Summer is in full wilt, and that means it’s time for the InsideCatholic Summer Reading List. We’ve asked bloggers, staff, and writers to suggest a few titles they’ve recently enjoyed. They’ve obliged. Â Have a look at the list — you’ll find something for every interest — and then add your own recommendations in the … Read more
Matthew Lickona is a Catholic writer who understands the new media, as a visit to his classy Web site immediately attests. Already well-known for his book Swimming with Scapulars: True Confessions of a Young Catholic (Loyola Press, 2006), Lickona also understands the changing habits of younger readers, which is why he has published the first … Read more
The most startling thing about Florence King’s 1982 novel When Sisterhood Was in Flower might be how thoroughly it combines satire and fondness. Gentleness isn’t a characteristic often associated with satire; and it certainly isn’t often associated with Miss King, the acerbic virago of National Review. King on Sylvia Plath: “For all her insecurities, Plath was … Read more
On June 26, a powerful film about the stoning of an Iranian woman accused by her husband of adultery will open in ten cities around the country. When a friend called to invite me to see a preview of The Stoning of Soraya M., I was initially hesitant. “Is the film trying to demonize Muslims?” … Read more
It could be said that the pun is mightier than the sword. If this is true, then wordplay may be as important as swordplay in the never ending wars between the dark powers of the underworld and the light of Christ. So this essay on the brilliantly annoying style of G. K. … Read more
Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir Christopher Buckley, Twelve, 272 pages, $24.99 And Noah, a farmer, planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and was uncovered in his tent. And Ham, the father of Cannan, saw his father uncovered and he denounced him to his two brothers outside. And Shen and … Read more
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor Brad Gooch; Little, Brown & Company; 464 pages; $30 Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Flannery O’Connor is that she is fascinating at all. Compared to other 20th-century literary figures, she lived a dull life. She never lost her mind. She didn’t sleep around. She didn’t have a drinking … Read more
White Guard Mikhail Bulgakov, Yale University Press, 310 pages, $18 “Great was the year and terrible the Year of Our Lord 1918, the second since the Revolution had begun.” So opens White Guard, the new and utterly admirable translation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s first novel, written some 83 years ago when the author was just 22. … Read more
Last month, I was celebrating the Naxos American Classics release of Vittorio Giannini’s Piano Concerto and his Symphony No. 4. When I pleaded that Naxos consider recording the other six symphonies, I had forgotten that Naxos has already released Giannini’s Symphony No. 3 (1958), so it has only five to go. The Third Symphony is … Read more
Most Americans are familiar with the young Abraham Lincoln. Stories abound of his truth telling, rail splitting, candlelight reading, soil tilling, store keeping, and flatboat driving. Amazingly enough, James M. McPherson has managed to touch on all of them — and a few more besides — in this brief biographical essay written to coincide with … Read more
In his powerful novel Serena, Ron Rash offers a haunting depiction of greed, inhumanity, and single-minded ambition. Put in more stark terms, he writes about the force of evil. Set in the Appalachians of Western North Carolina during the Great Depression, the book tells the story of a logging company owner named Pemberton and … Read more
He gets it. Stephen Catanzarite has written arguably the most important book about rock music of the young 21st century. U2’s Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall is a small volume — more like a thick pamphlet than a book — but each line is a mini-dissertation on the … Read more
During the post-Vatican II push for more “relevant” religion classes, students in my high school “Theology of the Film” course trooped off to see Dirty Harry — the 1971 drama starring Clint Eastwood as the police lieutenant who violates the law, including the torture of suspects, to protect San Franciscans from a wily serial killer. … Read more
The other night, along with many other Americans, I watched the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Starring Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed, the movie has become a Christmas staple — but it was not always that way, and how it attained its holiday status has as much to do with the intricacies of … Read more
Since the death of J. F. Powers in 1999, admiring reviewers (all of his reviewers have been admiring) have mourned not only his death, but the general obscurity of his novels and stories. Although his first novel, Morte D’Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award — over the more familiar names of John Updike, Katherine … Read more
A thoughtful exploration of Catholicism and the problem of evil — in a sci-fi flick? Matthew Lickona looks at the unlikely X-Files. There was nothing else playing. Well, almost nothing. We’d seen Dark Knight already — my brother, my father, and I — and the theater in my hometown, where we were gathered, wasn’t carrying … Read more
When Joseph Pearce’s epically titled The Quest for Shakespeare was released from Ignatius Press earlier this year, the Catholic blogosphere erupted with reports that William Shakespeare was finally, 400 years after the fact, proud to be papist. Although early modernists (a.k.a. Renaissance scholars) have been pondering Shakespeare’s possible relationship with the Romish Church for decades … Read more
 Adolf Hitler aspired to be a painter, and he became a tyrant. As a painter he was mediocre, but his understanding of art’s power was second to none. Hitler knew that conquering Europe would require more than war; it would call for a complete domination of the culture, especially its art and architecture.  … Read more
The newest Bond pic borrows too much from that other spy franchise. Â Â When you get older, fellow agent Rene Mathis tells James Bond, “villains and heroes get all mixed up.” Â Indeed, a conspicuous moral ambiguity infects virtually every scene in Quantum of Solace, the long-awaited follow-up to 2006’s franchise “reboot” Casino Royale. … Read more
Redeemed: A Spiritual Misfit Stumbles Toward God, Marginal Sanity, and the Peace that Passes All Understanding Heather King, Viking Adult, 256 pages, $24.95 There have been times, in the course of raising my little brood of Young Catholics, when I have sighed and wondered, “What does religion have to do with my children, with their … Read more