People of the Book
A Blog about Book Publishing from a Catholic Perspective

Book sales through July are running 9.3 percent ahead of the corresponding period in 2004, according to data from Nielsen Bookscan, which measures actual sales of books in stores. Customers bought 377 million books through July 31 — 32 million units more than 2004. Sales of music and home video were also up. Books are the most popular media category in terms of physical sales. But when digital sales are included, music sales eclipse books.

Some scholars think he might have been. Others think that that the plays were not written by William Shakespeare, the actor from Stratford, but by a scholarly nobleman who needed to stay in the background. The Times has a roundup of recent theorizing and speculation.

David Scott’s new book The Catholic Passion is out, and tireless book-blogger The Anchoress is delighted with it. She recommends the book to “any reader with a curious mind, an appreciation for fine writing and a willingness to expose himself to real fixations of Divine Love.� It’s her favorite book of 2005.

By quoting Catholic Christians through the ages, Scott has found a way to talk about the Catholic Church, and what it means to ordinary, practicing church members that is utterly free of complaint or condescension, and full of charity. . . He brings us Dorothy Day, recalling the birth of her daughter and the need that birth brought, within her, to find “Someone to thank, to love, even to worship, for so great a good that had been bestowed upon me.� He brings us Andre Dubus finding sacramental love in the act of making sandwiches for his children’s lunch. Be brings us G.K. Chesterton …Dante is here, so is John Paul II, so is Maximus the Confessor and St. Edith Stein, so are Peter, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, so are, in a very real sense, you and me.

Order The Catholic Passion here. Scott also wrote A Revolution of Love: The Meaning of Mother Teresa.

UPDATE: Godspy.com has an excerpt from the book here and an interview with David Scott here.

An AP story looks at libraries that are offering their patrons MP3 downloads of popular audio books. The big problem: most of the library downloads won’t work on the iPod, which has about 80 percent of the MP3 player market. Libraries get the books from their vendors in Windows Media Audio format, which is incompatible with the iPod format. Nevertheless, more than a thousand libraries now provide audio books supplied by OveDrive and NetLibrary, the two leading vendors. Patrons download the books onto their MP3 players. When the borrowing period expires, encryption makes the book unplayable.

Most evangelical bookstores are unwilling to stock and sell Catholic books and other Catholic materials. This antagonism seems to be changing in Canada, according to a piece in The Western Catholic Reporter, a Catholic newspaper. Broughton’s, Ltd., the largest supplier of Catholic books and merchandise, now sells to about 70 percent of Christian bookstores in that country. “We still have some customers who won’t sell rosaries, or medals or statues, but it’s changing,” says Broughton’s sales manager. “I think the Christian stores have finally seen the light, really, that they get Catholic customers in and they’ve been sending them away and throwing them to their competition.”

Competition has a lot to do with the new ecumenical openness. Christian stores in Canada, as in the U.S., are losing much business to Wal-Mart, Costco, and other discount retailers. Christian retailers looking replace lost business now look more benignly on Catholics.

Book-lovers in Paris can now buy books in vending machines installed at four Metro stops and on a chic street corner in the center of the city. The vending machines are stocked with 25 best-selling titles, including “The Odyssey,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and other classics. The French bookstore chain Maxi-Livres, which operates the machines, is pleased with the experiment so far. The vending machine best-sellers are “The Wok Cookbook” and a French-English dictionary, with Baudelaire’s “Les Fleurs du Mal” also doing well. The books cost two euros — about $2.45. They don’t drop down a chute, like a candy bar or a bag of potato chips. A mechanical arm lifts the books gently, and places them in the bin.

Here’s a link to piece on NPR yesterday about The Hold Steady, a Catholic rock group from the Twin Cities that seems to have broken through. Their latest album, Separation Sunday, is a concept album about the fall and redemption of a girl named Holly (short for Hallelujah), who meets St. Theresa of Avila. NPR calls it one of the best-reviewed rock albums of the year.

