Literary Compass

The Top 10 Books I Read in 2008

2008-12-19T07:50:00.000-08:00

These are the best books I read this year:

10. Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz - Fantastic thriller
9. Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick - Great for junior high students
8. Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life by Fr. Robert Spitzer - Grow spiritually in the midst of a busy life
7. What's So Great About Christianity by Dinesh D'Souza - Explains Christianity to modern skeptics
6. Praying the Word: An Introduction to Lectio Divina by Enzo Bianchi - Learn how to pray with the Bible using this small but powerful book
5. Journal of a Soul: The Autobiography of Pope John XXIII - Absolutely beautiful
4. Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI - So good I read it twice
3. Peace of Soul by Archbishop Fulton Sheen - Eminently practical and helpful
2. Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean Pierre de Caussade - a true classic; read it to discover God's will for you
1. Healing the Culture by Fr. Robert Spitzer - Required reading for everyone who cares about our culture: Read this book and your life will change.

A New Blog for Catholic School Teachers

2008-05-14T05:48:00.000-07:00

Today marks the launch of Catholic School Chronicles, a new blog for Catholic school teachers. If you're a Catholic school teacher, please visit the site and subscribe to the RSS feed, and if you know any Catholic school teachers, please let them know about the site. Thanks.

A Girl, a Guy, and a Soft Drink

2007-11-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

Here's something you don't see every day:

Veteran's Day Prayer

2007-11-09T06:08:00.000-08:00

I just received this Veteran's Day Prayer in an email from Autom and thought it was worth sharing:

Dear Heavenly Father,

In every age, You call certain persons to defend the human family from oppression, tyranny, and evil. Since our founding as a nation "conceived in liberty," countless American men and women have stepped forward to defend our country and many others from aggressors, and to liberate those held captive.

Today we revere all our veterans: those who rest in honored glory, those who still suffer from the wounds of war, and those who, with us, enjoy the blessing of living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O God, thank You for the selfless sacrifice of these veterans and of their families. Help us to remember them, to pray for them, and to care for them. Please bring all our departed veterans into Your Kingdom, and console their families with Your unfailing love. Please heal our wounded veterans through the power of Your Holy Spirit, and give to all our veterans the satisfaction of having served You even as they have served us.

Thank You for Your gifts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. May we fight to keep these rights available to all. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

The Perpetual Web Rosary

2007-11-05T05:26:00.000-08:00

Pray the rosary with others around the world via the Perpetual Web Rosary from Catholics United for Life. When you visit the page, start praying the rosary wherever the last person left off, then click the rosary as you finish each prayer. Your prayers are added to the prayers of others.

Bookshelves Arranged by Spine Color

2007-11-05T05:21:00.000-08:00

It looks cool, but how do you find the book you're looking for?

From Designverb.

Teaching Humor

2007-10-22T07:05:00.000-07:00

This email has been making the rounds lately, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd share it:

After being interviewed by the school administration, the teaching prospect said, "Let me see if I've got this right: You want me to go into that room with all those kids... correct their disruptive behavior observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages and instill in them a love for learning.

You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on drugs and sexually transmitted diseases, and raise their sense of self esteem and personal pride. You want me to teach them patriotism and good citizenship, sportsmanship and fair play, and how to register to vote, balance a checkbook and apply for a job.

You want me to check their heads for lice, recognize signs of antisocial behavior and make sure that they all pass the state exams.

You want me to provide them with an equal education regardless of their handicaps and communicate regularly with their parents by letter telephone, newsletter and report card.

You want me to do all this with a piece of chalk, a blackboard, a bulletin board, a few books, a big smile and a starting salary that qualifies me for food stamps.

You want me to do all this and then you tell me...I CAN'T PRAY?"

Hat tip to Gather.com and all those who sent it to me via email.

19 Story Cross Dominates Landscape

2007-10-21T22:50:00.000-07:00

Check out this huge cross in Groom, Texas. It was built by Steve Thomas and a group of 250 welders. Here are a few facts about the cross from this web page:

It stands 19 stories tall.
The arms stretch 110 ten feet across.
It's made of welded steel covered with steel sheeting.
There are no guide wires or extra supports keeping it up.

