A couple of months ago I explained why
fellow mothers in my situation in life (lots of little kids, lots of
mundane tasks) should make an effort to exercise their brains through
reading books on a regular basis. And while I was targeting moms in that
post, all Christians need to take seriously the call to form our minds
and seek truth. Yet, most of us do not realize the immense value we can
draw from reading good literature in the form of novels and short
stories.
I have always been a lover of novel reading, but as my reading has
been largely self-directed I have always had trouble choosing good books
to read. I came across a list of novels compiled by John Senior, a
great professor of the humanities, which he called “the Good Books List”
in the appendix of his book The Death of Christian Culture,
and it is from this list that I have drawn most of my reading choices of
late. Through reading these good books I have been slowly discovering
how a novel forms one’s moral sense by allowing a reader to enter into
various scenarios and seeing how characters are affected by those
choices. This is helpful because we can learn so much about sin and the
human condition through our imaginations to help us form our consciences
without muddying our souls.
Read the rest at the National Catholic Register...
Confessions of a Catholic Mom and Philosopher's Wife
Thank you for this article/list. I have been in a reading rut for awhile. These suggestions sound wonderful. I'm going to try some of these suggestions. Thanks!
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