Welcome to the October 2022 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

A cozy mystery. A fantastical dragon story. A comedy. Theologically-sound Catholic fiction. Murder Most Picante by Karina Fabian is all of these and more. I’m thoroughly enjoying the author’s humor delivered via Vern the Dragon’s first-person account of his trials in the world of the Mundane. (That’s where we live.) Smart, short, and entertaining. Now I know what all the fuss about Vern is for!

I’m a couple of chapters into Encountering Signs of Faith: My Unexpected Journey with Sacramentals, Saints, and the Abundant Grace of God by Allison Gingras. It’s a cohesive blend of the author’s experience adopting a profoundly deaf daughter from China, the Church’s sacramentals, and the saints. It starts with probably my favorite sacramental: the Miraculous Medal. I’m looking forward to learning more about some sacramentals I may be less familiar with.

Since I received a copy of Father Peyton’s Rosary Prayer Book: The Family the Prays Together Stays Together by Patrick Peyton, I’ve been taking it to weekly Eucharistic Adoration, when I have time to concentrate on the Rosary. Don’t get me wrong—I’m distracted at Adoration too, but possibly less so than in other places as I’m not rushed. This book fits so nicely in my hands, and with its short reflections, slows me down and helps keep me on track. I highlight lines that I want to contemplate and spend some minutes mulling over or return to later.

My husband has been reading The Lord of the Rings and the Eucharist by Scott L. Smith. As you’d likely guess from the title, the author examines author J.R.R. Tolkein’s devotion to the Eucharist and its significance in his novels, particularly the Lord of the Rings series. I don’t think my husband’s very far into the book, so it’s hard to say how this book fares in comparison to others that address Tolkein’s Catholicism as woven throughout his work.

My oldest son has been reading The Two Towers, also by J.R.R. Tolkein. I think the anticipation of Amazon’s Rings of Power series spurred his interest in reading the book after he’d listened to the first book of the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, on audiobook. He’s enjoyed the books much more than Amazon’s LOTR-inspired series, The Rings of Power. While it’s visually appealing, he’s not enjoyed the TV series. (I asked why he keeps watching, and he says it’s like a train wreck. He can’t look away.)

I last mentioned Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Drama of the Greatest Courtroom Clash of the Century by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee in 2017, when my oldest son read it. My daughter is now reading it for her Humanities class, which blends perfectly with her history studies. Some of her friends are also cast in the school’s fall production of the play, so she’ll truly be able to appreciate this story and its context. The play is based on the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial regarding a teacher accused of teaching the theory of evolution.

In addition to reading some books I’ve already shared here as her older siblings read them, my fifth-grade daughter is reading I Survived the Great Molasses Flood, 1919 by Lauren Tarshis. I don’t know how I made it to my forties without hearing of this disaster, but I’ve been absolutely fascinated by it since. (If you know a good book for adults on the subject, please share!) If you’re unfamiliar, the flood occurred in Boston when 2.4 million gallons of molasses rushed through the streets. Twenty-one people died and 150 suffered injuries. Weird, wild stuff.

Ascension Press publishes many sturdy, colorful, useable books for young Catholic children. My Catholic Picture Bible Stories by Jan Godfrey and Angela Jolliffe includes one- to two-page Bible stories with big, bright illustrations to capture the attention of the littlest kids. They’re organized and color-coded according to Ascension’s Great Adventure Bible timeline. It can serve as a great introduction to the best-known stories and characters of the Bible from both the Old and New Testaments.

Want more details on An Open Book? You can also sign up for An Open Book reminder email, which goes out one week before the link-up. No blog? That’s okay. Just tell us what you’re reading in the comment box.

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Welcome to the August 2022 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler’s Heart and CatholicMom.com!

Somehow, I squeezed in a lot of reading in the past month. Maybe it was vacation. Maybe it was a string of good books. I even have a few books in progress that I’ll hold until next month. Let’s get to it!

Karen Witemeyer’s Christian historical romances are incredibly consistent in quality, but I particularly enjoyed In Honor’s Defense. It’s last in a series but can stand alone. I appreciated that the connection between a hardened, lonely cowboy/vigilante and an overlooked, citified woman was based on a connection more than skin deep. Damaris provides the compassion, tenderness, and stability that Luke has never had. He provides the affection and attention she’s never received. The story has plenty of action and a little mystery as they work to uncover who wants to take the land left to Damaris’s orphaned nephew by any means necessary.

Love and the Dream Come True by Tammy L. Gray is also last (I think!) in a series. I’m a third of the way through the novel focused on a character who’s had his share of time “on screen” in the first two books in the series. In both books, Cameron, an aspiring musician, has been dumped, to put it bluntly. The second instance left him bereft of the love of his life and his friends/bandmates. Now he’s reached stardom, but he’s as lonely and anxiety ridden as ever. Enter his sister’s friend, Lexie, who’s had a crush on him since they were young and has perpetuated an imaginary relationship with him for more than a decade while raising her sister’s daughter. Cameron still has a way to go to make me like him, so I’m eager to see how this turns out. 

I did a little Christmas in July reading with Crystal Walton’s Merrying the Cowboy. If you like Hallmark Christmas movies, you’ll enjoy this one. It follows the format closely with the career-oriented city woman returning to the small town to help her ailing mother. While there, she can’t escape painful losses or her old boyfriend, a cowboy with some regrets where she’s concerned. The story flows smoothly and easily.

