Book Review

As a fan of G.K. Chesterton I was happy to review Defiant Joy: The Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton a new biography by Kevin Belmonte.  The author notes that this book is not a comprehensive or definitive study, but to introduce a life and legacy.  I am all for introducing Chesterton to a wider range of people.

The book mostly allows Chesterton to speak for himself as there are numerous paragraphs from his books and other writings within.  The basic framework of the book is to go sequentially through his books with chapters devoted to milestones of his publishing life.  I would start of with Dale Ahlquists’ books instead and it does remind me that I need to read Joseph Pearce’s biography of GKC.

This book was not meant to be a comprehensive biography, unfortunately often it is hardly even a sketch biographically of Chesterton.  If this had been the only book I had read on Chesterton I would hardly have any idea about the man other than some of the barest details.  This is a book mainly on Chesterton the author, and not Chesterton the man.  Major milestones in his life and the effect on his writing are covered in brief – often in just a sentence. His spiritual life is barely covered.  The darkness he descended to in art school is covered, but nothing on the effect his wife had on him and his return to Anglicanism.  His conversion to the Catholic Church got a sentence and his friendship with Hilaire Belloc was mentioned in passing.  Rather odd considering that the author appears to be a Protestant who takes spiritual themes seriously in GKC’s writings.  There are so many great stories about Chesterton and especially his legendary absentmindedness, yet this isn’t even mentioned or one of those famous stories told.  Of course GKC called absentmindedness, presentmindeness on something else.  GKC as a personality was seemingly bigger than life – you would learn none of that here.  Though you do get some idea of the interplay between George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, and G.K. Chesterton and how they retained their lifelong friendship despite their opposing views.

Where the book succeeds is with Chesterton the author and you do get a good summary of his writings and the reactions to them then and now.  From his early literary criticism to milestones such as The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Heretics, Orthodoxy, The Man who was Thursday, Father Brown, his poems, his essays on America, plays, etc.  These chapters revolve around extensive quotations of the works.  Literary criticism that appeared in response to these works and what effect Chesterton’s writings had on others is a part of these chapters. The author has done his homework from other biographies and of course Maise Ward’s biography of GKC is quoted throughout.  Though the author makes a major gaffe in referring to her husband as publisher Frank Ward.  That should be Frank Sheed one of the great Catholic apologists and later publisher with his wife — Sheed & Ward.

I was a bit disappointed on the chapter on Orthodoxy and thought it deserved much more than just  the view of it from Gary Wills and Philip Yancey.  While testimonials to the impact of Orthodoxy are fitting, I would have liked to see more of an outline of this book and some of the major themes within.  Though I also suspect that I would hardly be satisfied with any chapter on Orthodoxy in that I try to reread this book every year.

This book has spurred me on to wanting to read Chesterton’s literary criticism.  I was aware of his works concerning Dickens and Chaucer and while reading literary criticism is not my thing, I think GKC’s take will be.  I do love Dickens and I really need to learn more of Chaucer.

This book reminds me of Chesterton’s quip on George Bernard Shaw comparing him to Venus de Milo in that what is there is good.  I read through the book fairly quickly since I enjoyed it, it is just that I was constantly aware of what was missing.  Missing was any mention of Manalive, Lepanto, or so many other of his books. Certainly in a book of this type you can’t devote a chapter to such a prolific author, but I so love Manalive and I consider it a key to understanding Chesterton the man and his philosophy.

As a supplementary biography Defiant Joy is somewhat worthwhile, just don’t make the mistake of getting this book as a primary biography of Chesterton.

When I was teenager I had wished to have been a fly on the wall or a participant in the famed Algonquin Round Table that was composed of writers, critics, actors and other wits between 1919 and 1929. Obviously I was a weird kid, but hearing the wit of these people along with sharpening my own wit appealed to me when I first read of this celebrated group from various books on the Marx Brothers I absorbed.

After my conversion I switched this dream to the Inklings, the regular members including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, etc. How cool would it be to sit around the table of such men and hear their back and forth conversations. This time though I would be glad to just be a fly on the wall in either of their various haunts.

I thought of this dream when I first saw the book “Looking for the King: An Inkling’s Novel” by David C. Downing. I was obviously intrigued by a novel that included the Inklings in it.

