Catholic Lifetime Reading List discussion

Hi everyone!
I hope your Advent is going well! I've been compiling a list of books that I hope to read in this group for next year. I'll be posting that soon.

Unfortunately, my Kindle is lost (aka: my 3 year old hid it somewhere and I have no idea where she put it) so I'm not able to finish Jimmy Akin's The Fathers Know Best at the moment. I'm about halfway through. When the said Kindle is found I'll finish that.

We got a free book at church today by Scott Hahn, "Joy to the World". So I'm going to read that during Advent this month.

Look out for my post about our 2018 books! I'm very excited about the selections this year!

Okay, here's my plan for this upcoming year! Some of the books are from the ***Lifetime Reading List.*** I will make separate discussion boards for those books. I am also throwing in some other spiritual reading that is not on "the list" but in case anyone wants some book suggestions, feel free to discuss those with me as well. Keep in mind this list might change as the year goes on but I'm going to try to stick to it:

January: ***Lord of the Rings, Tolkein***

Febraury: Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles, Raymond Arroyo

March: ***Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross***

April: ***Something Beautiful for God, Malcom Muggeridge***

May: Crossing the Tiber, Steve Ray

June: ***Difficulties in Mental Prayer, Eugene Boylan***

July: Mind at Peace: Reclaiming an Ordered Soul in an Age of Distraction, Christopher Blum

August: The Benedict Option, Rod Dreher

September: ***Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales***

October: Contemplative Rosary with St. John Paul II and St. Teresa of Avila, Connie Rossini and Dan Burke

November: ***Mere Christianity, CS Lewis***

December: The Power of Silence, Cardinal Robert Sarah


I plan on starting LOTR in the next few days, so I'll be making a separate discussion board for that soon. Happy reading!

Ashley wrote: "Okay, here's my plan for this upcoming year! Some of the books are from the ***Lifetime Reading List.*** I will make separate discussion boards for those books. I am also throwing in some other spi..."


(Just to clarify: For Lord of the Rings, we will be reading the first book, the Fellowship of the Ring)

Ashley, I just happened to see your list of books. I received a set of Lord of the Rings for Christmas and am planning to read it in January. Perhaps you know that on You Tube Bishop Robert Barron has commentaries on both LOTR and The Hobbit.

Wishing you a wonderful new year, Frances

Frances wrote: "Ashley, I just happened to see your list of books. I received a set of Lord of the Rings for Christmas and am planning to read it in January. Perhaps you know that on You Tube Bishop Robert Barron ..."

Awesome! I will look up the Robert Barron commentaries. I love his commentaries...actually, ironically, right before I saw your comment, I was reading his commentary about the new Star Wars movie!

Ashley, because of you, I found Robert Barron's review of "The Last Jedi." We'd seen it, and I thought he was marvelously perceptive.

Frances wrote: "Ashley, because of you, I found Robert Barron's review of "The Last Jedi." We'd seen it, and I thought he was marvelously perceptive."

Yes I agree, he said a lot of things I hadn't thought of when I first saw it. I love his movie reviews!

Update on my current reading plan:

I requested "Dark Night of the Soul" in late January from the library with plans to read it in February. After a few weeks, it still wasn't in so I called and asked about it. They said someone else had requested it. So I waited a few more weeks and still nothing. I called again and apparently none of the copies that are available on the online database are able to be lent out, so it was some sort of error on their part.

So, needless to say, I still have not read Dark Night of the Soul. I did, however, read a book called "Boundaries". It is not Catholic, per se, but it is Christian and I have not run into any heretical or questionable content so far. It is about creating healthy boundaries in your relationships with family, friends, coworkers, and yourself. It has been a really interesting and helpful read for me and I would highly recommend it!

In March, I will be reading "Something Beautiful for God" like originally planned. I actually have the copy of the book in my hand so I know I will be reading it :-) I'll create a discussion board for that book here.

Have a great Holy Week and a blessed Easter!

Wishing you the very same, Ashley.

