Book Review – Celebrating Saints and Seasons, by Jeanne Hunt

Late last year, as I began to plan out some faith-based activities for this year, I was given the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book is divided into the 12 months of the year, beginning with January (to me it would have made more sense to begin with Advent, as does the liturgical year, so it would not begin in the middle of Christmas; however, I do understand that in many ways perhaps beginning in January was just easier).  There is an additional section at the end for “Special Occasions Throughout the Year”, such as birthdays, deaths, etc.

Each month is divided into sections: major celebrations, saints and heroes, and prayers.  Each individual activity is marked with (F) or (S) to indicate whether it is appropriate for Family or School use.

I expected this book to have activities appropriate for the various seasons, saint’s days, feasts, and other celebrations of the Church.  I did not realize that a good portion of each month’s section would relate to things like Groundhog Day, April Fool’s Day, First Moon Landing, National Ice Cream Day; or that there would be items like a Leap Year Day Prayer, and a Tomato Psalm.  I agree with making the ordinary extraordinary and finding God in simple everyday occasions, but finding these sections seemingly on par with sections about holy days and canonized saints was a bit disconcerting and distracting.  Some of the “prayers”, apparently written by the author, for a variety of occasions were a bit… cheesy (in my opinion).

The subtitle of this book is, “Hundreds of Activities for Catholic Children”.  Many of the suggested ideas for saints’ days and special feasts are great - for example, making Hawaiian leis on May 10th, in honor of Saint Damien of Molokai, a missionary to lepers in Hawaii.  An idea for the 12 days of Christmas is to have each family member give one another a small gift each evening, and then something long-desired on the evening of Epiphany.  More of this type of idea would have made this a great resource book for Catholic families, but as it is, one might be better off searching the internet for ideas, or simply getting a book about saints and using the stories to come up with extension activities.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book to review.  All opinions stated are solely mine.

Book Review – Doers of the Word by Archbishop Timothy Dolan

Archbishop Dolan went from the peace and quiet of Wisconsin to the hustle and bustle of New York City.

In this book, he writes very eloquently about how he has found that God is present both in the stillness of meditation and in the busy-ness of every day life.   This idea really struck a chord with me as I struggle with finding quiet time to reflect and think (and, let’s be honest, sometimes just stare at the wall and wonder about 4 year old boys) in the middle of busy days.

The book is a set of meditations written over time by Dolan as he spent time in his private chapel.  They are short and written in an easy-going, humble, yet shepherdly sort of way, and contain insight and wisdom that I found very helpful in my life as a wife and mother.  He did not write specifically to one set of people, but his thoughts are relevant to just about anyone in any stage of life and living any vocation.

Each meditation ends with a prayer and then a small “blurb” about some tradition of the Church.  These were interesting, but sometimes seemed a bit odd in relation to the meditation just finished.

I enjoyed this book; the only thing I wished for was that some of the meditations were longer so that the idea in them could be more fully developed.  As it was, in keeping them short, some of them felt like what I call “fluff” – a feel-good type of writing that just about anyone could come up with.  Thankfully, most of them held something (or were a good starting point for my own thoughts) a bit more substantial.

You can purchase this book here.

I wrote this review of Doers of the Word for the Tiber River Blogger Review program, created by Aquinas and More Catholic Goods, your source for Oplatki and Advent Calendars. For more information and to purchase, please visit Aquinas and More Catholic Goods.
 
Tiber River is the first Catholic book review site, started in 2000 to help you make informed decisions about Catholic book purchases.

I receive free product samples as compensation for writing reviews for Tiber River.

Book Review – Smart Martha’s Catholic Guide for Busy Moms, by Tami Kiser

Tami Kiser is a mom of nine children.  She knows what it means to be busy! 

The biblical story of Martha and Mary is one that resonates with a lot of Christian moms – how do we get all the Martha jobs done, and still have the heart of Mary?

This book was written to give mothers practical advice, ideas, and tips on how to be a “smart Martha” – a mother who, while taking care of her home and family, remembers that the best thing she can do for her family is to treat each child (and her husband) the same way Mary treated Jesus in the biblical account.  Mary sat with Jesus; she spent time focused on Him, listening to Him with her heart, not running around “worried and anxious about many things” as was Martha.