Be sure to see the full-page description of the cross, and the beautiful pictures of the cross at night.

My Reaction to The Knight by Gene Wolfe

2007-09-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

I finished Gene Wolfe's The Knight today. My Wolfe gene must be missing, because I don't get it. I understand that his books are often obscure on a first reading, and that this is just the first of a two-book series, but nothing in the book really moved me. Some of the scenes were beautifully written, and I liked the main character, Able of the High Heart, but the story left me flat. It just didn't seem worth the effort.

I thought I'd search the web for other reactions to the book to see what I was missing, and while many reviewers were positive, most of them were vague about why they liked it so much. Their comments generally bore on the same theme: "I'm not sure what the book means, but I look forward to reading the next book to find out."

Finally I found a review that I could relate to. Steven Wu, a "huge fan of Gene Wolfe," found the novel "too random, too aimless," and "like some fantasy writer's first stab at the art." Like me, Wu stuck with the book, "because this is Wolfe." He continues, "I tried hard with this book, slogging through it for a month and a half, and it just never got better."

My feelings exactly.

Be sure to read the entire review at Steven Wu's Book Reviews. And while you're there, check out his opinion of The Power and the Glory, Anubis Gates and Bridge of Birds.

Words Create Worlds

2007-09-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

I just love the way this picture illustrates the power of words:

Genealogy Meets Web 2.0 with OurStory.com

2007-09-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

If you've always wanted to keep a record of your family's history but didn't know where to begin, you might consider looking at OurStory.com. I've just been playing around on the site, and the unique thing about it is the way it makes family history a collaborative effort. (In the interest of full disclosure, let me say up front that OurStory.com is a sponsor of this site, but they are not sponsoring this post.)

After the free sign-up, you can create a time line for anything, and then invite others to join you in creating the story. For instance:

You can invite others to write about what they remember about your wedding, including adding pictures.
You can set up a tribute page for your grandparents' 50th anniversary and invite all the grandchildren to contribute their favorite memory.
You can tell your family's history and invite all your relatives to participate.

One idea I had was to invite everyone I know to tell the story of the one book that's had the biggest impact on their life.

Each story gets its own time line, and collaborators can subscribe to new entries via RSS, so you can always keep up with newly added memories. You can also add your time line to any blog you author.

I've been trying for over 15 years to put together my family's history, but with OurStory.com I can now invite my parents, brothers, sisters, and cousins to help me in this daunting project. In addition to adding memories, they can also add pictures and videos, creating a multimedia story of my family's memories.

OurStory.com brings the power of social networking to genealogy and memory-making.

As one of their tag lines goes, OurStory.com - Life is a journey. Tell the story.

Shadow Puppets Express a Wonderful World

2007-09-15T07:56:00.000-07:00

Just when you think the world is getting bleaker and bleaker, something like this arrives in your email inbox:

Raymond Crowe doing shadow puppetry at the 2007 Helpmann Awards

Chronological Middle-earth Reading List

2007-09-11T06:09:00.000-07:00

If you've ever wanted to read Tolkien's Middle-earth writings in chronological order, you might want to check out the Chronological Middle-earth Reading List. It's available in Word or pdf format.

Page Holding Book Gadget

2007-09-02T16:40:00.000-07:00

Kimbooktu is the reigning queen of book gadgets, but I came across something that I just had to share. Sorry, Kim, I would have sent it to you, but I haven't posted in a while and I was feeling guilty :-)

It's called Thumb Thing, and you use it to keep the pages open while you're reading:

Pretty cool, huh? Read more about it at the Thumb Thing website.

Video of a Deer Jumping over a Motorcyclist - Real or Not?

2007-08-22T16:09:00.000-07:00

Check out this video of a deer jumping over a motorcyclist.

Hat tip to Paula Neal Mooney, who wonders if the video is real or a digital forgery. What do you think?

The Best Thing I Read this Week

2007-08-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

I found a real gem at the used book store yesterday: Quiet Places with Jesus by Rev. Isaias Powers, C.P. I've been looking for a prayer book to help me concentrate more on the person of Jesus as I pray. I tend to be a bit too intellectual when I meditate and I wanted something that would help tap my imagination.