In this novel which takes place in 1940, American Tom McCord goes to England to do research for a book he is doing on King Arthur and he hopes to prove the historicity of King Arthur. The novel starts with him preparing for a meeting with C.S. Lewis where he first runs into another American Laura Hartman. The plot quickly takes on a more ominous tone and heads into almost Indiana Jones territory.

The meeting of these two young Americans as part of the plot is a bit coincidental in how both of their quests are intertwined. But as someone who loves Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse I can handle coincidence in a plot even when it hits you over the head. They are aided in this intertwined quest by the knowledge and advice from various members of the Inklings who they mostly meet individually and once as a group.

I mostly enjoyed this novel and while the plot was a bit Indiana Jones’ish – that was fine with me. The interaction with the Inklings was quite interesting, but I felt it was the conversations with C.S. Lewis that had the most authenticity to them. Not surprising since the writer has written on Lewis. The plot has a spiritual dimension to it along with questions of belief and the interactions between Tom McCord and C.S. Lewis felt very real. The scenes with Tolkien and Williams gave you some idea of the personalities of these men, just not at the same level as C.S. Lewis in my opinion.

The novel being based in the 1940 also seemed to me to have a 1940’s flavor to it. The romantic elements fit this period, or at least the writing about relationships in this period and a kind of relationship innocence as in a P.G. Wodehouse novel.

So my verdict would be that this is an fun novel that at times is quite striking on a spiritual level with some interesting conversations while at other times the dialog is less fulfilling. Having the Inklings in a novel sets up a sort of threshold that even the finest writers could hardly pull off.

I listened to the audiobook version of this Ignatius Press release with Kevin O’Brien of Theater of the Word as the reader. Once again Kevin O’Brien impressed me with the range of voices he provided for the characters. His voices also gave the book a nice quality of taking you back to this era and I especially loved his C.S. Lewis. Once again Ignatius Press is selling their audiobooks at a very reasonable price (that is compared to other audiobooks).

Having just read Jimmy Akin’s “The Fathers Know Best” and Michael O’Briens “Theophilos” I found Rod Bennett’s book “Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her own Words” to fit right in a reading theme of the early church and the Church Fathers. I had previously heard plenty of good things about this book and I found my high expectations to be exceeded.

This book runs along two basic themes. The first being related to conversion and apologetics as Rod Bennett tells the story in the introduction how as an Evangelical and the eternal quest for going back to the original church how the Early Church Fathers are a blindspot in the Protestant mind. Rod Bennett relates his running across a set of books on the Fathers of the Church in a Protestant bookstore and how he became hooked on these readings which were in stark contrast to his own beliefs and his view of Catholicism which was informed only by distractors of the Church. This introduction sets up the main part of the book. The final chapter returns to this theme and takes a more apologetics bent as he tells of his conversion story and the influence these four witnesses of the early Church changed his worldview and allowed him to investigate the Church with his prejudices diminished. He is not the first and won’t be the last to discover these writings and end up on a path crossing the Tiber. He dedicated the book toe now Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman whose experience with these writing led him to start the Oxford movement and also set him on his later journey to investigate the development of doctrine. “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” is Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman famous phrase which continues to prove itself true and this history certainly includes discovery of the Ante-Nicene and later writings.

The second and main theme of the book is to investigate the lives of four witnesses of the early Church. — Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons. Each of these men get an in-depth chapter that gives their biography, the history of the times they lived in, their writings, and the writings of other where applicable. Now I have done a modest amount of reading in Patristics and other books about the men concentrated on here and so I was no stranger to these men. The writings of Ignatius of Antioch show up yearly in the Office of Readings for the Liturgy of Hours. Yet I have never come to know these great saints better than with Rod Bennett’s writing. He has a great talent in putting various pieces together and describing them in a way that makes it very real to you. The academic part of his research gets presented in description of scenes that reminds you of the fiction of a Louis De Wohl in that brings the writings of these men alive, but he sets them up in context of history and other writers from this time or later. It is hard to give justice to how well he pulls this off and brings you into the life of these four witnesses to the early Church. Though two of the men were probably not witnesses in the sense that the word martyr means witness, they were certainly witnesses to the theology and practice of the early Church.