That’s the title of a helpful piece at mediabistro.com. The editors among us should send copies to their authors. Authors should read it and do everything it says. The piece includes this lovely description of the ideal author-editor relationship:

Editing is not a unidirectional dispensing of advice. In the best of situations it’s an ongoing dialogue between the editor and author. “It’s always fun to edit somebody who, instead of just agreeing or disagreeing with an edit, grasps the logic behind your suggestion and comes up with a whole new solution of his or her own,” says Farrar, Straus & Giroux Editor Lorin Stein. “I think that’s largely a matter of trust. It happens when deep down each of you suspects, even in the middle of a passionate disagreement, that the other person’s probably in the right.”

Here’s the new list from the Catholic Book Publishers Association.

Hardcover

1. The Rhythm of Life
Matthew Kelly. Beacon /Fireside.

2. Rediscovering Catholicism
Matthew Kelly. Beacon.

3. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB

4. The Catholic Passion
David Scott. Loyola Press

5. The Holy Longing
Ronald Rolheiser. Doubleday

6. The Book of Courage
Matthew Kelly. Beacon

7. Code Name God
Mani Bhaumik. Crossroad

8. Personal Transformation
Kiril Sokoloff. Crossroad

9. The Holy Eucharist Prayer Book
Alfred McBride. Our Sunday Visitor

10. And God Said, “Play Ball!”
Gary Graf. Liguori

Paperback

1. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday/Our Sunday Visitor/USCCB

2. Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication, Liguori

3. RB 1980: The Rule of St. Benedict
Liturgical Press

4. Waiting in Joyful Hope
Katherine L. Howard. Liturgical Press

5. The Gift of Prayer
Margaret Silf. BlueBridge

6. Theology of the Body for Beginners
Christopher West. Ascension Press

7. National Directory for Catechesis
USCCB

8. Return of the Prodigal Son
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Doubleday

9. Catholic Q&A
John Dietzen. Crossroad

10. The Circle of Life
Rupp & Wiederkehr. Ave Maria Press

There’s much to ponder in the Newsweek package on Spirituality in America. I was fascinated by data in a poll accompanying the articles. We’ve heard much about Americans saying, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Indeed, 24 percent of Americans describe themselves this way, but more than twice as many — 55 percent — say they are “religious and spiritual.” Another 9 percent say they are “religious but not spiritual.” I wonder what that means.

Other numbers that caught my eye: 84 percent of Americans say that spirituality is very important or somewhat important to them. 77 percent of Catholics say they are very traditional or somewhat traditional.

What catches your eye? Take a look at the poll and let us know.

“It’s a strange thing to discover and to believe that you are loved, when you know that there is nothing in you for anybody but a parent or a God to love.� The line is one of the pivotal moments in Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, our book group’s novel for August. The protagonist, Maurice Bendrix, discovers he is loved when he reads what his former lover, Sarah Miles, has written about him her journal. He has stolen the journal. He is bitter that she broke off their affair. But as he reads, he learns that she loved him well, that she loves him still, and that she ended the affair because she met a greater lover – the God whom neither of them knew when the affair began. Maurice rightly sees that he is unworthy of God’s love, and is surprised to find that he has it anyway. In The End of the Affair, we discover it too.

The vehicle of discovery is Sarah Miles, a self-described “bitch and fake,� who makes a wild bargain with God when a bomb falls on their love nest during the London Blitz: if God will spare Maurice’s life, she will give up the affair. Maurice lives and Sarah keeps her end of the bargain. From this primitive, magical beginning, Sarah embarks on a journey that ends in true faith. A pivotal moment for her comes when she lingers in a Catholic Church and realizes that God had a physical body, and dwells in the tangible things of this world. God is no mere idea, “a vapor.� Later, crushed and angry when a priest tells her she cannot divorce her husband and marry Maurice, she gazes at a crucifix and understands that “sometimes God’s mercy seems like punishment.� Our group was thoroughly absorbed by the drama of Sarah and her two lovers. We did note the absence of joy in Graham Greene’s spiritual topography. But few writers knew more about suffering, and about how God is to be found in it.

Priest-author-sociologist-columnist Andrew Greeley is in Hollywood talking to producers about a television series based on his Blackie Ryan novels. The idea is to cast “West Wing” star Martin Sheen as the bishop-detective who unravels mysteries of the spirit as he solves crimes. Greeley told the Chicago Sun-Times that he knows the idea is a long-shot at this stage. But Sheen is interested in the project, the president of Warner Television gave them a meeting, and Hollywood is eager to connect with those “people of faith” out there who bought so many tickets to The Passion of the Christ. Blackie Ryan, played by the former president of the United States, may be in our living rooms soon.

