The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan

This is another reread; the first time that I read The Pilgrim's Progress was probably 8th grade or so. I enjoyed it then, and I enjoyed it now. What impresses me most about this book is the myriad Biblical references that are in the margins of the pages. Bunyan wrote all these in himself. His knowledge of the Bible is astounding. His poetry isn't bad, either. I love when authors begin their stories with a poem or two, and he does this spectacularly.

The life of a pilgrim is not supposed to be easy, and Christian's journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City clearly illustrates this. Pilgrim's Progress is one of those books that every believer in Christ ought to read. I know it gives me strength to see the struggles that Christian (and in the second part of the book, his wife Christiana) goes through.

I guess there's not much more I can say about this book other than READ IT! It can be clunky and hard to follow, because there are no quotation marks for those people speaking. The first time I read it, I had to follow it kind of like I was reading a play. That seems the best way to describe it.

All in all, a wonderful book. :)

musings no. 3

Salvete!
If you spend your "free" time memorizing Latin declensions, you're either a student or crazy. Or both.
I am most certainly both.
The end.

It is getting to that time of year when I have an extremely difficult time playing the organ -- or doing anything that involves moving my finger, for that matter. Darn cold hands! I can't type, write, play music...oh, and texting is almost out of the question!

The wind we had over the last few days was insane.
I was kind of scared when I realized I could feel the building I live in moving.

Here I am complaining about the cold, yet I have my window open because there is no other way to get my room to not smell stuffy and blehh. Yep. Blehh, that's it.

I am indeed already listening to Christmas music.
Yes, yes I am quite aware that Halloween hasn't happened yet, thank you very much.

The pipe organ is a bit of heaven on earth.

Last night at Concordia, there was a hymn festival. The theme was "Gifts of the Reformation" and we had a wonderful man by the name of David Cherwien playing the Steiner-Reck. I'm pretty sure he was not using music. The man was AMAZING. His talent is off the charts. He made that organ do things I didn't even know it could do! It was pure heaven, if only for the short space of time of an hour and a half. The chapel was filled with voices raised in praise to our Lord and I could feel the very air vibrating with the power. It was probably the greatest musical experience of my life.

Now, as most of you know, I am taking pipe organ lessons. After last night's festival, I was intimidated and hardly wanted to take my place on the bench at the Steiner-Reck for my afternoon lesson today. Yet I did. Why? Because I love playing, and nothing is going to stop me. I want to glorify the Lord with my song. And I won't let anything stop me from tackling pieces by the greatest composers in the history of music, either. I've been working on a piece by J.S. Bach. Admittedly, this one is taking a LONG time. Today, though, I chose a new piece that is by Dietrich Buxtehude. He was a contemporary of Bach, and his compositions are no less powerful. Here is a recording of the piece that I have just begun learning. High expectations? Of course not. this one will take a long time to perfect. But God gave me the talent of music, and by golly I'm going to use it!




If the video does not work here, this is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CloCDuKBis

Is it possible? I daresay it is!

I apologize for the long stretch between updates! There has been a lot going on. Mostly homework, but I have also been enjoying the last days of warm weather for the year. The autumn colors in Wisconsin are too gorgeous to not be outside.

Currently, I am sitting at my desk attempting to find some motivation for homework. Not working so well. The good news is that I don't have much that needs to get done tonight; the bad news is that there is definitely plenty I could be doing. Blahhhh.

Exactly.

So I was on Facebook (that's nothing new!) and I glimpsed an ad on the sidebar that was actually relevant to me. Shocking? I think so. It was an ad for aspiring writers. Naturally, I clicked on it.

http://www.onepageperday.com/

I will give my raving review in one word: EPIC!

Seriously, this website is perfect for people who want to be writing but need help remembering to actually do some writing. You sign up with your Google or Twitter account and then begin writing. As it says, you only have to write ONE PAGE. And it does truly mean one page. The page length is about what you would have on Microsoft Word, or a physical sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 printer paper. And then it will tell you that a page is completed and inquire if you wish to continue. I was quite enthralled immediately.

BUT.

What to write???????

I stared at the blank page in front of me, considering all the story ideas I've had crammed in my head for years now. (No joke, I think some of the characters are getting dusty....) None of them jumped out at me. Okay, so was there a new idea? Something I hadn't considered in the past?

Turns out there was. I love those novels that are written entirely in poetry, usually free verse form (or the lack thereof!). I began writing in this format, and suddenly realized it had turned into something that was befitting the genre of science fiction. Hmm. This is a new development. Are there any sci-fi free verse novels? Probably, but I haven't ever run across them. So I'm going to continue writing this story and see where it takes me. After all, I am a writer. And writing of any sort is my stress reliever.

