reclucan exile; one has to wonder if Rahl is him.) But it isn’t perfect. In particular, no sooner does Rahl end up in Hamor than he turns into a stock Modesitt hero. He’s given a job at a trading firm operated by Recluce, and almost immediately realizes that his superiors have their hands seriously in the till. The first thing I’d have expected that Rahl to do is figure out how to get in on the deal, but our hero never even considers it. In part, this can be put down to growth; and in part it can be put down to Rahl’s well-honed survival instinct; but neither of these go quite far enough to explain the change in his character. (Later events, on the other hand, do; I’ve no quarrel with where he ends up, only with how rapidly he gets there.)

Anyway, I enjoyed it.

Morality and Non-Machines

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Last year, when I was studying up on the Catholic Church, I reflected that Theology and Moral Philosophy should be more like Physics. That is to say, knowledge should accumulate. A beginning student of hysics isn’t told to go back to first principles, conduct his own experiments, re-derive all of the necessary math, and in general rebuild modern physics from scratch. If this were necessary, nobody would ever learn modern physics. Instead, our student is guided rapidly through the basics of physics, doing proofs and experiments for enrichment, and then on in like manner until the subject is grasped and the student can make use of his new knowledge. If God is objectively true, there should be a similar system of knowledge for theology and moral philosophy that has been built up over the years. Scripture is foundational and essential, but its implications (and the implications of human nature in general) are not always obvious, and yet everyone seemed to start from scripture and build their own superstructure on top it. Not surprisingly, different authorities often disagree.

I found the body of knowledge I was looking for in the Catholic Church and in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC). The moral principles in the CCC are rooted in scripture and in human nature, and represent a treasury of knowledge built up over thousands years that extends back to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks as well as to the ancient Hebrews. It’s massive, all encompassing, and consistent, and I was delighted to discover it.

Great! Theology and Moral Philosophy are like Physics!

In one sense, that is, but not in every sense, as Pope Benedict explains in section 24 of Spe Salvi:

First of all, we must acknowledge that incremental progress is possible only in the material sphere…in the field of ethical awareness and moral decision-making, there is no similar possibility of accumulation for the simple reason that man’s freedom is always new and he must always make his decisions anew. These decisions cannot simply be made for us in advance by others—if that were the case, we would no longer be free.

In other words, physical matter has no free will, and so always follows the rules. We can build machines, in line with the laws of physics and chemistry, and they do what we expect them to do. And we can hand them over to others who don’t understanding a thing about physics and chemistry, and they still work! I live at the apex of a pyramid of technology with my laptop and my cell phone and my video games and air conditioning and refrigeration and central heating and all manner of things, some of which I have a good understanding, some of which I have a marginal understanding, and some to which I’m completely oblivious. But even if I had no understanding, all of these gadgets would still work for me! I can stand on top of this pyramid of knowledge without possessing even the capstone.

Moral knowledge is different. There’s no such thing as a gadget of virtue. I can’t go to Target and buy some Fortitude for my kids, and maybe a little Wisdom on the side. I can’t say to my oldest son, “Hey Dave! Come over here, I need to upgrade your Prudence!” People aren’t machines; you can’t program them to be good. If you want to stand at the apex of the pyramid of moral knowledge, you need to acquire the whole pyramid. And you need to do it yourself; no one can do it for you. And you need to acquire it not with your head, your intellect, but with your heart, your will. Understanding moral teaching intellectually is useful, but if it doesn’t enter your will, you don’t possess it. And if it has entered your will, understanding it intellectually isn’t strictly necessary. Reading about another country isn’t the same as living there; and if you live there, you know what it’s like without reading about it.

Acquiring that pyramid of virtue is difficult, and very few ever stand at the apex (we call them “saints”). And we need help to ascend it, which, fortunately, God is delighted to give us.

