Want to Pray More? Start By Doing Your Laundry

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

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I promised you a very different follow up to my entry on why young adults don’t pray. You probably imagined a list with amazing tips to pray more. But the more I thought about it, and the more I talked to friends, I realized this is the entry I needed to write for today.

Reading is my beautiful escape and comfort. I read to know that I am not alone. I read to live a thousand lives all at once. It is a great pleasure to devour a book – to be transported to other worlds, to explore all the secrets of a story, to be intoxicated with the ardor to change the world. A good book is both portable magic and a marvelous companion, for it amuses me and attends to the cares of my soul. But, for me, there is nothing easy about reading a book. I find myself reading all sorts of magazine articles and online essays, but giving my full and undivided attention to a book is a different matter.

Top Ten Books of my M.A.

By John D. O'Brien, S.J.

As the summer winds down, one looks back on the great books discovered over the past year. In my case, I shall look back a bit farther and make it the past two years, since many came to light as a result of a master’s program in theology. St. Ignatius of Loyola wrote that “love consists in interchange between two parties”—that is, one shares what one has with the beloved. So, dear reader, may I share with you my top ten books of recent vintage, with the hope that you might enjoy them as I did.

Summer Reading Suggestions

By Eric Hanna, S.J.

A friend of mine recently asked me if I could recommend some summer reading for her. I'm a big fiction and fantasy fan so I came up with five novels that made a big impression on me when I read them. I include them here for your perusal, along with brief summaries to get you interested. Why not try something new?

Diamond Age: A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer
By Neil Stephenson
Description: A future in which the technology exists to manufacture matter at the molecular level, where societies intentionally engineer themselves according to models of value, and in which a little girl in the poor district learns to become an intrepid heroine through accidentally discovering an interactive program designed to teach Victorian culture.

Choosing Books

By Adam Hincks, S.J.

All you have to do is write one true sentence.  Write the truest sentence you know.
(Hemingway, on how to begin a story)

Doing full-time philosophy studies involves a goodly amount of reading, leaving me with less time (and notably, energy) for my 'own' reading.  Having realised that I need to be more selective, I recently did something that I rarely do:  I abandoned a novel.  It was Lancelot, by Walker Percy. I had never read anything by him and that was the first book on the shelf I saw by him, so I took it. But I quickly found it plodding, uninteresting and even downright silly.  Finally, about three-quarters of the way through, I made the principled decision to put it aside. Life is too short.