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Today’s book picks are by my sister, Rosie Herreid, who recommends some very timely reads for Advent:

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Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart by Fr. Jacques Philippe

I felt noticeable more peaceful while I was reading this book.  At first glance it seems to offer the kind of cliche spiritual advice that is hard to take to heart, but it is actually full of extremely practical advice about breaking destructive mental habits.

Fr. Philippe begins by dismantling the subtle temptation to fight the “wrong battle,” which he describes as the misplaced desire to attain peace by conquering all of our faults and all of the external obstacles to peace.

…if we expect peace…because everything is going well…and our desires are completely satisfied, …then it is certain that we will never know peace or that our peace will be extremely fragile and of short duration.

Instead, the first step towards finding peace is to look for it in the right place: trusting in God.   He describes his own interior peace this way: “The external situation was always the same, there were always problems to solve, but the heart had changed, and from then on, I could confront them peacefully.”  This is a small, extremely easy-to-read little book, written in a gentle and tender tone.

One more snippet, a prayer upon making a decision, which demonstrates how effectively Fr. Philippe cuts through mental confusion and scrupulosity:

“Lord, I have thought about it and prayed to know Your will.  I do not see it clearly, but I am not going to trouble myself any further.  I am not going to spend hours racking my brain….I know well that, even if I am mistaken, You will not be displeased with me, for I have acted with good intentions.  And if I have made a mistake, I know that You are able to draw good from this error….’  And I remain at peace.

*****

God Help Me!  This Stress is Driving Me Crazy: Finding Balance through God’s Grace by Gregory Popcak

This is the book Fr. Philippe would have written if, in addition to being a wise spiritual adviser, he was also a very practical psychotherapist with an annoying sense of humor.  Dr. Popcak does an impressive job of smoothly weaving together spiritual advice, traditional therapy techniques, and extremely practical, specific, and step-by-step guidelines for extricating yourself from the pit of anxiety.  This is the book for the person who is warily venturing into the field of self-help books, but afraid of running into ideas that clash with Christianity or offer vague psychobabble instead of concrete advice.

Dr. Popcak’s approach combines surprisingly deep theological insights with practical ways to recognize and dismantle bad mental habits.  One of my favorite examples, on the mental habit of magnification:

Imagine standing in the middle of the railroad tracks.  A train is bearing down on you, and all you can think is, ‘How am I ever going to lift this train before it crushes me?’  Never mind that if you stepped five paces to the left or right you would be just fine.  Magnification causes us to feel that our problems are so big there is nothing to do but become paralyzed by them.  We forget that no matter how big our problems are, God always obliges us to act….

Avoid platitudes like ‘Don’t worry.  You’re going to be OK.  God won’t give you any more than you can handle.’  All of these statements may be true, but they lack the weight needed to be any real help to you or anyone else….If you can’t figure out what to do, make that your main mental occupation, not worrying…Put all of your energy into finding solutions, not into nursing your stress.

This book made me realize that God wants me to be healthy in every way, and that includes psychologically; that He blesses psychotherapy and self-help books just as much as spiritual help and taking care of your body, because He wants you to use everything He has provided to make yourself well.

Okay, so I just completely forgot to post a book pick yesterday.  Today, I’m featuring two good books for Advent reading.  The first recommendation is written by the wonderful Steve Gershom (Catholic, Gay, and Feeling Fine, Thanks).

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The Golden Key by George MacDonald

illustrated by Maurice Sendak

Everybody runs the risk of doing what Revelation 2:4 warns about: forsaking their first love. I come back to The Golden Key often, to remind me what my first love was and is.

It’s a children’s story, and my mother first read it to me when I was maybe eight years old, but it laid the groundwork for all the things that, when I am at my best, I am able to remember about life: that it is terribly good and terribly exciting; that the stakes couldn’t be higher; that real goodness is a thing that glows white hot; that our final destination is a beauty so deep you could never hit bottom.

Not that kids will get all of that at first. It works as a standard fairy tale, too: the quest for a magical object, the strange, sage-like figures met along the way, the tests and trials. The adult will see further, and if he’s reading it out loud, should probably have several kleenexes at hand.

                                                                                                                                                                                                   –Steve Gershom

*****

Today’s book pick is one I just read to my kids last night, and it’s just as good as I remembered it from my childhood.

The Flying Carpet by the wonderful Marcia Brown 

(retold from Richard Burton’s translation of The Arabian Nights)

Very lavish and rhythmic, so much fun to read out loud (warning:  plot spoiler!)

“Alas!  We have traveled far and wide for hope of wedding the Princess Nur-al Nihar.  But in vain!  She lies on her bed, sick unto death.  Her women weep and wail in sorrow.  O my brothers, if you would see her for the last time, take a look before she is no more!”

Ali and Ahmad looked into the tube.  Indeed Nur-al Nihar was about to die.  Ahmad turned to his brothers.  “Come, she is not yet lost.  I can save the princess!” He pulled from his pocket the magical apple and told them what it could do.

“My carpet!” cried Prince Husayn.  “It shall fly us in the twinkling of an eye straight to our beloved!”

The illustrations are like what you’d get if Marc Chagall were an Arab — gorgeously gaudy,  just absolutely perfect to completely satisfy a child’s thirst for brilliant color, emotion, texture, and action.  We love this book!

Today’s book pick is from my father, Phil Prever, who not only read us The Odyssey, but he let us act it out as he read, which must have been the most annoying thing ever.

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   About a hundred years ago when I was a college freshman, I took a survey course in Western literature.  One of the reading assignments was excerpts from Homer’s Odyssey.  The book made no particular impression on me then, but I do remember a comment offered by a bright young woman during a class discussion.  “The only thing remarkable about it,” she said of the Odyssey, “is that anyone could have written it so long ago.”  I knew she was wrong, but I didn’t know why.  Now, after reading it close to a dozen times over the decades, I know why.

