I’m so grateful to Dr. Meg Meeker, author of May’s featured book, The 10 Habits of Happy Moms, for so promptly answering my questions for this interview so this could be a Mother’s Day weekend treat for Catholic Post Book Group readers. To all mothers and those who have mothers, have a blessed and terrific Mother’s Day!
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One Book for Mom, and Three for Mary
First, What are You Reading? Volume 9, May 2011
Well, after my failed attempt last month at giving up reading, here are my answers to the four questions I ask on the first of each month:
first, what are you reading?
what do you like best about it?
what do you like least?
what’s next on your list/pile 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. Happy reading!
First, what are you reading?
I have just finished The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, on the recommendation of a great friend and fellow book-lover. I’m so grateful for this recommendation, because it’s not often that I find a newer, satisfying, well-crafted novel written for adults that is haunting in a good way. From the Amazon description:
Like Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved classic The Secret Garden, Kate Morton’s The Forgotten Garden takes root in your imagination and grows into something enchanting–from a little girl with no memories left alone on a ship to Australia, to a fog-soaked London river bend where orphans comfort themselves with stories of Jack the Ripper, to a Cornish sea heaving against wind-whipped cliffs, crowned by an airless manor house where an overgrown hedge maze ends in the walled garden of a cottage left to rot.
I’m also well into the final Ranger’s Apprentice book, The Emporer of Nihon-Ja, but I’m not rushing it since it’s the last in the series.
Finally, I’ve been re-reading a lot of John Paul II’s poetry. I have an early edition of Easter Vigil that I vividly remember buying at a used book store in Milwaukee, WI in the early 1990s (does anyone else do that with certain books?). I also have been paging through my seen-better-days copy of The Place Within, as well as Roman Triptych. I’ve been sharing a few of these poems here and here.
What do you like best about it?
The Forgotten Garden was excellent from start to finish. The novel spans a century of decades, and each chapter moves effortlessly from the early 1900s to 2005, to the 1970s, and back again. It is extremely well-done and not a bit choppy, as you might expect from a novel that moves around so much chronologically.
The characters are so likeable, even the “bad” ones, that you really want to know what happens to each, and Morton doesn’t disappoint.
One fascinating and fun feature are the original fairy tales (written by “The Authoress” in the novel) interjected throughout the book. A nice touch, and they read as real fairy tales in the style of the Fairy books..
What do you like least about it?
I’m having trouble here finding something in The Forgotten Garden that I don’t like. At first, I was considering writing that no characters act explicitly because of religious belief, but yet people act in an immoral way or a moral way based on their character. The novel is fairly religion-neutral, not common among modern novels, where sometimes the religious character is the worst.
What’s next on your list to read?
I’m searching for Catholic fiction for my regular June fiction round-up, and looking for good suggestions. Please contact me if you have some ideas.
In the meantime, The Emporer of Nihon-Ja awaits, and I’ve got several more Kate Morton books on reserve from the library.
What are you reading? I’d love to hear about it.
Poetry Friday, Beatification Edition, Part 2: Another Poem by John Paul II
As I wrote earlier today, I wanted to share a poem or two of Karol Wojtyla, who was fairly prolific in his poetry.
This is from Roman Triptypch, a section entitled, “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
I like to think of it as “the theology of the body in poem form,” but it is called:
Pre-Sacrament
Who is He? The Ineffable. Self-existen Being.
One. Creator of all things.
And yet, a Communion of Persons.
In this Communion, a mutual self-giving of the fullness
of truth, goodness and beauty.
But above all–ineffable.
Yet, He spoke to us of himself.
He spoke, by creating man in his image and likeness.
In the Sistine painting the Creator has human features.
The Almighty, the Ancient–a Man, like Adam whom He creates.
And they?
“Male and female He created them.”
God bestowed on them a gift and a task.
They accepted–in a human way–the mutual self-giving which is in Him.