Perhaps I will post an excerpt from the story on here once I have ten pages or so.

Shameless promotion!!

As you may have noticed, I reconfigured things on this blog o' mine. There are links and more links...yes, I like links. However, there are two links I would appreciate my dear followers to take close notice of. Under the heading My Other Blogs are two links. They are, as should be deduced from the heading, my other blogs!


Enthralled by the Written Word is my blog for the books I am reading and my thoughts on those. This one is quite new, as of I think last Friday. Updates will probably be few and far between simply because I'm a busy college student. The moral of this tale is that I should have started this blog in the summer when I was reading three books a week. Oh well.

Jaded Poetry is my blog for, you guessed it, my poetry! I have some poetry on my LiveJournal from awhile ago, and I should probably link to that on here, but my LJ became sadly neglected, so I moved everything to Blogger. This blog, also, will have rare updates. I will do my best.

musings no. 2

The fourth week of school has begun. This isn't the halfway point, but it is the halfway point to the halfway point! This is a good thing. However, somewhere in the middle of last week, I began to lose most of my original motivation. This is not a good thing. I'm struggling to recover this motivation, but it has disappeared without a trace. Now, I certainly do not mean that I'm not doing my homework, completing it on time, and turning it in! Goodness, that would be so uncharacteristic of me. No, I just mean that it has become rather difficult to sit down and begin the homework. Once I've started, it isn't so bad. Especially when I have good music to listen to. (Movie soundtracks work well for this sort of thing.)

Part of the issue is that the weather is changing. Autumn is my second favorite time of year, following winter. Yes, winter is my favorite season. Don't judge me! You see, I am not a fan of summer, because I don't have much use for hot weather. I hate summer clothing, I really do. Shorts are not for me, nor are tank tops or sandals. That's just the truth. And I can't stand getting a lot of sun, because I burn easily and also I don't like having a tan. So when the weather changes and the coolness of fall sweeps in, I bask in it. I love my hoodies and jeans. Bonfires are, of course, a must. And then there is the hallmark of fall -- the leaves losing their uniform green look and becoming a blaze of reds, oranges, and yellows. Who doesn't love that?? God's creation truly is amazing.

So yeah, the weather's changing, and I'd prefer to be outside enjoying it, rather than inside studying. As much as I love Latin and my other classes....right now, it's extremely hard to pay attention to what I need to be doing. I suppose I could take advantage of the cooler weather to curl up under a blanket with a cup of apple cider or tea and read my homework. That's not such a bad alternative.

To read a book for the first time is to make an acquaintance with a new friend; to read it for a second time is to meet an old one. ~Chinese saying

Greetings, my friends.

Yes, I have created another blog. I have two already, one for my thoughts and nonsense, and the other for the poetry that I write. This one, however, is where I will record the books I read and what I think about them, and of course, if I would recommend them to you. I probably won't update this blog often, especially while in the midst of college, but I shall do my best. This first post is going to pay homage to a series which became an instant classic when the first book was released --

Harry Potter.

I reread (again!) the entire series in a month, just shy of a month ago. Let me tell you, seven books is a lot to read in that amount of time. But I had set myself a goal of finishing book seven before classes began. Unfortunately, I did not quite meet that goal, but I was finished within the first week of class! Now, I reread this series not only because the first part of the seventh movie is being released in November, but because this is a series which holds such a dear place in my heart. I feel as if Harry Potter and Ron Weasley are my best friends. I don't include Hermione Granger in this merely because I feel as if I am her. In all the literature that I've read in my life, there hasn't been a character I could identify more closely with. Maybe a close second would be Anne Shirley in Anne of Green Gables, or perhaps Jo March in Little Women.
Why is it that stories like that of Harry Potter and his struggles against Lord Voldemort stick out so strongly in our minds? I think it is because in stories like these, good triumphs over evil in the end. The bad guys may win some of the battles, but they don't win the war. That's not the way it works. We as humans want something like this. In spite of all the bad things in our world, we want to know that good will win out. We want to have that hope.
Being a Christian, I do have that hope. It is the hope for eternity, that all that is unclean and "bad" will be destroyed in the end. So many Christians who see the Harry Potter series as promoting the occult need to look more closely. These are not books about the magic specifically; the world the story is set in is magical, but there are clearly defined lines between good magic and Dark magic. This is no different than Chronicles of Narnia, or Lord of the Rings.

My point is, I love the Harry Potter series and the characters as if they were my own friends and family. I can return to Hogwarts School at any time in my mind if I just open one of the books. I think this is what great books are supposed to be -- close friends that we may turn to at any moment we need them.