Trollope in Barchester 2021

 Another read-along group I joined with this year is hosted by two great friends of Anthony Trollope's Barsetshire Chronicles. 

January: The Warden

The Warden was the first book I finished this year. I found it to be an excellent start to the Barsetshire series. Mr. Harding sticking to his conscience was incredibly satisfying, especially when it would have been so easy for him to give in to what those around him (and above him in authority) were saying. I found Trollope's commentary on reform interesting——as was his poking fun at Dickens or "Mr. Popular Sentiment."

February/March: Barchester Towers

 

“How often does the novelist feel, ay, and the historian also and the biographer, that he has conceived within his mind and accurately depicted on the tablet of his brain the full character and personage of a man, and that nevertheless, when he flies to pen and ink to perpetuate the portrait, his words forsake, elude, disappoint, and play the deuce with him, till at the end of a dozen pages the man described has no more resemblance to the man conceived than the sign-board at the corner of the street has to the Duke of Cambridge.” ― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers⁠

“There is no happiness in love, except at the end of an English novel.” ― Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers⁠ ⁠∙ I have a new favorite Victorian novel. Now, admittedly I have many favorite Victorian novels. But Anthony Trollope's Barchester Towers firmly ensconced itself in the upper echelon of my favorites. ⁠Memorable characters and writing. And the insight Trollope provides into his characters is *chef's kiss*. All at once his characters are precise, complex and utterly hilarious. ⁠∙ And can we appreciate the character names for a minute? Farmers Greenacre & Topsoil; Drs Fillgrave, Rerechild, Lamda Mewnew & Omicron Pie; Revs Brown, White, Grey & Green; the aspirational Lookalofts; Rev Quiverful with his 14 children; diplomatic Mr Plomacy; loud Mrs Clantantram; attorney Vellem Deeds. ⁠∙ Consider me the newest Barchester Towers/Anthony Trollope evangelist. ⁠⁠∙ More favorite quotes: “Till we can become divine, we must be content to be human, lest in our hurry for change we sink to something lower.”⁠ ⁠∙ “She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration.”⁠ ∙ "It is ordained that all novels should have a male and female angel, and a male and female devil. It it be considered that this rule obeyed in these pages, the latter character must be supposed to have fallen to the lot of Mrs Proudie, but she was not all devil. There was a heart inside that stiff-ribbed bodice, though not, perhaps, of large dimensions, and certainly not easily accessible."⁠ ∙ “Her virtues were too numerous to describe, and not sufficiently interesting to deserve description.”⁠ ∙ “There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.”⁠ ∙ "Wars about trifles are always bitter, especially among neighbors. When the differences are always bitter, especially among neighbors. When the differences are great, and the parties comparative strangers, men quarrel with courtesy. What combatants are ever so eager as two brothers?"⁠

April/May: Doctor Thorne

June/July: Framley Parsonage

August/September: The Small House at Allington

October/November: The Last Chronicle of Barset

It has been such a lovely read-along to be a part of so far, and I promptly added the rest of Trollope's 47 novels to my TBR (oops). 

A Cather Annual

I've been reading through several of Willa Cather's novels with a lovely group of ladies. This read-along is not of my organizing, but I am so glad to be a member of it! Willa Cather's novels are so rich. And it is phenomenal getting to follow and explore the ideas and themes she explores over and over.  

October 2020: O! Pioneers

O Pioneers!, Willa Cather * I love Cather. Her writing, her characters. I accidentally finished this month's book for #ACatherAnnual well ahead of schedule. I just couldn't stop myself. So good. And it's short!! (Please ignore the Hallmark movie cover of my copy. You never know what you're gonna get with thrifted online book purchases 🙃) ⁠

November 2020: A Lost Lady

“He came to be very glad that he had known her, and that she had had a hand in breaking him in to life. He has known pretty women and clever ones since then,— but never one like her, as she was in her best days. Her eyes, when they laughed for a moment into one's own, seemed to promise a wild delight that he has not found in life. 'I know where it is,' they seemed to say, 'I could show you!'” ― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady⁠ 🌹 A Lost Lady is short, but packs a punch. And fascinating tidbit: one of the main characters, Mrs. Marian Forrester was an inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Daisy Buchanan character in The Great Gatsby.⁠

