Wordful Wednesday: Lost to the West
I’m certain that without the Internet I wouldn’t get as much reading in. Or at least I don’t think I’d read on quite as diverse a range of topics as I read now. I still get recommendations from friends, from bibliographies of other books I read, and from the Cursed Library New Materials RSS Feed (a good thing which prevents me from doing much of my own choosing), but it sure seems like, these days, I get a lot of recommendations from other bookish blogs.
I first saw mention of Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization, by Lars Brownworth, over on superfastreader.com. And it certainly would’ve been nice to be a super-fast reader, because interesting and gripping as the book was, it wasn’t exactly speedy reading. And I’m not really sure why not.
I love to read both fiction and non-fiction, and my favorite topics in non-fiction are science and history (and History of Science is a particular favorite). Both history and science books are awesome because they make me feel smarter and dumber at the same time. Mostly I feel dumb that I didn’t already know more about the topic.
Everyone learns about the Byzantine Empire in school, right? I know I certainly did, though I haven’t had a world history class since (wow!) 1987 or so. Double wow there. It all goes back to the fact that I did a 3:2 transfer program to get my engineering degree. Since we future engineers were only going to be experiencing three of the normal four years of George Fox College’s offerings, the powers that be decided we shouldn’t waste time on trivialities like Western Civ and U.S. History or, for that matter, Bible 101. No, instead, we few, we lucky few, got to take upper-division electives in the humanities and Bible.
(This isn’t really a complaint here. In Bible, particularly, I loved the classes I took – Writings of John, Life of Christ, and Christian Classics were awesome. And I got my Bible 101 from LeTourneau University after I transferred.)
So I got to choose either Psychology or Sociology, had to take both Ethics and Intro to Philosophy (both of which helped me discover my love of writing), and the History class I chose was England to 1688. By the way, I enjoyed the class quite a bit.
(Looking back, I’m really glad I studied Engineering at a liberal arts school. Because Intro to Music and Survey of Art were really cool classes. Even if we engineers enjoyed adding an ‘F’, guess where, in Survey of Art. Psst…it was right before the only ‘a’ in the course title. Don’t tell my mother.)
You know what I love? When I completely hijack an otherwise well-intentioned book review to just yammer on about something in my past. Blogging is awesome.
Anyhow, I knew something about the Byzantines, because I’d had Mrs. Gaffney’s Honors World History way back twenty-three years ago (sob!), and I even read Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium back in college, which wasn’t even fifteen years ago!
All that being said, I knew nothing about the Byzantine Empire And now I do. I know that Justinian was a pretty remarkable dude, Belisarius was an amazing military commander, the Comnenis brought things back from the brink, the Fourth Crusade was a tragedy, and being the Byzantine Emperor must’ve been a pretty cool gig, apart from the fact that the severance package usually involved being poisoned, blinded, or strangled with a bowstring.
But more than any dry facts I may have learned in reading this book, I learned to admire the Byzantines and to be thankful for what they did, preserving what became known as the Western Tradition even while being normally thought of as The East.
Because, really, what would’ve become of Western Europe without Constantinople? In short, it probably would have ceased to exist during the Dark Ages. At its most vulnerable, it probably would have been attacked by the Bulgars, or the Khans, or the Turks. But with Constantinople there, a brilliant and wealthy target, all the big guns seemed to aim there. And most of them were pushed back.
Of course, Byzantine power waxed and waned a fair bit, and some of the Emperors weren’t worth the air they breathed. But others brought them back from the brink and managed to save the remnants of Greek and Roman culture so they could be passed on later. And even the final fall of Constantinople did good for the Christian West. In their exodus from the failing empire, the population carried copies of classical works into the West (which had been Lost to the West).
In short, even though I seemed to struggle to get through it, this is a terrific book and highly worth reading. And I need to read more histories. (Heh…but I already started another.)
Next up…no idea really. I’ve started five books, and I’m pretty sure I know which three I’ll finish first, but can’t make an educated guess as to which will pull me in for a quick finish.
Fiction Friday Night: Brighty of the Grand Canyon
I just realized (just counted, actually) that I’ve included fifteen read-alouds on my reading list this year. There are actually quite a few others I read to Ethan that I didn’t count because of their failure to meet my fairly low standards of length/difficulty.
The latest one that counted was Brighty of the Grand Canyon, a 1953 book by Marguerite Henry, detailing the adventures/legend of a burro named Brighty (after Bright Angel Creek).
(Marguerite Henry wrote several books about a horse called Misty. You may be familiar with those titles. I think I was aware of them.)
