Author: Deacon Nick

Fantasy Short Short Stories

Books and Reading / Family

5 Great Books to Read Aloud at the Family Dinner Table

One of my favorite things to do is share stories with my family at the dinner table. A few years ago when I was reading Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series my boys asked me each night at dinner to tell them what had happened to Captain Aubrey and his friend Stephen Maturin. It gave me a chance to share the joys of reading with my sons, and it also encouraged me to keep reading. Another great way to encourage reading in your kids is to read to...

Young Cicero

Books and Reading

Are ROMANs Elite?

John at SF Signal reviewed my free ebook ROMAN Reading in post called When in Rome…Do as Elitists Do? I really appreciate the time he took to read the book and write about it. His comments actually illustrate a couple of the elements of ROMAN Reading: Asking questions about what you read, and Naming your experiences. One of the questions he asks is if the neighborhood analogy is elitist. Here are his thoughts: Encouraging reading is a good thing, but I detect a smack of reading elitism here,...

Columbus Notes on Marco Polo

Books and Reading / Family

How to Turn a Book Into a Treasured Heirloom

Stefanie at So Many Books has just posted a review of ROMAN Reading and it’s generating some great comments about marking in books. Here’s one by Whatladder that I particularly like: My husband claims that his favourite book ever is the copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry I gave him that had all my pencilled notes in it. What a terrific reminder of the value of marking in books. Besides helping you engage in the text, writing in a book also leaves a visible sign of your...

The Three Musketeers

Books and Reading / Family

Literary Testosterone – 30 Must-Read Classics for Teenage Boys

This is a follow-up to Maureen’s question about recommendations for 12 and 13 year-old boys. Without getting into a big discussion about gender stereotyping, let me just say that in general boys at this age tend to read books that are more action and adventure oriented, while girls enjoy reading more about relationships. Case in point: I teach The Hobbit and Les Miserables to my eighth graders each year. Both boys and girls love these books. But when I look at the few students who didn’t like them,...

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza

Books and Reading / Family

Don Quixote for Young Readers?

Maureen asks: I have 12 and 13 yo boys and would love some book recommendations. Is Don Quixote appropriate for their age group? They are voracious readers, and I find we’re on the brink of children’s and adult books. Thanks for any advice. What a great question! One of my favorite things to do is recommend books. First, concerning Don Quixote: In sixteen years of teaching junior high students, I only recall three students who read Don Quixote all the way through, but each of them really enjoyed...

Reading on Bed

Books and Reading

Are you a Horizontal Reader or a Vertical Reader?

No, I’m not talking about your body’s position when you read, I’m talking about the way you read. I was thinking about my reading habits the other day while working on another book, and it occured to me that there are two ways to approach reading: Horizontal reading: this is an approach where you try to read as many books as possible; the idea here is that the more you read the more you know. Horizontal readers voraciously devour books day after day, week after week. Vertical reading:...

Books and Reading / Spirituality

5 Books about the Blessed Mother for Mother’s Day

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you moms today. In honor of Mother’s Day, here are five books about Mary, our Blessed Mother: Introduction to Mary: the Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion by Mark Miravalle – an informative explanation of the Church’s beliefs about Mary True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort — a challenging read, but this book was central to the late Pope John Paul II’s formation The Rosary: Chain of Hope by Fr. Benedict Groeschel — profound meditations on the different mysteries...

Books and Reading

Read for Your Life

Motivational speaker Pat Williams has an important new book out called Read for Your Life: 11 Ways to Transform Your Life with Books. Pat is the father of nineteen children, a marathon runner, the senior vice president of the Orlando Magic basketball team, and a reader. His book is designed to encourage people to read for an hour every day. He says, “Hey, if I can do it with nineteen kids, so can everyone else.” Yeah, but does his wife read for an hour every day, too, or...

Deacons and Diaconate / Spirituality

A Grief Observed

About ten days ago I wrote about a former student who had been ordained a deacon. Yesterday I saw him again, but the circumstance were far from joyful. He was the assisting deacon at a funeral mass I attended. The funeral was for my friend’s husband, who passed away at the age of 49 from cancer. He found out he had cancer about ten months ago, shortly after he found out they were expecting their third child. Their daughter was born a few weeks before he died. C.S....

Books and Reading

My Reading Life Is a Shopping Cart with Wobbly Wheels

As far as my current reading goes, I feel like a wobbly-wheeled shopping cart going out of control, swerving down the aisles of the supermarket about to collide with a big display of cereal boxes. I keep veering back and forth between different kinds of books, trying to keep up with my insatiable hunger for knowledge. Here’s what I’m reading: Ethics, Book I by Aristotle Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor The Intellectual Devotional edited by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim Blink by Malcolm Gladwell Get a...

An Evening in Rivendell

Books and Reading / Music

Music to Listen to While You Read, Part III – Lord of the Rings

As promised in part II, here are some CDs I like to listen to while I read The Lord of the Rings: The Tolkien Ensemble has done a beautiful job setting all of the songs in The Lord of the Rings to music. Their work is collected in four CDs: An Evening in Rivendell, A Night in Rivendell, At Dawn in Rivendelland Leaving Rivendell. The sound is more classical than I expected, but it really grew on me. Another album I listen to is Broceliande’s Starlit Jewel. This...

Young Cicero

Books and Reading / Writing

ROMAN Reading Will Improve Your Reading Habits in Under an Hour

My new eBook ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life Through Reading is available for free today! Download ROMAN Reading (1.86 mb) and in less than an hour you’ll have learned reading skills that last a lifetime. I’ve been teaching these skills for over sixteen years, and I can teach you. For free. Why? Because I have a mission, and I want you to share it with me. The mission? Changing lives one page at a time. I want to make the world a more literate...