Rising Strong by Brené Brown My rating: 3 of 5 stars The physics of vulnerability is simple: If we are brave enough often enough, we will fall. The author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection tells us what it takes to get back up, and how owning our stories of disappointment, failure, and heartbreak gives us the power to write a daring new ending. Struggle, Brené Brown writes, can be our greatest... Read more
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis My rating: 5 of 5 stars I read this five years ago and, prompted by Louis Markos’ chapter about it in Heaven and Hell, picked it up again. Clearly, I read it too soon in my own faith life the first time and now am giving it the proper five-star rating it deserves. Written as a response to Blake’s poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Lewis is showing that Heaven and Hell must... Read more
Demons, Deliverance, Discernment : Separating Fact from Fiction about the Spirit World is a recently released book by Fr. Mike Driscol which is published by Catholic Answers Press. This book takes a different focus then other books I have read on the subject. Often even when there is a serious look at the subject there can be more sensationalist elements. Not surprising since elements such as those fictionalized in The Exorcist are a draw for many. I found the treatment... Read more
I had certainly been looking forward to Jimmy Akin’s newest book The Drama of Salvation: How God Rescues You from Your Sins and Delivers You to Eternal Life as it has been teased for awhile on Catholic Answers. The doctrine of salvation (Soteriology) is of course of supreme importance and like many important things it can be both easy and hard to understand. The subtitle of the book is actually a pretty good simplification of this branch of theology. The... Read more
Heaven and Hell: Visions of the Afterlife in the Western Poetic Tradition by Louis Markos My rating: 5 of 5 stars This was an excellent overview of the stories that have influenced and shaped our views of Heaven and Hell from ancient times until now. I particularly enjoyed the author’s exploration of the chain of influences that have connected all these stories and the way that they’ve been tweaked to express new ideas in the “journey to the other side”... Read more
Chesterton takes on a challenging task in writing a biography of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis was beloved in his own life time, so even the earliest sources are bound to exaggerate (if not make up) stories. Or at least skeptics can assume so. And Francis’s life was well over five hundred years ago leaving plenty of time for legends and misconceptions to grow. How can a modern, interested person get a true understanding of the man with so many... Read more
The Lord by Romano Guardini That Jesus’ task “is consummated” must be true, because he says so (John 19:30). Yet what a spectacle of failure! His word rejected, his message misunderstood, his commands ignored. None the less, his appointed task is accomplished, through obedience to the death—that obedience whose purity counterbalances the sins of a world. That Jesus delivered his message is what counts—not the world’s reaction; and once proclaimed, that message can never be silenced, but will knock on... Read more
Finding True Happiness: Satisfying Our Restless Hearts (Happiness, Suffering, and Transcendence) by Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, SJ. In some ways this is a seemingly odd book bringing together arguments from physics, a technical analysis of the four levels of happiness, along with help with prayer. Moving from physics to prayer. Still as a whole it is quite cohesive and instructive. I learned a lot from his detailed looking at the four levels of friendship. The division from first level of... Read more
On the eve of the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, the Holy Father expresses his hope that during this year the figure of Dante and his work will also accompany us on this personal and community path. “Indeed”, he remarks, “the Comedy may be read as a great itinerary, or rather as a true pilgrimage, both personal and interior, and communal, ecclesial, social and historical. It represents the paradigm of every authentic journey in which humanity is called upon to leave... Read more
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne This was a great book. It was very different from The Scarlet Letter style-wise with lots of description which set mood, tone, and gave layers of additional meaning. Luckily, I’ve been reading so much Dickens lately that I was able to recognize when to abandon my usual “don’t bore us, get to the chorus” reading style and sink into those layers. Hawthorne also does eccentric characters who you learn to love... Read more
Happy Catholic Bookshelf
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