The winner of the ham battle is you!

Hello! I have settled on these at last! I have dated this entry to the day it is all "due".

Regular text means not started yet.
Italics means in progress.
Bold means completed (hurray!).
Strikethrough means I've decided not to do them but haven't come up with a replacement yet.

( 101 Things )

Books 18-26 of my 101 books in 1001 days project.

( 18. The Pact, Jennifer Sturman )

( 19. The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede )

( 20. Over Sea, Under Stone, Susan Cooper )

( 21. My Trade: A Short History of British Journalism, Andrew Marr )

( 22. The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper )

( 23. Subversive Sequels in the Bible, Judy Klitsner )

( 24. Monstrous Regiment, Laurie R. King )

( 25. Riders, Jilly Cooper )

( 26. Un Lun Dun, China Mieville )

The problem with the Kindle is that I have about six books on the go now, and switch back and forth depending on my mood, so I'm about 60% through a handful of novels but close to finishing none of them. The next few weeks I have made a pledge not to start any more books until I have finished all the ones I have on the go!

For my 101 books in 1001 days list. Man, I was going to try so hard to keep up with these.

( 4. Deathless, Catherynne M. Valente )

( 5. Daddy Was A Number Runner, Louise Meriwether )

( 6. God: A Biography, Jack Miles )

( 7. Milk In My Coffee, Eric Jerome Dickey )

( 8. Smile Or Die, Barbara Ehnrenreich )

I am reading God: A Biography at the moment. and basically loving it. Its approach to the text is a bit odd - it keeps dancing around the documentary hypothesis but insists on treating the Tanakh as a literary unity. (Or, at least, the Torah - I haven't read further on yet.) It uses "the Lord" for "Adonai" and "God" for "Elohim"*, and says things like "the animals, who go into the ark two-by-two in the God version and seven-by-seven in the Lord version", but (for example) describes the second creation story as a "sequel" to the first rather than a different story.

I think this is because Miles is only interested in analysing the effect of reading it as a unity, sort of playing "let's pretend", but I keep going in my head "yes, there is an immediate contradiction because it was written by TWO DIFFERENT AUTHORS!" I think I need to get better at turning off my inner Wellhausen and playing along.

Especially because the rest of it is mostly great. I have just finished the section on how Abraham's response to God going "I am totally going to obliterate Sodom and Gomorrah, see if I don't!" is basically "O RLY? Because you've been waffling on about my and Sarah's amazing dynasty for the past eighty years and it ain't happened yet, so I'm REAL SURE you're going to follow through on this one", and then there are ace bits like:

Cain and Abel – the first two children of Adam and Eve – each bring the Lord an offering. Why? He has asked for no offering. He likes Abel's offering, but not Cain's, and Cain is angry. Why? What is Cain expecting? As in Genesis 2-3, the Lord speaks to Cain as a somewhat impetuous man might speak to a fellow man. As before, he speaks principally to condemn. But it is crucial to note that the condemnation does not arise from Cain's having broken any commandment of the Lord. The Lord has given no command not to kill. After the murder, when he says to Cain, "Hark, your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground!" it is as if he has at that moment discovered that murder merits condemnation. There is a groping and tentative quality on both sides of this relationship. The metaphor – "your brother's blood cries out to me" – may bespeak agitation rather than moral condemnation. Something is wrong, but does the Lord yet quote know what it is? He acts, and then infers his own intention from what he has done.

BRB GETTING A SPOON TO EAT THIS WITH

*obvs I find this fairly annoying, but there is also some odd stuff around God's names, like, "The meaning of el shaddai is of obscure origin. The word sadday may mean, or suggest, mountains. But the tradition in the use of the earliest translation of the name, God Almighty, makes it clear that of all the titles applied to God in Hebrew, it is the one most intended to convey raw power." I would have appreciated a bit more than "some medieval Christians thought this meant Almighty so that must be what the c950-850 BCE author intended by it"!