All of this has implications for society, to wit: utopia is impossible. We cannot build the Kingdom of Heaven here on Earth. We cannot design the perfect society, with perfect rules, in which everyone will always automatically have everything they need and there will be no want, and everyone will be happy, precisely because people are not machines. Society is not a machine. No matter what rules and institutions you devise, people are free to subvert them, and (without that moral grounding) they will. Or, if your system is designed specifically so that people are not free to subvert it, cannot prevent it from working, then you have taken away their freedom, and your system is not the Kingdom of Heaven, is not truly utopia.

So what are our responsibilities with regard to Society? We must strive, with God’s help, to acquire all virtue. A society is only as good as its members. We must strive to provide just rules and institutions. We can’t build utopia, but there’s no reason to settle for less than the best we can do. And we must strive—as individuals—to serve those in need, because they are in need right now. Ignoring the needs of those around us in favor of trying to build the Perfect Society in which they will no longer be in need is a cop-out. It merely inflates us with pride while failing to accomplish the goal…and meanwhile, those around us are still in need.

A True Friend

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So yesterday we were praying as a family at bedtime, and my four-year-old daughter was praying for her friends. She said,

God, please help my friends to run fast, so the monsters won’t get them.

Which monsters, I’m not certain.

The Sharing Knife: Passage, by Lois McMaster Bujold

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This is the third in Bujold’s recent series, and I like it a lot better than either of its predecessors.

For those who came in late, Bujold’s The Sharing Knife series involves a place and time where human society is divided into two groups: the Farmers and the Lakewalkers. The division between the two has its roots in a cataclysm in the remote past, a cataclysm which spawned the blight bogles, creatures of malice which, upon hatching, begin to suck the very life out of the land and creatures around them. The land is ultimately completely and utterly dead, and incapable of supporting life.

Lakewalkers, it seems, are the descendants of those responsible for the cataclysm, and they have the self-imposed responsibility of patrolling the land and slaying blight bogles where ever they find them. This is no easy feat, but they are assisted by their possession of the “ground sense”: they can directly perceive and manipulate the field of life carried by all living things. It is this field, this “ground”, that the blight bogles consume. All of Lakewalker life is organized around this mission.

Farmers, on the other hand, are ordinary folks more or less like us. They live in villages and on farms, they grow, they build, they trade. A very few Farmer folk have the merest touch of ground sense. In general, Farmers have a deep and abiding distrust and fear of Lakewalkers, who are thought to “beguile” young women, among other unsavory habits. For their part, Lakewalkers tend to look down on the Farmers, who they regard as undisciplined louts who simply won’t stop building villages and homes in the areas where blight bogles are likely to hatch, no matter how often they are told of the danger.

Enter Fawn and Dag. Fawn’s a young Farmer woman; Dag’s a veteran Lakewalker patroller. In the first book they are thrown together, and slay a blight bogle, and fall in love (natch). Ultimately they marry, following both Farmer and Lakewalker customs, but Fawn’s people are uncomfortable with Dag, and Dag’s people reject Fawn almost completely. Meanwhile, it’s clear to Dag that the Farmers are going to continue to expand into dangerous territory, and that the only way to keep entire towns from being destroyed by the blight bogles is if Farmers and Lakewalkers learn more of each others ways, and learn to work together. And that’s really the topic of this present volume.

The book has an energy that reminds of Bujold’s first book about Miles Vorkosigan, The Warrior’s Apprentice, in which Miles mounts a tiger and isn’t able to dismount through a considerable series of ever larger adventures. Passage is more gentle, but the story builds in the same way. At the outset, Fawn and Dag set off down the river to the sea, partially as a honeymoon trip, and partially for something to do while they figure out just what they ought to do. And as they go, they collect an odd and unlikely collection of people around them, and begin to learn not only the course they should take but the dangers that lie therein.

The whole series has an odd feel of the early American frontier, and that’s especially pronounced here; the details of life along the river owe a great deal to a number of books (listed in the afterword) written by those who sailed the Mississippi in the days before the steamboat…including one Davy Crockett. I might have to look some of them up, as Bujold’s use of them has piqued my curiosity.

Anyway, Passage is a neat book; and for the first time in this particular series, I’m rather looking forward to the sequel.