This really struck a chord with me, and has been something I’ve been thinking about for the past couple of years or so.  A group of mothers from my church get together every Monday morning to pray and spend time talking (bringing along our children to play), and we are called the “Mary and Martha” group. 

It’s a balancing act really, this being both Mary and Martha, and a mother must have her priorities clearly set before her in order to be at all successful in accomplishing what needs to be done while still listening to her family with her heart.

I was excited to have the opportunity to read this book!  Tami Kiser has a lot of practical tips to share, and she writes in a friendly, familiar way, with some great humor thrown in occasionally.

Many of her tips about organizing toys, and general housekeeping were either unrealistic for me or things I already do, but they were written well and I do think would benefit many mothers.  The author’s idea of how many toys are “a few” toys for each child was “a lot” of toys in my opinion; perhaps I was looking for a more simplify-and-minimize approach than she uses in her home.  This is fine, and I understand that each family must do what works for them; but this along with her feelings about children and video games and the use of other electronic media just aren’t my feelings and thus I didn’t get much out of these sections of the book.

I also hoped for more wisdom and guidance about balancing activities that provide spiritual nourishment with all the down-to-earth responsibilities.  I found that, while this was discussed a couple of times, the book was mostly about being as organized as possible to allow for more time, the idea being that this freed up time will allow one to be more of a Mary to her family.  This is fine, but personally I know that if I don’t have clear priorities laid out for me, extra time will simply be spent doing more “Martha” activities.
Overall I enjoyed the book.  I appreciated the writing style, which kept me engaged and interested, and I did learn quite a few useful things that I hope to implement into our routines and home life.

Thank you to The Catholic Company, for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.  The opinion stated is fully my own.

This review was written as part of the Catholic book reviewer program from The Catholic Company. Visit The Catholic Company to find more information on Smart Martha's Catholic Guide for Busy Moms . They are also a great source for first communion gifts and baptism gifts.

Book Review – The Edge of the Divine, by Sandi Patty

In my high school years I was a fan of Sandi Patty’s music (I won’t tell you when that was, but let’s just say shoulder pads and big hair were in style), and have always appreciated the power of her voice to uplift my spirits.  So I was excited to have the opportunity to review her latest book – The Edge of the Divine: Where Possibility Meets God’s Faithfulness. 

I wasn’t sure what this book was about before I received it; I simply thought it was a sort of autobiography – what I had read on the publisher’s website was that it was written to be inspiration for women to trust God and live life on the “Edge of the Divine”.  So it was a bit of a surprise to learn that this is mainly the story of her journey to a healthier lifestyle after having lap band surgery to help her lose weight.  Regardless, I really enjoyed her insights and her conversational style of writing. 

Sandi Patty relates her story of how and why she learned to turn to food for comfort, and how she came to a point in her life where she decided to work towards a more healthy lifestyle.  Along the way she gained some wonderful insights about her relationship with God, and described with honesty the “edges” she reached in her personal life – points where she could choose to step over the edge and trust God or remain safely where she was despite being unhappy and unfulfilled.

I don’t agree with all the choices Sandi has made in her life, as told in this book, and many of the Scripture quotes using a modern and pretty casual interpretation (The Message by Eugene H. Peterson) annoyed me.  However, all in all, I really enjoyed the book, parts of which were really humorous.  I’m glad I read it and it did serve to make me more thoughtful about the relationships in my life.

Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for sending me a complimentary copy of this book to review.

Book Review – Simplify Your Life

I recently read Simplify Your Life, by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker.  As you may know, I’ve been making a dedicated effort to bring more simplicity, peace, and focus into our family life – and this book came at the perfect time!  (Remember how I was going to write several posts about my efforts to simplify?  They are still up and coming, it’s just that I was thrown off a bit by the fact that apparently simplifying means spending less time on the computer.  Huh.  Who knew?)

It’s a quick read, in fact it’s marketed as part of a “30-Minute Read” series.  There are a lot of relevant quotes scattered throughout the book, and I really enjoyed reading them.  Quotes like this one:

“Our Life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify!  I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.”