About a quarter of the new titles published in the US are from print-on-demand publishers, according to an informative article on the POD business in the Dallas Morning News (registration required). For several hundred dollars, POD publishers will produce a trade paperback, store the digital file, print copies as needed, and fulfill orders. They will customize the cover and edit the manuscript for additional fees. Marketing is up to the author. Quality is low. The paper quotes POD Girl, a pseudonymous reviewer, who says she has read 1000 print-on-demand books, and can recommend only 24.

“We’re talking tremendous garbage here,” she wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Dallas Morning News. “Some authors want to see their books in print so badly that they take the shortest route possible, which is POD. They are so desperate that they ignore some of the obvious signs of impending failure: no publicity, no editing, no potential for a decent cover.”

Nevertheless, POD publishing will likely grow. The paper offers this helpful summary of the leading companies and their fees:

iUniverse: $459 (trade paperback and ebook, custom cover, five free copies, volume discounts, retain all rights). $299 for “Fast Track” (trade paperback, no ebook, no custom cover, one free copy, retain all rights, book ready in as little as 30 days)
BookSurge: $498 (no custom cover, one free copy, volume discounts, retain all rights). $99 for “Author’s Express”(no custom cover, one free copy, volume discounts, retain all rights)
Xlibris: $500 for “Basic Service” (no custom cover)

“Sin breeds upon sin. Sin is a vector, you know, not scalar. It’s not a load of sin, it’s a velocity, either downhill or up. To return to God from a life of sin you have to retrace your steps, plot the back azimuth, undo the evil. In theory. In practice I’m not sure you can.”

Michael Gruber, Valley of Bones

Amazon.com has begun to sell short stories from well-known authors, in digital form, on its website for 49 cents each. Amazon Shorts, as the program is called, was launched this week with works by 59 authors. Amazon says that the short-form writing ranges in length from 2,000 to 10,000 words. The pieces are delivered digitally. Customers can read them on the web, download and print them, save them in a digital locker on Amazon, or send them to an email address. Browse the first batch of Amazon Shorts here.

The program is interesting for several reasons. The Amazon Shorts are a major experiment in the digital delivery of content. If a substantial fraction of Amazon’s millions of customers get used to downloading reading material, what might Amazon sell them next? The companies that dominate DVD rentals (Netflix), music (Apple), and audio book downloads (Audible.com) are sure to be watching Amazon Shorts carefully. The program also marks Amazon’s debut as a publisher. It is starting with the most commercially challenging literary form, the short story, but Amazon may not stop there. Amazon recently purchased a company that prints books on demand. Stay tuned. Or is it, stay online?

“Why don’t publishers test market covers?” asks blogger M.J. Rose, commenting on Barry Eisler’s essay on “the book package.” Why indeed? It would be easy for publishers to set up a website where they would ask reader to evaluate book cover concepts.

By doing this, we’d have practical information to go by. Or is it really better to have in-house publishing folks who see hundreds of covers each month continue making subjective decisions? Or asking bookbuyers who are equally overexposed to make all the decisions? Why is our industry leaving so much to chance? Why do we continue to rely on all the same old ways of doing things?

Rose’s post is here. Eisler’s post on the book package is here.

If you’re looking for good Catholic books for children, head over to WhipperSnapper Books, an attractive, easy-to-navigate, content-rich online bookstore. The most interesting aspect of WhipperSnapper, to me, is its recommendation function. The owners personally review books and recommend the good ones. After looking around the site for a while, one is inclined to trust their judgment. For example, here’s what they’re looking for in “Catholic content:”

For us finding “catholic content� means putting our hands on a book that reflects an important aspect of Catholic life. Why does this matter? A single, admirable Catholic character in a novel can instill a sense of pride in a Catholic kid. An engaging biography of a remarkable Catholic reminds our kids of the many possibilities in their own lives. Books with Catholic content can teach Catholic culture, build Catholic identity and inspire an active faith.

