Catholic Book Sales

Aquinas & More is having an Inventory Reduction Sale right now -- 40% off lots of good stuff! Mostly books, of course, but also some gift items.

Father Dwight Longenecker is having a Summer Book Sale until August 15th -- $5.00 off all of his books (except More Christianity which is being reprinted by Ignatius Press this fall.) I particularly recommend The Gargoyle Code, his take-off on C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters. It's much better than anyone else's attempts at this genre. Fr. Longenecker extends Lewis's sketchy world building and gives a good sense of the deception and betrayal that is inevitable among Satan's troops.

Sophia Institute Press could use some business right now. (They recently sent out an email to their mailing list pleading for donations or orders.) Although I'm not usually sympathetic to that sort of appeal, I always like to promote Sophia Institute Press because they are one of the few Catholic publishers that print fiction. And so far, every novel I've ordered from them has been pretty good -- which, sad to say, is not often the case with religious fiction.

A few of the titles I've bought and enjoyed:

Bleeder by John J. Desjarlais. Classics professor Reed Stubblefield retreated to rural Illinois to write a book on Aristole while recovering from a disabling injury. Though religiously skeptical, he makes friends with the local Catholic priest, an Aquinas expert with an excellent library who is reputed to be a stigmatic and a healer. When the priest bleeds to death during the Good Friday liturgy, Stubblefield finds that he's the chief suspect. Can he find the real killer before he himself is arrested or killed?

The Tripods Attack! by John McNichol. A young G.K. Chesterton and H.G. Wells join forces with Father Brown and a mysterious man known only as "The Doctor" (but not the one you're thinking of) when the Martians invade England in this steam-punk novel for kids.

The Blood-Red Crescent by Henry Garnett. This novel about the Battle of Lepanto, originally published in 1960, is just the sort of thing I loved reading when I was a kid. The protagonist is a sixteen year-old boy from Venice who takes part in the historic naval battle and learns important lessons about manhood from Miguel de Cervantes. Homeschooling parents of boys might use this book as an intro to Chesterton's poem, "Lepanto."

Ignatius Press is having a Summer Super Sale which ends on August 31st with some books marked down as low as $3.00.

I recommend Dayspring by Harry Sylvester, a novel originally published in the 1945 which has been marked down to $5.00 ( a real bargain -- especially since Ignatius paperbacks are signature sewn and printed on very good paper). The book is about Spencer Bain, an anthropologist who is studying the Penitentes, a brotherhood of men in New Mexico who practice severe religious penances. Spencer feigns a conversion to Catholicism in hopes of obtaining first hand observations of them. But he gets much more than he bargained for. This book is a little modern for my taste, but the writing is very good.

I'd also recommend Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in the works of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien by Richard Purtill. Originally published in 1974, this revised edition contains two additional essays on Lewis and some new notes on the Silmarillion in Chapter Six. And it's only $3.00!

Miracle Fiction?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I've decided to have a go at The Song of Bernadette. It's another one of those books that I've always heard of but have never actually read. Since I'm on a tight budget, I borrowed a copy from the public library. They had the 1989 edition from St. Martin's Press. According to the introduction, it was the first book to be published in their new "Religious Miracle Fiction Series."

Naturally I was intrigued. Most of what passes for religious fiction is very badly done. But I'm always on the look-out for the rare exception. This series was to consist of "reissued classic books that bring back the well-known works of popular religious writers of the twentieth century." So what other novels had they published under this imprint? Possibly none -- since both Amazon and Google searches turned up no references except to Song of Bernadette. (If anyone does know of further books in the series, please let me know.)

Why did they attempt this series?

According to the editor, the approach of the new millennium would see both a revived belief in eschatology and "a fervent faith in the arrival and occurrence of religious miracles" which he defines as "often totally inexplicable events, that will be interpreted as saving us from our rational, destructive selves." Huh? Our rational selves are destructive? I thought that was the job of our irrational selves. He also seems to be buying into the assumption that religion and reason have nothing in common. Okay, Mr. Editor, I can tell right now that we are not simpatico.

I'm in the same camp with G.K. Chesterton who says, in the person of Father Brown in "The Blue Cross, "I know that people charge the Church with lowering reason, but it is just the other way. Alone on earth, the Church makes reason really supreme. Alone on earth, the Church affirms that God himself is bound by reason." That's how Father Brown unmasks the thief Flambeau who has been masquerading as a priest. "'You attacked reason, ' said Father Brown. 'It's bad theolgy.'"

Not counting the brief Y2K frenzy, did either of the editor's predicitons of emerging religious themes come true? I don't think so.

Oh, wait a minute. Didn't those Left Behind novels come out around 1995? Shoot! Not that I ever read them. I tried to read the first chapter of one while standing in front of the book display in Costco, but I just couldn't manage it. It was soooo badly written. (And not my cuppa theology, either.) Their popularity boggles the mind. But I suppose that if you really like a novel's message, you'll forgive a lot in the way of bad writing.* Which is probably, as I said earlier, why most religious fiction is so badly done.

I'm two thirds of the way through Song of Bernadette. So far my response to it is fairly positive -- with one major reservation. More details when I'm finished.

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*Is that why Da Vinci Code did so well?