Reading Catholic and catholic
(Sharing great songs that are inspiring, uplifting and/or are otherwise “worth a listen”). Read here for a short explanation of this feature.
As I wrote about in my WinterJam recap, TobyMac was a huge highlight, and here is most of one his songs, “Get Back Up.”
Here are the questions I ask and answer on the first of each month.
The questions, as always, are:
first, what are you reading?
what do you like best about it?
what do you like least?
what’s next on your list to read?
As always, I hope you’ll consider your current reads on your blog and/or sharing here in the comments or on Facebook or Twitter. Happy reading!
First, what are you reading?
A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.
Emma by Jane Austen for a book group.
What do you like best about them?
I find myself jealous these days when I read excellent prose, because I find writing painfully difficult, often impossible, this week/month/year, and I’m rarely happy with the result when I do finally finish a column/project/etc.
Rachel Held Evans writes really, really well, but I’m not holding it against her because A Year of Biblical Womanhood is so darn interesting. She spends each month of a year trying to live out a different biblical womanly virtue–obedience, valor, etc. It’s a bit artificial of a concept, but her writing carries the narrative. This book made me think of women in Scripture differently, it introduced me to the concept of “a woman of valor” (making Proverbs 31 a poem and a praise of all women do, not a “job description”–wow, that’s probably my one big take-away from this book), and just overall was a diverting, thought-provoking read.
Here’s just one great quote from this book (in the chapter on Proverbs 31: .
“Somewhere along the way, … we abandoned the meaning of the poem by focuing on the specifics, and it became just another impossible standard by which to measure our failures. We turned an anthem into an asignment, a poem into a job description.”
Most of all, reading A Year of Biblical Womanhood made me so enormously grateful to be a Catholic and understand that as a woman there are myriad ways to be holy. Evans is one of those non-Catholic authors who make me think, “wow, she’d be such an awesome Catholic.” I don’t mean this in a holier-than-thou way–she ponders more about spirituality and Scripture before breakfast than I do in a month–but imagine her writing and life informed by the saints (like, say St. Edith Stein, or St. Therese) and nourished by the Eucharist.
As far as Emma goes, it’s practically perfect in every way. I have a lot of great quotes highlighted. This is a terrific feature of reading a book on a Kindle App. You can highlight a sentence or two, and then pull up all those highlights on any device. This to me is a true advantage of e-reading versus real books.
One very fun expression I had not remembered from Emma was people being “come-at-able” because they were always willing to make up a dinner party at Emma’s house–they were willing and able to join in. Emma does not necessarily consider it a positive, but at this point in the novel she’s still in her clueless, teenage, “know-it-all” phase. And I do consider being “come-at-able” or flexible and willing to join others, is a good quality.
What do you like least about them?
A Year of Biblical Womanhood is not perfect. There are lots of examples of this, and I don’t want to nitpick, but if do read it you might find yourself annoyed at various points as I did. Here is just one “for instance”: she appears more tolerant of the conservative modesty and religious values of a Jewish woman than of conservative Christians, perhaps because her Jewish friend is able to articulate her point of view so well.
It also makes me unnaccountably sad that she and her husband do not want to have children.
Emma, can I say again, is near-perfect in every way, so nothing not to like. Emma herself is fairly cringe-worthy at so many times because she’s young and clueless. This time through, I am for the first time actually reading it from the perspective of Emma’s dead mother, rather than Emma herself. Interesting, and also a transition.
What’s next on your list?
I’ve just started Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon by Leonard S. Marcus, and it is so good. I want Leonard Marcus’ job when I grow up: to write thoughtful biographies about the authors of children’s books.
What are you reading this month?
One of the most prized birthday presents my son received when he turned five was the book Chickens to the Rescue by John Himmelman.
A few months before, I had discovered the book on the new book table at our local library, and the nearly-five-year-old boy became obsessed with it, so much so that it is a book I can still recite if I peruse it for a few minutes.
And he “read” the book out loud many times. I can still hear the little five-year-old voice screaming, “Chickens to the rescue!” as well as his adorable five-year-old pronunciation of “Milky the Cow.”
(Am I the only one who mourns when children grow out of mispronouncing things? I tried to get my youngest to say “lellow” instead of “yellow” long after he could say it correctly.)
The illustrations in Chickens to the Rescue make the book. The lines are deadpan (first page: “On Monday, Farmer Greenstalk dropped his watch down the well.” Next page: “Chickens to the rescue!”) but the pictures are hilarious.
For instance, when the dog eats Jeffrey’s homework on Wednesday, dozens of chickens come “to the rescue.” Several of the chickens peck out the text on the keyboard of the computer, several others fiddle with the dot-matrix printer, and others (even one sporting a pair of glasses) read books or proofread the paper, and one chicken chastises the dog, cowering under the bed.
In each two-page spread there is also an “Easter egg” of sorts, because one of the chickens is laying an egg. Finding that is a bonus, but just seeing all the clever humor in the illustrations is great fun.
Chickens to the Rescue has two “sequels”: Cows to the Rescue and Pigs to the Rescue. While we have enjoyed them greatly, nothing will ever compare in our book to those darn chickens.
As I was finishing up this post, I discovered on an old hard drive the video of our little guy “reading” Chickens to the Rescue days before his birthday. He is still “reading” the library version of the book, and it’s the first time my husband heard the book. Two random things that made me laugh more than usual: my husband’s longish hippie hair, and our oldest daughter making helpful suggestions in the background.