December 2020: Death Comes for the Archbishop

“The old man smiled. 'I shall not die of a cold, my son. I shall die of having lived.'” ― Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop⁠ ⁠☀️ I love Death Comes for the Archbishop. Revisiting this story this month with other #ACatherAnnual readers has been delightful. Cather has such a way with words. And how can your soul not soar a little with sentences like this?: “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!” I'm instantly transported to the land of enchantment. ⁠

January 2021: The Professor's House

“And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own individual lives.” ― Willa Cather, The Professor's House⁠

February 2021: Lucy Gayheart

"What did it mean,—that she wanted to go on living again? How could she go on alone?⁠ ∙ Suddenly, something flashed into her mind, so clear that it must have come from without, from the breathless quiet. What if—what if Life itself were the sweetheart?" — Willa Cather, Lucy Gayheart⁠ ❇︎⁠ The power went out no less than three times while I was reading Lucy Gayheart. (It went out more than three times last week, but I somehow managed to time my reading with three of the power outages.) The chill of an unheated house did pair rather nicely with certain scenes, particularly our introduction to Lucy skating at the beginning of the book, and a shocking tragedy at the end of Book II. As I'm finding Cather is wont to do, she superbly subverted expectations throughout the novel. And she does so with real artistry. Melancholic, a touch existential, and looking not only at memory, but how we hold those memories, Lucy Gayheart gives much to mull over. ⁠

March 2021: Song of the Lark

“Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.” ― Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark⁠ 🎵🐦🎵🐦 Cather's The Song of the Lark was soring and beautiful, just like one of the arias that Thea, the novel's aspiring singer, would sing. In some of my own hunting and researching, I stumbled across an original review of The Song of the Lark that ran in The State Journal (Raleigh, NC, December, 1915). Here's a little snippet: ⁠∙ ⁠"But these are faults that are easily forgiven in consideration of the story’s merits: its seriousness and utter sincerity, its painstaking workmanship, its large free pictures of the Western plains and the Arizona canyons, the simplicity and restraint with which the more emotional parts are handled.⁠ ∙ The faults are of the kind that can be overcome; the merits are of the kind that make fine things in fiction." ∙ ⁠Seemed fitting to pair my print of "Prairie Song" with Song of the Lark for this photo.

April 2021: Shadows on the Rock

May 2021: Sapphira and the Slave Girl

June 2021: One of Ours

July 2021: My Mortal Enemy

August 2021: Collected Stories

September 2021: My Antonia

Death Comes for the Archbishop was a re-read for me, as My Mortal Enemy and My Antonia will be. 

2021 Eudora Welty

 This year I'm reading through a hefty collection of Eudora Welty's short stories, with at least one friend. Our #2021EudoraWelty is open to all, so please, feel free to jump in and join us if you are so inclined. Twenty-two stories in, and I have found Ms. Welty to be a strong writer, who creates excellent little scenes full of memorable characters. Welty employs more of a vignette look at her subjects or a particular idea. There is a similarity to Flannery O'Connor's writing (perhaps in the vignette look?), although the two are decidedly distinctive. Some of her stories feel more like character sketches. 

"I want the world to know I’m happy. And if Stella-Rondo should come to me this minute, on bended knees, and attempt to explain the incidents of her life with Mr. Whitaker, I’d simply put my fingers in both my ears and refuse to listen." —Eudora Welty, Why I Live at the P.O. 

Welty mentioned "Keela" (one of the January stories) in a 1989 interview that is included in the introduction to Photographs, which of course delighted me to no end. It is so fun when your books converge, although I suppose it is to be expected if both involve the same creative. Here are Welty's own words: "It's a psychological story I wrote in "Keela." I was interested in what sort of points of view people could have toward such an atrocious thing, including that of the victim himself. He, I guessed, like people in many a kind of experience, enjoyed it years later in his looking back on the days of excitement. You know, things, awful as well as not, get to be kind of interesting in a different way after you've lived through them and they are embedded in your past. Lee Roy had eventually forgotten all the humiliation and horror... All of his children are there, and they don't want to hear about it. They just say, 'Hush, Pappy!'"

