The American Catholic Almanac--My Review

The American Catholic Almanac: A Daily Reader of Patriots, Saints, Rogues, and Ordinary People Who Changed the United States

About the Book:

They’re all Catholics who have shaped America. In this page-a-day history, 365 inspiring stories celebrate the historic contributions of American men and women shaped by their Catholic faith. From famous figures to lesser-known saints and sinners, The American Catholic Almanac tells the fascinating, funny, uplifting, and unlikely tales of Catholics’ influence on American history, culture, and politics. Spanning the scope of the Revolutionary War to Notre Dame football, this unique collection of stories highlights the transformative role of the Catholic Church in American public life over the last 400 years.

Did you know…

• The first immigrant to arrive in America via Ellis Island was a 15-year-old Irish Catholic girl?

• Al Capone’s tombstone reads “MY JESUS MERCY”?

• Andrew Jackson credited America’s victory in the Battle of New Orleans to the prayers of the Virgin Mary and the Ursuline Sisters?

• Five Franciscans died in sixteenth-century Georgia defending the Church’s teachings on marriage?

• Jack Kerouac died wanting to be known as a Catholic and not only as a beat poet?

• Catholic missionaries lived in Virginia 36 years before the English settled Jamestown?

My Comments:

I love reading about my people and this book features 365 of them, one for every day of the year.  There are men and women, lay and religious, priests and politicians.  While a bit heavy on the Irish (but then I wonder, percentage-wise, what percent of American Catholics are of Irish descent) it covers both cradle Catholics and converts (did you know that Buffalo Bill converted on his deathbed).  We learn about Stagecoach Mary "a sharp-shooting, whiskey-drininkg, cigar-puffing, pants-wearing, punch-throwing, six-foot-tall former slave" who loved the Ursuline Sisters and about Fanny Allen, a socialite who became the first known woman from New England to become a nun.  

Each biography is only a page long so it is a perfect book to pick up, read a page or two and then save for later.  

I'd like to thank the publisher for sending me a complimentary review copy.  Grade:  B+

Review: The In-Between Hour

The In-Between Hour

About the Book:

Bestselling author Will Shepard is caught in the twilight of grief, after his young son dies in a car accident. But when his father's aging mind erases the memory, Will rewrites the truth. The story he spins brings unexpected relief…until he's forced to return to rural North Carolina, trapping himself in a lie.

Holistic veterinarian Hannah Linden is a healer who opens her heart to strays but can only watch, powerless, as her grown son struggles with inner demons. When she rents her guest cottage to Will and his dad, she finds solace in trying to mend their broken world, even while her own shatters.

As their lives connect and collide, Will and Hannah become each other's only hope—if they can find their way into a new story, one that begins with love.

My Comments:

I downloaded this one to my Kindle quite some time ago, and never got around to reading it.  Judging by the description, it was just another romance, and somehow it never made its way to the top of the stack.  Then Kathleen Basi invited me to the Women's Fiction Cafe Week with Barbara Claypole White.  If figured it might be interesting and I started the book--and then life got in the way.  Still, I loved it.  I loved the story, I loved the characters and I loved the writing.  

A big issue in this book is mental illness.  Will's mother was mentally ill (my guess is bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia) and because of that, his childhood was anything but ideal.  Still, he knew his parents loved each other.  Hannah's son suffers from depression, and depression is the reason her father committed suicide. Will's father is losing his memory.  Barbara Claypole White manages to show the real effects mental illness has on other family members.

There are bedroom scenes in the book, though they aren't terribly graphic.  I don't generally recommend books with bedroom scenes to people who don't like them, but in this case, I will.  The bedroom scenes are easy enough to skim through and the rest of the book is good enough, different enough to make it worthwhile.  

Barbara Claypole White's descriptive writing was absolutely beautiful.  It slowed me down and made me savor the words and the pictures they painted.

I'd like to thank the publisher for making a review copy available via NetGalley and I'd like to thank Kathleen Basi for moving this book from the bottom of my stack to the top.  Grade:  A.  

Sunday Snippets--Final Edition

Hello, and welcome to Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. We are a group of Catholic bloggers who gather weekly to share our best posts with each other. To participate, go to your blog and create a post titled Sunday Snippets--A Catholic Carnival. In it, discuss and link to your posts for  the week--whether they deal with theology, Catholic living or cute Catholic kids. I'm mostly a book blogger so my posts are generally book reviews, some Catholic, some not. Make sure that post links back here. Once you publish it, come back here and leave a link below.

Well folks, there gets to be a time when you have to decide something has run its course.  I think Sunday Snippets has run its course.  I started Sunday Snippets when the old Catholic Carnival folded because the organizer didn't want to do it anymore.  There was no other major gathering of Catholic bloggers and I hoped to make this such a place.  Via this link-up, I've met some terrific bloggers and learned a lot about the Catholic blog world.  However, our numbers are getting fewer each week and frankly, I don't have the desire I once did to contact new bloggers and invite them to join.  There is a new(ish) (if they are new than us, they are new, right) group called Catholic Bloggers Network which is doing what I set out to do years ago.  They give Catholic bloggers a place to network with each other, and since they are a large group, I'd say they are more successful than this link-up has been.  Click here to join them.    I hope to see you all there and I appreciate you all linking up here all these years.  I'm sure my stats will go down by shutting this down, but honestly, I'm ready to move on.  

I published two book reviews this week.  One is a double-threaded story, and a clean romance.  The other is a general market romance. 

Bliss and the Art of Forever: My Review

Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel)

About the Book:

Now that she’s committed to leaving Hope Springs, she’s falling for the wrong man…but he just might give her all the right reasons to stay.

Two years after her husband’s death, kindergarten teacher Brooklyn Harvey is leaving Hope Springs for her in-laws’ vineyard in Italy—with no plans of coming back. That is, until she meets a disarmingly sexy biker-turned-chocolatier. He might be the man of her dreams, but he’s also the father of one of her students; as such, he’s strictly off-limits.

Callum Drake knows a good thing when he sees one, and he doesn’t want to let Brooklyn get away, even if his rival for her affection is the ghost of her dead husband. He’ll do whatever it takes to win her over, including making chocolates concocted just for her—chocolates that evoke memories of their time together. But can he create a second love bright enough to pull her, and her heart, out of living in the past?

My Comments:

Since I loved the other books in his series, I was eager to read this one.  While I enjoyed it, the other books were better (but the chocolates described herein seemed divine!).  Brooklyn is a kindergarten teacher, a lover of medieval romance novels and a good friend to people in this small town.  Because of the danger involved in his job, Brooklyn and her husband chose not to have children.  After he dies, she is alone.  She decides to join his family in Italy and is in the process of closing out her life in Hope Springs, and then she meets him--the bad boy biker who is the loving father of one of her students.  Sparks fly, chocolate is made, a  cute kid almost steals the show and in the end...

While it takes them a while to end up in bed, eventually they find their way there, and readers get to watch. 

I liked the fact that this book really showed the art of courtship.  He wanted her right away, and in a lot of ways, she wanted him too, but she wasn't ready, and he knew it. He was  there, he kept letting her know how much she meant, and in the end...

I'd like to thank the publisher for providing a complimentary review copy via NetGalley.  Grade:  B.