What I'm Reading Right Now

I'm spending a lot of time reading on the beach these days. Thanks to Kindle, I can read several books at a time. Here's what I'm reading right now:


The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing Genius

My daughter, Hannah, recommended this book to me on Thursday. I'm now almost halfway through it. It is the remarkable story of a mother's determination to heed what she intuitively felt needed to be done to help her autistic toddler achieve his potential. What I've read so far is not only an amazing story, but a story that provides wisdom, insight and courage to parents, whether or not their children are autistic. Favorite quotes so far:

"I learned that *everyone* has an intrinsic talent, a contribution to make, even if it comes in an unexpected form. And I began to believe that each person's potential to achieve great things depends on tapping into that talent as a child."

"I had believed for years that any child will out perform your expectations [in various skills, academics, etc.] if you can find a way to feed his or her passion."

The book caused me to ponder how I helped raise my older children and given me much food for thought on helping my younger children - ages 8-15 - find their intrinsic talent, that which they are most naturally passionate about, and pursue that passion. I will finish the book before we head home next week.

Homosexuality and Civilization

I've been reading this book, by Louis Compton, for several weeks and am now 39% of the way through it. Though the author is an academic, I have found it to be very readable and quite fascinating. It begins at the beginning of recorded history and works its way up through the centuries, through Judea, Bronze Age Mediterranean civilizations, Ancient Greece and Rome, the Dark Ages and into the Renaissance, where I now am, reading about homosexuality in Florence during the 1400's.

Along the way, I have learned how the writings of the early Israelites impacted early Christian fathers, then the jurisprudence of Rome, then Medieval Europe. How forgeries, misunderstandings, mistranslations, superstitious fear and brutality came to effect western Civilization's views on homosexuality for 2000 years. It makes for a very insightful, fascinating and sobering story. Did you know, for example, that Julius Caesar was the butt of many jokes as a result of a same-sex affair he had early in his career? Or that the practice generically known as "pederasty" in the Greek world existed for 1000 years until the burgeoning power of the Christian church finally succeeded in crushing it?

The David Suzuki Reader 

I knew of David Suzuki from my years in Vancouver, B.C., primarily from the CBC show, "The Nature of Things," which he hosted. I was reminded of this when we recently went to visit Mark's brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Marie, in Colorado. One night, we were sitting around talking about books, and Tim suggested the Mark read Suzuki's book, Tree: A Life Story, which is a "biography" of a single Douglas fir. Mark downloaded that book, but it is still a few books down in his queue.

I am not very far into the Reader, but I like that it is a collection of  relatively short essays about the environment, about sustainability, about climate change and about Suzuki's life story. Reading the essays has reminded me of when I lived in Vancouver and was attending law school at the University of British Columbia. Those were the days Gro Harlem Bruntland, the prime minister of Norway and chair of the United Nations' World Commission on Environment and Development, was advocating sustainable development. The Commission issued its report in 1987 - the year I commenced law school - entitled "Our Common Future," which I recall reading. Those were the days of "Think Globally. Act Locally." It was the time in my life when I was most engaged in what was going on in the environment.

Four Seasons in Rome

I read Anthony Doerr's book, All the Light We Cannot See, while we were in Europe. Although there was much about that book I liked, it was, in my view, dark and unredemptive. I decided to pick up Four Seasons in Rome because I had just been in Rome and hope to go back some day. It is a memoir of a year he and his wife and newborn twin sons spent in Rome in 2004-2005. This book is on my "slow read" booklist. I typically read a few pages at a time, then move on to something else. While I am not captivated by it, I am only halfway through. Perhaps it will get better.

Greece: A Short History of  Long Story

I came aware from our Greek cruise with a desire to learn more about the history of Greece - buy gently. I long, long ago realized that I am what I could call a "cyclic learner." I learn a little bit about something, then a bit more, then a bit more - in cycles. Perhaps many if not most people learn that way. I don't know. But when I searched about for a short, approachable yet serious history of Greece, I landed here.

I'm about 20% of the way through this book by Carol Thomas and have already learned quite a bit, putting pieces of information together that I learned while in Greece. This is another one of those books, however, that is not a page turner and which I have to absorb slowly.

The HeartMath Solution

This is another book that was recommended to us by Mark's brother and sister-in-law, Tim and Marie. I'm sure I'll blog more about this in the future. For now, let me say that I am finding it fascinating and enlightening. I'm only 13% into the book, but I think it's fair to say that the basic premise of the book is that science is proving that the heart has an intelligence, a brain, of its own apart from the mind's brain. And all sorts of things flow from that.

