A word for Wednesday

Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius ~ by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, 2020, philosophy, 330 pages

These words from the Lives of the Stoics (p. 18) made me smile (and remember my Aunt Bonnie.  I think the words describe me, since this is what I do with my books every day:  "...poring over lines of written text ... A masticator of words..."  My aunt is the only person I have ever heard actually use the word "masticate." 

Word of the Day

mas·ti·cate / verb = chew (food).  Masticate is a technical word meaning to chew.  The word masticate is almost always used in a scientific or technical context.  In the everyday context of eating, people usually just say "chew."  Here's a chart I found about the use of the word "masticate" over time:

My aunt was born in 1904, when using "masticate" was at its height.  I wonder where she heard the word.  I wasn't born until 1940.  If you can't read the small dates along the bottom, they show 1800 — 1850 — 1900 — 1950 — 2019.

A pair of books for TWOsday

The Lost Page: An Archaeological Thriller ~ by Joe Edd Morris, 2021, thriller, 259 pages

An unforgettable story of two courageous couples who risk everything for truth.  Amid a revolution, archaeologist Christopher Jordan and ancient manuscript expert Kathryn Ferguson travel to Syria in search of the original scroll of Mark's Gospel. 

Paralleling their quest is the story of the evangelist's escape with the scroll from the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., his struggles to complete the manuscript, and his journeys and efforts with the daughter of Peter the Apostle to protect and save it for the ages.  For both couples, time is running out and enemies are closing in.

This literary thriller explores the hard questions:  Did Mark intentionally omit the resurrection story, leaving it shrouded in mystery?  Or did it become detached and lost forever?  Discover the answer in The Lost Page.

The Lost Gospel: An Archaeological Thriller ~ by Joe Edd Morris, 2021, thriller, 281 pages

Join archaeologist Christopher Jordan and ancient manuscript expert Kathryn Ferguson on another heart-pumping adventure through the Middle East in their quest to save two recently discovered jars containing early Christian documents.  With an American Fundamentalist student determined to keep the jars in Christian hands and a Hezbollah kidnapping attempt in retaliation for their earlier heist of Mark's original gospel, Chris and Kate must navigate treacherous waters to succeed in their mission.

But that's not all — Israeli and Palestinian antiquity authorities are also vying for ownership of the jars, escalating tensions in this international recipe for war.  As Chris and Kate race against time, their story is interwoven with the fascinating tale of the original lost sayings of Jesus, the Q Gospel.  You'll be captivated by the author's creative imagining of how the Gospel came to be composed and his efforts to save his lifetime work.

The Lost Gospel is a gripping sequel to The Lost Page, filled with rich historical detail, transporting readers between modern and ancient biblical times.  Will Chris and Kate overcome their formidable obstacles to reach thrilling conclusions?  I don't remember where I heard about these books, and I haven't read (or even bought) them . . . yet.

Musing about a tartan and another book

Tartan Day

Oops!  I just learned that April 6th was Tartan Day 2023.  I'm part Scottish, and I know that I'm descended from the Campbells of Argyll.  That means any kilt in my family would be made from this blue-and-green color pattern that has a little yellow and white and black thrown in.  I like it!  I probably have more blues and greens in my closet than any other colors.  Tartan Day is a North American celebration of Scottish heritage on the 6th of April, the date on which the Declaration of Arbroath was signed in 1320.  It originated in Canada in the mid-1980s and spread to other communities of the Scottish diaspora in the 1990s.  And now I know about it, too.

The Beautiful Struggle ~ by Ta-Nehisi Coates, 2008, memoir, 240 pages

An exceptional father-son story from the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.

Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons:  a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization.  Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence — and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack — and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free.

Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets.  The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts — assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present — to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction.

With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.

Two library books for my Sunday reading report

Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 ~ by Norman Lebrecht, 2010, history, 464 pages

In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the world.  Many of them are well known — Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka.  Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives.

• Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery.
• Without Paul Ehrlich, no chemotherapy.
• Without Siegfried Marcus, no motor car.
• Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different.
• Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.

What do these visionaries have in common?  They all had Jewish origins.  They all had a gift for thinking in wholly original, even earth-shattering ways.  The Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world’s population in 1847, and yet they saw what others did not.  How?  Why?

Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists, and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it.  Genius and Anxiety begins with the Communist Manifesto in 1847 and ends when Israel was founded in 1947.  (I have a problem with the dates, but I'll see what the book says.)

Abigail Takes the Wheel ~ by Avi, illustrated by Don Bolognese, 1999, children's fiction, 64 pages

Collision in the harbor!  Abigail and her brother, Tom, travel to school every day aboard their father's freight boat, the Neptune.  Two ships collide in the Narrows one day, and Abigail's father goes to their aid — leaving Abigail to take the Neptune's wheel.  Can she and Tom steer the freight boat through the crowded waters of New York Harbor alone?

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb Nance at Readerbuzz, and Library Loot is a weekly

event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life

Reading that encourages bloggers to share the library books they’ve checked out.

Risé Recommends

It's Saturday.  Let's look at another book recommended by my friend Risé, a retired librarian.  I've read this one, so the rating is mine.    I wrote about it HERE.

Everything I Never Told You ~ by Celeste Ng, 2014, fiction, 305 pages, 8/10

"Lydia is dead.  But they don’t know this yet."  So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio.  Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue.  But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos.  A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing.  This is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

See these other books that my friend Risé has recommended (click on the titles):

• The 13th Gift: A True Story of a Christmas Miracle ~ by Joanne Huist Smith, 2014, memoir, 224 pages
• Lost Laysen ~ by Margaret Mitchell, 1996, novella, 128 pages
• The Fifth Child ~ by Doris Lessing, 1988, fiction, 144 pages
• Plum Wine ~ by Angela Davis-Gardner, 2006, fiction, 352 pages

Beginning ~ with the only reason to study philosophy

Beginning = Introduction

The only reason to study philosophy is to become a better person.

Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living from Zeno to Marcus Aurelius ~ by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman, 2020, mini-biographies, 352 pages

Nearly 2,300 years after a ruined merchant named Zeno first established a school on the Stoa Poikile of Athens, Stoicism has found a new audience.  The philosophy embraced self-mastery, virtue, and indifference to that which we cannot control.  This book tells us about the lives of the men and women who strove to live by the Stoic virtues of courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.  It's organized in mini-biographies of all the well-known Stoics (and some not so well-known), letting us see what it was like for the people who lived it, so we can apply their philosophy to our own lives.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.

Thursday Thoughts

What kind of beans do NOT grow in a garden?  Jelly beans!

Maybe I should stop thinking about jelly beans!

No, no, no!  I'm thinking about WORDS, so I'm a WORDSMITH.

I'm also a BOOKIE of sorts, as you can see here:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G . . . Ha, I realized that I was singing the alphabet song as I typed.  I read this on Buzzfeed:  "Cassettes had side A and side B, therefore it was kind of logical that its successor would be the CD."

Café Conversations ~ I placed my order and put a tented sign on a table announcing "Café Conversations."  Some of my friends actually came over to see what was going on.  Maybe I started a new thing, but how often to meet?  Weekly or monthly or bi-weekly or what?