"The Whistle" from February hit a bit too close to home with its despondent tone as tenant farmers Jason and Sarah Morton were freezing in their little shack, seeing as I read it during our Texas freeze/no power. "Clytie" and "Flowers for Marjorie" were both tragic... but I did enjoy them. "Old Mr. Marblehall" reminded me of another story, but shame on me I did not make any scribbles or notes anywhere, and I cannot remember what story I was reminded of. ⁠ 

"Death of a Traveling Salesman," was probably my favorite of the March stories. So well told!

As prompted by #2021EudoraWelty, I'm slowly creating a little Welty collection for myself. I enjoyed reading One Writer's Beginnings, a short collection of autobiographical essays. Paging through Photographs, a collection of photos that Welty took, the majority her documentation of 1930s Mississippi when she worked for the WPA, was a real treat. ⁠

Managing my phone and social media

One of the things I have been trying out this year is taking regular breaks from my phone and from social media. I do not want to be legalistic about it, to create a series of hard and fast rules that I have to follow, or else. That is not inspiring, and not helpful. I am trying to get out of the shackles I feel my phone and social media have put upon me, not take up new chains.

Instead, I have some guidelines I have been using so that my day no longer revolves around my phone and what I find on it; so that my phone goes back to being a tool for my use, and not the other way around. All of this is touch and go. I am constantly assessing how my personal guidelines are working for me, tweaking where it is needed. So, what are some of the steps I have adopted?

1. Keeping my phone out of my bedroom at night. 

 My phone charges overnight on the bathroom counter. It is much harder to get sucked into the vortex that is Instagram's suggested stories and posts page at 2:30am if my phone is an entirely different room. In grad school I bought myself a a little digital battery-powered alarm clock from Target, and this thing is worth way more than the six dollars I paid for it. So, no phone alarms for me, and my phone is relegated to the bathroom at night. 

2. Actually turning my phone off at night. 

I do not have a set time for this. Lately I have been turning it off around 7:45pm, because I do not want to spend all evening scrolling, staring at my tiny phone screen. Plus it helps me avoid the circle of scrolling and being kept up by my phone as it gets later and later. Realistically, there is nothing I *need* to be doing on my phone at that time. Work emails can wait until the morning. Or if I am staying up to write a report for work, I can just access Outlook and respond to said work emails on my laptop. No need to pull out my phone for that. I do not need to be calling or texting anyone (for the most part) after dinner. Conversations can be held the next day. If I think of something really important that I do not want to forget, I can write a little note to myself to text about it the next day. Or if it is REALLY important I can always turn back on my phone. Inconvenient maybe, but then it means I have to make sure what I am texting or calling about is truly important. If there is an emergency and another person needs to get a hold of me, there are multiple people in the house they can contact whose phones are on. And the only person I maybe see this happening with is my brother who lives in Tennessee... pretty sure he will be calling the parents before me if there is an emergency, regardless. 

3. Waiting to turn on my phone in the morning.

Rather than letting my phone screen be the first thing my bleary eyes see, I wait to turn on my phone until I few basic morning chores have been completed. As previously mention, I have my little digital battery-powered alarm clock from Target. Yes, I have to do my daily health check in for work. But I realized it does not make a difference if I do it right when I wake up, or 45 minutes later. They do not care, I just have to do it at some point in the day. My work emails can wait. Getting up and accomplishing a few things like making my bed, changing the water in the cat water bowls upstairs, sweeping downstairs, and doing my daily Scripture reading are things I need to do anyway. Now I get the reward of turning on my phone once I have done these tasks. It is a good motivation to get them done promptly instead of getting distracted. When I turn on my phone and am ready to connect with the world at large, I have already gotten some basic chores done. If I end up doom scrolling, well, at least I covered the basics. 