WhipperSnapper Books is a good example of what the new media theorists call a “post-filter.” We’re awash in an abundance of media; we need trustworthy guides to help us find the good stuff. More on “post-filters” here. Hat tip to Amy at Open Book.

Mystery writer Barry Eisler, whose essay on “authors as entrepreneurs” I praised a few days ago, follows up with an excellent post on the book package — title, cover, jacket copy, and blurbs. He thinks publishers sometimes get it wrong, and authors should get involved. “Publishers don’t always follow the right principles and they don’t always achieve the right outcome. You’ll have a much better chance of persuading your publisher of the merits of your point of view if you can describe not only what you want, but why you want it – that is, if you can articulate the principles behind your plan.”

Here’s Eisler’s smart take on jacket copy and blurbs:

The function of jacket copy is to tell the reader what the book is about more descriptively than the hints and implications of the title and cover art. In other words, to add to and reinforce the reader’s initial attraction to the book. The function of the blurbs is to convince the reader that, regardless of what it’s about, the book is good. In other words, the jacket copy and the blurbs answer two distinct questions: “What’s it about? And is it any good?� I’m of the opinion that using the jacket copy to persuade the reader of the book’s merits is silly. Your (or the publisher’s) claims to terrificness aren’t credible. Only disinterested third parties (reviewers) have credibility for that. Of course, you can go in the opposite direction, using some description from blurbs in conveying what the book is about, because there’s no credibility problem there. But bear in mind the separate functions of jacket copy and blurbs so you can use them with maximum impact.

Read the whole thing here.

Why do small publishers like Amazon.com? An Associated Press report lists several reasons:

Ask small publishers what they like most about Amazon, and they’ll say it’s the global reach. Another huge plus, they say, is that Amazon pays its bills — and on time.

It’s common for publishers to spend months waiting to get paid, then receive a shipment of unsold books returned — often with an order for a new batch of books. That makes cash flow a big problem for the little guys.

By comparison, Amazon typically orders books in fairly small numbers and rarely returns them.

Should publishers be worrying about the failing eyesight of aging boomer readers? That’s one rationale for the larger, and more expensive mass-market paperback format recently introduced by Penguin Group and Simon & Schuster. The new “pocket booksâ€? are three-quarters of an inch taller than the old ones, which allows the publisher to increase the type size and the leading. The new books have 32 lines on a page, compared to 38 lines for traditional mass-market paperbacks. “We’ve gotten so many letters and e-mails from readers saying, ‘Thank you for making the type larger,’ ” Leslie Gelbman, the president of mass-market paperbacks at Penguin, told The New York Times. So far, the larger books are very much an experiment. Only a few best-sellers have published in the new format.

Mass-market paperback sales have been in a steady decline for a decade. Failing eyesight is only one reason. They have been pressured by discounting of hardcover books, which lessens the incentive to “wait for the paperback.� Penguin and S & S are raising prices for the new books; they cost $9.99, two or three dollars more than traditional mass-markets. This further blurs the distinction between mass-market and trade paperbacks. No wonder many in the publishing industry are skeptical about the new size. But the new books are definitely easier on the eyes, and aging readers need relief. Sales of ready-made reading glasses grew 11 percent last year.

Go to Caffè Appassionato for your St. Ignatius Gourmet Coffees. Five blends are inspired by Jesuit heroes, and portion of the proceeds goes to the Oregon Province.

Few Catholic authors market their books with the intensity of, say, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen and dozens of other lesser-known authors in the evangelical world. Perhaps it’s because their books don’t lend themselves to aggressive marketing camapaigns. But, perhaps, it’s also because too many Catholic authors think their job is done when they send in the corrected galleys. They leave the marketing up to the publisher, and then complain when book sales are disappointing.

Mystery writer Barry Eisler would like to light a fire under diffident writers. Smart writers understand that writing is a business, he says. “Really smart writers see themselves also as entrepreneurs.” Eisler used to work in Silicon Valley. He thinks writers should use the high-tech start-up entrepreneur as a model for the writing business:

The writer labors alone for years creating the first cut of a manuscript (product). When the manuscript is ready, the writer finds an agent (venture capitalist), who invests not money, but time in helping the writer re-write and otherwise tune up the manuscript. When the manuscript is more ready, the agent introduces the author to publishers (customers), with the agent’s imprimatur helping to get the publishers to take notice. The publisher buys the book; the author quits his day job, and thereafter devotes himself to his new business – writing new books (creating new products) to sell to his original publisher (the original customer) and to new ones (foreign sales and subsidiary rights).

