Category: Book Review

Jacques Futrelle

Book Review / Books and Reading / Teaching

The Thinking Machine

I’m currently reading “The Problem of Cell 13” by Jacques Futrelle to my eighth grade students. Futrelle is probably the best mystery writer you’ve never heard of. He could have been the next Arthur Conan Doyle except for one tragic event in his life: he bought a ticket to sail on the Titanic. He and his wife were in Europe and decided to return to American on the Titanic, cutting their vacation short. When the ship began sinking his wife May boarded a lifeboat and survived, but Futrelle...

The Best Old Movies for Families

Book Review / Books and Reading / Family / Movies

The Best Old Movies for Families

I was browsing through Borders Books the other day and came across a new book called The Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together by Ty Burr. Old movies are an interest of mine, and I have struggled with trying to get my kids to watch them, so I picked this book up hoping to get some help. Burr, the film critic for The Boston Globe, does a great job listing movies from the golden age of cinema that kids of different ages will appreciate....

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler

Book Review / Books and Reading

How to Read a Book

Some books take no extra skills to read–all of their benefits are on the surface waiting for you. Others hide their treasures below the surface and you have to go after them like a deep sea diver, returning and returning again to appreciate their beauty and discover their meaning. Books like The Brothers Karamazov and City of God require extra literary skills to understand, but the effort is worth it. If you’ve never had a good literature class, or if it’s been a while since your last one,...

St. Vidicon to the Rescue

Book Review / Books and Reading / Technology

St. Vidicon, Pray for Us!

If you are a computer troubleshooter, you need to know about St. Vidicon of Cathode. He was martyred in the year 2020 when he was electrocuted in order to keep the Vatican broadcast equipment working so that Pope Clement could send his message to the world. Since his death, people throughout the world have prayed for his intercession to combat those terrors of technology, Murphy’s Law, the Imp of Perversity, and Finagle. His story is recounted in St. Vidicon to the Rescue, a novel by Christopher Stasheff. St....

What Does God Want? by Fr. Michael Scanlon

Book Review / Books and Reading

What Does God Want?

I hate making decisions. Well, that’s not exactly true. I hate making bad decisions. Why can’t God just reach down from heaven, place a huge index finger on the newspaper and say, “THAT ONE…PICK THE ONE WITH CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING”? He told Mother Teresa to found an order of nuns to serve the poorest of the poor, why can’t he tell us what he wants us to do with our lives? Well, it turns out he does tell us. It’s just that he uses God-speak, that mysterious language...

Father Elijah by Michael D. O'Brien

Book Review / Books and Reading

Reflecting on Father Elijah

I have just finished Michael D. O’Brien’s Father Elijah for the second time. I hadn’t read it in about five years, and I wanted to re-read it before Tom Curran discussed it later this month on his Sound Insights radio show. I remember liking it a lot more the first time I read it, probably because it was such a revelation to me. The book attempts to look at the second coming from a Catholic perspective. If you’ve read or heard about the Left Behind series, and wondered...

After the Rain by Norma Fox Mazer

Book Review / Books and Reading

After the Rain by Norma Fox Mazer

The wonderful thing about After the Rain is that it feels so true. Like a good writer should, Norma Fox Mazer takes ordinary, everyday life and writes about it in such a way that it becomes interesting and compelling. After the Rain recounts the story of Rachel, a typical middle-class teenager just trying to live her life. Rachel struggles with what it means to be a high school student, what it means to have a boyfriend, and what it means to be a granddaughter–which are all interconnected, as...

Book Review / Books and Reading / General

Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

There’s nothing in the living world like books on water cures, deaths-of-a-thousand-slices, or pouring white-hot lava off castle walls on drolls and mountebanks. How I just love Ray Bradbury’s writing style. After I read any of his stories or novels, the world becomes a more interesting place. Falling leaves become tears that the trees cry; rain is the cleansing power of the universe; books are portals to new worlds. Ray Bradbury takes the ordinary world and electrifies it until it shimmers with a glow that was always waiting...

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov

“What I hold is not a neuronic whip, nor is it a tickler. It is a blaster and very deadly. I will use it and I will not aim over your heads. I will kill many of you before you seize me, perhaps most of you. I am serious. I look serious, do I not?” The wonderful thing about Isaac Asimov is that he’s just so readable. A person can pick up one of his books and just dive in with little or no preparation, and yet Asimov...

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara

“This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you’ll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we’re here for something new. I don’t…this hasn’t happened much in the history of the world. We’re an army going out to set other men free.” What motivates a nation to go to war with other nations? What motivates a nation to go to war...

Don Quixote and the Mule

Book Review / Books and Reading

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

“Master, sadness was made for men, not for beasts, but if men let themselves give way too much to it, they turn into beasts.” It has been said that a person should read Don Quixote at least three times in one’s life: in youth, in middle age, and in old age. I whole-heartedly agree, but I would hope that it could be read more often than that. This is my all-time favorite book, the one book I would want with me if I was stuck on a deserted...

The Sword of Shannara

Book Review / Books and Reading

The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks

Truisms, my young friend, are the useless children of hindsight. There was a time–about five years ago–when only a few of my students had heard of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Of course, all that has changed with Peter Jackson’s magnificent movies. Now all of my students are familiar with the story, and many of them have read the books. If you haven’t read them yet, buy them immediately–they’re that good (and so much more satisfying than the movies, which I also happen to love). But...