Caravans by James A. Michener My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read one Michener book, The Source, long ago … in fact, long before I became Christian … just as a compelling way to travel through the history and people of a region. I still recall much of it vividly. Michener was brought to my attention recently when I was looking through Kindle samples and reviews of more recent versions of geographical/gigantic historical fiction. As I discarded author after... Read more
I’m pretty guilty of not knowing my fairy tales that well. And I have Regina Doman to thank for not only educating me in the last few years with her Fairy Tale Novels, but for also making them relevant to modern life. Her latest installment, Rapunzel Let Down, is categorized adult fiction (all the others are young adult), and not only tackles a fairy tale that I didn’t appreciate, but also deals with some topics that are critical and touchy. The... Read more
The Quiet Light by Louis De Wohl My rating: 5 of 5 stars Having finished G.K. Chesterton’s The Dumb Ox for my book club, I thought it would be good supplementary material to read a more straight forward biography of this saint. Chesterton is amusing and clever and did a fine job of making me appreciate Aquinas, but he obviously was counting on the reader to already know the basics. As I know only a smattering of legends, I needed... Read more
Creatures of the Abyss by Murray Leinster My rating: 3 of 5 stars I listened to the LibriVox free audio version, narrated by the wonderful Mark Douglas Nelson. Radar expert and electronic engineer Terry Holt has been recruited by a scientific expedition in the Phillipines to make underwater listening devices. They won’t tell him what his inventions are meant to investigate. And that makes him mad. He has some ideas though. Orejas de ellos, the things who listen, have been... Read more
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the newly-released Youcat Prayer Book, and I wasn’t even sure how I would review it. Even if *I* love it, is it something I’ll share? Give? Promote? As it turns out, I had nothing to fear. It’s done well and I’m really enjoying the journey I’m taking through it. The first section is a two-week prayer book. The second section is a series of prayers. You think it’s an accident that as I... Read more
America: The Last Best Hope, Volume 1: From the Age of Discovery to a World at War by William J. Bennett My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is just what I wanted. An American history that is even-handed and thorough, yet doesn’t bog me down so I can never get the overall gist (such as telling all the details of every campaign that was fought during the French-Indian wars). Also it is so clearly written and engaging that it... Read more
The state of commentary on the works of Shakespeare shares a lot with the sad state of affairs concerning scripture scholarship. In both cases instead of exegesis and drawing out of the text, we get eisegesis and a reading into the text. interpretations that say more about the commentator than the text. Just like “the Real Jesus” there is also “the Real Shakespeare” where Shakespeare wasn’t really Shakespeare and didn’t really write the works attributed to him. The state of... Read more
The Restless Flame by Louis De Wohl My rating: 4 of 5 stars Having dropped The Brothers Karamazov and realizing I will have to resort to Cliff Notes before my book club meets in August (there’s a first time for everything), I am moving on to the next BIG BOOK they chose. The Confessions by St. Augustine. Now I love St. Augustine. He is my first “saint pal” so to speak. However, I’ve tried several times to read The Confessions... Read more
On Heaven and Earth is an extended dialogue, in book form, between Jorge Mario Bergoglio (now Pope Francis) and Rabbi Abraham Skorka. Apparently the two men became friends over a great many discussions over quite a long time, and eventually decided to put some of them into a book. The book is organized around a number of topics, some of universal interest (God, Prayer, Guilt, Abortion) and some of purely Argentinian interest. One of the two opens with his views,... Read more
Are you aiming for world domination? Looking for tips on minions and henchpeople? Need a boost to your moral in a world that just doesn’t appreciate evil the way it should? Look no further, because I have the book for you! A Method to the Madness: A Guide to the Super Evil is a collection of papers for aspiring ne’er-do-wells, written by those who have succeeded in the world of evil. And if you’re not aspiring to a life of evil,... Read more
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