I started a new blog today. I promised myself I was done starting blogs. However, like any good addict I've become an expert at explaining my actions. The Leap of Dave Summer Reading Blog is actually an extension of this blog. This past Sunday I started my 100 days of Summer Reading Program. Yesterday I finished my first book during the program. My plan is to write a post at the Summer Reading Blog after each book I finish and then publish a link to that post here.
Even though you can't tell by the weather yet, I am on my Summer break from substitute teaching. Monday was my last day until August. This summer besides working a local movie theatre and the Kane Cougars baseball team as a concessionist I will also be volunteering for a month with my family at a camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
One of the perks of working at a movie theatre is free movies for me and my family. Last weekend I noticed a new movies coming in called Family Camp and I recognized the people on the poster. At the bottom of the poster it said it was a Skit Guys production.
I have seen many skit guys skits first as a volunteer at my church youth group and some of them in Sunday morning services. Here is a good example of their work.
With the prospect of spending a month volunteering at a camp which hosts family camps and because of my familiarity with the Skit Guys and because of my ability to watch free movies at my theatre I took my daughter to watch Family Camp.
As you can tell by the title of this post, I was not a fan of the movie. I may have walked into the film for free, but I walked out feeling like I had spent too much.
As my daughter pointed out there wasn't much of a Christian message to this film. Yes we laughed at times but there wasn't much to the plot and what there was to the plot was recycled from so many movies before. This was especially disappointing as the Skit Guys skits are original, humorous and imbued with a Christian message.
In 1979 , the summer before I started high school, Bill Murray's first movie Meatballs came out. This was the story of a Summer camp and Murray played the head counselor. In my opinion, it is a very funny movie but a little raunchy. In the Summer of 1986 I worked as a counselor at a Christian Camp. When I applied for the position I wrote about how the movie Meatballs was an inspiration to work at the camp. I referenced the relationship between Murray and Chris Makepeace who played a camper and how Murrays character invested time with Makepeace's character to bring out the best in him.
The fact that there was more of a believable transformative narrative in Meatballs which is basically a PG Animal House in a camp rather than college setting than in a Christian film is deeply disappointing. I think the probability of people like me enjoying Family Camp is cloudy with no chance of Meatballs,
30 years ago today Jay Leno replaced Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.
After an applause laden reaction to his first monologue he quipped Let's see how you feel in 30 years.
Today I'm going to take him up on that offer.
Recently Jay started hosting a remake of You Bet Your Life, the classic 1950's game show hosted by Groucho Marx. I have not watched the show but if the majority of the first page of reviews at it's imdb page are to be believed it is not his finest work.
Leno was the 4th and 6th host of the tonight show replacing Johnny Carson in 1992. Carson took over the show from Jack Paar in 1962. The 30 year remark was an homage to Carson's longevity. Leno was not Carson's pick to replace him. He wanted fellow Midwesterner David Letterman who had the time slot after him to have that honor. Leno had been a substitute host for Carson on Tonight for over 5 years before replacing him.
Recently Jay started hosting a remake of You Bet Your Life, the classic 1950's game show hosted by Groucho Marx. I have not watched the show but if the majority of the first page of reviews at it's imdb page are to be believed it is not his finest work.
I like to apportion 100 days of each year for summer reading. These 100 days generally fall between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends. This year the 100 days start on Sunday May 29th, the day before Memorial Day and end on Labor Day on September 5, 2022. As I mentioned in Moby Dick: My White Whale my only real goal for these 100 days is to finish listening to Moby Dick. I always read at least 10 books during the Summer and expect I'll get at least that many again.
LAST FIVE
First Degree - David Rosenfelt
Listened to on Hoopla
4/28/2022
Until Tuesday - Luis Carlos Montalvan
Borrowed from Library - Read
5/1/2022
The Last Battle - C.S. Lewis
Listened to Via Hoopla
5/1/22
An American Marriage - Tayari Jones
Borrowed from library. Read
5/5/22
Neal Cotts: The Lefty Who Would Not Quit - Jim Pransky
Own - Gift from boss - Read
5/20/22
NEXT TEN
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
God's Forgetful Pilgrims - Michael Griffiths
The Case For Easter - Lee Strobel
Mere Christianity - C.S. Lewis
Immanuel: Reflections on the Life of Christ- Michael Card
Between Heaven & Hell - Peter Kreeft
Bury The Lead - David Rosenfelt
Little House on the Prairie - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Inside The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - Devin Brown
The Collected Short Stories of Louis Lamour - Vol I
I finished book #20 on 4/18 and finished book #25 on May 20th. 5 books in 32 days is not great but it is a pace to finish 57 books in a year. Based on my rate since January 1st I am on pace to read 65 books this year. I imagine with a strong effort this summer those projections will increase.
