How you know me: I am the Director of Music at St. Mark’s Parish in Peoria as well as the owner of Johnson Family Chiropractic in Peoria. My undergraduate degree was a B.A. in Humanities and Catholic Culture from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where I also met my wife, Wendy. She and I have since launched a fantastic career of raising six (so far) girls.
Why I love reading: I love fiction and non-fiction, but for different reasons. In our YouTube world where just a few facts suffice for someone to make an iron-clad opinion about any topic, a non-fiction book is often a refreshing deep dive into a subject. Holding a non-fiction book isn’t like glancing at a bumper sticker, but rather absorbing the author’s own years of research and curation. Fiction, on the other hand, exercises the muscles of my imagination, which is an absolute necessity in order to remain properly childish as I age.
What I’m reading now: As usual, I’m in the middle of several books at once.
First, G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man
Robert Royal’s The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive World History
Marc Goodman’s Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
Finally, Randall Munroe’s What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions
My favorite book: My three favorite authors are O. Henry, P. G. Wodehouse, and G. K. Chesterton. If I had to pick one, only one book, then it’d be Chesterton’s collected Father Brown