Reader’s Diary

Matthew Lickona

This is a thoughtful, sometimes amusing, but generally serious book about being a faithful Catholic. Lickona, a young married American, is open when describing the difficulties and rewards of striving to follow the Church’s teachings. He acknowledges that he can’t always understand every doctrine, but is wise enough and humble enough to realize that the Church might be smarter than he is and convincingly explains how his faith - and his faithfulness - has enriched his life.

Tom Hodgkinson

This is a funny, literary book that provokes the reader to reflect on just how balanced his life really is. If the reader isn’t a troubled workaholic who needs a wake up call, but rather a slacker, well, Hodgkinson provides some marvelous justifications for taking the road less busy. For instance, in the chapter “6 P. M.: First Drink of the Day”, he says, “Sensible people advise against drinking on an empty stomach, but to my mind it is the best sort of drinking.” But he’s not just funny, he’s thought-provoking:

The difficulty is that we get ourselves caught in a double bind: we work so hard that we do not allow ourselves time to dream, and therefore we continue to work hard because we have not had the time to dream up an alternative.

Tim Moore

This enjoyable book convinced me of two things: Tim Moore is nearly as funny a travel writer as Bill Bryson, and never, ever, take a donkey on a pilgrimage.

Conrad Rudolph

Rudolph’s account of his pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela is interesting, but left me wondering: why undertake such a journey if you’re not a believer?

Ross King

This short history of the creation of the Sistine Chapel ceiling does an excellent job of putting it in the context of its times.

Lee Strobel

Lee Strobel says that his wife’s conversion to Christianity lead him to investigate the claims of Christianity. Being a reporter with a law degree, he approached this as if he were writing about a controversial criminal case. This provides the narrative hook for a series of interviews with Christian scholars. As one might guess from the title, at the end of the process he himself converted.

Strobel does a good job of demonstrating that Jesus was a historical person, that the Gospels are reliable documents relative to other documents of the era and that they were written close to the time of Christ. His arguments for Christ’s divinity are weaker, though still thought-provoking.

The book would be much more satisfying if Strobel had ventured outside of the category “American Protestant” when selecting his interview subjects. Not only would variety have improved the book, but might have lead Strobel to investigate another “case”: the Catholic church’s claim to be the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic” church that Christ founded.