One of the initiatives Ingatius Press started last year was to make their catalog available as ebooks and downloadable audiobooks. I received the audiobook version of this book. Rod Bennett reads the main parts of his book and Kevin O’Brien of Theater of the Word reads the writings of the various Church Fathers and others. Rod’s narration of this book is very enjoyable and Kevin O’Brien is more like a cast of players as he gives unique voices to each of the writers he narrates. This really added a nice dimension since often books that contains lots of extended quotations can be rather dry. They have produced a very high quality audiobook and I was pleasantly surprised at the rather low price Ignatius Press is selling the audiobook version for since audiobooks really tend to be pricey. I would highly recommend this book and especially the audio version.

Jimmy Akin’s new book The Fathers Know Best
is more than just a collection of quotes from the Church Fathers. The first major section contains a lot of information on the Church Fathers and related subjects. Ably and fully answered is the definition of what the definition is of a Church Father in the first place compared to who would come under the column of an ecclesial writer. A list of the Church Fathers along with short biographies and the time frame is provided along with other useful lists concerning the various councils and heresies from this period. Some of the stories included in the biographies are quite interesting and it is obvious care was taken to provide just information that could be historically verified.

The majority of the book is broken up into major topics and then sections within those topics. These sections such as the Trinity, Primacy of Peter, Women’s Ordination contain an introduction followed by multiple quotes which are sorted by earlier to later Church Fathers. Where applicable along with these quotes are also listed any canons from Church Councils pertaining to the subject. The introductions are very good and give a good summary of the subject from scripture, tradition, and magisterial teaching.

For the most part the quotes are taken from a publicly available Protestant translation of the Church Fathers. So this is perfect for apologetics work and this makes it easy for others to see the full context of the original writings. In some cases fair use quotes of Catholic translations are used because they were left out of the aforementioned Protestant translation.

This is really one of the best references concerning the Church Fathers in that it is very easy to find information on the topic you want and their are multiple indexes in the back to make this easier. It is quite fascinating just to read through what the Church Fathers had said especially where you can see the development of doctrine or to see just how early and in-depth a doctrine had been fleshed out. Some things that I though had become more developed in the age of the Scholastics I was very surprised to see thought out in much detail very early in the Church.

As a one volume reference this is a worthy entry in the field of Patristics and I recommend it fully.

This book also has a companion blog that contains posts related to the book and video’s on related book content.

There will also be a Kindle version of this book coming up.

In this second volume Nancy Brown has once again chosen and adapted some of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown stories for younger readersThe Father Brown Reader II: More Stories from Chesterton. The stories include The Invisible Man, The Mirror of the Magistrate, The Eye of Apollo, and The Perishing Pendragons and while they do revolve around murder they are still appropriate for a younger audience. The adaptations are that the stories are still Chesterton’s words almost entirely, but clarifications are made at times to make a part of the plot understandable. Included throughout the book are illustrations of the characters that are rather whimsical and match the story telling. Even though I have read the stories before they are very re-readable since Chesterton’s mysteries are much more than a simple whodunit. This along with the first volume is highly recommend for those who want to introduce their children to this great writer. As someone who was not introduced to Chesterton until late in life all I can say is don’t let this happen to your children.

Maybe not everybody gets excited by 500+ pages of articles concerning Catholic doctrine and history, but I do. When I received Catholic Controversies: Understanding Church Teachings and Events in History I was quite thrilled to dive right in.

This book contains the best articles culled from solid sources and written by the best of the Catholic writers.  The book is divide up in multiple sections with one or more articles per section along with a couple page introduction to the articles in that section.  These introductions form a nice summary of the information with bulleted information that both prepares you and is useful to reference later.

Catholic Controversies is a very good reference in that if there is some subject you want to brush up on or have further questions on you can likely find a related article or you can look at the further reading suggested.  Whether the subject is the Church and science, history such as the Inquisition, Natural Law, Doctrine, or the fine points of embryonic stem cells I found the articles to really be best in class.  Where these articles were originally published is also referenced and I think that you can find many of the articles referenced available on the web which is quite useful in passing on information to others.

The information presented is totally faithful to the magisterium of the Church and have not quibbles at all about the information presented.  Though a couple of the articles were shorter than I might want and in the case of the history of the Protestant “reformation” I would like to have seen more than one article on the subject, but still the suggested reading is there.

