Technically, I did pretty well on my 2019 reading list, finishing nine of the eleven books on my list. It’s just that it sounds a lot better if you didn’t see the grocery bag of books I schlepped over Christmas break when I finished three of the books on my list during the Octave.
Beyond the list, my 2019 was made up of 172 books (55k pages). I had, to the best of my recollection, three long-haul bookclubs (The Brothers Karamazov, Can You Forgive Her?, and St. John Henry Newman’s Loss and Gain: Story of a Convert). And I’m trying to make it to the end of a short-haul bookclub for Jean Danielou’s Prayer as a Political Problem.
But, very happily, a lot of my 2020 reading will be The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, I Want My Hat Back, and so on, as we prepare to welcome Beatrice Immaculata in the next few weeks. So I’ve tried to cut back (as best I can) for my proposed 2020 reading list.
Let’s see how it goes…
- (√) Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America (Chris Arnade)
- (√) The Religious Potential of the Child (Sofia Cavalletti)
- (√) On Wealth and Poverty (St. John Chrysostom)
- (√) Placemaking and the Arts: Cultivating the Christian Life (Jennifer Allen Craft)
- (√) John Henry Newman (Eamon Duffy)
- (√) The Weil Conjectures (Karen Olsson)
- (†) The Day is Now Far Spent (Robert Cardinal Sarah)
- (√) Mercy on Trial (Austin Sarat)
- (√) The Devil in a Forest (Gene Wolfe)
So, now to finish the Danielou* and keep going from there!
* book club scheduled to finish a wee bit after Beatrice’s due date
† Alexi and I wound up picking Sarah for our Sunday spiritual reading, meaning we only read it once a week, and we’ll finish it during 2021.
I just read Chrysostom’s On Wealth and Poverty and have been reading his On Marriage as well.
For someone revered for his eloquence, I found the written prose somewhat stilted and stolid, although it may have been the translation.
Nonetheless, I found his point that I hold my wealth beyond my basic needs in trust for my fellow man to be a very pointed challenge to the ceasefire that modern American Catholicism has made with American capitalism.
I’d count myself on the successful side of the millennial cohort, and have always tried to be very charitable, but reading him and about others (Undset’s Catherine of Siena), I’m no longer confident that modern American Catholicism has gotten it right.
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