Writing a book is only the first step, he says. “You are now running a company (albeit a sole proprietorship), and your company is responsible not only for creating the product, but also for marketing, branding, and selling it. Yes, other people will be involved in these efforts, but the ultimate consequences of success or failure will be yours alone. Run your company accordingly.” Read the whole thing here.

Book people take note: Internet use among teenagers grew 24 percent in the last four years, to the point where 9 in 10 teens are online, says a report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. Teens increasingly use email to communicate with their parents, teachers, schools and other institutions. But email is too slow for teens’ communication among themselves. They use Instant Messaging and text messaging over cell phones to talk to each other. The Pew report says that teens are “leading the way to a fully wired and mobile nation.” Read a summary at the Pew website.

Here are the July Catholic Bestsellers. This list is taken from Publisher’s Weekly Religion Bookline newsletter, but I think this is the latest list compiled by the Catholic Book Publishers Association. It is based on publisher reports of orders from general interest, Catholic and Christian stores in the U.S. and Canada for titles published by members of the Catholic Book Publishers Association.

HARDCOVER
1. The Rise of Benedict XVI
John Allen. Doubleday

2. Let God’s Light Shine Forth
Robert Moynihan. Doubleday

3. Path of Wisdom, Path of Peace
Dalai Lama, Felizitas & Von Schorborn. The Crossroad Publishing Company

4. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday.

5. The Way We Were
Joan Chittister. Orbis Books

6. Benedictine Daily Prayer
Maxwell E. Johnson. Liturgical Press

7. The Poetry of John Paul II
John Paul II. USCCB Publishing

8. Gospels and Acts: The Saint John’s Bible
Donald Jackson. Liturgical Press

9. Illuminating the Word
Christopher Calderhead. Liturgical Press

10. John Paul II: Lessons for Living
Joseph Durepos, Loyola Press

PAPERBACK
1. Catechism of the Catholic Church
Doubleday

2. Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication. Liguori Publications

3. Return of the Prodigal Son
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Doubleday

4. The Theology of the Body
Pope John Paul II. Pauline Books

5. National Directory for Catechesis
USCCB Publishing

6. 101 Inspirational Stories of the Priesthood
Patricia Proctor. Franciscan Monastery of Saint Clare

7. A Year of Sundays
Cackie Upchurch. Liturgical Press

8. Life of the Beloved
Henri J. M. Nouwen. Crossroad

9. The Circle of Life
Rupp & Wiederkehr. Ave Maria Press

10. Theology of the Body for Beginners
Christopher West. Ascension Press

Barbara Nicolosi, a screenwriter and guru to many Christians in Hollywood, is eagerly awaiting the December 9 release of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. She predicts that the movie version of the C.S. Lewis classic will pull Hollywood out of the box office doldrums. “Without Narnia, the 2005 box office is a state of being ‘where it is always winter but never Christmas,’â€? she writes. Go here for your Narnia gear.

Meanwhile, persistent rumors have it that the producers of the movie version of The Da Vinci Code, now being filmed in Europe, are looking for ways to change the script to soften the book’s anti-Christian content. Among those who have been asked for their ideas are Nicolosi and Amy Welborn, who wrote the refutation De-Coding Da Vinci. A recent Times article has the latest.

The Lord of the World, Fr. Robert Hugh Benson’s turn-of-the-century “Catholic apocalypticâ€? novel, has been reissued by a tiny start-up publisher Once-and-Future Books. The novel, its author, and its new publisher are all unusual. Fr. Benson (1871-1914) was a son of the Archbishop of Canterbury and an Anglican convert who enjoyed great popularity as a writer after he entered the Catholic Church in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The Lord of the World is a science fiction novel which is both a satire of British society and a Catholic imagining of “the end times,” depicting the rise of the anti-Christ, and reaching its sensational conclusion on the Plains of Armageddon.