Hi everyone! Happy Easter!! I planned to start reading “Crossing the Tiber” by Steve Ray in May. However, I am going to start now because “Something Beautiful for God” was so quick. The Steve Ray book is not on the official “lifetime reading list”, but I’ll start a discussion board for it anyway in case anyone wants to join me. Steve Ray is a dynamic speaker, author, and guide to the Holy Land. The book is actually a letter he wrote to his dad when he decided to leave his devout Southern Baptist faith and join the Catholic Church. I love a good conversion story so I’m excited to start reading it!

I'm almost done with "Crossing the Tiber". I was surprised because I thought it would be more of a conversion story. It seems that he is more focused on apologetics and scriptural evidence for Catholicism, in particular infant baptism and the Eucharist. When I got the book, I noticed it was much thicker than I thought it would be. But after reading it, I realized at least half (if not more) of the book is footnotes! So it got me wondering...do you usually read footnotes in a book? I posted a poll in case you are interested. In this book I did not because I was more interested in his story of conversion than I was in his defense of Catholic teaching.

I read Crossing the Tiber a while ago. I did like it. I do recall Steve Ray saying in an interview that he wrote the book to explain to his Baptist Father the reasons he became Catholic. That could be why the Apologetic slant.
As to the footnote question: it depends. I usually do if they are placed on the page I am reading. If I have to go to section at end of book I might wait until end of chapter or section. But to be frank I often forget.
One thing I do especially when reading Faith books is “Google” words or People ( especially Saints) that are unknown to me.
I do like this group and apologize for being a silent member. My name Bice is pronounced Bee-Chay. It is Italian.

Oops Bice is pronounced Beechay

Ashley wrote: "I'm almost done with "Crossing the Tiber". I was surprised because I thought it would be more of a conversion story. It seems that he is more focused on apologetics and scriptural evidence for Cath..."

Hi Bice! Thanks for stopping by!
I love the feature on a Kindle where if I don't know the meaning of a word or who a person is, it will look it up for me if I just tap the word!

I finished "Crossing the Tiber". I have to admit I skipped through some parts. I was really looking for more of a conversion story, and like I said above, a lot of it was explanations of the faith. So if you are looking for something like that, I would highly suggest it!

A few books I am REALLY excited about that I want to share with you! First of all, I am going to steer away from my original 2018 list for this month. I was originally going to wait until next year to start LOTR "The Two Towers". However, because of Susan's glowing recommendation, I'm going to read it for this next month. I'm actually going to give myself two months to read it, but of course as always, if you want to read along with me, move at whatever pace is most comfortable for you! Since it is on "the list", I'll make a separate topic board for it.

If you have kids (or work with kids), I highly recommend two other books I am reading right now: Marian Consecration for Children by Carrie Gress and The Religious Potential of the Child by Sofia Cavalletti.

The Marian Consecration book is based of Louis de Montford's Marian consecration but it is geared toward children. It is a wonderful thing to do together as a family. Our family has picked the Feast of the Visitation as our feast day and will complete our consecration on that day. (Two of our daughters are named Elizabeth and Mary, so it seemed fitting). I am learning so much from this book, even though it's for children! It's a great thing to read at the dinner table together every day!

The other book, The Religious Potential of the Child, is also teaching me so much about how children are in their relationship with God. Children, more than adults, have the capability to have these intense, joy filled, total trust based relationships with the Lord, even without any catechetical instruction. I would highly recommend it!

Happy reading everyone! Mary, Mother of God, pray for us this month of May!

I just read "Mind At Peace". It actually was not what I thought it would be. I expected more of a "game plan" to help us not be so addicted to and reliant on technology. But it seemed to me to focus more on the virtues and how they relate to using technology. It was interesting, but not my favorite.

I am now reading "The Benedict Option". I can tell I'm going to love this one. It's my dream to live in a community with likeminded Catholics anyway so this is right up my alley.

I'm in the process of paying for my lost copy of "Difficulties in Mental Prayer" and I'm hoping to get another copy soon so I can finish that too.