4. I enabled ActionDash. 

I have an Android phone, so if you are an iPhone user, there is a different app. ActionDash is both incredibly useful and sobering. You can set time limits for yourself on all the apps on your phone (e.g. a daily limit of 45 minutes for Instagram). You can "pause" an app for the rest of the day. It has handy little charts that show you what your most used app is that day, how many minutes you spent on each app, and how many times you unlocked your phone. And it gives you a weekly view too, so you can compare your daily usage. This is my review of the app on the Google Play store: Favorite app on my phone by FAR. Although it was definitely jarring at first. I use Instagram how much?! I unlock my phone how many times a day?! Yikes!! The pausing feature is super helpful when you need to focus and get off an app, but you don't want to go through the rigmarole of deleting it off your phone and downloading it again later. I love being able to schedule time limits for myself on various apps. I'm not against using my phone, or spending time on things like Instagram, but I also don't want to spend eight hours a day on it... and if I'm honest, sometimes it is really easy to accidentally do just that. All those times you open Instagram and scroll because you're bored add up. ActionDash has helped me be more purposeful with the time I'm spending on my phone. I'm better able to focus and get my non-phone work done when I need to, and I'm better able to enjoy the fun apps when I want to. I'm not feeling oversaturated on apps like Instagram because I've been scrolling through it every time I'm bored; now my time on apps like Instagram has a much greater purpose, and is more fun! 

5. I say no to socials one day a week.

Now, my pick of Sunday as a no social media day is purposeful, and it works for me on multiple levels. But really the idea is just to be off of social media one day a week. Your day could be Monday, Friday, Saturday. I chose Sunday because this dovetails nicely with a goal of mine to be more focused on religious things on Sunday anyway. An important piece to cutting out socials is to have something to fill that time with. Otherwise you create a vacuum. So on Sundays I have plans to do things like read, update my goals progress, practice piano, play board games with my siblings, craft, take an extra-long walk with the dog, etc. 

6. I keep my phone entirely turned off one day a week. 

This is a new thing I have been trialing since mid-March, and I do not implement it perfectly. For example, if I have plans to meet up with friends to grab coffee and walk in the park Sunday morning, I am going to turn on my phone. Obviously I need to be able to reach them, so we can check in and coordinate things. However, I have found that it makes it easier to effectively implement #5 if my phone is not even on. I can manage a dog walk without listening to an audiobook, although truthfully it is an adjustment. If I need to keep the time, well, I do have an analog wristwatch I wear every day. Might as well actually *use* it. Do I miss my work daily health check because of this? Yes, and this was what I struggled the most with. I could change my check in to being through email rather than text, for one thing. However, I realized talking to my coworkers that I am pretty much the only person religiously answering those five questions every morning. The system will not explode (or implode) if I do not fill out the questionnaire on Sundays. 

7. Keep off of socials for an entire week once a month. 

This one is also new as of mid-March, but I so appreciated what my first attempt at a week of no socials was like that I promptly decided this was something I needed to do on a monthly basis. I have decided to keep my schedule simple that my "week off" will be the first seven days of every month. This means I can be mindless and automate this system. I like not having to think about things. You can accomplish more that way. Again, I make sure I have other activities to fill this time. It also helps to have a buddy!

There are some other social media/phone usage/internet usage ideas that have been bouncing around my brain that I have not fleshed out yet or attempted to implement. One such idea is having "office hours" for my book Instagram account. Or having set days that I post (say, M-W-F). I am pretty active on my book Instagram account and am part of many reading groups and book clubs there, so it is very easy for me to accidently spend hours and hours on the app. Again, this is not to be legalistic about my phone and social media usage, but to free me to focus on other things, not just the nebulous world of the internet. 

Now, part of me is rolling my eyes at myself--Alicia, why did you go and start a blog if you are trying to lessen the amount of time you spend on socials/your phone/the internet? I dunno, I like to make things tricky for myself? It is too hard to actually leave? I am clearly a millennial and would like the attention all on me, thankyouverymuch? This space is something that I am going to employ for now, but we will see. I very easily may decide that this blog is silly or not a good use of my time and shut it down. But for now I appreciate having a space to write out my thoughts, and in a medium that is not your typical pen/paper journal. Perhaps some other like-minded (or dissenting!) individuals will stumble upon it and we can have a a good discussion. 

How do you feel about your phone and social media usage? Is it something you want to change?