Impressions

I’ve reviewed five video games in nineteen years of blogging, and it’s been seven since the last one, so we’re overdue for another. Back in July a couple friends of mine suggested that I try out Undertale. I knew next-to-nothing about the game, but since I have some free time now and it was on sale anyway, I decided to give it a shot.

One of the most interesting developments over the past, very roughly, twenty years or so in the Catholic Church has been the renewal of interest in the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). I’ve spoken to some people who would like to attend one, but run into some obstacles: availability is very hit-and-miss, depending on whether a TLM-oriented religious order like the FSSP has set up a parish nearby, and how friendly the local bishop is to the TLM. Even aside from that, though the TLM is clearly related to the Novus Ordo, it’s different enough that even pious Catholics seem a little intimidated by it. It reminds me a lot, in fact, of the uncertainty some non-Catholics I’ve known feel about attending a regular diocesan parish - what are these prayers? What are the responses? When do I stand, kneel, or sit? None of these problems are particularly big, really; in both cases, the answer is really just to attend and do what everyone else does. Nonetheless, it’s natural to approach new experiences with a little anxiety, and we often prefer to go with a friend who can gently offer some guidance. If you don’t know anyone who can take you to a TLM, don’t worry – Eduard Habsburg will be your friend.

The bulk of this post will be a review of the Four Books iOS app (also available for Android), developed by Daoxue Academy, an aid in studying the Four Books of the Confucian canon (the Great Learning, Analects, Mencius, and Doctrine of the Mean). Rather than just giving an overview of the app’s features, though, I’m going to focus on how I personally use the app, which necessitates spending some time talking about my experiences studying Classical Chinese and the Confucian canon. This approach will let readers know what basis I’m using to evaluate the app, and, I hope, allow others to benefit from my experience.

This review, of Anthony Esolen’s Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child, will be a short one, because I found it to be frustrating read.

I’ll admit that I originally planned not to review today’s book, Beth Kobliner’s Get a Financial Life, since its subject is outside of my wheelhouse. However, it was recommended to me by a friend and it seems useful enough to pass along that recommendation along with a few comments. Besides, the last time I reviewed a New York Times bestseller, it turned out to be the most Reactionary book ever written (in some sense, anyway).

Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge series is popular enough that I don’t think I need to spend much time introducing it. I’ll simply say that the books are a contender for the most beautifully illustrated children’s books I know, and the artwork seems to be what it’s most known for. The official website has a lot of merchandise featuring the art, from prints to mugs to calendars, which may seem a bit kitschy but honestly, I don’t blame anyone who wants to surround themselves with this art.

Last month, feeling 100% in the Halloween spirit, I was looking for something seasonal to listen to. My go-to album for that time of year is Tales of Mystery and Imagination, but this year I felt like something more intense and listened to the original Broadway cast’s recording of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which I hadn’t listened to in years.

I’ve written a few posts over the last year discussing various children’s books and authors, but I don’t know a lot about the history of children’s literature or what criticism of the genre looks like. So, I decided to start looking for a general overview and began with The Cambridge Companion to Children’s Literature, edited by M. O. Grenby and Andrea Immel. It was published in 2009 so it’s not the leading edge of criticism, but for a general overview that seems plenty recent enough.

Library booksales are wildly hit-and-miss affairs, usually more of a miss. Once in a while, though, you can catch a break - like us at a sale earlier this year, where we walked out with several dozen books for $20. Of course, mere quantity means little if every book is rotten, but we were able to find a lot of good stuff. What helped, I think, is that staff gradually restocked the tables over the course of the morning, so the early birds weren’t able to pick out absolutely everything worth having (often to sell on eBay later, not even to enjoy for themselves!). Among those was a book I wasn’t familiar with, but might be the best of all: Treasury of Children’s Poetry, first published in 1998, edited by Alison Sage and with an introduction by Michael Rosen, author of the picture book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and a poet with a few selections included here.

When reading Serious Literature for Grown-Ups, we may often feel like the Ethiopian courtier reading Isaiah, “How can I understand, if there is none to instruct me?” This can be difficult for some to admit, given the modern preference among many for coming to one’s own conclusions on things, but if we’re to grow in wisdom we need the intellectual humility to recognise that we do not and cannot know everything, especially on an early reading of a difficult text.