...Or more lessons learned from my mother...
Mom sent me two links today that I would like to share with whomever reads this.
The first was an article about Agatha Christie from the BBC. The tag line from the BBC along with the article is this,
A campaign is under way to champion the work of Agatha Christie. But with two billion books sold worldwide, why bother?
I read this article earlier in the day, and both my mother and I were upset that Dame Christie's work was summarily pushed aside as (according to the Oxford Companion to English Literature) "undistinguished style" with "slight characterisation".
My mother's message to me in the email:
Well, I've certainly spent some pleasant evenings reading Christie. I always said the schools should try to encourage students just to read - whether it is crime fiction or science fiction or Tolstoy - if you love to read you will find other, even more important literature. I still have not read "The Scarlet Letter" because I didn't like the teacher at all nor her stupid attitude toward life. I meet people all the time who have had the same type experiences in school.
I have to agree with her. She and I are both avid readers. She much more so than I, and I read a good deal. I know she started me out early with Christie and I gobbled them up. It is also apparently the 75th anniversary of the invention of Miss Marple, who was my favorite of her detectives.
The second link my mother sent to me was also in the literary vein. Her message to me with the link:
To explain the Bush government we need a bitter ironist like this dude.
What did she link to? Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal."
Here's the first two paragraphs. Read the rest.
It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.
Thanks Mom for your great emails. I hope you don't mind me sharing them.
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