Murmurings and Reading
I'm coming down off the high of Christmas. I got three full, amazing weeks of that season - one with my family, one with Kevin visiting my family, and one with me visiting Kevin's family. It's back to the grind of Rome prep. I have less than a month before I step onto the plane, and there's so much to do! It feels so weird to not be unpacking at Christendom tonight. Really, really weird. It's unsettling to be not stressing out about leadership and classes, not hugging all my newly-returned friends, not planning to go to the March for Life, not trying to make my bed and sort out all my clothes with five people in my room chatting. Instead, I'm still at home, planning my life for the next 3 months of travel and the following 3 months of (hopefully) an internship. These musings aside, I really am excited about Rome, and the trips to Crete and Ireland that I'm planning with friends.
One incredible gift that this break has given me is the chance to read. Read! For fun! I haven't had this much leisure to read since my junior year of highschool! I thought I'd share with you the new books I've read already this break. I've resurrected some old favorites and discovered new ones, both fiction and non-fiction.
For spiritual reading, I have A School of Prayer by Pope Emeritus Benedict. It's a collection of Wednesday audience addresses; beautiful, readable, and inspiring.
My main non-fiction book, which I just finished, was Race With the Devil by Joseph Pearce. Besides being my boss (I proofread for him over at the St. Austin Review) he's also an amazing writer with quite the backstory. Race With the Devil is his autobiography, the story of his young-adult years as a white-supremacist revolutionary, and his conversion (through Chesterton) to faith and love in the Catholic Church. After this, I'll have to go find Pearce's biography of Chesterton. I'm also working my way through his bio of Solzhenitsyn.
As is usual with me, I've read a lot of fiction! After all, whatever bag one takes to the library empty, must be filled when one exits, correct?! No? Well, tell that to the girl who gets excited by libraries and can't not spend money at a book store. So far, I've been through the following, which are not in any order, and I have a whole stack more waiting for me to delve into.
Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters
the Amelia Peabody series, also by Elizabeth Peters - The Curse of the Pharaohs, The Mummy Case and Lion in the Valley. I checked out the next few in the series, but Amelia Peabody must be experienced in small doses.
the Frankenstein series by Dean Koontz - finished off the series with Dead and Alive, Lost Souls and The Dead Town. My parents got me hooked on these books over the summer. I can heartily recommend them to mature readers, as they're quite intense. However, they're extremely well-written with a Catholic worldview that is manifested in amazingly good characters and despicably bad ones who always, always lose in the end.
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier - I'd seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie this semester and picked up a cheap copy of the book over Thanksgiving. It was well worth it!
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - Thoroughly NOT impressed with this book. Author shows an astounding lack of knowledge of human nature in the way that the main character develops through the situations he's put in. I couldn't make it through the second book, which actually was worse than the first one.
I can't be thankful enough for the time and the inclination to read for fun. Not until I filled up a bag of library books did I realize how much I missed that!
One incredible gift that this break has given me is the chance to read. Read! For fun! I haven't had this much leisure to read since my junior year of highschool! I thought I'd share with you the new books I've read already this break. I've resurrected some old favorites and discovered new ones, both fiction and non-fiction.
For spiritual reading, I have A School of Prayer by Pope Emeritus Benedict. It's a collection of Wednesday audience addresses; beautiful, readable, and inspiring.
My main non-fiction book, which I just finished, was Race With the Devil by Joseph Pearce. Besides being my boss (I proofread for him over at the St. Austin Review) he's also an amazing writer with quite the backstory. Race With the Devil is his autobiography, the story of his young-adult years as a white-supremacist revolutionary, and his conversion (through Chesterton) to faith and love in the Catholic Church. After this, I'll have to go find Pearce's biography of Chesterton. I'm also working my way through his bio of Solzhenitsyn.
As is usual with me, I've read a lot of fiction! After all, whatever bag one takes to the library empty, must be filled when one exits, correct?! No? Well, tell that to the girl who gets excited by libraries and can't not spend money at a book store. So far, I've been through the following, which are not in any order, and I have a whole stack more waiting for me to delve into.
Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy Sayers
The Murders of Richard III by Elizabeth Peters
the Amelia Peabody series, also by Elizabeth Peters - The Curse of the Pharaohs, The Mummy Case and Lion in the Valley. I checked out the next few in the series, but Amelia Peabody must be experienced in small doses.
the Frankenstein series by Dean Koontz - finished off the series with Dead and Alive, Lost Souls and The Dead Town. My parents got me hooked on these books over the summer. I can heartily recommend them to mature readers, as they're quite intense. However, they're extremely well-written with a Catholic worldview that is manifested in amazingly good characters and despicably bad ones who always, always lose in the end.
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier - I'd seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie this semester and picked up a cheap copy of the book over Thanksgiving. It was well worth it!
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - Thoroughly NOT impressed with this book. Author shows an astounding lack of knowledge of human nature in the way that the main character develops through the situations he's put in. I couldn't make it through the second book, which actually was worse than the first one.
I can't be thankful enough for the time and the inclination to read for fun. Not until I filled up a bag of library books did I realize how much I missed that!
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