We have found at the Catholic Book Club that different genres and authors inspire different readers and broad variations in discussion, another reason to mix it up a bit in terms of genres and styles. Our two most recent selections have been no exception.
Books
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
What Evelyn Waugh saw in America (An Anglo-American romance)
Noted for his acid tongue, Evelyn Waugh hated the United States and its citizens and let them know it. However, he felt more and more drawn to them on repeated visits.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: How the Weimar Republic paved the way to its own ruin
Benjamin Carter Hett’s ‘The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic’ shows how a flawed but genuine democracy could give way to the vilest regime imaginable.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Doing theology in light of science, and vice versa
The core of Roger Haight’s new project is to ask “what science can teach Christian theologians about our own self-understanding” and to offer an answer to Christians who “either do not know how to process their Christian faith in this context or call it into question altogether.”
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: The infinite perspectives of Colum McCann’s fiction
Colum McCann’s new novel is structured like the wings of a bird, with two narrative arcs constantly moving toward and then away from each other.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: Beauty in the corrupt world of the first century
In his new novel, Christos Tsiolkas depicts acts of profound cruelty and sadism, but also shows the love shared among the early followers of Jesus,
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: When the meek are not blessed
If anything, the dystopia is even scarier in the sequel, which provides terrifying detail on the history of the Christian fundamentalist regime that overthrows the United States at Gilead’s founding.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: When charity is not enough
Maureen Day is an assistant professor of religion and society at the Franciscan School of Theology and the author of Catholic Activism Today: Personal Transformation and the Struggle for Social Justice.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
The border divides a family in Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s affecting memoir
Castillo writes with gorgeous precision and sensitivity about his experience as a boy growing into a man in a country that will not recognize him, his family split across borders.
Posted inArts & Culture, Books
Review: A college president looks back
Mark W. Roche is the Joyce Professor of German and former dean of arts and letters at the University of Notre Dame.