   The Odyssey is remarkable in many ways.  On one level there are the fabulous adventures: magical encounters with the gods, brutal conflicts with hideous monsters, a terrifying visit to the land of the dead, and audiences with wise and legendary kings.  These adventures make the book a wonderful read-aloud, as I believe all eight of my children will attest.

    On another level, Homer probes with startling psychological depth the relations between husband and wife, father and son, and citizen and homeland.  Furthermore, the Odyssey records the reintegration of a man’s soul as he is redeemed from the wreckage wrought by war and pillage by his struggles to reclaim the things in life that are most important.

   Above all, the Odyssey appeals to and satisfies the desire we all have to make things right, to correct injustice, to restore the divine order in our lives.  At the end we can say with Shakespeare, “Jack shall have Jill, nought shall go ill…and all shall be well.”  And even more, we can look forward to the time when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

   So the question is not, how could anyone have written the Odyssey so long ago but, why in almost three thousand years has no one written anything better?  Since I have failed in my feeble attempts to learn Homeric Greek, I have had to read the Odyssey in translation.  If you like that sort of thing, Richmond Lattimore’s version reads like it is incised on marble tablets.  Robert Fitzgerald’s is airy and fast-moving, but I find that Fitzgerald’s Homer sounds an awful lot like Fitzgerald’s Virgil.  Last time around I read the translation of Robert Fagles.

It was delightful, with real meat on real bones, and seemed to me to have the best of everything.  I read it very slowly because I didn’t want it to end.

Today’s book recommendation for our 50 Books list, which I’m assuming will even out to about fifty books at some point, is written by my mother-in-law, the inestimable, unflappable, indefatigable Nana Fisher, also known as H. M. (which stands for “Helen Mary.”  She also sometimes goes by “H.”  Crazy side note:  I once met a midwife who was named “Mary Helen,” and she went by M. H., or “Maitch”), who keeps her head when all about her are bugging out; whose cookies and fudge sustained my body and soul through many a pregnancy; who can make anything, anything at all, with a sewing machine or enough papier mache; who will let you stay at her house until you get back on your feet, no matter who you are or what your feet smell like; who can feed a small army in style at a moment’s notice; who cleans with a razor blade and kerosine, but who understands how to step over a mess when other things matter more than cleaning; who is one of the original and most loyal members of the Rocky and Bulwinkle fan club;  who always finds the right music for any occasion; and who never stutters and stammers over the names of her eight children or eleven grandchildren, because she calls all the girls “Toots” and all the boys “Sugar Booger”).  H. M.  recommends for us:

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

H.M. says:

The Princess Bride speaks to children and grown-ups in a quirky and familiar way.

Anyone who has seen the movie will enjoy William Goldman’s style in telling the story, set in Renaissance Europe, of adventure, an evil prince, revenge, a ‘dread’ pirate, and of course, true love.

It’s a great book to read aloud boys and girls of any age.

From Margaret Wise Brown to a book that I can’t believe I didn’t read sooner:

Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith

Boy, did I have the wrong idea about this book.  Maybe because it was so popular when it came out, or (look, I’m shallow) maybe because the author’s name is so snazzy, I somehow assumed that it was a trashy beach book, or some kind of dated, two-bit thriller.  Boy, was I wrong.  This is the real deal — real literature, a genuinely great novel.  Almost Dostoevskian at times.

The characters are so real.  Their sorrows and loves are so real.  The places are so real.  My memories of passages I read are as strong as memories of places I’ve actually, physically visited.  The plot is insanely complicated, but it’s never outside the realm of what might, actually possibly happen to someone who is as unlucky, as talented, as driven, and as flawed, and as Russian as Moscow homicide investigator Arkady Renko.

I honestly don’t know why my kids love this book so much:

The Golden Egg Book by Margaret Wise brown, illustrated by Leonard Weisgard

Okay, so Margaret Wise Brown, best known for Goodnight, Moon — kind of a difficult author, in my opinion.  They couldn’t have chosen a more grating color scheme for the colorized version, and I have a really hard time with books that sometimes rhyme, but sometimes just use the same word twice, because that rhymes.  I have a hard time with the fact that they leave the bowl of mush out all night at room temperature.   I have tried really hard to see this book as charming and comforting, but it just always strikes me as dreary and creepy — like a Twilight Zone episode where alien rabbit drones enslave mankind and try to replicate a quaint nursery atmosphere, but since they’re aliens, something is disastrously off.  Or are they kittens?  I forget.  Luckily, my kids aren’t especially attached to this book.

I do actually really like The Big Red Barn, which just talks about how there’s all these animals doing stuff, and then they go to bed, and then it’s dark.  Very nice, and I enjoy the delicate shifts in the color of the sky as the sun slowly sets.

Okay, so back to the original book, the Golden Egg Book.  There is no actual golden egg involved (it’s a “Golden Book,” that’s all), nor is there a highly decorated egg like on the cover.  It’s a perfectly cute story:  bunny finds an egg, doesn’t know what’s inside, and harasses the egg in various ways until he falls asleep.  Then the egg hatches and the duckling who comes out harasses the bunny in various ways until he wakes up.  The pictures are pretty and old-fashioned, and have lots of atmospheric detail.

Well, according to my kids, THIS BOOK IS A RIOT.  It’s comedy gold.  I don’t know what it is, but they just can’t get enough of it.   They laugh and laugh and run around the room yelling with sheer excess of enjoyment.  I don’t know if that will make you want to buy the book or not, but if you do, your kids will probably like it.  (The kids in question are ages 7, 5, 3 and 11 months, by the way — all girls.)