New January Reading Vlog

As usual, it's actually a baking, tea drinking, kitten chasing, ice skating, sunset admiring...and reading vlog.

My first reading vlog of the new year includes Russian, Italian and British literature as well as Linzer Cookies, ice skating, winter garden dreams, a cup of tea or two (of course), appearances from Cymbeline the kitten, movie reviews and reflections on following the will of God. Typical stuff, really.

Dante’s Paradiso was probably my favorite book from January - I didn’t quite manage to finish off the Divine Comedy in 2021, but reading Dorothy Sayers’ translation has been such a delight. There were moments in Inferno and Purgatorio where Virgil would explain something to Dante then add that Beatrice would explain it better later, and Paradiso was in fact packed with explanations from Beatrice and other saints, which made me take it a bit slower to try to understand everything. What I loved best about the book was just the pure joy and bliss that Dante and the saints he meets experience abiding in the light of God in heaven.

I also picked up my copy of Flannery O’Connor’s Prayer Journal for the Flannery O’January readathon. It’s such a slim volume and a short read, but it goes deep!

“Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing.

I do not know You God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.”

I love that image of the moon and the shadow. There were a few moonlit nights at my farmhouse this month, and the silvery light throwing shadows of the bare trees and branches onto the snow was so lovely. I tried to film a clip of the scene on my camera, but it was too delicate a light to be captured by my equipment. I guess I’ll have to be content with sunrises and sunsets, of which there are plenty in this January vlog!

Lending a paw with the camera…or just looking for something to pounce on…

Don’t be fooled, Cymbeline was not a help in filming this month. Up until recently, she had mercifully been staying off the kitchen counters, but just last night as I was trying to edit, I found she had stealthily hopped up not only onto the counter, but right into the teacup cupboard which I had unwisely left open. While her predilection for tea is adorable, I am not willing that she should annex the tea cup cupboard to her domain. Naughty, silly cat. 😸

Hope it’s been a wonderful and bookish January!