Yet another third in the series is Denise Hunter’s Harvest Moon. It didn’t hurt that this series, set in a North Carolina Appalachian Trail town ushered in my hiking/camping vacation that included some Appalachian Trail hikes. Mulberry Hollow addresses some serious grief and unresolved issues between a divorced couple left with (temporary) custody of their friends’ young daughter. From book one, the reader knows that Laurel and Gavin buried their own young son, and Denise Hunter does a great job of drawing out the tension surrounding that loss until well into this third book. Like Karen Witemeyer, I find Denise Hunter’s writing very consistent.

Mulberry Hollow  immediately precedes Harvest Moon. It’s probably my favorite of the three books as it’s the most trail-oriented. Wes is hiking part of the Appalachian Trail for a fallen friend. He gets sick and ends up on the door of the local town’s health clinic where Avery, the town doctor, nurses him back to health. He can’t pay her, so he remodels a small guest property that Avery hopes will help lure another doctor to her practice to lighten her load. As you might guess, they’re attracted to one another, but Wes has promised to head north to the sister of his fallen friend, and Avery has committed herself to being single due to the possibility of a hereditary health condition. Don’t worry. It all works out.

Jocelyn by Sarah Monzon is another rom-com in the Sewing in So Cal series. I think I liked the first book, Molly, better, but this one is much like the first in tone and mood. These are relatively short, light reads that I’ve found refreshing. This one has a little of the cowboy/ranch hand thing going for it in a contemporary setting and is set apart by featuring a Black couple, which I don’t see a whole lot in Christian romance.

I did read more than romance in July, and here’s evidence. Child, Unwanted by Corinna Turner is the next in her Friends in High Places series. Daniel, the main character of the first book in the series is featured prominently in this story of a young boy, Miracle, scarred from birth by a failed abortion, who lands in foster care and then suffers a near-fatal accident. He’s got a lot to suffer. Daniel is there as a companion and so is St. Margaret of Castello. I knew very little about this recently canonized saint who suffered both physically and emotionally her entire life. As an aside, Corinna Turner is the only author I know who can confine her protagonist to a hospital bed in a single room and still make the story engrossing. (This isn’t the first time she’s done it.)

In the Shadows of Freedom by C. & C. Spellman is the first book in a dystopian series. In it, the United States is governed by what I’d call a totalitarian libertarianism, odd as that sounds. The story of a disaffected young woman, Amanda, includes supernatural elements and an exploration of freedom versus licentiousness. Amanda cultivates troublesome relationships that promote drug experimentation and draw her further from the faith of her childhood. 

While on vacation, my college-age son picked up a small book about the lives of the mountain families whose homes were taken by eminent domain to establish Shenandoah National Park. Shenandoah Heritage: The Story of the People Before the Park by Carolyn Reeder and Jack Reeder features stories of families and individuals who resisted leaving their homes. Many of the residents were stereotyped as uneducated and lazy and became part of a campaign to relocate residents against their will, for their own good, of course. It was terribly unjust.

The Scourging Angel: The Black Death in the British Isles by Benedict Gummer was snagged at a library sale and has sat on our shelf for a while. My son picked it up and dug in. It includes information on the plague itself with a focus on Britain and how it was affected by the disease and related upheaval. I imagine this is more interesting reading having lived through the last couple of years.

Based on a recommendation from an An Open Book post last month, I requested The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo from the local library. My almost fifth-grade daughter has enjoyed many of Kate DiCamillo’s books, and she enjoyed reading this one at our campsite on vacation. This illustrated story set in medieval times traces the journey of Beatryce, who is nursed to health by a monk. There’s a prophecy about Beatryce, and the king is after her. 

The same daughter is reading Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the second book in the beloved series. Interestingly, I heard her spouting facts she’d learned from this and the first book while we were hiking. She’s picking up on natural history and pioneer survival skills. This book involves the Ingalls family traveling by covered wagon to Kansas territory.

My youngest son picked Splatoon Vol. 10 by Sankichi Hinodeya from the library. I don’t have much to say about these books, which are comic book adaptions of the video game. You defeat enemies by spraying them with paint. The interesting thing to me about these books is that they are read from back to front as one would do in Japan.

If you’re looking for readable Bible stories for children, Catholic Bible Chronicles: 70 Bible Stories from Adam to the Apostles may fit the bill. The stories, adapted by Amy Welborn for Ascension Kids, are illustrated with a single picture and include a reference to the relevant Bible chapters. Stories are organized according to Ascension’s The Bible Timeline, which orders books according to Salvation History. It’s a large, sturdy hardback that can survive heavy use by many little hands.

An Ark Full of Animals by Renita Boyle is a colorful picture book adaption of the story of Noah’s Ark that works best as a read aloud with rhyming, alliteration, and fun, descriptive language. The book is sturdy and visually appealing, something I’ve come to recognize as a quality of books from Ascension Kids.

Want more details on An Open Book? You can also sign up for An Open Book reminder email, which goes out one week before the link-up. No blog? That’s okay. Just tell us what you’re reading in the comment box.

THANKS FOR STOPPING BY! STAY A WHILE AND LOOK AROUND. LEAVE A COMMENT. SHARE WITH A FRIEND. IF YOU LIKE WHAT YOU SEE, PLEASE SIGN UP FOR MY AUTHOR NEWSLETTER TO KEEP UP-TO-DATE ON NEW RELEASES, EXTRAS, AND HOT DEALS!

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.