Reading Notes - January 2019

I didn't spend very much time last month watching television or on the computer and have actually been trying to intentionally 'unplug' before I sleep and pick up a book in bed instead.  All of this has resulted in quite a few titles for the first month of 2019 - a strong start!  The previous Reading Notes covered the first part of January, so this is the remainder of the month.

Saints: Lives and Illuminations - by Ruth Sanderson

I received this book as a gift for Mother's Day a few years ago, but never sat down to read it from cover to cover.  And now I have.  Sanderson's book is exactly the sort of pre-bed reading I find myself gravitating towards - short, easy to pick up and put down, etc.  Her illustrations are lovely and bright, reminding me a little bit of icons in their decorative style, but her text is very simple.  Each saint receives just a short page introduction; there is little detail.  That being said I had never heard of many of the Christians mentioned, since I'm not Catholic, and I found it informative.

Dialogues With Silence - by Thomas Merton

Here is what I knew about Merton before I read this book:  He was a Catholic monk who joined a monastery sometime in the 1900s and he had written an indeterminate number of books.  Presumably about Catholicism.

In other words I knew practically nothing about Thomas Merton!  Dialogues With Silence helped fill in a few gaps in my knowledge.  For one thing, I had absolutely no clue that Merton was fascinated by Zen teachings later in his life, that he illustrated his journals with Eastern inspired ink drawings, that he had correspondence with many figures in the 60s and 70s, and that he had actually converted to his faith only two years before joining his contemplative order.  This book was comprised of snippets of these journals, which often showed his painful transition to a contemplative, and were illustrated with his beautiful drawings, and like Ruth Sanderson's book on the saints I thought it was just right for bedtime reading.

The Book Of Irish Legends - compiled by Iain Zaczek

I believe I picked this book up months (years?) ago in order to add it to my collection of myths and legends for my children to use for school, and yet I never actually managed to read it to see if it would work in that capacity.  It turned out to cover a few of the main myths but likely is too advanced to be useful any time soon.  But it was a fun little read, and Emma Garner's illustrations were strangely compelling and odd - they were in a sort of scrapbook style with snippets of text incorporated into the images.  This was another of my quick bedtime reads.