Various Things I’ve Read in the Past Couple of Years

Obviously, if you look at the Blog Archive at left, you’ll see that my posting to this blog has dwindled to barely a trickle in the past couple of years. There are several reasons for that. One is just simply having less time – I’m now more involved than ever in my church. One is that for a long time the bulk of my postings here resulted from a rather heavy schedule of comic-book reading and compulsive reviewing that left me burned out on that a couple of years ago, even as in my opinion DC Comics’ output largely went off in directions that I have little interest in following, such that at present – and for most of the past year – I’ve not been buying and reading monthly issues anymore at all, and have been picking up very few of the trade collections that they’ve put out. Finally – and this is at least somewhat related to both of the above – my interests have undergone another of my periodic shifts, this time back toward reading a lot more religious and spiritual material than I did for a long time. Personally, I think that’s a good thing for my soul, but it’s not something I’m usually as interested in blogging about as the largely meaningless comic books or other fiction that I was engrossed in for many years before the past couple.

And yet, as I was looking at the right side of my blog, at a Currently Reading section that used to be there, and contemplating how out of date it was (listing, in order, Stephen Walford’s Heralds of the Second Coming, Diana Moczar’s Islam at the Gates, Michael P. O’Brien’s Father Elijah, and Pope Francis’ Laudato Si’ ) – it’s reflective of at least several months ago, well back into 2015 – as well as a Recently Read and to be Blogged … Maybe section that was even older, with relics from as far back as 2014, I started wondering how much of my reading in the past year and a half or so didn’t even make it on those lists. So I started making a list, from memory … and of course, having done that, I thought (as a service to the handful of people who may be interested; hey, I'm optimistic!) I may as well drop at least a little blurb about each, why I was reading it, what it meant to me, and so forth. There are some of my “recent” readings that I do want to share my thoughts about, and I don’t really want this blog to be completely moribund.

Initially this was intended to be another Quick Hits blog entry [LINK] … but as usual my words got away from me and the first couple of sections ended up being the length of decent blog posts in themselves. So it will likely be a series of posts, if I persevere at all.

A couple of notes: I will not be covering the books in the strict order I read them. Instead, I’m grouping them broadly by subject or genre, while maintaining some attention to order. And I won’t be including various things I might have started reading but never finished, for whatever reason – there’s actually been a fair amount of that, some of which I do mean to get back to later, some of which I read enough to know I don’t want to pick that book up again ever. Although I’ve never been diagnosed as such, I probably have at least a mild case of attention deficit disorder, and I’m always finding new things I want to read, some I start and persevere only until the next thing strikes my fancy. It may be one reason I have always liked comic books, because they are individually easily read in a single sitting. I will be honest – I do miss the comics, and do give some attention to the monthly solicitations of upcoming publications. Unfortunately, very little that is currently being announced has any appeal to me, nothing that I can’t wait for in collection. Also, my “itch” for serialized fiction is being scratched on a weekly basis for most of the year by the various comic-based television shows, most notably the CW’s Arrow, The Flash, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, as well as the same producers’ Supergirl on CBS. Frankly, I find those shows more enjoyable right now than the source material itself, which is a sad commentary.

In any case, if you’re interested, here is a list of the books I will (hopefully) be posting some thoughts about in the next few days. If you’re not interested, then why have you gotten this far?

·         Stratford Caldecott, The Radiance of Being: Dimensions of Cosmic Christianity

·         Scott Hahn, A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God’s Covenant Love in Scripture

·         Scott Hahn, The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth

·         G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

·         G. K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi

·         G. K. Chesterton, Essential Writings (ed. William Griffin

·         Michael D. O’Brien, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse

·         Stephen Wolford, Heralds of the Second Coming: Our Lady, the Divine Mercy, and the Popes of the Marian Era from Blessed Pius IX to Benedict XVI

·         Emmett O’Regan, Unveiling the Apocalypse: Prophecy in Catholic Tradition

·         Greg J. Cring, A While Longer

·         Reid Turner, The Five Beasts of St. Hildegard: Prophetic Symbols of Modern Society

·         Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World

·         Michael D. O’Brien, Elijah in Jerusalem

·         Taylor Marshall, The Crucified Rabbi: The Jewish Origins of Catholic Christianity

·         Warren Carroll, Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness

·         Paul Badde, Maria of Guadalupe: Shaper of History, Shaper of Hearts

·         Paul Badde, The Face of God: The Rediscovery of the True Face of Jesus

·         Paul Badde, The True Icon: From the Shroud of Turin to the Veil of Manoppello

·         Glenn Beck, It IS About Islam: Exposing the Truth About ISIS, Al Qaeda, Iran, and the Caliphate

·         Bill Warner, The Hadith (A Taste of Islam, Book 5)

·         Bill Warner, The Life of Mohammed: The Sira (A Taste of Islam, Book 2)
·         Elena Choudinova, The Mosque of Notre Dame [REMEMBERED AND ADDED 11 MAY 2016]

·         David Weber and Timothy Zahn, A Call to Duty (Manticore Ascendant)

·         Michael O’Flynn, Eifelheim

·         Marv Wolfman, Batman: Arkham Knight