So whether you are like me and want fat books containing good articles concerning the faith or want a collection of articles to refer to as you need, I would highly recommend Catholic Controversies.

Recently I received Scott Hahn’s Study Guide for The Lamb’ s Supper from Doubleday.  Receiving the study guide became a good reason to re-read The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth.  The book presents the Book of Revelation in it’s connection to the Mass in that the key to unlocking so many strange symbols is the liturgy.  This is more than just of thesis of Dr. Scott Hahn.  He discovered this independently only to find that it was a thread of teaching in the Church Fathers and some once again presented in the Second Vatican Council.  Scott Hahn is adept at presenting deep theological truths in bite-sized chunks without watering down the information presented.  Re-reading The Lamb’s Supper reminded me of many elements that I had half-forgot and really want to keep uppermost in my mind when it comes the the liturgy.

As for the study guide itself, it is a nice companion to the book.  Each section following the book starts with a solid summary of the chapter itself, followed by related doctrinal statements, a hymn, and then a series of questions/reflections on the contents.  These questions were written by the always great Mike Aquilina.

I am usually not impressed by study guides and their usefulness, but this is not the case here.  While it could be used on a personal level, it is in the group setting that it would shine.  I would really recommend it for youth groups, adult continuing formation, home school families etc.  You can easily have people read the chapter ahead of time and then read aloud the summary which will both remind people of what they read, but also help in emphasizing and memory retention.  The doctrinal component from the Catechism and a range of Church documents and other sources really connects the chapters with what the Church teaches.  Plus the Questions are not just something thrown together but an important part of the guide, especially in a group setting.

The teaching on the Book of Revelation related to the Mass is very important and something that should be more known to help Catholics not only know their faith, but the reality of the highest form of prayer – The Mass.  So I think it is ideal for use in youth groups, adult formation, or within a homeschool family since both the book and the guide are highly accessible and the information of primary importance.

Beyond a House Divided: The Moral Consensus Ignored by Washington, Wall Street, and the Media is the new book by Carl Anderson the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus. It is an easy read and packed with information. Carl Anderson’s premise is that contrary to so much negative press there is much more that Americans agree on than that it is split on. He uses various polling outfits along with the pollster used by the KoC to demonstrate on many questions where there is a high concessive on an issue.

The point is also made that in polling it is really as important what is asked as to what the answers are. Questions can certainly be guided down a path to elicit specific answers and specificity is important. The polling he shows on the abortion issue is interesting, especially now that polls asking the same consistent question have found that people identifying themselves as pro-life has been the slight majority over the last couple of years. Plus when you drill down to more specific questions on abortion you get more and more people being against it. The area of limiting abortion to some extent gets a wide range of support and a narrow range of support from abortion absolutists that want no limitations on abortion at all. I found especially interesting his comparison of the abortion issue and segregation. They both came about because of the court, yet decades later there is as much or more opposition to abortion as when Roe vs. Wade became the law of the land. Segregation on the other hand is hardly an issue at all now.

Carl Anderson also shows on multiple other topics where there is a consensus that rises above partisan politics contrary to the often touted claims of deep divides. The subject of marriage is included and he takes to task the 50 percent divorce rate claim which has been touted for so long. While certainly divorce is rampant. it is not as rampant as this claim which never seems to change percentage from year to year. Simply taking the number of people divorced and the number of people married in a year is a percentage that tells you very little. Plus the repeated citing of this claim is like a self-fullfilling prophecy in discouraging people from staying married.

There is some good information in this book, but I think the idea of Moral consensus is basically flawed. The areas where there is such a consensus is just too general. The consensus quickly breaks down when you come to details and so these broad consensus will not go anywhere politically. It is a good thing that there is such wide agreement that there should be more restrictions on abortion, but this does not translate into political will to bring some restrictions about even if done slowly. These consensus also break down when people prioritize them with other things they advocate. More people might identify themselves as pro-life, but a majority also elected the most pro-abortion president in history. So I am much more pessimistic than Carl Anderson is on how these general agreements can be translated into action on these issues.

There was a certain amount of criticism in regards to the number of Beatifications and Canonization done by Pope John Paul II. He encouraged diocese to begin the process on suitable candidates in the world wide Church to give us the role models of faith from all around the world. This was never a criticism I felt and I think this was a very good thing. Though it does create one problem is that often we know so little about these new Blesseds and Saints.

