Category Archives: Books

Staying True

Last week I was talking to a co-worker about Made for People who then recommended to me Hua Hsu’s Stay True.  Stay True is a biographical account of college life for Hsu, who attended Berkley back in the 90s.  And … Continue reading

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Fighting for Friendship

As Aristotle tells it, there are three kinds of friendship: the pleasing friendship, the useful friendship, and the friendship pointed toward the good (see also Victor Lee Austin’s Friendship).  So friends that are fun, friends that help us get something … Continue reading

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Beyond Sharing

Yesterday I shared an initial post about Justin Whitmel Earley’s Made for People.  It’s not the first book from Earley that I’ve enjoyed.  A few years ago, The Common Rule captured the zeitgeist of the “routines and habits” emphasis (that … Continue reading

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Being Made for People

Of the many great things about Justin Whittle Earley’s Made for People (and there are many great things), the greatest is the assertion Earley makes early in the book about Jesus and friendship: It may seem odd to cast the … Continue reading

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Summer with Some Saints (part two)

A couple of days ago I mentioned spending the summer with some saints.  In that entry, it was St. Francis of Assisi through the writings of G. K. Chesterton.  At the same time I was reading about Francis, I was … Continue reading

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Summer with Some Saints (part one)

A decent bit of my reading this summer has been “saint-centric.”  Right now I’m slowly working through Fire Within by Thomas Dubay.  The book is a consideration of prayer through the works of Teresa of Avila and John of the … Continue reading

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Laity Lodge on My Mind

Even when it isn’t summer, my mind often wanders to Laity Lodge.  It wanders there in the summer, of course, because the two times I’ve visited the retreat center have both been in late June/early July.  I visited the first … Continue reading

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On Forgetting

(Forced) Forgetfulness was a theme in this week’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.  Here’s the trailer for the episode, which gives some hint of the price of forgetfulness. Forgetfulness (forced or otherwise) is also a key thread in The Silver … Continue reading

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Summer-Time Fictions

It’s been a good summer of fiction for me, though I haven’t moved through anything too quickly. The latter half of June was all about The Ferryman by Justin Cronin.  Some of my favorite moments reading during the summer involved … Continue reading

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On the Remarkable Ordinary

These last couple of weeks, my morning reading has been a slow (mostly re-)read of Frederick Buechner’s The Remarkable Ordinary.  It was one of the last two books of Buechner’s to be published before his death last August.  I started … Continue reading

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