34-Week Reading Goals Update (2023)

Surprise, I'm (quite) pregnant! Plus I kept reading, so that's good, too.

Pregnancy, man. Just when you’re enjoying the energy and semi-normalcy of the second trimester, WHAM! Your morning sickness returns, you get hit with some weird neuropathy, and suddenly the easiest tasks (like opening the refrigerator door), become a much more challenging. As for slouching over a computer screen to type out a few things, I did not want to do that for a very long time.

For a similar reason, there will not be an audio version of this article available. When I try to read or speak for more than thirty seconds at a time, I start to gag. It’s more annoying than anything else. If anyone has any tips on preventing this, please let me know.

Baby is due in December, we’re both healthy, and our growing family is very, very happy.

Despite feeling sick and taking care of little kids, I did have time to read. Maybe that should be my epitaph years from now: “She did have time to read.”

2023 Reading Goals: Progress!

1. Finish Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: DONE!

2. Read Tartuffe by Molière (a play): DONE!

3. Candide by Voltaire (a satirical novella): DONE!

4. The French Revolution by Hilaire Belloc: DONE!

5. Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: DONE!

6. Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts: DONE!

7. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

8. Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: DONE!

9. An anthology of French poetry: DONE!

10. Pensées by Blaise Pascal (philosophical musings of a great mathematician)

11. The First Discourse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau: DONE!

12. Lafayette by Harlow Giles Unger: DONE!

13. From Mother and Daughter: an anthology of the writings of Madeleine and Catherine des Roches: I read three more of Madeleine des Roches’s poems, “Ode 4,” “Sonnet 1,” and “Sonnet 5”

Other (Non-French) Things I Read:

Persuasion by Jane Austen and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, both of which take place during the Napoleonic wars and so they count, okay?

A selection of what I read with my kids: The Silver Chair, The Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night…I didn’t actually read aloud as much as usual to my kids, mostly because of nausea. Audiobooks saw us through a lot of days. Fortunately my oldest loves to have stories on repeat.

Bible: miscellaneous New Testament books

Journal-Style Reflections

Napoleon: A Life

I finished Andrew Roberts’s biography of Napoleon in late June. It’s hard to process a task that took over thirty hours through three months - apart from the book itself, it felt a bit funny not having my go-to audiobook when I got in the car.

Reading and listening to one biography does not make me any sort of expert on Napoleon, yet I’m also surprised by the many details I do remember.

Napoleon, born in Corsica, was raised speaking Italian and didn’t speak French until he was preparing to attend a military boarding school as a preteen. He always considered himself a Frenchman, and his early detractors loved to point out that “Bonaparte,” pronounced “Boh’ nah par’ tay,” is an Italian name.

He came of age during the French Revolution but didn’t distinguish himself in it. Though he showed some promise as an artillery commander, under the various revolutionary governments, he owed his career’s “big break” to his political marriage to Josephine: the command of the Army of Italy was a present form his father-in-law.

However, all the éclat after that was truly earned on the battlefield. Napoleon had a few principles that guided most of his campaigns, from the mundane but vital detail of making sure his soldiers had good shoes, to balancing daring and caution in every action: he attacked hard and fast, but he maintained reserve troops at each successful battle. He was bold, consistent…I’m still no authority on battle tactics, but suffice to say he won a lot. Most of his failures on the battlefield came when he didn’t follow his own maxims.

Before reading his biography, I was most confused about how he became emperor. Essentially, the government after the monarchy was too weak to maintain its wars against other European powers, and many people wanted a strong, central ruler again. It wasn’t hard for Napoleon—having impressed everyone with his campaigns in Italy and Egypt — and a few conspirators to launch a coup in 1799. He was technically only the “first consul” of three consuls for a decade, but by the rule of France was his.

I had also been confused about his two exiles. Napoleon had sowed the seeds of his own downfall some years before. Desperate for an heir to provide more stability to his reign, he divorced his first wife Josephine in 1810 when it became apparent that, at forty-six and after eleven years of marriage, she would not bear him any children. Despite repeated infidelity on both sides, Napoleon and Josephine’s marriage had worked on a personal and political level that his second marriage did not.

