Category: Books

Commonplace books and how to make them

Nancy Drew’s Father: The fiction factory of Edward Stretemeyer

I just finished Unassisted Childbirth by Laura Kaplan Shanley. It was not exactly what I was looking for. I was looking for something in terms of a practical how to because I have very quick labors and I would like to be prepared if I do not make it to the hospital. This book was… Continue reading Unassisted Childbirth

My husband Posco works with someone who apparently thinks quite highly of his own intellect — one of those people who think they’re geniuses because they got 1300 + on the SATs and went to a “good” college. Let’s call him Hooper. Anyway, Posco and Hooper got into a rather wide-ranging conversation, and Hooper (who… Continue reading the proper response to the DVC

I just finished this book, which supplied a much needed poke in the rear. I’m not sure I’ll be following all of her suggestions — I start getting fidgety and rebellious when I see what to me look like insanely overcomplicated diagrams — but I appreciated the basic reminders about the hierarchy of priorities and… Continue reading A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot

I received a note from a reader wondering if I knew where to locate a copy of Fr William Virtue’s Mother and Infant, a primary text for Catholic AP types. I do not. And now I want a copy too. Any ideas? I suggested asking at the Newman Bookstore; the JPII Institute for Marriage and… Continue reading TSM Book find

Gavin Menzies, the author of the book is a retired British submarine captain who believes the Chinese reached and even colonized America around 1421 before Columbus did. He reaches this conclusion due to evidence such as many pre-Columbian maps he found which chart places like the Caribbean, North and South America, Antarctica, Greenland and Australia.… Continue reading 1421:The Year China Discovered America

…When Mary answers the angel, she answers God. She knows that the angel appears as God’s messenger and that and that when she delivers her Yes to him, she is in fact giving it to God. Her seeing and hearing the angel at all already depends on an obedient subordination of her senses to the… Continue reading The Light of Assent