                                                                             -Henry David Thoreau

Or this one:

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

                                                                           -Hans Hoffman

This little book (only63 pages) gives sound advice on the following areas:

• Cutting down on clutter
• Simplifying relationships
• Nurturing our minds, bodies, and spirits
• Simplifying the way we live as we learn to use our resources wisely and treat our environment with more care
• How growth in gratitude will help us live more simply as we focus on our blessings and stop wasting time and energy to gain what we do not have.

Much of what I read was plain common sense, but there were new ways of viewing areas of my life that I appreciated, and I really enjoyed this book!

One more quote:

“Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities.  It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend…. When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present – love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure – the wasteland of illusion falls away, and we experience Heaven on earth.”

                                                                - Sarah Ban Breathnach

Thank you to The Catholic Company for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book to review.

Book Review – Homeschooling for the Rest of Us, by Sonya Haskins

I found this to be a very encouraging and inspirational book, for homeschoolers as well as non-homeschoolers.   The author’s wisdom in general about raising children was extremely helpful.

She talks about healthy social skills, developing routines and schedules, appropriate chores for various ages, living with a sometimes messy home (and not becoming discouraged), and a host of other issues that any mom would most likely appreciate. 

All in all, Ms. Haskins does a great job of giving very down-to-earth advice for homeschoolers.  The tone of the book made her seem like a really competent friend, able to help keep homeschooling from being overwhelming.  She makes a point of reminding homeschoolers to not compare their children, their routine, their style, or their home with anyone else’s. 

This book is full of wonderful information, from how to deal with unsupportive relatives, to specific guidelines for what needs to be covered when homeschooling.  She has a website for more advice at thehomeschooladvocate.com. 

I highly recommend this book!  Thank you to Bethany House Publishers for sending me a free copy of this book to review.

Book Review – Wild at Heart by John Eldredge

The subtitle for this book is “Discovering the Secret of a Man’s Soul”.  Well, what woman with husband and son wouldn’t appreciate knowing the secret of a man’s soul?!  I was really looking forward to reading this book.

The main point of this book, as I see it, is that men and boys have the need to be the hero.  They want to be brave and strong and adventurous.  This is all well and good and it has helped me understand my husband’s “need” to go hunting each fall, as well as my son’s need to play just a little on the dangerous side sometimes.  They want to be challenged, and know that they are up to the challenge.

However, the author went a bit overboard in my opinion.  His tone throughout the book seemed a bit derogatory towards “nice guys” who go to church – suggesting that they are bored, and that you can tell this simply by going to church and looking around.  Honestly, what is a man in church supposed to be doing that would make him seem more manly?  In my opinion, simply being there and being a role model to his children, is manly.

He mentions Mother Teresa in a couple of passages.  Once, when talking about the fact that many portraits of Jesus show him as being gentle and kind - “Kind of like Mother Teresa.”    Then he writes, “Telling me to be like [Jesus as pictured], feels like telling me to go limp and passive.  Be nice. Be swell. Be like Mother Teresa.”  How limp and passive was Mother Teresa??  I found this very insulting, and also proof that the author knows nothing about Mother Teresa and her courage.  How “nice” and “swell” was she in her Nobel award speech?  She had to have great courage to go among the poorest of the poor, tending lepers and other outcasts.  He does go on to say that Christ is the incarnation of tender mercy, but also brave enough to take on the Pharisees when they needed correction.   This, I suppose, is what all Christians are called to be – tenderly merciful when needed and brave when needed.  There were several things in the book that I felt were thoughtlessly written, but I don’t have the room to put them all down here.

The book was peppered with movie quotations and scenes, used to help explain the author’s view of what lies in a man’s heart… movies like Braveheart, Legends of the Fall, and Gladiator.  I haven’t done a count, but I feel like he used movies much more often than scripture passages to make his points.   It seemed a little strange to me that he would use movies made by fallen humans to describe God’s intention in creating men. 

Unfortunately I can’t recommend this book, unless one is willing to skip over half of the nonsense in it in order to learn something worthwhile about the men in their lives. 

Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for sending me a free copy of this book to review.

Book Review – Saint Clare, Beyond the Legend, by Marco Bartoli

I expected this book to be a biography of Saint Clare of Assisi, but it was more an account of what has already been written about Clare, and how this information was come by, as well as a discussion about how accurate (or inaccurate) the information we have about Clare may be.

