As the summer rolls on, so does summer reading. In fact, I feel like I’m finishing books faster than I can blog about them. Here is a post to catch up and deliver a referendum on recently finished titles.

From the Bible: Ezra and Nehemiah.

Now y’all know I love to read my Bible. But there are a few books even I find dull. My first reading of the Bible, I would say that I did not enjoy Numbers, Joshua, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Proverbs, Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and some of the minor prophets, most surprisingly Jonah.

From the sounds of things, I didn’t like about half of the Old Testament. But I’d like to point out two things: one, the parts of the Bible that I enjoyed, I really enjoyed. The good parts make up for the dull parts—you may even say that the dull parts make the good parts better. And two, after reading a few of these books a second time (Isaiah, in particular) I had a greater appreciation for them.

Well, I’ve read Ezra and Nehemiah twice now, and I can tell you these books are dishwater dull. They are chronicles of the return of the Jews from Persia. In Ezra, the temple in Jerusalem is rebuilt. In Nehemiah, the wall surrounding the city is rebuilt. These books should be inspiring, as they show the fulfillment of Yahweh’s promises to the Jewish people and the turning of the Babylonian captivity.

But they basically just list the names of the people who returned from Babylon. In Nehemiah, Nehemiah spends pages telling you who built what part of the wall. In Ezra, Ezra grieves because the Jews, newly settled into Jerusalem, are beginning to marry Canaanitish women. Then, he lists each person who married a “strange woman.” Apart from being unpalatable, Ezra is just plain boring.

What I will say for Ezra and Nehemiah is, they are short. You could read each in a single, dedicated sitting—if you can manage to stay awake. My verdict? Thumbs down on both counts.

From the works of Shakespeare: Henry VIII.

Well, I guess this is another negative blog post. Did you know that Shakespeare wrote a play about Henry VIII? I thought you didn’t. And there’s a reason you don’t know about it. There’s not great drama here. Shakespeare (with the help of John Fletcher) wrote about Henry’s divorce of Katherine of Aragon, and his marriage to Ann Boleyn, but the depiction of Henry is mostly positive. It seems the Bard, here, did not want to step on any royal toes. The result is a play that is a bit toothless and disjointed. At the end of the play, Queen Elizabeth is born, which is kind of cool, I guess.

My verdict: Thumbs Down.

From my beloved Herman Melville: Billy Budd, Sailor.

Yep, we’re going negative today. I did not like Billy Budd. Melville is not known for intricate plots, but rather for very simple plots of which he explores every possible implication in very dense and allusive prose. He has never been more dense than Billy Budd, and rarely had a plot more simple. Unfortunately, none of the passages in Billy Budd reach the heights or depths we find in Moby Dick, there’s little of the irony of Bartleby, and no character in Billy Budd has the eloquence or the fire of a Captain Ahab.

At the novella’s conclusion, I, a Melville lover, just found it to be okay.

But!! There’s redemption today from a surprising source. Henry James’s Washington Square.

Now, as much as I love musty old books, I did not think I would enjoy anything by Henry James. According to Oscar Wilde, Henry James writes fiction as though it were a painful duty. I also read one short story by Henry James—the name of it escapes me now because I burned it with fire—about a butler who served an intelligent master, and who was consistently stimulated by the high-brow salons his master would hold. When this master died, and the butler had to serve a cruder family, he died. Presumably because there was no one to gratify his intellectual curiosity.

I thought this short story was boring and awful, and I had a bad opinion of Henry James because of it. But really, if a writer writes a dozen bad short stories, and one good novel, I’ll say they are a good writer on the basis of the novel, rather than a bad one on the basis of the stories. In Washington Square, Henry James has written a good-ass novel.

It tells the story of Catherine Sloper, an heiress who is both boring and ugly. A handsome, shady dude named Morris Townsend starts courting her in attempt to win her fortune. Catherine’s father—who is awful himself—forbids the marriage, as he believes Morris is only after her money. To find out the rest, you really need to read the book. It’s only 166 pages, and it moves quickly. It’s mostly dialogue, and the dense, flowery style we would expect from Henry James is really only working at half-strength in Washington Square. And it’s funny! I swear!

The great thing about this book is, I got it for free from Ed’s Editions, a bookstore near my mother’s house in West Columbia. If you spend ten bucks at Ed’s you get to pick a book from their Free section. I took Washington Square because I went to NYU, which is located beside Washington Square Park. I may never have read it, but Lorrie Moore has called Washington Square a perfect novel. So I’ve been a bit curious about the book for a long time.

The other day, I had to ride the bus to buy a new cell phone, because I lost mine on a roller coaster at King’s Dominion. That’s its own thing.

I wanted to bring a book on the bus, and I wanted something small. Washington Square met that criterion. I read the first page and laughed three times. The rest, as they say. I think I agree with Lorrie Moore. Washington Square is perfect.