In Defense of Sanity: The Best Essays of G.K. Chesterton

I’ve been meaning to read more Chesterton, and wow, is this ever a great way to do that! It’s a collection of 67 essays, ranging from the highly hilarious to the deeply thoughtful. It’s a sampling of Chesterton that whetted my appetite and made me want more. Surprisingly, I couldn’t put it down. I love essays in general (short stories too!), and this is a collection of wonderful work.

Getting #Married: Using Social Media to Celebrate the Sacred, by Meredith Gould

What’s not to love about the concept of this book? It makes me raise my eyebrows, on the one hand (social media? to celebrate the sacred?), but it also appeals to the deeply ingrained geek within. Gould shares her experience of using various social media outlets to celebrate her own wedding and gives us all a glimpse of yet another good way to use these tools!

The Dragon’s Tooth (Ashtown Burials #1), by N.D. Wilson
(fiction, YA)

My husband wasn’t so fond of this book, and he read it before I did. I found it via a friend, who liked it but wavered when I pushed her for how many stars she’d give it (1-5, 1=terrible, 5=fantabulous). I was shocked, then, that I not only loved it, but couldn’t put it down. I gave it four stars out of five, and have already written the publisher requesting a review copy of the second book. I’ll be sharing it with the young people in my life and recommend it for the young people in your life, too!

Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy’s Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back, by Todd Burpo

My niece was reading this book for her class in our parish’s religious education program, our director of religious education has been raving about it, and I was just too curious NOT to read it. On the good side: I read it in one day (oh how I love those reading days). On the not-so-impressed side: well, I wasn’t such a fan. I didn’t think it was written all that well. BUT…it has the class of sixth graders paying attention and I’m glad I read it to be able to know what they’re doing. Not the book I would have picked, but it doesn’t really hurt anything, I don’t think. It felt like “settling” to me…here we have our Catholic faith, rich in mystics and tradition. Then again, hearing about heaven from a four-year-old is interesting, to say the least. I gave it three stars over at Goodreads.