For his second wife, he chose the teenage Marie-Louise, whose father was emperor of Austria, one of the countries routinely fighting France. Though she did bear a son, the match was diplomatically unsuccessful, estranging Napoleon from Russia without providing a solid alliance with Austria.

Move forward a few years, and the heads of state in Russia and France were massing armies and denouncing each other. Napoleon decided to make the first move and attack, but he was too precipitous, famously underestimating the harsh Russian winters. He lost half a million soldiers in that campaign, mostly from sickness, starvation, cold, and despair.

With his enemies pressing hard on France and everyone dissatisfied back at home, even marching into the capital itself, he agreed to an abdication, retiring to the idyllic Mediterranean island of Elba. He hated it there. Less than a year later, he was back in France, reclaiming his rule. The soldiers loved him. The elites did not, but they were too afraid of him to deny him outright. Their problem was solved almost immediately by the united powers of Europe marching on France. When Napoleon lost at Waterloo, he was exiled again to the far more remote island of St. Helena in the southern Atlantic in 1815. He died of cancer six years later in 1821.

The First Discourse

I read Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “First Discourse” with my husband in July. My prior education about Rousseau had been a lot like my knowledge of Napoleon, caricatured and bullet-pointed, so I was unprepared for his eloquence and sincerity. This essay is about the vanity and pretension that often surrounds academic pursuits when they’re not geared toward acquiring true wisdom. It’s provocative and strongly worded, going so far as to say that people are better off illiterate and hard-working and strong, working for some simple, good purpose. His real criticism is not of education, but of the mutual-admiration societies that often surround academia.

Madeleine des Roches’s poems

Here are some of my favorite lines from each poem.

“Ode 4”

“What sorcerer filled with envy,
On my listless life
Has poured out so much poison,
That my soul, enslaved to my senses,
Burns like a branding iron?”

“O God! I am shipwrecked
Just as calm waters are in sight.

“I shall be safe and sound
When form and matter
By their alteration
Will lead the earth on to
Another generation.”

“Sonnet 1” [to Catherine des Roches]

“To bring down virtue from high heaven
So as to crown your lovely brow with ever-verdant boughs.
Although at present we see the likes of Nero and Domitian,
And a new Briareus obscure the earth,
Your solemn and saintly honor shines with a flame so bright
That the Century in which you came down is pleased”

“Sonnet 5”

“Even though now only gentleness and clemency surround me.
Because my misfortune has lasted so long,
Attempting to root it out has left such a gaping hole
That it’s impossible to reconstruct the destroyed building.
The sad affliction that has injured my soul
Has so wounded my body, spirit, and mind
That this late-coming happiness bears no real fruit.”

Next Steps

Find a copy of Pascal’s Pensées and start reading it.

I still need to finish A Tale of Two Cities, but I’m more than halfway done now.

Read three more poems from the des Roches.

Other, Non-Literary Favorites

Inspired by Laura Vanderkam’s advice to take one night for a scheduled, out-of-the-house activity, I signed up for a quilting class. Every other week, even when I felt nauseous and my head was aching, I’d drive to a peaceful, quiet shop where I learned how to make a flannel rag quilt. It’s not quite done yet, but it’s the biggest, cutest project I’ve ever done. I want to show it to everyone. I might name her Sukie. She’ll live on my couch until one of us dies.

I also sewed a dress for the first time. It’s just a simple play dress for my older daughter. After the long, monotonous (in a good way) work of the rag quilt, I was surprised by how quickly it came together.

Finally, my husband and I drove to the Massachusetts home of my favorite American novelist, Edith Wharton. Having toured the mansion on a previous, wintry visit when the grounds were closed, we took our time meandering through her many acres of gardens and woods. I felt pulled to pick up another one or four of her books, but I’m dutifully finishing this year’s challenge before adding anything big to my pile.