Category: Books and Reading
Did you ever read the encyclopedia when you were younger? I don’t mean Wikipedia, I mean an honest-to-goodness set of World Books or Brittanicas. And I don’t mean for a school paper, I mean for the sheer pleasure of it, discovering wondrous things about the world and letting one article send you on to the next, until before you knew it, several hours had gone by? That’s what reading Dana Huff’s blogroll links have been like for me over the past few days. But I’m getting ahead of myself....
Maria Popova has a wonderful new article at Brain Pickings titled “How Libraries Save Lives.” Libraries have always been important to me, and to be honest, if I would have grown up near a college that offered a Master of Library Science degree, then I may well have ended up a librarian instead of a teacher. In her article, Popova offers a fine collection of quotes and stories in praise of libraries, as well as links to reflections, essays, and art work. You’ll find tributes from Ursula LeGuin, Nikki...
The following interview of author Patrick O’Brian showed up in my Facebook feed the other day and it’s a real gem. O’Brian was interviewed for almost an hour in 1995 at the Mariner’s Museum in Newport, VA. First he answers questions from the museum’s president and CEO, John Hightower, then he takes questions from the audience for about thirty minutes. The audio is a bit rough, but the content is worth it. And if you love the Aubrey/Maturin book series as much as I do, be sure to...
In a few days October will be upon us in all its splendor. October in the Pacific Northwest is a mystical month of auburn leaves, fog, and crisp morning air–the perfect atmosphere for reading. Imagine settling in to your favorite reading nook, sipping on a cup of pumpkin spice coffee, and getting lost in a book while the leaves fall around you. But what to read, you ask? Not to worry, I’ve got you covered. Here’s a roundup of what some Catholic book groups are reading next month, along...
2015 was a down year for me in terms of number of books read. I had some academic responsibilities in the summer and early fall that took up time I would usually have spent reading. Because of that I missed hitting my reading goal of 40 books. Still, I read 23 books, and these are my top 5: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas – This was a great re-read, and I hope at some point to read the sequels. In His Spirit by Richard Hauser, SJ – A spiritual...
2014 was a very productive and satisfying year for me in reading. I read 44 books, surpassing my goal of 40, and many of them were some of the best books I’ve ever read. One of the things I love about using Goodreads to keep track of my reading is how easy it is to see the patterns and trends of my reading habits. Here’s a breakdown of some aspects of my reading for 2014: 80% of the books I read were ebooks (35 out of 44), my...
There have been few people as wise, eloquent, and humorous as Benjamin Franklin. Evidence: the epitaph he wrote for himself when he was but a young printer in 1729 (Alas, it was not, in the end, used on his gravestone.): The Body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer (Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out And stript of its lettering and gilding,) Lies food for worms: Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more In a new...
I barely reached my goal of reading forty books this year, and though some of the books were very short (like the eleven Doctor Who books), some of them were very long (like Quo Vadis, Les Miserables, and The Count of Monte Cristo). Of the books I read, these were my favorites (in the order I read them): Les Miserables (unabridged): I read an abridged version with my students every year, but it had been a while since I read the full novel. I really appreciated this translation,...
The Academy Awards are this weekend, and normally they don’t hold much interest for me, but this year I’m pleased to say that one of my old friends is nominated for a major award. I’ve been teaching the novel Les Misérables for almost twenty years and it has become a steady companion to me each Lent as the eighth graders and I read it at this time every year. The latest movie of the novel is a film version of the Broadway musical starring Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway,...
In 1969, Camilla Unwin, daughter of publisher Rayner Unwin, asked J.R.R. Tolkien to help her with a school project by giving an answer to the question, “What is the purpose of life?” After a fairly lengthy letter, Tolkien gets to the heart of his response: “So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks.”...
Book Riot has some beautiful reading nooks on display in this photo gallery, including the rustic one pictured below: Doesn’t it make you just want to take out that old copy of Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe and settle in for the evening?
That’s the question that Jeffrey Tucker looks at in an article at The Chant Café. The score is unusually text driven, just like liturgy. The singers in the film were chosen not for their singing ability but for their acting — which makes the singing more authentic in some way. Their voices were not ruined by too much training and affectation. They seemed authentic because of this — again, a point that is replicated in a liturgical context. I highly recommend that every priest and singer needs to see...