Three Months with the Liturgy of the Hours

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Actually, it’s been almost three-and-a-half months; I started praying the Liturgy of the Hours in mid-January, and it’s now nearly the end of April. For the beginning of this project, see the series of posts that begins here.

I don’t really have a lot to say, except that I’m still praying Morning and Evening Prayer, Night Prayer, and most days the Office of Readings as well. Many such projects start out well, with the enthusiasm born of novelty, and then lapse as the novelty fades. This has not been the case, so far. The Divine Office just plain works for me; it helps me to pray when I feel dry, and it’s even more rewarding when I don’t. God is faithful, and the Divine Office helps me to be faithful in response. This is very cool!

The one resource I’d like to add to those I mentioned in the series of posts linked above is John Brook’s The School of Prayer, which does a better of job of explaining why it is that praying the Liturgy of the Hours is a worthwhile thing to do. In a nutshell, it’s because it teaches us to pray, using the prayers—the psalms—which the Lord himself gave us. But Brook goes into more detail than that; he also has a detailed commentary on every psalm in Morning and Evening Prayer. Highly recommended.

Society vs. People

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I used to tell people, “There’s no such thing as Society. There’s only People.” Most of them, especially the more liberal, would look at me really funny. It’s an overstatement, but I think it’s mostly true. And what I mean by it is, the only real way to change society is to change the hearts and minds of individual people. There are lots of ways to do that, but when you’re thinking in terms of Society most of those ways begin to look like a sledgehammer…or, maybe, a pile-driver. It’s hard to be subtle when you’re dealing with people as a mass of population. If you want to be subtle, you need to work with each individual heart, each individual mind. Of course, it’s almost impossible to do that when you’re dealing with People as a mass of population. Hence the constant temptation to try to engineer Society.

Over at Amy Welborn’s place, she quotes somebody named Angelo Matera, who said (in a much longer excerpt) “This is the spiritual method of the lay movements, not the political method used by Catholic pressure groups.” It occurred to me, on reading this, that this “political method” is based on a subtle fallacy: that the “powers that be” are a ring in the nose of the body politic, and if you manipulate them properly you can steer the body politic in the direction you want it to go. There’s some truth to this, in the political arena; but it doesn’t work very well as a form of social engineering. Just because you’ve got the leaders going the way you want them to, doesn’t mean that the rank-and-file are going to buy into it. And this is even more true in the world of the Catholic Church, where the Magisterium doesn’t answer to the voters in any American sense.

On the other hand, the Christian faith is precisely the thing that can change hearts and minds across society, because it changes them one heart and mind at a time. More to the point, Christ asks each of us to change our own heart, our own mind—to allow Him to change them for us. Christianity is attractive, not coercive. We witness to others through our lives; we call out to others to come drink of the living water and never thirst again. They, then, can choose to change their own hearts and minds, with Christ’s help.

The bottom line is this: if you really want to change the world, don’t bother with the political process. Let Christ lead you into service. Serve those He leads you to. Let Him use you to lead others into service.

Follow Christ and the World (and the Church!) can take care of itself.

Milestones

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Been quiet recently, not because things have been quiet, but because there’s been a lot going on. I’ve been doing a lot of reading, and a lot of praying, and a lot of thinking, and I haven’t generally felt like discussing any of it with the world at large.

No offense.

But yesterday was a significant milestone that I’d like to record. Most Catholic bloggers went all out for Easter Sunday, and Easter Sunday was indeed a glorious day; I went to the Easter Vigil, and then the whole family got up in time for the Easter Sunrise mass at a park not far from where we live that’s perched on the side of a mountain high above Los Angeles with a view I simply could not believe. And the air was warm and crystal clear.

But yesterday was even better. Because yesterday was the day that Jane, after mumble, mumble years as an Anglican, was received in the Catholic Church, was confirmed, and made her first communion as a Catholic. Two of our kids were able to receive their first communion along with her. And then we all went to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream.

We’re here. We’re finally all here. For this I am truly thankful. (And the ice cream was nice, too.)