No food for the soul
I sometimes like "horror" movies and books, and some crime/spy dramas on television. I also enjoy modern drama - I read plays the ways some people read romance novels! I read a lot of poetry. And I have some eclectic tastes when it comes to music.
But increasingly I find myself feeling empty when I read or watch.
The world view is too often so dark, so full of despair and hopelessness that they leave me hungry for something else.
I felt that hunger again today when I was at the library picking up something for school. I saw a copy of one of the graphic novel volumes of The Walking Dead series. I enjoyed the television version, so I've read a few of the novels (boy, are there some differences between the books and the show!).
I put the book back on the shelf unfinished. It left me feeling sad and unsatisfied.
The same thing happened the other night when I was listening to some contemporary music.
If I'm going to read, if I'm going to listen to music, it should be things that make me a better person, that help me to grow and learn about myself and others and my faith.
Where's that Chesterton book I was reading!
But increasingly I find myself feeling empty when I read or watch.
The world view is too often so dark, so full of despair and hopelessness that they leave me hungry for something else.
I felt that hunger again today when I was at the library picking up something for school. I saw a copy of one of the graphic novel volumes of The Walking Dead series. I enjoyed the television version, so I've read a few of the novels (boy, are there some differences between the books and the show!).
I put the book back on the shelf unfinished. It left me feeling sad and unsatisfied.
The same thing happened the other night when I was listening to some contemporary music.
If I'm going to read, if I'm going to listen to music, it should be things that make me a better person, that help me to grow and learn about myself and others and my faith.
Where's that Chesterton book I was reading!
posted by A Secular Franciscan | 6:22 PM
1 Comments:
Hmmm... he's a little hard to find, but the Spanish writer Jose Luis Olaizola has written some popular novels that might fit your needs.
Cynical, hard-bitten expat lefty that I am, I think I know a writer you might enjoy.
One of my favorite books right now is "The Thirteenth Summer" (the English translation is from Red Deer Press, a small Canadian publisher)about an improvident aging jock (and hopeless gambler) in 1940s Spain trying to raise his son on his own after his wife dies ... Plancio, the son, is launched in life (or perhaps "saved") though some unlikely agents of grace and charity... a dying bureaucrat, a slightly larcenous butler, a cache of adventure books).
Olaizola has also written explicitly "Catholic" novels -- his recent "Fire of Love" being a readable story about St. John of the Cross. I haven't read it, but from the reviews this is a very different kind of "saint's life"... as much the love story of his parents as it is about the Divine Love the mystic, poet and saint. (Ignatius Press, 2011).
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