White Whale - Something that someone pursues obsessively with little chance of success.
In 1993, when I was teaching English Literature while living in Russia I taught the first chapter of Moby Dick by Herman Melville. I had never read Moby Dick before and was only provided multiple copies of the first chapter. The chapter contains probably the best first paragraph of a novel I have ever read. The first sentence, Call me Ishamael is highly regarded as one of the best opening sentences ever written. It is not, however, my favorite opening sentence. That distinction belongs to the first sentence of C.S. Lewis's voyage of the Dawn Treader, "There once was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.".
I have asked Dave from Dave out Loud to come in from out of the loud and read the first paragraph for us.
I hope you can see how amazing of a first paragraph this really is. The entire first chapter made me want to read the entire book. This is when the troubles began.
What I mean by troubles is that I was in Russia almost 30 years ago and I still haven't finished the book.
I read quite a lot while I was in Russia, but I never got the opportunity to read Moby Dick in it's entirety while there. A few years after I returned from Russia I picked up a paperback copy of Moby Dick at this relatively new bookstore called Barnes & Noble. I think it sat on a shelf for a few more years before I actually began to attempt to read it.
Moby Dick is a brilliantly written book but it seems to be a very difficult book to read. Moby Dick is approximately 209,000 words not the worlds largest novel by any means but it won't ever be confused with short. The Great Gatsby by comparison is approximately 47,000 words long , To Kill A Mockingbird is just in excess of 100,000, and the aforementioned Dawn Treader is just shy of 53,000 words. Add those 3 together and Moby Dick is almost 10,000 words longer.
Also after the first paragraph the book became much more cumbersome for me to read.
The book is a long read at 822 pages. This does not make it the longest novel ever written but it's certainly a long swim.
The format of the novel is odd. It ranges from traditional story telling to essays on the different species of whales to philosophy.
Herman Melville has a big vocabularly. If your preparing for the GRE Moby Dick is good preperation for the vocabularly section of the test.
Melville draws from many classics of western civilization. If you have not read the Bible, Shakespeare, or Plato his ideas will go right over your head.
Moby Dick was written a couple hundred years ago. The reader may need to do historical research to better understand the lives of sailors in that time period.
Moby Dick is not only a story about whale hunting. The whole back drop of the story is whale hunting. Why did they hunt whales? They needed whale oil for their lamps and cooking. This is a story about energy and what lengths we will go to provide society with it. I think this goes over many readers heads.
Moby Dick is a dense book. It must be chewed on and thought about. It's meaning and themes don't explain themselves.
Moby Dick is about life experiences that many of us can't relate to. Most readers don't understand the terror of the ocean, the hard work of harvesting energy, and the bitter loneliness of being away from friends and family for a long time. Rest assured Moby Dick captures real human experiences.
The book contains lots of symbols and metaphors and they don't easily explain themselves.
The whole. Once you add all nine of these things together into one book many people may decide Moby Dick is not a voyage worth taking. Rest assured it is. It will grow you as a person and give a perspective on life that is hard to find anywhere else. You will be glad when you finish this whale sized book.
Just a quick note about reason 5. Moby Dick is not a couple hundred years old. It is 161 years old and will not be a couple hundred years old until I am 96 years old. But I concede the point, it is an old book.
Over the years I have made several attempts to read Moby Dick and have never gotten very far in my attempts. A couple years ago, I changed my strategy about reading Moby Dick and borrowed an audiocopy of the book on Hoopla from my library and have been listening to it on and off since then. I did this mostly between April 2020 and April 2021 when I was working overnights at a local grocery store and would listen to the book for 1/2 hour or so before going to bed after my shift.
Through this method I have gotten farther through it than I ever did reading it. I got about 40 % through it this way. At some point I stopped reading it thinking I would get back to it eventually and didn't really until this Spring.
Every year during the summer months, specifically the100 or so day period between Memorial Day and Labor Day I embark on a personal Summer reading program. I tend to spend more time reading during that time and try to read at least 10 books during that period secretly hoping to read more like 20 to 25.
This year my only goal is to finish one book and that book of course is Moby Dick. I have finished 42 chapters and am about 1/3 trough the book. I am sure I will read more books than just Moby Dick this summer but I'll be much more satisfied to finish this white whale than if I read 25 other ones and this one still tasked me.