Fr. Powers wrote these guided meditations in the 1970s and they're very much in the Jesuit tradition of using the imagination to help one pray. What I've been impressed with most so far, however, is Fr. Powers' summary of how to know if one's prayer is successful. He's captured the essence of effective prayer so beautifully that I want to share it with you:

For prayer to be "successful" (that is, for grace to have "worked") does not depend on an emotional "high," or even on the awareness that "I prayed really well." The only criteria is that which was proclaimed by Christ:

"By their fruits you will know them."
(Matthew 7: 15-20; 12:33)

If the time spent in prayer endows the person with more kindness, patience, hope, joy, gratitude, love, serenity, faith, thoughtfulness, gentleness, courage, humility, wisdom, compassion, a sense of oneness and purpose with all humanity...then God's grace is most certainly at work.

To me, that is one of the greatest explanations of how to know whether or not one is really praying or simply going through the motions. It's not how good we feel during or immediately after the prayer, it's how our actions slowly begin to change for the better.

Fr. Powers ends his introduction with this beautiful blessing:

May Blessed Mary, the greatest example of prayer--and St. Luke, the foremost evangelist of our Lord's insistence on prayer--guide you to a place of peace, a hold on hope, a capacity for unclutteredness...and to such a habit of constant prayer that you will no longer need any manuals or methods...when God will speak plainly--without parables--to your heart.

I think Quiet Places with Jesus is really going to help my prayer bear more fruit.

2 Videos Against Cyberbullying

2007-08-19T07:12:00.000-07:00

The Ad Council always creates the most startling commercials. Here are two of their recent efforts against cyber-bullying:

First Impressions of The Knight by Gene Wolfe

2007-08-15T07:07:00.000-07:00

I don't often understand Gene Wolfe's books, but I'm always captivated by his characters. Wolfe is one of those authors whose books leave me feeling a bit like an alien abductee who's been returned to his home: I know something important just happened, I just don't quite know what it was.

Fortunately, The Knight seems more accessible to me than other Wolfe novels I've read (which, admittedly, haven't been many). And Wolfe still has the power to create compelling, likeable characters. Like Severian in The Book of the New Sun, I liked Able of the High Heart from the opening paragraph, and I enjoy spending my time reading about him.

The story itself begins like many other fantasy stories: someone from our world somehow finds himself in a fantasy world or fairy land. Most of the time this device doesn't work, but occasionally an author can pull it off brilliantly (Kay's The Fionavar Tapestry, Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, for instance). I have every confidence that Wolfe will be able to make it work in his novel. He's already got Kay and Anderson beat for the best transition from this world to the fantasy world.

I look forward to reading the rest of the The Knight, and I'll post more about the book as I work my way through it.

Win a Book from Teen Literacy Tips

2007-08-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

From my other blog, Teen Literacy Tips:

Get a chance at winning a new copy of Gary Blackwood’s ALA Notable book The Shakespeare Stealer for your classroom library by writing a review of the Teen Literacy Tips blog and linking back to your favorite article. The review must be at least 50 words long, and need not be positive; however, you must link back to a favorite article. Everyone who writes a review will be entered in a drawing to win the book.

For details, see the complete post, Win a Free Book in the Teen Literacy Tips Review Contest.

2 References to The Knight of the Sorrowful Face

2007-08-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

I just started Gene Wolfe's novel The Knight, and the first thing I encountered was this epigraph by Lord Dunsany which just happens to mention my favorite knight:

The Riders

Who treads those level lands of gold,
The level fields of mist and air,
And rolling mountains manifold
And towers of twilight over there?
No mortal foot upon them strays,
No archer in the towers dwells,
But feet too airy for our ways
Go up and down their hills and dells.
The people out of old romance,
And people that have never been,
And those that on the border dance
Between old history and between
Resounding fable, as the king
Who held his court at Camelot.
There Guinevere is wandering
And there the knight Sir Lancelot.
And by yon precipice of white,
As steep as Roncesvalles, and more,
Within an inch of fancy's sight,
Roland the peerless rides to war.
And just the tip of Quixote's spear,
The greatest of them all by far,
Is surely visible from here!
But no: it is the Evening Star.

And then I came across this quote by George Bernard Shaw:

"Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad."

