For Your Reading Pleasure, Suggested Books

Well, thanks to my occasional lurking around Sora Colvin's blog, I have been reminded of Sigrid Undset and her masterful trilogy of fourteenth century life--Kristin Lavransdatter (for which she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928)--along with four, old, paperback books of her tetralogy of 13th century Norway life, The Master of Hestviken, all of which have been patiently waiting for me on the bookshelf for a few years now. For those of you who never follow my links, here's a biographical snippet from the above Undset one:

In her personal life Undset devoted herself to medieval interests - she restored a house dating from the year 1000 and dressed in the grown of a Norse matron of the Middle Ages. In Lillehammer Undset lived a reclusive life and refused to open the doors of her house to journalists. Undset's emphasis on women's biological nature, and her view that motherhood is the highest duty [to which] a woman can aspire, has been criticized by feminists as reactionary.

Remembering these books, in turn, reminded me of Par Lagerkvist's six works which are their bookshelf neighbors, including his novel Barabbas (for which he won the Nobel prize in 1951). After John introduced me to Lagerkvist, I've read his books twice, and their sparse, almost bleak, beauty is something worth returning to. After my last reading of them, I still hadn't puzzled through all my thoughts, and I would like to have another, probably unsuccessful, try at clarity. (Books such as this can be read for a lifetime and never completely plumbed.)

All this comes, of course, just after John filled my arms with birthday books, which came on the heels of my decision to re-read C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, which came right after I met the pressing need to mop the floor, which after a few days of honey spills and spaghetti suppers and breakfast juices, is rapidly becoming a pressing need again.

So here I sit, half-buried in books, with letters unpenned and seeds unsown. (Letters will be started today; seeds will be sown when John's semester ends...)

And now the girls are awake, and my time has come to feed, clean, and take a wind-kissed walk to the P.O. (Almost all 30 of the Ebay items are shipped. Hurrah!)

When Hello responds to my "hello's," I'll post a few snapshots.