Do you have a favorite laugh-out-loud books that you enjoy at your house?
A shorter version of this review appeared on the book page of The Catholic Post this month.
You might say that John Thavis, the recently retired Rome bureau chief of Catholic News Service, had uncanny timing to release a book like The Vatican Diaries: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Power, Personalities and Politics at the Heart of the Catholic Church, just days before Benedict XVI announced his retirement.
Fortunately, this book is also fascinating and wonderfully written. The Vatican Diaries is a grand tour of Rome, the Vatican, and several decades of great and controversial stories and personalities. I read it with interest just after watching about the papal conclave & Pope Francis’s election. Having seen so much of Rome from the coverage, I thoroughly enjoyed getting an inside look at some of the personalities who make things happen at the Vatican.
(Thavis discusses his decision to feature “mid-level” Vatican workers in this excellent Q&A with The Anchoress. Also well worth reading.)
Since I was once a reporter and then a public relations director, I most relished seeing how Thavis and his colleagues made the behind-the-scenes reporting and editing decisions that became “the news.” I loved getting to see how the Vatican press corps covered events and “spun” them, regardless of the skill (or lack thereof) of Vatican officials.
I also found fascinating “Latinist,” the chapter on the colorful Father Reginald Foster, who taught Latin unconventionally for decades in Rome (and made a mental note to avoid getting sick in Rome, as the health care system there sounds abysmal).
Who am I kidding? I found every chapter worthwhile, not just well-written but well-reported. This book should be read by aspiring and current reporters and writers, but also for any Catholic (really, anyone) who has interest in the workings of the Vatican. Before reading The Vatican Diaries, I might have predicted that inner workings of the Vatican would not be genuinely enthralling. Turns out I was wrong.
Thavis writes not just intelligently, but lovingly, about his Church and how fortunate he was to cover it and its people for so many years. A great read.
Last week’s explosion at the Boston Marathon was heartbreaking for so many reasons. The fact that the vast majority of casualties came from the spectators, including the death of the young boy who had just celebrated his First Communion, is beyond belief.
When I was a tween, my family was in Boston and saw the finish of the Boston Marathon (Bill Rodgers won that year), and it is what started me and my family of origin running all those decades ago. I’ve done several big-city races and one of the things that can be tricky for my family is reuniting again and finding each other after the race. It’s just so awful to think about a marathon, a test of endurance, accomplishment and the human spirit, being always associated with a terrorist attack, and sadness.
I promise to share a picture book, and one related to marathoning, but I have to digress for a moment to quote GK Chesterton. We were reading Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (my choice) in a Catholic women’s book group to which I belong.
(A further digression: I actually apologized to the ladies during our discussed the book because I found it so difficult to read this time. Why? I don’t know. I first read TMWWT in my 20s, and I just loved it, but I’m a different person now and I found it a really hard go. After I finished the book, I felt so guilty that I found this article for us to help our discussion of the book.)
One quote that stood out for me when seeing the video and photos of Boston was a description of how Syme, the hero of TMWWT, is radicalized (in a good way) against anarchy and disorder in society both by his “anything-goes” upbringing as well as being a bystander to an Anarchist bombing:
“His hatred of modern lawlessness had been crowned also by an accident. It happened that he was walking in a side street at the instant of a dynamite outrage. He had been blind and deaf for a moment, and then seen, the smoke clearing, the broken windows and the bleeding faces. After that he went about as usual–quiet, courteous, rather gentle; but there was a spot on his mind that was not sane. He did not regard anarchists, as most of us do, as a handful of morbid men, combining ignorance with intellectualism. He regarded them as a huge and pitiless peril.”
Lots to ponder there, which is the only saving grace of Chesterton and TMWWT–the quotes to wrestle with and consider.
Okay, digression over.
An interesting and little-known factoid about the modern marathon marathon is the legend of how it came to be.
Briefly, the military messenger Pheidippides runs from the battle of Marathon to Athens to deliver the message the Greeks had defeated the Persians, but when he finished, he dropped dead from the exertion.
You may be wondering, how can this work as a picture book? It just does in the clever The First Marathon: The Legend of Pheidippides by Susan Reynolds, illustrated by Daniel Minter.
Author Susan Reynolds got the idea to write this book on the flight home from running her first marathon. She tells the story of both what marathons are today, and the story of how the first marathon may have been run by the brave and Pheidippides.
Talk about endurance!
The illustrations are colorful and optimistic, and there is a map to show his route and the surrounding Greek countryside. Children and marathoners alike will marvel at how Pheidippides ran the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens after running hundreds of miles delivering messages for the Greek army.
I actually own this book, but I can’t locate it right now to take some photos, but it’s really worthwhile getting from the library, or to own if you’re a runner.
Do you know any good picture books about running or marathons?
(Sharing great songs that are inspiring, uplifting and/or are otherwise “worth a listen”). Read here for a short explanation of this feature.
I have finally begun to upload videos I took at the WinterJam 2013 back. Yes, I now have my own YouTube channel, believe it or not, and I’m still working out the settings and such.
As I wrote about in my WinterJam recap (it just made me smile again to read my helpful post title: “A WinterJam Primer, or How to Keep Your Hearing, Your Faith, and Your Sanity, and Have a Good Time), Jamie Grace was a highlight.
I had not known this song before we went, but I’ve come to love it, since we bought her CD at WinterJam.
Do you have a favorite Jamie Grace song?