Nevertheless, though it wasn’t what I expected, it did hold my attention and I learned quite a bit – about Clare and her beliefs, as well as about the times in which she lived. 

Clare’s story is entwined in the story of Saint Francis of Assisi, and so I also learned a bit about Francis.  Many of us know about Francis, the lover of nature and animals, but he was apparently even more so a lover of lepers and the extremely poor.  Clare followed in his spiritual footsteps, loving poverty to the extent of owning absolutely nothing of her own.  Born into a wealthy and noble family, through her love of God she developed a social conscience that would not allow her to live in luxury while knowing there were many at that time in Italy who were the poorest of the poor.

The fact that we have any account of Clare, a woman living as a religious in the 13th century, is amazing.  Her order of nuns were a silent order (except in cases of necessity) and Marco Bartoli makes a point of the fact that despite being cloistered and silent, Clare’s life of holiness spoke out loudly in a time when women were hardly considered prominent members of society or worth listening to.  In other words, Clare definitely made an impression.

I came away from this book wanting to know more about St. Clare, and will be looking for an actual biography about her.  It’s possible that we may never know the complete story of St. Clare of Assisi since she did live in the middle ages, but I feel she is a great example for Christians of any age or time.

Thank you to the Catholic Company for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Book Review – A Century Turns by William J. Bennett

This is, without a doubt, the best political history of recent times that I’ve read. 
A Century Turns is a detailed chronology of the past two decades, from 1998 and the election of George H. W. Bush up to the recent election of Barack Obama.  I have lived this historical time, yet never have I understood it as thoroughly as I do now, thanks to Bill Bennett.
Not only is this book about politics, it’s about popular culture and world events… and how all of it has influenced our nation and brought us to where we are today.  Bennett, a known conservative, does an admirable job of providing an objective point of view when discussing events.  His opinion, when shared, is stated as such, and differing opinions are explained and respected as well.  The narration of events is peppered with Bennett’s personal anecdotes (he was closely involved with the major players in many events), which makes the book highly enjoyable.
This would work well as a history textbook (if only my high school history texts had been as interesting and compelling as this one!); at the very least it can be used as an extremely detailed chronological timeline of this period. 
I’m recommending this book to everyone I know.  Bennett has fascinated me with the history of my own time, and I am very grateful. 
Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for providing me with a free copy of this book to review.

Book Review – Rediscovering God in America by Newt Gingrich

I recently read this book, and have to say, enjoyed it much more than I expected.  It held my interest, was a quick read, and is beautifully made with high quality paper that just feels good to touch (now I *know* such a thing is not really important, but if you are like me, these special touches make reading a good book just that much better).  The photos throughout the book are lovely and inspiring, and it was truly a pleasure to read. 
I can say this book was not as overtly religious as I expected it to be.  It’s point, as I’m sure you can guess, is that Judeo-Christian beliefs, and the morals that go hand in hand with those beliefs, were what our founding fathers based our system of government upon.   But this point is made in a very modest manner, simply by taking the reader on a “walking tour” of our nation’s capitol and letting it speak for itself. 
Each chapter describes one of thirteen monuments, buildings, or memorials in and around Washington D.C.  The tour begins with the National Archives, includes the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the White House, and several others, ending with Arlington National Cemetery.  Each chapter describes the design, architecture, and history of one of these locations, in an incredibly interesting and well-done manner (stunning photos are included).  Each chapter then includes religious symbolism (and by this I do not mean only Christian symbols; Jewish and Islamic imagery is there also) seen at the location.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in our nation’s capitol and architectural history, and who can listen with an open mind to evidence that our founding fathers were for the most part deeply religious men who intended to protect our religious freedoms, not prohibit religious imagery or religious expression.
In the introduction Gingrich writes:

“The founders had a very straightforward belief that liberty was the purpose of a just government, but that the maintenance of this liberty among a free people would require virtue.
And if virtue was to survive, it would require “true religion,” which was any religion that cultivates the virtues necessary to the protection of liberty.
Implicit within this vision of the Founding Fathers is a pluralistic sensibility.” (p. xviii)

This is such an interesting and beautiful book, and would make a wonderful gift;  I have already agreed to loan my copy out to a couple of people, and will be buying extra copies as gifts.   Thank you to Thomas Nelson Publishers for giving me this book to review!