With the idea that there is simply not enough time for everything, certainly not enough for the merely good, I have turned my attention to the best, hoping thereby to improve my own circumstances.
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy--In the gorgeous new translation. I have never managed to make my way through this book. The subject matter is unutterably depressing and uninteresting. I've never been much engaged by those who go about evil deliberately (Vronsky) applauded by society. But, unfortunately, that is a prevalent reality and Tolstoy chronicles it very well.
A Retreat with Pere Jacques--A retreat given shortly before the martyrdom of yet another Catholic during the horror of the Second World War. Pere Jacques was imprisoned for protecting and aiding Jews escaping from the Holocaust. He is numbered by the Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among nations and his story is told in the film Au Revoir Les Enfants. He was deported to Mathausen Concentration Camp and survived until the liberation but died shortly thereafter. Being a Carmelite, Pere Jacques would seem to have a great deal to say to this lay Carmelite (even thought the retreat is given to cloistered religious).
Next up, More of Dom Columba's book. I've dipped into it here and there and if the whole lives up to the selected parts it will prove a really fine read.
Great business at work accounts for a diminished number of books going simultaneously.
