book ends

February's books in March-enjoy

Hope you’re having a blessed Holy Week, it’s always amazing isn’t it that you want to have a sacrificial Holy Week, but then end up being completely surprised when God gives you a lot of things that quality as sacrificial? Just me? Very, sacrificial over here.

But I did want to quickly share some very fast book reviews with you from what I read in February. Which happened approximately 58 years ago because that’s how long March has felt. Again. Sacrificial.

North Woods by Daniel Mason

I read this one because it ended up being on quite a few best books of the year lists from 2023 and because it sounded like one of the books on the list I wouldn’t completely hate. This is a very unconventionally told story of a house and its inhabitants over the course of about 300 years. It takes place in a very atmospheric forest in New England, and tells of the lives memorable characters such as Puritans running away from their overly Puritan villages to poets to maybe psychotic murderers. It is a weird book, but a weird in the best possible way I think. In bouncing across time and across perspectives the prose stays fresh and propels you to keep reading, but in a way that doesn’t feel overly precocious. I don’t know if it will make my best books of the year list, but the reading experience was enjoyable and the writing quite excellent. But again, it’s weird.

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

This is a very wonderful novel that is part mystery, part morality play, but done in a wonderfully subtle and suspenseful style. At the beginning of the book we learn that there has been a collapse of a seaside cliff that has destroyed a hotel that rested beneath it and killed seven people. The rest of the novel tells of the people staying and working in the hotel, how they interact, and answer the question as to who survived. There is a bevy of characters but I think it is skillfully handled by the author in how each character is revealed. Taking place on the Cornish coast in post-war, ration weary England the setting is wonderful and the whole time I was reading it felt like a really great vacation in itself. Well, maybe not the food. I won’t spoil the morality play aspect of the story, but it is wisely done and not a bit heavy handed. While reading you are so concerned about the characters and who will live that it isn’t until the ending you realize that there is a profound theme of virtue permeating the story. I highly recommend this to any reader, it is really a marvellous book.

A Short Primer for the Unsettled Layman by Hans Urs von Balthasar

It’s been a few years since I sunk my teeth into a Balthasar book and this one is the perfect read for someone without hours to devout to deep theological study, but wants something that can truly feed their faith and understanding. This is a very short book that looks at the problems plaguing the average Catholic, and although Balthasar wrote it in 1988 it only testifies to his wisdom that everything he says only applies more to us lay Catholics today. He devotes time to why belief in itself is difficult in today’s modern world, the struggle of a having a troubled hierarchy, why a trad reaction isn’t the correct course, and much more. I think I read a chapter in a about ten minutes a day, which is oftentimes all the time we have to give to serious reading, and once you get the hang of his writing style I think it gets easier. A very worthwhile theological book, and much meatier than the average Christian self-help book we have become used to.

on audiobook:

The Fury by Alex Michaelides is a suspense thriller, almost after the Patricia Highsmith style with an unreliable narrator telling the story of the murder of a famous, but retired, movie star. With the setting taking place in London(yay!) and a Greek island it makes for good escapist reading, but because the plot involves twist after very predictable twist I can’t say that this book is great. I can tell the author really wanted to be as good as Highsmith at the unreliable, twisty thriller game, but Highsmith really is the master of the genre.

True Grit by Clinton Portis is an undeniable classic as far as I’m concerned, and this being the second time I read it can only extol how good it is even more. I think it is just a wonderfully written, hilarious, but often moving story of great originality. It really is top notch for the genre and I could swear that those characters are real people. Donna Tartt’s narration of the audiobook was very good and just made me wanting to be best friends with her one of my bigger pipe dreams.

Is that it? Is that the post? Does this even qualify as an actual post? Let’s hope so. I’m off to continue trying to make it to Easter. Hope you’re making it!