David Ancell / Thursday, August 31, 2023 / Comments(0)
In order to be able to fully live the faith, doing regular Catholic reading is vital. We really need to be filling our mind with the things of God, and reading is one of the primary ways in which we can do it. However, I’ve had a number of times when it has been very hard to find time to read a good Catholic book. I’ve found an idea that I want to share that may be helpful to people in that situation.
There are a number of good solid books with short chapters (or sections of chapters. They are usually pretty easy to read, and even in a pinch, it’s often possible to read these one section at a time. Here are a some examples:
I’m sure there are a lot of others out there also.
Anyway, to make it easier to have it with you whenever you have a moment to read, I’d actually recommend having them on your phone and/or tablets as e-books. They are usually less expensive that way, and you can have a number of books on one device. If you choose to do this, I highly recommend buying them as ePubs directly from the publisher rather than going with Amazon, Nook, or Kindle whenever possible. Avoid anything sold as an Adobe Digital Edition like it’s bubonic plague.
The reason for this is that books bought with the services mentioned above contain digital rights management (DRM) copy protection. It limits you to reading the book on their proprietary software (except for Adobe Digital Editions, but you are still more limited even here than with a non-DRM ebook). More importantly, however, is that your rights to read the book are dependent upon your account on a particular server. The publisher could pull the plug on your rights to use the book easily. With today’s cancel culture, who knows when some woke company employee will decide that they don’t want to keep providing access to a Catholic book. With a plain ePub, you can download the file and back it up and install it on anything that can read an ePub file.
I’ve been able to get more reading in doing this. It does mean that, when I do this, I’m reading lighter reading, but at least I’m able to do something. Recently, I’ve been doing this while also working on a longer or more complicated book just to allow me to maximize the amount of reading that I can do.
David Ancell / Sunday, October 30, 2022 / Comments(0)
I admit I haven’t had the best time trying to read the classic Catholic writings of the saints. I read the Imitation of Christ a long time ago but wasn’t really ready for it. I didn’t even appreciate St Therese of Liseux’s Story of a Soul when I read it. I gained a greater appreciation for her reading other stuff about her. I read an abridged version of St Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout life, and that went much better for me.
Ascension Press has been putting together some great podcasts with Fr Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year, and coming next year, Catechism in a Year. Now, they’ve published a new edition of Introduction to the Devout Life and have a podcast where they are reading through it. From what I have read so far, this is a very accessible edition of the book. If the print version they are selling is too expensive for you, they’ve also published as an ebook. It’s available now, while the print version isn’t shipping yet.
The podcast, by the way, is going to run in seasons. It looks like they are going to spend a period of time reading a certain classic and then stop for a while. From what I see, Ascension must be planning to publish updated translations of a number of classics, and each time they do, we will have a podcast where we can read through it. The season for Introduction of the Devout Life is expected to last 42 days. You can follow along each day as you read the section, and I’m sure for me the days won’t be consecutive. You’ll have an opportunity to catch up on the break between seasons.
If they keep this up, and I hope they do, it’ll be an awesome way to study the classic writings of our faith.