The book was a gift from my mom, who visited the Grand Canyon just this year. As a description of the Canyon in its pre-National Park days, the book succeeds rather well. As an adventure, it’s a bit disjointed.
The book starts by introducing Brighty and Old Timer, an old prospector. Before long, Old Timer and Brighty meet a shady stranger who is unambiguously The Bad Guy. But Old Timer is too trusting and shares the secret of a terrific stake he’s just made (a rich copper deposit).
Then Old Timer is murdered, and there’s really no mystery about whodunnit, and Brighty is left to fend for himself. Which, of course, he does rather well, having never really depended on Old Timer for anything but some treats and a few back scratchings.
Soon thereafter we’re also introduced to Uncle Jimmy, a renowned mountain lion hunter, and also to the sheriff of the county, both of whom pledge to bring the killer to justice.
And then we don’t hear anything about the search for the murderer for about a hundred pages. Instead, the narrative focuses on Brighty’s activities in the years that follow the murder. We learn what Brighty does in the summer and what he does in the winter. We learn that he’s a tough customer, when he manages to fight off and kill a mountain lion. And we learn what he thought of the Other Side of the Canyon after a bridge was built across the Colorado River (Teddy Roosevelt makes a few appearances during this part).
Eventually the Bad Guy resurfaces, and there’s a bit of trouble and some scuffles and some difficulties, none of which I’ll divulge.
I won’t say Ethan and I didn’t enjoy it. It’s somewhat difficult to connect with a non-human character who doesn’t talk, and I totally blame animated movies for that! (BTW, as an aside, why was The Incredible Journey remade with talking animals? The old version had to be better, though I’ll admit I didn’t see the new one.)
But the fact that Brighty was a real character made it interesting, and as I mentioned, the history is fascinating. And the descriptions of the Canyon and its surrounds made me want to see it again. And maybe go on one of those trail hikes with donkeys.
Next up…I’m not certain, because two holds just came through at the Library, and the final Crichton book was on the Best-Sellers rack and I picked it up. We’ll see if I can focus on just one of them.
Wordful Wednesday Morning: The Girl Who Ran
One of the things I’ve long thought was cool about homeschooling is that all the teaching materials are in my house, and I stand a fair chance of actually (gasp!) learning something. Now, I’m sure that all parents are surprised at the things they’ve forgotten that their kids are just learning (hence, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader). But I think the condition is particularly acute with homeschoolers.
At this point in our homeschooling experience, I’m mostly the nighttime read-aloud dude. And the library-book-procurer. And the baseball thrower and catcher (sometimes catching one on the spine).
I’m loving the read-alouds, because I get to learn something new almost every time.
Our latest read-aloud was Naya Nuki: Shoshoni Girl Who Ran, by Kenneth Thomasma. The story follows Naya Nuki, a young Shoshoni girl and friend of Sacajawea who was taken captive by an enemy tribe during the Shoshoni Buffalo Hunt (which took them into enemy territory), along with her more famous friend.
Both girls, among others, were taken on a long trek (a thousand miles, give or take) and made slaves of the other tribe. While Sacajawea apparently made 
peace with her fate, Naya Nuki focused on planning her escape. For the entire trip, she noted landmarks to help her find her way (the Missouri River was a major help in this).
Once they came to their destination, Naya Nuki worked hard in order to gain trust, and then began gathering materials she would need for her long return trip, including a buffalo skin and knife.
The story of her arduous return trip after her escape is very inspiring, as she was attacked by bears, nearly died of some kind of illness, and struggled to find enough food to make it home.
The narrative is interesting, because there is rarely any dialogue. This is expected, of course, because for a full three quarters of the book, Naya Nuki is entirely alone.
One quirk of the book was the frequency of occurrence of Naya Nuki’s name. It appeared in practically ever other sentence. Now, I understand that using “she” over and over again would get tiresome, and I may not have noticed the frequency of the name if I hadn’t been reading it aloud. But it was still somewhat strange.
By the way, the book notes that we have actually no idea of Naya Nuki’s real name, because her name was changed after she returned home. Naya Nuki means “Girl Who Ran.”
The Epilogue mentions the joyful reunion of Sacajawea and Naya Nuki, and excerpts Meriwether Lewis’ journal describing the event.
In many ways, Naya Nuki’s story is more interesting and inspiring than Sacajawea’s.
Once again, Ethan was riveted by the story. I sometimes wonder if I could read baseball box scores to him and he’d still beg, “just a little more!”