And congratulations to Danielle at A Work in Progress for finishing Don Quixote!

Disappointed by Tim Powers' Novel Declare

2007-08-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

I finally had to abandon Tim Powers' supernatural spy novel, Declare. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn't go any further. I really enjoyed Powers' earlier novel, The Anubis Gates, and I had high hopes for Declare after reading reviews. But the book didn't evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn't care for the way Powers' narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s.

I think part of the problem was my unfamiliarity with many of the historical references in the book. If the characters or the story would have captivated me more, I would have done a little research into the history, but it just wasn't worth the time. As a point of comparison, when I began reading Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander series, I only had a surface knowledge of nautical terms and Napleonic history, but I was so interested in Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin that I bought companion books to help me understand the story better. I had no such desire with Declare.

I was intrigued by the religious elements in the book, but not enough to keep reading. Fans of spy novels may have better luck with it than I did.

Disappointing.

What I've Been Browsing Lately

2007-08-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

Here are some sites I came across this past week that might be of interest to readers of Literary Compass:

More on Blogorator

2007-08-09T05:27:00.000-07:00

A couple of days ago I wrote about Blogorator, a widget that allows visitors to rate your blog. The good news is that as of this writing I'm the highest rated education blog on the Blogorator site (with only 4 ratings, and one of them mine, so I'm not breaking out any champagne).

The bad news? Apparently the widget may be causing an error message to pop up in blog readers and on the page itself. I've only heard one comment about this so far, and I haven't been able to get the message to pop up myself, so if you're experiencing this, would you mind letting me know? If it's causing a pop-up, I will remove the widget immediately.

One in Our Desire for Faith: The World Prayer Project

2007-08-08T06:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I forget the beauty of other faith traditions. Sometimes I get so narrow in the books I read, the places I visit, the web sites I search for, that I miss out on the presence of God in the wider world.

The World Prayers Project is a collection of adorations, invocations and celebrations from different faiths and faith traditions. It displays humanity's unceasing desire to respond to God's call. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The World Prayers Project shows how universal that restlessness is.

Obviously, many of the prayers at the Project contradict what I believe about God and spirituality. Some sources are even what I would consider outrageous or ridiculous. Nevertheless, there is something beautiful in the endeavor to know and communicate to God, regardless of what a person means by the term God.

The World Prayers Project is a testament to the power of God to elicit responses from his people. The varied nature of our responses as documented in the Project is a testament to our need for revelation and discernment, but is also a reflection of the diversity that God so generously distributes.

We may not all be one in faith yet, but we are one in our desire for faith.

Take a trip to The World Prayers Project and spin the wheel to get a random prayer. Today I came across the Hail Mary, Psalm 51 and Ecclesiates 3:1-8.

But I also came across the following:

How wonderful, O Lord, are the works of your hands!
The heavens declare Your glory,
the arch of the sky displays Your handiwork
In Your love You have given us the power
to behold the beauty of Your world
robed in all its splendor.
The sun and the stars, the valleys and the hills,
the rivers and the lakes all disclose Your presence.
The roaring breakers of the sea tell of Your awesome might,
the beast of the field and the birds of the air
bespeak Your wondrous will.
In Your goodness You have made us able to hear
the music of the world.
The voices of the loved ones
reveal to us that You are in our midst.
A divine voice sings through all creation.

--traditional jewish prayer

It is not so important to love all men today
as it is that each day
you learn to love one more human being.

--urantia book

Dear Jesus, help us to spread your fragrance
everywhere we go.
Flood our souls with your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly
that our lives may only be a radiance of yours.
Shine through us and be so in us
that every soul we come in contact with
may feel your presence in our soul.
Let them look up and see no longer us, but only Jesus.
Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine,
so to shine as to be light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from you.
None of it will be ours.
It will be you shining on others through us.
Let us thus praise you in the way you love best
by shining on those around us.
Let us preach you without preaching,
not by words, but by our example;
by the catching force -
the sympathetic influence of what we do,
the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you.
Amen.

-- prayer of Mother Teresa

Oh great and powerful ocean,
I fear and respect your beauty.
I wish not to take way
nor leave anything behind.
I only wish to dance
with you for a short while.

-- a surfer's prayer