First on my summer reading list was the latest Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris: Dead and Gone. It's book 8 in the series and HBO's True Blood is only on book 2. So much happens in the intervening novels...i wonder how long the show will be on, and if it will last until this book? In short, it was a fun first read to celebrate the end of studying for the summer.
I am currently reading "Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life" by Robin Wilson. I am half was through and am enjoying it immensely. For one of my favorite authors, I don't know too much about his life. I own 2 different biographies but haven't gotten around to reading them yet. Apparently Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was an extremely accomplished mathematician. At the age of only 23 he won the Christ Church (at Oxford University) Mathematical Lectureship, which he held for 26 years. There is a good deal of math and logic in his writing - but it never REALLY stood out to me until now.
This book is filled with puzzles and games, brainteasers that Charles created for his own amusement and for his 10 brothers and sisters. He was the 3rd oldest child and the oldest boy. He spent a good deal of his youth (before going away to boarding school) creating a "Family Magazine" which contained his stories, poems and those of his siblings. He also started experimenting with photography when he was quite young. The author goes as far as saying that if Dodgson had not written the Alice books, he would be best remembered as, "a pioneering photographer, one of the first to consider photography as an art rather than as simply a means of recording images." He photographed many, many subjects: his parents, brothers and sisters, locations and, of course, Alice Liddell and other children.
This brings me to a sore point: reading about the FACTS - rather than the myths - of Lewis Carroll's life erases any notion of pedophila from my mind. I never believed he was a pedophile, but I must admit there was a lingering shred of doubt. I doubt no longer. In the context of his life, his stories and photos do not appear as anything other than what they are: stories and photographs of an incredibly smart, whimsical man, who grew up entertaining his siblings - and who later delighted in telling stories to his friends' children and writing to them. That he wrote "Alice's Adventures Underground" for Alice Liddell no longer appears as any great act of devotion (into which many have read deeper meaning). He was always writing stories and letters to his siblings, both as a preteen and while he was away studying at Oxford.
ANYWAY, the book is fun so far - filled with puzzles and brain teasers, codes...supposedly he devised an easy method to find the day of the week for any given date in history! (Haven't gotten to that yet). Oh, and in case you were wondering, the name Lewis Carroll comes from a play on his own name: Latin for Lutwidge (his middle name) = Ludovicus and the Latin for Charles = Carolus.
Leave a comment
