Bookshelves Arranged by Spine Color
It looks cool, but how do you find the book you’re looking for? From Designverb.
One Catholic Life Blog
Teaching Humor
This email has been making the rounds lately, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it: After being interviewed by the school administration, the teaching prospect said, “Let me see if I’ve got this right: You want me to go into that room with all those kids… correct their disruptive behavior observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages and instill in them a love for learning. You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on...
19 Story Cross Dominates Landscape
Check out this huge cross in Groom, Texas. It was built by Steve Thomas and a group of 250 welders. Here are a few facts about the cross from this web page: It stands 19 stories tall. The arms stretch 110 ten feet across. It’s made of welded steel covered with steel sheeting. There are no guide wires or extra supports keeping it up. Be sure to see the full-page description of the cross, and the beautiful pictures of the cross at night.
My Reaction to The Knight by Gene Wolfe
I finished Gene Wolfe’s The Knight today. My Wolfe gene must be missing, because I don’t get it. I understand that his books are often obscure on a first reading, and that this is just the first of a two-book series, but nothing in the book really moved me. Some of the scenes were beautifully written, and I liked the main character, Able of the High Heart, but the story left me flat. It just didn’t seem worth the effort. I thought I’d search the web for other...
Chronological Middle-earth Reading List
If you’ve ever wanted to read Tolkien’s Middle-earth writings in chronological order, you might want to check out my Chronological MiddleEarth Reading List. It’s available in pdf format. This reading list is a guide for those who want to read Tolkien’s works in the order in which they took place in Middle-earth, rather than in the order Tolkien originally wrote them. The reading order is NOT recommended for those who have never read any of Tolkien’s works before. The reader should have already read The Hobbit, The Lord...
More Quotes on the Glories of Reading
I’m a voracious reader. You have to read to survive. People who read for pleasure are wasting their time. Reading isn’t fun; it’s indispensable. –Woody Allen What better occupation, really, than to spend the evening at the fireside with a book, with the wind beating on the windows and the lamp burning bright?…Without moving, you walk through the countries you see in your mind’s eye; and your thoughts, caught up in the story, stop at the details or rush through the plot. You pretend you’re the characters and...
The Best Thing I Read This Week
I found a real gem at the used book store yesterday: Quiet Places with Jesus by Rev. Isaias Powers, C.P. I’ve been looking for a prayer book to help me concentrate more on the person of Jesus as I pray. I tend to be a bit too intellectual when I meditate and I wanted something that would help tap my imagination. Fr. Powers wrote these guided meditations in the 1970s and they’re very much in the Jesuit tradition of using the imagination to help one pray. What I’ve...
First Impressions of The Knight by Gene Wolfe
I don’t often understand Gene Wolfe’s books, but I’m always captivated by his characters. Wolfe is one of those authors whose books leave me feeling a bit like an alien abductee who’s been returned to his home: I know something important just happened, I just don’t quite know what it was. Fortunately, The Knight seems more accessible to me than other Wolfe novels I’ve read (which, admittedly, haven’t been many). And Wolfe still has the power to create compelling, likeable characters. Like Severian in The Book of the...
2 References to the Knight of the Sorrowful Face
I just started Gene Wolfe’s novel The Knight, and the first thing I encountered was this epigraph by Lord Dunsany which just happens to mention my favorite knight: The Riders Who treads those level lands of gold, The level fields of mist and air, And rolling mountains manifold And towers of twilight over there? No mortal foot upon them strays, No archer in the towers dwells, But feet too airy for our ways Go up and down their hills and dells. The people out of old romance, And...
Disappointed by Tim Powers’ Novel Declare
I finally had to abandon Tim Powers’ supernatural spy novel, Declare. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn’t go any further. I really enjoyed Powers’ earlier novel, The Anubis Gates, and I had high hopes for Declare after reading reviews. But the book didn’t evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn’t care for the way Powers’ narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s. I think part of the...
One in Our Desire for Faith: The World Prayer Project
Sometimes I forget the beauty of other faith traditions. Sometimes I get so narrow in the books I read, the places I visit, the web sites I search for, that I miss out on the presence of God in the wider world. The World Prayers Project is a collection of adorations, invocations and celebrations from different faiths and faith traditions. It displays humanity’s unceasing desire to respond to God’s call. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The World Prayers Project shows how...
