Tag: books

What are you doing for catechism this year?

All right, YOU catechise this, if you’re so smart.

For the older kids, in 7th, 8th, 10th, and 11th grades, I give up. Wait, no, that’s not what I meant to say out loud. What I meant to say is that we haven’t found either EDGE or LifeTeen to be a good match for our family, and every time I try to read something aloud to the kids, or do a pre-packaged curriculum with them, something happens to capsize the whole endeavor.  It’s some combination of the kids being in three different schools, and me and my husband working four different jobs, and the kids having this dumb idea about having social lives, and me falling into a prenatal coma around 6:00 every night, that just makes it difficult to keep up with the diligent inquiry into beginner’s theology that I always imagined enjoying in the soft quiet of evening with my older kids. And no, we can’t do anything in the car. I don’t want to explain why. We just can’t.

Read the rest at the Register.

At the Register: Maite Roche is a treasure

 

As a writer with children, I receive lots and lots of Catholic children’s books, and nearly every time, I regretfully decline to review them, because I cannot deal with the way Mary and Jesus’ faces are drawn. The best of them are blank and insipid, giving the impression that the Holy Family was dabbled in narcotics; and the worst are goony and pandering. Take it from me: transferring Spongebob’s features onto a human body and slapping a halo on his head is not, in fact, the best way to attract little children to the Faith.

Maite Roche is different! Read the rest at the Register.

Life is too short for bad sex with a good husband.

This is the greatest letter I’ve gotten in a million years. It’s from MightyMighty atLetters To Us. I’ve bolded the best lines. She mentions Greg Popcak’s excellent bookHoly Sex, which I’ve been meaning to review for a long time; and also references theReal Catholic Love and Sex blog, which is full of good and honest discussions. Here’s the letter:

I don’t want to be a freaky fan girl, but would like to take a sec to tell you how awesome your book is. I read it during a loooooong period of abstinence after our 3rd was born. It was sort of funny the way it worked out. I was reading a book about how sex is good and not a joke on women & reading similar things on realCatholicloveandsex.com [now apparently defunct – leads to porn site!]. All while waiting for some clear signs of fertility to start showing up so that we could chart. By the time it happened at 11 months postpartum, I was actually enthusiastic about sex for the first time since before our first was born.

Normally my interest is completely tied to what’s going on with me physically, but thanks to your book, I’ve realized how that’s not being very loving–it lowers sex into something that is just about scratching an itch. If it’s really about love, it is worth making the effort to be together throughout whatever parts of the month are open to the couple. My husband has now read your book (he wanted to understand the huge change in attitude) and he is working on making some similar changes himself. We’re both pretty guilty of first asking, “Am I in the mood?” instead of asking what our spouse/marriage needs in this moment. I pointed out, “We don’t do that about other things that are good for us, like exercising or paying the bills or eating. Maybe we ought to stop acting like being together is as optional as watching Netflix together.”

I feel like reading Popcak’s “Holy Sex” helped me start shedding some of the prudery I had about sex being a little bit frivolous/selfish and your book helped me shed the rest of it + the poisoning lies the culture teaches about sex. (Men are animals, women are the gatekeepers, sex is mostly about getting pleasure, God sorta hates women for setting them up for either 20 pregnancies or no sex when their hormones are cooperating, etc.) At some point I thought, “Life is too short for bad sex with a good husband. I am going to get to middle and old age and really regret spending the healthiest years of my life this way, just like I already regret spending my teens and twenties dressing like a frump.”

My dad died at 61 last year and my mom just said last week, “I really regret not lavishing more affection on your father. He shouldn’t have had to coax me. I should have been more….[hand gesture indicating va-va-voom]! He deserved that!” I was shocked, but glad to see that it’s really never too late to get a healthier view on sex.

 

PIC dancing peasant couple

In another letter, she says:

 

It was very helpful to read your (semi-sarcastic) comments about developing some skill in bed. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has put minimal effort into any session that I was participating in out of duty/charity. I find that putting in the same effort as I do when I’m all gung-ho (when I’d honestly rather just read in bed) takes the session (is there a better word??) from kind-of-degrading-to-both-of-us-because-I-feel-used-and-he-feels-judged to just as good as when I was up for it. For whatever reason, I needed permission to stop acting like a prude and start trusting that my husband wouldn’t be scandalized by me being enthusiastic.

I now realize that acting like sex is dirty if it’s too enthusiastic gives power to the smutty culture that reduces sex to “consensual pleasure.” God made sex awesome and me participating in it fully is good, not dirty. What’s dirty is when two married people feel smug for having sex without having given each other their all, including the trust needed to let go, unconditional acceptance for each other’s everything, and the effort to really be generous with one another, not just their fertility. Good job! You ate a protein bar at a 5 star restaurant! You went to Italy and never left the hotel! Good job, you’re Catholic and you still managed to separate love from sex!

 

 So smart. Thanks, MightyMighty!

I don’t always do obnoxious fist pumps

. . . but when I do, it’s because I got a good book review from a priest. Madonna House‘s Fr. Denis Lemieux, whose blog, Ten Thousand Places, you should be reading, had this to say about The Sinner’s Guide to  Natural Family Planning:

The meaning of chastity in marriage and the painful journey towards it is well treated, as is the delicate subject of discernment around the choice to have another child. The judmentalism that can sometimes pervade NFP circles is squarely and forthrightly condemned, and the overall theme of the book is the need for mercy, humility, gentleness, sympathy, and kindness to surround everything to do with sex, babies, marriage, and fertility in our hurting world. All written with much humor and poignancy.

