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Reviews
Christmas books: 'And Away…'
By
Bob Mortimer
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.
Christmas books: 'Spare'
By
Prince Harry
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.
Christmas books: 'My Name is Barbra'
By
Barbra Streisand
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
Why do we read memoirs? For me, part of the appeal is getting a glimpse into the life of someone who means something to me. But I wonder if it isn’t also that I’m hoping they can give me some kind of insight into my own life.
The insider
By
Charles Shanabruch
Reviewed by
Steven P. Millies
I have been telling people to read Ed Marciniak’s 1969 book, “Tomorrow’s Christian,” for more than a decade. The book embraces the Second Vatican Council’s vision of a church with its clergy in the midst of God’s people, leading the church from within to transform the world.
Beyond the Headlines: Updates on the local Eucharisic Revival
By
Reviewed by
‘Moral truth does not escape history’
By
James F. Keenan
Reviewed by
David Gibson
A confession: Rarely do I treat a book as rudely as I did the latest from James Keenan, SJ, “A History of Catholic Theological Ethics.” My copy is dog-eared and marked-up and basically ruined for anyone’s use besides my own.
Christmas books: 'Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth'
By
Elizabeth Williamson
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
I don’t know which is harder to believe, that it’s already been 10 years since 20 grade-school children and six educators were murdered by a gunman who attacked the school in Newtown, Connecticut, or that so little has improved. In fact, in every way things seem to have gotten worse. There were 273 reported mass shooting deaths the year after Sandy Hook, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This year there have been 615 in the first 11 months, including in May another mass shooting at a grade school, in Uvalde, Texas. Just in the two weeks since I began thinking about this review, five people were killed at Club Q in Colorado Springs and 17 others injured by a gunman, and six others were killed and four injured by a gunman at a Chesapeake, Virginia, Walmart.
Christmas books: 'The Silmarillion'
By
J.R.R. Tolkien
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
As the new “Lord of the Rings” prequel series “The Rings of Power” got going on Amazon Prime Video, I thought it would be interesting to finally read “The Silmarillion,” Tolkien’s history of Middle Earth before “The Lord of the Rings.” What I found was a gorgeous, Catholic-inspired myth of creation followed by a long-form version of the Fall as tragic as anything written by Oedipus or Shakespeare.
Books for Christmas: 'Bewilderment'
By
Richard Powers
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
Theo Byrne is an astrobiologist who spends his days trying to conceive of what life on other planets might look like. But more and more his main occupation is trying to help his 9-year-old son, Robin, who has been diagnosed with a variety of mental health issues, grieve the death of his mother, Alyssa. At the point that Theo seems out of options, a friend of Alyssa’s offers a treatment in which Robin will have the brainwaves of his mother transmitted into his mind. The treatment succeeds, but with unexpected results, not only for Robin and Theo, but also for the society in which they live, which seems to be falling apart.
Christmas books: 'The Expanse' series
By
James S.A. Corey
Reviewed by
Father Jim McDermott, SJ
On Nov. 30, writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, who go by the single pen name James S.A. Corey, released the ninth and final volume of their gritty space opera “The Expanse,” which, for the past 10 years, has offered one of the most realistic-seeming depictions of what human life amongst the planets might someday be like.
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