One Catholic Life Blog

Lord Darcy

Book Review / Books and Reading

Lord Darcy: Sherlock Holmes Meets Jonathan Strange

If you, like me, find the Harry Dresden series not to your taste, but like the idea of a magic-wielding detective, you might enjoy the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett. Mix together Sherlock Holmes and Jonathan Strange, and add in a little alternate history, and you have an idea of what the Lord Darcy stories are all about. What if Richard Lionheart didn’t die, and what if the Protestant Reformation never happened? Garrett imagines an alternate history where in the twentieth century the Plantagenet dynasty still rules,...

Thornton Wilder

Books and Reading / Spirituality / Theology

Is Purgatory Like a Novel?

What makes fiction so powerful and so poignant? Thornton Wilder sums it up in one of the most moving quotes I have ever read: If Queen Elizabeth or Frederick the Great or Ernest Hemingway were to read their biographies, they would exclaim, “Ah, my secret is still safe.” But if Natasha Rostov were to read War and Peace she would cry out as she covered her face with her hands: “How did he know, how did he know?” Is this what the pain of Purgatory might be like:...

Storm Front

Book Review / Books and Reading

Harry Dresden Book One: Not for Me

I finished Storm Front: Book One of the Harry Dresden Files, and it wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was still quite entertaining. In brief: What I liked: The setting: I particularly liked Harry’s house and office, and his idea about magic affecting complex machines The film noir elements combined with traditional wizard-lore Butcher’s conception of magic and how it works: a little Latin, a staff, some magical symbols, all the things traditionally associated with users of magic The action scenes...

Classics

Books and Reading

Humiliation through Rereading

This quote by Joseph Epstein rings true with me: Rereading can be…a humility-inducing activity, when, on rereading, one learns that the first time around with a book, one’s politics or fantasies or personal anxieties were in fact doing most of the work. Rereading books first read when young, one is inclined to weep for the naif one not so long ago was. And while at it one discovers, if one gets to reread the same book twenty years hence, one is even one now. I can think of...

Babette's Feast

Movies

45 Important Movies as Chosen by the Vatican

In 1995, to commemorate 100 years of film-making, the Vatican made a list of what it called “Some Important Films.” The list was divided into three areas–Religion, Values and Art. I’ve been gradually acquiring them and watching them. What I particularly like about the list are the international titles. Here’s the list with a few comments of my own thrown in: Religion: Andrei Rublev Babette’s Feast – I really enjoyed this slow-moving but tender film. Ben-Hur – The four-disc edition also includes the original silent film–an excellent dvd...

Don Quixote

Books and Reading

The Knight of the Sorrowful Face Will Put a Smile on Yours

I finally finished listening to the Don Quixote audiobook narrated by George Guidall, and it remains my favorite book of all time. It took almost five months to listen to (I have a very short commute to work), but it was worth the time. Guidall is deservedly known as the king of audiobooks, and his reading was masterful. In a book full of dozens of characters, he managed to give each one a separate personality and voice. I don’t want to say too much about the story itself,...

books

Books and Reading / Humor / Poetry

When I Loaned This Book I Deemed It as Lost

The Book-Lender’s Soliloquy by Nick Senger (with apologies to Shakespeare) To lend or not to lend, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of a book lost forever, Or to hoard books against a sea of troubles, And by keeping them hide them? To read: to lend; No more. And by hoarding to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That the librarian is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To read, to...

Books and Reading / Family

Harry Dresden – For Teenagers?

I’m about a quarter of the way into Storm Front, book one of the Harry Dresden Files, and I wanted to answer a question posed by Maureen, who wants to know about its suitability for junior high/high school readers. It didn’t take long to get the answer to that question. Keep in mind that I believe in each parent deciding what their kids can read or watch, so don’t take my comments as gospel truth on this. Here we go: I’m really enjoying the book so far as...

The Sound of Music

Books and Reading / Family / Movies / Music

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

My wife and I celebrated our seventeenth anniversary two nights ago by attending the Spokane Civic Theater’s performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music. The show was fantastic–elaborate sets, wonderful singing–a real treat. There were even a couple of songs that we had never heard before. It was also very special to see one of my former students in the role of Louisa Von Trapp. My wife loves The Sound of Music, so one Christmas I bought her the movie, the soundtrack and the original book....

castle

Books and Reading

Camelot – ‘Tis a Silly Place

My boys and I watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail a few days ago and that got me thinking about Arthurian novels. Here are a few of my favorites: The Once and Future King by T.H. White – A terrific book, but unfortunately I can’t get the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone out of my head when I read the first part. The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day by Mary Stewart – This was my first introduction to...

Field of Dreams

Books and Reading / Movies

The 15 Greatest Movies with Novels as Source Material

Not only are these great movies, but the novels on which they are based are classics, too. If you’re in a reading group, why not read the book, then watch the movie? I only chose novels, no non-fiction (i.e., A Beautiful Mind) or drama (i.e., Much Ado About Nothing). Movies are listed alphabetically. Ben-Hur – Novel by Lew Wallace The Bridge on the River Kwai – Novel by Pierre Boulle Field of Dreams – Based on Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella The Godfather – Novel by Mario Puzo...

Foulis

Books and Reading / Humor

The Perfect Book?

Are you a bibliophile in search of the perfect book? Are you a perfectionist like I am? Then read on. The following excerpt is taken from a fantasic book for readers called A Passion for Books: A Book Lover’s Treasury, edited by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan (Times Books, 1999). The Perfect Book William Keddie The Foulis’s edition of classical works were much praised by scholars and collectors in the nineteenth century. The celebrated Glasgow publishers once attempted to issue a book which should be perfect specimen of...