Both naked…
they felt no shame, as long as the gift lasted–
Shame will come with sin,
yet the thrill remains. They live conscious of the gift,
without being able to call it by name.
But they live it, they are pure–
Casta placent superis; pura cum veste venite,
et manibus puris surmite fontis aquam (see note below)
For eight years I read these words every day
as I entered the gate of the gymnasium in Wadowice.
Pre-sacrament–existence itself as the outward sign of eternal Love.
And when they became “one flesh”
–that wondrous union–
on the horizon there appears the mystery of fatherhood and motherhood.
–They returned to the source of life within them.
–They returned to the Beginning.
–Adam knew his wife
and she conceived and gave birth.
They know that they have crossed the threshold of the greatest responsibility!
—
note: translates as “Heaven is pleased with what is pure; come with pure robes, and with unsullied hands drink water from the source.”
Poetry Friday, Beatification Edition: A Poem by John Paul II
I feel honored to be able to share one of my favorite poems from Karol Wojtyla, who became John Paul II, who will be beatified the day after tomorrow.
I had a nice time searching through the several books of JP II poetry I own, for just the right “one.” I think I might have to post another one later today, there are so many that I like. This post may end up being Poetry Friday, Part 1, so stay tuned.
This poem is from “The Church,” written at the Basilica of Saint Peter, Autumn 1962, when Wojtyla would have been in Rome for the beginning of Vatican II.
Marble floor
Our feet meet the earth in this place;
there are so many walls, so many colonnades,
yet we are not lost. If we find
meaning and oneness,
it is the floor that guides us. It joins the spaces
of this great edifice, and joins
the spaces within us,
who walk aware of our weakness and defeat.
Peter, you are the floor, that others
may walk over you (not knowing
where they go). You guide their steps
so that spaces can be one in their eyes,
and from them thought is born.
You want to serve their feet that pass
as rock serves the hooves of sheep.
The rock is a gigantic temple floor,
the cross a pasture.
How I Turn Kate Middleton’s Wedding Dress into a Catholic App Spotlight
I happened to see the royal wedding live this morning, which I did not intend to do, as a very small subset of my local Jane Austen book group is gathering for tea, scones, and DVR’d highlights of the royal wedding in a few hours. However, I was up extra early and at the gym, where I was able to persuade the guys near me to change the tv channel from ESPN to the wedding “just this once.” And when I saw Kate Middleton’s dress, one of my first thoughts was, “Wow, now that is a dress.” And my second thought was, “I think that looks like St. Gianna Molla’s wedding dress.”
Now, our family has had a lot of St. Gianna in the past year, as our oldest daughter chose St. Gianna as her confirmation saint. She chose St. Gianna because of her great life story, her family life and her work as a doctor (she’s interested in healthcare as a career path), but I think a bit of our fashion-conscious daughter likes that St. Gianna had a really great sense of style.
But the real reason I thought about St. Gianna’s wedding dress is I had just been exploring last night the new App series from Little iApps. I got the terrific one devoted to St. Gianna, and in looking through it last night, I noticed a photo of St. Gianna in her wedding dress.
So see if you agree with me. Doesn’t her dress look extremely similar to St. Gianna’s? I took a screenshot of the above wedding dress photo from the App.
I noticed one commentator talking about Kate’s dress being very 50s-inspired, and Pietro and Gianna were married September 24, 1955, so I don’t think I’m too far off the mark.
Two interesting facts about St. Gianna’s wedding dress: she made it herself, and that she hoped to re-use it for vestments if she had a son who became a priest.
I will get the chance to use this eVotions App later today, as I plan to pray some of the prayers for the newly married couple for a happy, holy marriage. St. Gianna seems a good saint for this stylish new princess, and I’m sure we all wish her and Prince William the best.
Now we’re back to our regular books-centered writing. Look for later today excerpts from two poems by John Paul II in honor of his beatification Sunday. I’ll be watching that, too.