Book meme

The latest book meme has been passed to my via
Dev Thakur at Against a dictatorship of relativism
.

Total number of books I’ve owned:
Not sure, but I expect that I would need to use an exponent to describe the number. Let us just say that God could have told Abraham that his descendents would be as numerous as amount of books that Jeff has owned.

Last book I bought:
Well the last haul contained Pope John Paul II’s Memory and Identity and Cardinal Ratzinger’s God and the World.

Last book I read:
Like some others I don’t confine myself to reading one book at a time, though I normally limit this to one book per room. Recently I finished reading Our Lady and the Church by Hugo Rahner, A Tour of the Summa by Msgr Glenn, Hail Holy Queen by Scott Hahn, St. Benedict and St. Therese by Dwight Longenecker, Worthy is the Lamb by Thomas J. Nash.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

Like most book lists this one will include the caveat of not including the Bible or the Catechism since they are assumed.

R.A. Salvatore series (including the Icewind Dale Trilogy) about the Drow Elf Drizzt Do’urden. I started reading this series before my conversion, but it sparked some questions for me. Drizzt grows up as part of what is an evil race and struggles against his birth right to reject evil and to do good by helping others. I found some of themes and especially the chapter introductions to be very Catholic in their understanding sometimes. I was drawn to characters such as Drizzt who displayed heroic virtue when at times it would have been easier for him to take an easy road and avoid problems his ethical understandings brought him. This made my ponder in my own life why I was attracted to characters such as these, though I wasn’t always doing the same in my own life.

Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity which is just an amazing book in its very lucid and easy to understand treatment of theology. A must read for all.

G.K Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man is the first book from him that I had read so it has a special place for me. He simply blew me away in that almost every paragraph made me pause and think. The view of history on a grand scale and his view of man made many things click for me. I was still on my way into the Church when I read this and after reading it I considered it almost criminal that before investigating the Catholic Church that I have never heard of him. Though it is understandable why a secular society would want to ignore his writings.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series. My love of reading started with SF as a child really took when reading his books. The idea that human civilization could be guided by a group of elites who helped them especially appealed to me when I was still a raging liberal. Of course his propensities for puns didn’t turn me away either.

I declare a tie on this one between St. Teresa of Avila’s autobiography and St. Augustine’s Confessions St. Teresa’s common sense, her humor, and her striving for perfection have made a big impact on me. This book humanized saints for me more than any other. St. Augustine’s masterpiece spiritual biography also showed me that saints aren’t just some plastic thing on a dashboard. The following quote really spoke to me since I had spent most of my life as an atheist.

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

I will inflict or pass this one to Victor Lams, Zorak (Happy Birthday), Dave Armstrong, Tom at Disputations and Christopher Blosser.