I recommend this book highly, especially for younger married couples themselves in the trenches, but really for anyone who wishes to deepen their understanding of the vocation of marriage, its dignity and sublime meaning lived out in the nitty gritty of daily life and toil.

Thanks, Fr. Lemieux! Read the rest of his review here.

Lard Will Keep Us Together; or Proof that Autism is Caused by Vatican II

We all know that marriage rates are dropping, even here in New Hampshire. But do we know why?

Science says . . . it’s because of margarine. The less we eat, the less we stick together. Don’t argue with me! It’s science, with a chart and everything!

Proof.

If that’s not enough sciencing for you for one day, feast your peepers on this science, which shows a clear correlation between the consumption of high fructose corn syrup and the amount of crude oil the US imports from Norway:

This one is particularly shocking: the less Norwegian crude oil we imported, the less high fructose corn syrup we imbibed.  In the face of science like this, can we go on doubting that high fructose corn syrup is, in fact, Norwegian crude?  The numbers don’t lie, man. The correlation is there.

These charts, and many others that you can generate yourself at Spurious Correlations, all of which are made up of at least 100% pure science, are excellent reminds of something we all used to know. All together now . . .

CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

Just because two things happen at the same time or at the same rate doesn’t mean that one causes the other, or that one has anything whatsoever to do with the other.  Sometimes two things happen at the same time, and it doesn’t mean anything at all. A very handy truth to keep in your back pocket next time someone shows you a chart proving that, for instance, the popularity of dubstep is caused by DTaP, or austism was caused by Vatican II, because look at those numbers.

Here’s a great book I need to re-read: How to Lie With Statistics, by Darrell Huff.

Americans are so willing to believe anything is true as long as it has a number, a chart, or a graph attached to it. It’s kind of endearing, but kind of not. This copiously illustrated, lively book picks apart the malicious and ignorant ways that statistics can mislead us into believing all kinds of ridiculous nonsense. Should be required reading for high school students.

And now on to some field research, in which I suss out whether or  not staying up late to drink wine and eat half a pound of sesame sticks has anything — anything at all — to do with how crappy I’m going to feel in the morning.

The Church asks us to become expert lovers

at least according to Simcha Fisher, whoever that is, who has a new Tumblr accountand is only a little bit afraid to use it.

I’ll be adding more shareable quotes from my book in the coming weeks.  I don’t really know how to use Tumblr.  Do I put everything on my Tumblr page and share it on Facebook and Twitter and such? Do I blog it and link back to Tumblr? All of the above?

Anyway, I can’t quite bring myself to recommend buying The Sinner’s Guide to Natural Family Planning for someone for mother’s day, unless she specifically asked for it. But you know, guys, as much as women appreciate gifts on special days, theyreally appreciate gifts on days when you’re not supposed to get her a gift.

32 authors and one banana

. . . read excerpts from Jen Fulwiler’s new book. I fought through my horrible Skype connection and provided a few seconds (no, I am not the banana one):

You have to watch this, if only to see Dwija mostly unruffled by a wandering lion. And of course Bonnie just had to let it go.  I’m delighted to be in such august company, delighted to see that Hallie Lord’s husband Dan is secure enough in his masculinity to wear what is surely a vest conceived in Hell. Never mind a hate site, I have a new goal: I want to someday write something that will cause Patrick Madrid to rear back in his seat and feign disgust. Jen has arrived!

 

At the Register: Something Other than God: Jennifer Fulwiler’s New Memoir

. . . is great! Of course it is. But it’s even better than I expected.

Don’t you love the cover? It’s finally ready for just plain buying, rather than pre-ordering. And check out Jennifer’s site for the launch party including a HUGE contest with LOTS of excellent prizes. Dammit, it’s no fair that someone who write so well should also be such an excellent promoter! Well, I hear she has big feet, so there’s some comfort.

At the Register: Great New Children’s Book about the Papacy (updated with link this time!)

Our Holy Father, the Pope:  The Papacy from Saint Peter to the Present would make a very good addition to the library of any Catholic child.  Quick review here. This week or next, I’ll be doing a few more book reviews of some of the excellent children’s books coming out of Ignatius/Magnificat.

Help me load my iPad with freebies!

The other day, I was amazed and delighted to hear that I had won second prize in Catholic Vote’s contest. First prize was a trip for two two Rome for the upcoming beatifications, which would have been niiiice, but I am beyond thrilled at what I did win, as top referrer: a spiffy new iPad Mini!

PIC iPad “At first I was going to give it to someone, and then I thought I would raffle it for a good cause, then I thought it would make a great prize, and then I realized I WANT THIS.”

I understand its microwhatever is roughly as powerful as the International Space Station and that the touchscreen can, by analyzing the electrolyte content in my fingertips, predict the very moment of my death; but I mostly want to use it to read books and play music and movies.

My first plan is to load it up with free or very cheap books, preferably good read-aloud books. I can’t tell you how many books we’ve gotten 3/4 of the way through, only to lose track of them and never find out if Curdie rescued the Princess, if Pip’s sister ever found out who took the meat pie, and of course what the heck that Trinity thing is about.  Seriously, one of the main reasons we quit homeschooling was because we just plain lost all the books all the time.

So, help me get started, eh? What’s cheap or free and great?