Happy New Year! As has been my practice for over 17 years, today is the day I take to reflect on the past year of reading, list my favorite books of the year, and look forward to the year ahead. As I look back on 2025, I see a change in my reading habits due to two separate factors. First, I made the deliberate decision to move away from an annual reading goal based on number of books read, and instead began a more intentional focus on reading...
Today is Gaudete Sunday, Rejoice Sunday. We light the rose colored candle. We hear words like rejoice and be glad. And yet, maybe many of us arrive here a little tired. Advent days are dark. The world is loud. This season that’s supposed to be joyful is often when things feel the heaviest, the most stressful. Which makes today’s readings comforting. Because every one of them speaks to us right where we are. Not to people who have it all figured out, not to people whose lives are all...
Did you hear about the treasure buried in the Spokane area? About a month ago I was driving out in the valley and I saw a big billboard that said there was a $10,000 treasure chest buried nearby. The billboard gave a web address, and each day a clue was posted to help lead you to the treasure. You could even see a livestream of the big X on the ground where the treasure was buried. Now before you go out looking for it, the treasure has already...
March is a restless month. One day it feels like spring, the next, winter comes roaring back with a sudden snowstorm, like this weekend. Across the country, the weather has been wild: tornadoes, windstorms, wildfires. In many ways our world feels like a storm right now. The headlines change by the hour— inflation on the rise, financial markets dropping, people being detained, protests in the streets, arguments online. Some are afraid of what’s happening, others don’t mind so much, and still others just feel exhausted by it all....
“Many years later as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” This week I started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, through the Hardcore Literature Book Club with Benjamin McEvoy. This will be my first novel of magical realism and my first real foray into Latin American literature. It’s refreshing to have this new literary territory to explore. My initial plan is to simply let the novel do its...
Welcome to 2025, and a new year of reading. Before moving forward into a new year I like to reflect on last year’s books, looking for patterns, appreciating blessings, and choosing my ten favorite reads. As I look back over the books I read in the last twelve months, what stands out more than anything else is that, for me, 2024 is a testament to the value of rereading. Half of the books I read last year were rereads. And among my top ten books of 2024 are...
I am rereading Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and this line jumped out at me today as Thoreau was describing the house he built for his time at Walden Pond: I have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long… Ten feet wide by fifteen long. 150 square feet. I got curious about how big that was, so I measured the room I am in right now, my home office/library. It measures twelve feet wide by thirteen feet long, or 156 square feet —...
The 2025 Chapter-a-Day Read-along has been announced at its new home! Be sure to visit ChapteraDayReadalong.com to get all the details about the 2025 American Masterpieces Chapter-a-Day Read-Along. It’s going to be epic!
The Chapter-a-Day Read-Along has a new home! After seven years of hosting the read-along here at One Catholic Life, I’ve decided to give it its own home at ChapteraDayReadAlong.com so that people can find it and follow along more easily, especially considering that the 2025 Chapter-a-Day Read-Along will be announced soon. ChapteraDayReadAlong.com will be the new main hub, and you can always find the latest reading schedules and articles there. I’ve transferred all the past read-along articles from One Catholic Life to this new website, so everything is...
Maybe it’s just me, but this autumn seems to have been especially glorious: colorful, vivid, bright, and seemingly lasting forever. Lately the trees have lost some of their color, what with the rain and the wind, but overall it’s been a beautiful autumn. I notice it most when I am commuting back and forth to work. To get to St. John Vianney School in the Spokane Valley I usually take 29th Avenue to Carnahan, Carnahan to 8th Avenue, 8th to Park and so on. It usually takes about...
You might remember the movie The Shawshank Redemption, the story of Andy Dufresne, a man unjustly imprisoned for many years. In the course of his time in prison, he gains the trust of the prison staff by helping with various tasks, like handling the finances and overseeing the prison library. One of the most powerful scenes in the movie happens when Andy finds himself unsupervised in the warden’s office. He is sitting in the warden’s office in a chair, all alone, and he notices a crate on the...
As Catholic Schools Week begins this year, today’s Gospel reminds us of a very important truth— Jesus was a teacher: “…on the sabbath Jesus entered the synagogue and taught. The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” Jesus was a teacher. He taught in synagogues, he taught in the temple, he taught from hillsides, and he taught from boats. Jesus was a teacher. Jesus taught in a way that was different from other teachers. And the...
Classics Club #32: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevesky
January 20, 2020
Classics Club #21: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
December 28, 2018
Classics Club #20: She by H. Rider Haggard
May 17, 2018
Notes from the Upside Down by Guy Adams
April 4, 2018
Cries from the Earth by Terry C. Johnston
March 20, 2018
Books and Reading / Chapter-a-Day Read-Along
Announcing the 2019 Chapter-a-Day Read-Along
December 26, 2018