39 New Saints You Should Know is a book that looks at just a small amount of this group brought to the altar during John Paul II’s pontificate. The examples he chooses makes me want to know more about so many other names that rapidly passed by.

Brian O’Neel has done an excellent job of compiling 39 synapses of Blesseds/Saints in three to six page chunks. Often when you read lives of the saints you might play down some of the miracles found these hagiographies as seeming to mythic. While certainly some things have been elaborated in some of the stories of the saints, you might want to rethink how much of it was based on this book. Some of these stories of modern saints are really quite amazing, but also well documented and documented at a much greater extent.

While some well known modern saints are covered such as St. Pio and St. Benedictus of the Cross, most of the stories were of saints I had never heard of. The story of Blessed Jakob Gapp as a probable atheist and socialist who turned to the priesthood to seek an education certainly appealed to me. His utilitarian plan to use the priesthood as he became a fully convinced Catholic before being ordained. I joined the Navy for the utilitarian reason of education and travel only to have the Navy transform me and in some ways to prepare me for conversion and seeing the truth of the Catholic faith. So this story appealed to me on a personal level, but so did so many other stories. The examples of the saints in this book are really inspiring in their imaging of Christ and an example once again of the many ways people can image Christ. The often difficult lives these saints arise from and the troubles they overcome are a reminder that holiness is for everybody and that when it comes down to it there are no real excuses. Quite interesting is the wide swath of life these saints are taken from – laity, married couples, religious, priests, a pope, etc

I now I have a number of new intercessors and saints to identify with after reading this book and I can pretty much guarantee that you will also if you read this book.

Can SF or F Enhance People’s Religious Beliefs? I was the moderator, and a good thing, too. The answer is too obvious: No it doesn’t. Few people will come away from F/SF with their religious beliefs altered in any fashion. — SF Author Mike Flynn

A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. — C.S. Lewis

I was thinking of this subject recently when I came across one of Mike Flynn’s latest posts. I would be part the category of few people who had their religious beliefs altered in any way from reading of F/SF, or to be more accurate to have F/SF have some part in the grace God gave me in conversion.

Science Fiction was my first love as a book reader and it is what turned me from an occasional reader to a book junkie. Partly this was because of the number of SF books my father had and growing up in the time leading to the moon landing. For me this was a time of science conquering everything and answering everything and as a young atheist my inbuilt needs for faith and hope turned science to try to fill those wants. Isaac Asimov easily became my favorite author and I became the type of SF reader that prided themselves on reading hard SF where technical detail and scientific accuracy was important to me. Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Hal Clement, and of course Asimov were my SF heroes. Clarke’s view of religion throughout his novels and especially Childhood’s End dovetailed nicely with my own views and of course the societal remodeling of so many of Robert Heinlein’s books made him also a favorite author. So my choice of reading fit nicely with the C.S. Lewis quote.

Fantasy though was a genre I did not seek out. It just did not fit in my scientific worldview and if it didn’t have some mock-science basis for the world involved I just could not enter that world. I remember reading one of the Xanth novels which are humorous fantasy adventures that I was so stuck in my worldview that walking skeletons annoyed me so much that I could not finish the book. Though books like “The Once and Future King” had me enthralled so I wasn’t always consistent in what I could not suspend belief for. Perhaps something more mythological was fine for me since I so enjoyed the works of Homer and stories involving the Greek and Roman Pantheons of gods. I could enjoy stories about gods when they were not gods at all but eternal humans with all the human foibles. I never even read the Lord of the Rings until about eleven years ago (making up for that by multiple re-readings).

My opening up to Fantasy was the result that I had pretty much read all the SF I could find at the base library at NAS Whidbey Island and so decided to try a Fantasy series and one where the library had the whole series. I settled on the The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen Donaldson which I enjoyed and became more open to this genre. But SF and especially hard SF was my first love and what I always searched for. Later I started reading some of the Forgotten Realms stories which often followed the common thread of a team of people going after some evil overlord, etc on a quest. While at sea somebody who shared my taste in reading opened up his library of books he had onboard to me and I first became acquainted with R.A. Salvatore with the Icewind Dale Trilogy which I quite enjoyed and had a connection in my movement towards conversion.