The Novels of Alexander the Great, by Mary Renault

Mary Renault was both a product of her times and in advance of her times. A lesbian, she wrote ground-breaking novels that had gay themes, primarily from the Classical period of ancient Greece. She was English, but spent the last few decades of her life in South Africa with her partner. When reading the first novel of her's that I've read, i.e, The Last of the Wine, I realized that I needed to learn a lot more about ancient Classical Greece in order to appreciate what I was reading. Renault was dealing with pederastic themes within the context of historical Greece during the Peloponnesian war. Thus, that first book was somewhat challenging. I kept waiting for the climax of the love between Alexis and Lysis ... but I came to realize two things: Renault was writing in the 50s' and 60's, and she was writing about a form of love that is foreign to 20th and 21st-century readers - even gay readers.

Now, I'm reading her trilogy about Alexander the Great. I still wish I knew more about Greek history; thus my reading of Greece: A Short History of a Long Story. But the story is fascinating. Alexander. His mother, Olympias. His father, Philip. Of course, Alexander was gay, or at least bisexual. Thus, I know the story is to be developed. Where I'm at in my reading, he's about eight.

Nurture vs. Nature

I have written before that I have done more reading in the past 15 months or so than in the previous 20 years. Part of the reason for that is that I was busy raising a family, adopting kids from Russia, practicing law, doing church work and dealing with the meltdown of a marriage. What spare time I had was taken up in running and with other hobbies and interests.

Now, however, in this season of my life, I have taken up reading again. And a couple of days ago, I had one of those realizations that are very meaningful to me, but probably leave other people scratching their heads, wondering what the big deal is. The realization: I *loved* to read as a child. I read voraciously as soon as I learned how. I loved the series, "Childhood of Famous Americans," as well as the Hardy Boy books. And as soon as I was old enough, I started ordering books through the Weekly Readers, most of which were fiction, particularly historical fiction. I also belonged to a summer reading club for several years grades 3-6 or so.

I also realized that I was pretty much alone in my intense interested in reading, not only among my siblings, but also my parents. I don't think my dad as an adult ever read a book for pleasure; all I recall him reading was the evening newspaper. Same with my mom. She started reading romance novels by the dozen a year or so after my parents' separated; but that was the extent of her reading as well.

The upshot of these realizations, among other things, is that I came to see, in a very clear and focused way, that a love of reading was part of my "nature," not a result of the environment in which I was raised (nurture). Such a simple, seemingly obvious realization, yet it opened doors to understanding. For one thing, it gave me a greater appreciation of my own unique personality as a child - that I wasn't just "there," that I was and am a unique person that was not just "acted upon."

I also thought of my own children and how I tried to create an atmosphere of reading in the home, wanting them to be readers. I'm not saying this was a bad thing, but I see now that I focused far too much on "nurture" to the detriment of "nature." For one thing, I took credit for the fact that my three older daughters and my oldest son became avid readers, rather than recognizing that this trait was part of who they *are*, not who I molded them to be. Secondly, I see now that I should have focused less on molding my children and more on nurturing their innate nature. I also see, embarrassed, that I believed that, unless I developed the desire to read in my children, it wouldn't emerge.

I'm not blaming myself totally for this, for it was an aspect of Mormon culture and doctrine. Children were to be "trained up in the way they should go." They were to be taught to work, taught the value of education, taught to develop their talents. Taught to go to church. Taught to read their scriptures. Taught. Taught. Taught. 

Some of these are worthy goals, of course, but it tends to leave little room for nature with too much emphasis on nurture - which really was training and not nurturing.

Beyond all of the foregoing, my realization about who I was as a child made me think/question when and why it was that I lost my zeal for reading ... a question that I haven't yet been able to fully answer. I'm just letting it lie there for now. 

I suppose many would wonder why I spend so much time in introspection like this. But I would imagine that most such people have likely not spent most of their lives in the closet, or perhaps in an oppressive marriage or some other soul-destroying experience that lasted for decades, during which one's identity, one's sense of self, is ground into dust. I think one of the reasons I am so driven to recover my historical self, my memories, is so that I feel less like a cipher, a shell of a person who doesn't feel connection to anything, but has been conditioned to merely function.

In this regard, I was reminded recently of something that a counselor - my family physician - once told me about 18 years ago as I was going through a difficult time, dealing with child abuse for the first time. He told me that I hadn't allowed myself to have desires, let alone act upon them (and I had not told him anything about my hidden sexual orientation). The remark took my breath away, and I wished I could have discussed it further with him.

What becomes of a man who doesn't allow himself to have desires (of any kind, not just sexual)? He has no real personality. He goes through life losing who he is, like sand silently slipping out of a hole in a bag until there is nothing left ...

But getting back to "nurture" and "nature," I have vowed - though I have less contact with them now that I'm divorced - with my younger children to make more efforts to nurture their nature, and in this regard I have a wonderful partner - Mark - who is equally committed, with no agendas, to seeing the children blossom into who they are. 

Without any prompting from me, for example, he decided to form a "Frequent Reader Miles Club" with Aaron, who has difficulty reading. Aaron, who understandably doesn't like to read, actually looks forward to reading with Mark. It is such a delight for me to witness this, in part because I know that Mark's sole ambition is to help Aaron be who he can be and to discover the world through reading. He has no other agenda. And I love him the more for it.