One of the things I noticed in reading the various hero quests is the virtues of the heroes. These fantasy heroes were more the classic heroes than the annoying anti-hero we have today. These were heroes who fought temptation and would build up their virtues and not compromise them. I really came to love these stories and I started to wonder why it was that they were so attractive to me when I was not really willing to build my own virtues and had lots of excuses of why I could compromise my own values for convenience sake. I found it quite annoying that I wanted to act like them, but wasn’t really willing to take the time to in fact emulate them. My earlier heroes were the stoic intellectual beings like Sherlock Holmes, Spock, Data, etc who when I failed to emulate them I excused this since they were an ideal not only often non human, but a non human ideal. The Fantasy heroes were a different thing to me since I felt that there example could indeed be followed and that it was very human to want to do so. These realizations did not cause me to want to drive to the closest church and sign up, but they were realizations along the path road of grace.

I started thinking about these things again because I am re-reading the series written by R.A. Salvatore involving Drizzt Do’Urden. During the part of my life before becoming Catholic and I was reading tons of books involving theology from various Christian perspectives I also started to read the start of the Drizzt Do’Urden books and so much in them coincided perfectly in what I was going through and so were important memories for me.

Drizzt Do’Urden as a character is a Dark Elf raised in the Underdark where cruelty and jockeying for position were the rules of the day. This matriarchal society devoted to the Spider-Queen goddess Loth spent their days planning on how to retain these evil goddess’s favor and to overthrow houses above them in ranking. Murder and sacrifice of victims and even family were the norms in this evil society. Drizzt the secondson to Matron Malice the head of House Do’Urden plans to use her new son as either a sorcerer or warrior to build their house, though there is no motherly feelings among the Dark Elves where are persons are to be used to your advantage. His unacknowledged father Zaknafein one of the consorts of Matron Malice and the house’s weapons master begins to train Drizzt. Zak though is the rare Drow not at ease with the evil depravity of the Dark Elves, but comprimies by taking delight in the killing of other Drows and especially the matron mother of other houses, he though wishes more for Drizzt who he sees as being more innocent and naive of the ways of the Dark Elfs. Drizzt indeed like his father is not happy with the world around him which at first he was insulated from and has to come to terms of how he can live in this setting when his conscience is so aroused against it.

Many of the chapters start with reminiscences from Drizzt and the awakening of his moral sense and how he must follow his conscience. He does not see conscience in the modern sense, but as also something that must be informed so that he can act on his conscience directly. In many ways I sees these stories of almost a hagiography in that Drizzt is working towards becoming a saint. He fights against losing himself in the environment in which he leaves and is willing to die to keep from hurting the innocent or not doing all he can to protect a friend. He worries about compromising himself and taking the easy path. At one point he has a mask which can hide his drow features making it easier for him to live among people who would instantly hate him for being a Dark Elf, but determines this a falsity that he can not live with. While the author probably did not intend to write a character with so many Catholic sensibilities and moral sense, nevertheless he did so in the character of Drizzt and re-reading the series I am delighted to see that I did not just read this aspect into the series, but that it was still there to be seen and the series is just as enjoyable as I remembered. Also very enjoyable are his companions along the way made up of various races (Human, Dwarf, Hafling, Svirfneblin) who also show the various virtues and come to see beyond the outward appearance of the Dark Elf.

So while there are many factors in conversion and God uses many different things for each individual I was glad that the series involving Drizzt Do’Urden was one of them and while the Lord of the Rings has become my favorite involving this genre, R.A. Salvatore and the multiple books involving Drizzt Do’Urden and his other books will always hold a special place for me and to bring back memories to me when I return to them.

* You can read Mike Flynn post on the panel he hosted here. Mike Flynn is another of my favorite writers in my first love of SF and I can recommend his whole catalog.

* My favorite SF series is Dune and I have read this series multiple times and I find it interesting now that while Frank Herbert was no theist his worlds did not eliminate religion like so much of SF. He at least acknowledges the very human capacity of religious beliefs which make his gigantic story arc fuller. I have also read all the Dune books written by his son and another author which followed his Frank Herbert’s notes and story arc and I really enjoyed these, but they are not quite as good as his father’s work