Once-and-Future Books is a side venture started by five people involved in the interfaith Center for Economic and Social Justice. (www.cesj.org.) Their first book was The Four Winners, a long out-of-print novel by Notre Dame football coach (and chemistry professor) Knute Rockne. The major novels of Fr. Benson’s are the company’s next project. Michael Greaney, one of the five new publishers, says they want to reprint long-lost novels that have a moral orientation. He adds that he and his partners also want to have some fun. Check out the Benson novels here.

The temptation to check the rankings of books on Amazon.com is irresistible for many authors and publishers. It’s the one place where you can get immediate feedback about the success of a book. But these rankings change wildly from day to day. And, it seems, these great fluctuations are driven by small numbers of book purchases. Author and publishing consultant M.J. Rose heard this from a friend who works in the marketing department of a New York publisher:

1. Last Thursday, one of our books zoomed from a sales rank of 32,154 to 872, peaking at 665 on Friday. How many copies did we sell in total last week? 17.

2. Another book hovered between the mid-6000s and 14,000s during the week. It ended up selling 37 copies in total.

3. Finally, a publishing colleague shared that one of their authors had appeared on NPR’s Fresh Air program that same week. Before the interview, the book ranked 36,162. The day of the interview, it hit 300. The following day, it reached 80 and appeared on the Movers & Shakers list. And, after all that, how many did it sell at Amazon? 47 copies.

Rose called on fellow authors to stop checking their Amazon numbers, and “to send me email telling me what you were able to accomplish with the extra hour a day you will now have to do something fun or productive with.”

Podcasting is the latest thing at the busy intersection of technology and publishing. This form of do-it-yourself radio was something for geeks and hobbyists until last month, when Apple released software that made it easy for anyone with an iPod to subscribe to podcasts. Podcasting is still not quite “mainstream,� but it soon will be. Publishers and anyone else with a message to communicate will need to take note of it.

A podcast is an audio recording posted online that can be downloaded into your iPod or other portable MP3 player. You can listen to them whenever you want. Most are free. You can find thousands of podcasts on every topic imaginable at the iTunes website. When you subscribe to a podcast, the latest version is automatically downloaded into your iPod whenever you visit iTunes. Just about anyone can make a podcast. All you need is an inexpensive microphone, some audio software, and a fast internet connection. You don’t even need to have something interesting to say, as you will discover if you browse through some podcasts. A lot has been written about podcasting in the past month. This recent New York Times article will give you a good overview.

The most popular Catholic podcast seems to be Catholic Insider, a quirky, entertaining program by a Dutch priest who spends a lot of time in Rome. Some of Vatican Radio’s English programming is available by podcast here. Go to Catholic Lector for a podcast of the daily scripture readings. Go to this site for a directory of some other Catholic podcasts.

Religious book sales rose 19 percent in June, but are slightly down for the year, according to a monthly report from the Association of American Publishers. The book business as a whole is up 4 percent for the year. The categories that have grown are adult hardcover (2 percent), adult paperback (7.9 percent), children’s hardcover (32.6 percent), children’s paperback (7.8), audio books (14.2), e-books (36 percent), and professional (6.3 percent). Categories that are down for the year are adult mass market and university press books.

Writing at Godspy.com, author David Scott discusses the great paradox of Mother Teresa. She was a beacon of cheerfulness and joy, yet her inner prayer life was “was one of dark, pitiless silence.” She thought God had abandoned her. She once wrote: “In my soul I feel just this terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing. That terrible longing keeps growing, and I feel as if something will break in me one day.”

Why would God do this? Perhaps, as a saint sent to the modern world, Mother Teresa had to experience its spiritual aridity. Scott, who has written a short biography of Mother Teresa, suggests two other reasons: God often tests his special servants, and those who seek to draw closer to Jesus will inevitably experience the suffering and pain that he experienced. Through it all, Mother Teresa showed infectious joy. It was no facade:

Mother Teresa wrote a lot about joy. It comes, she said, from being close to Jesus. Or as she put it: “Joy is a sign of union with God—of God’s presence.” Knowing what we now know about her feelings of divine rejection, this sounds like an inside joke, or a deliciously dark irony. But she had no guile about her. She always told us that joy wasn’t a matter of attitude adjustment or putting on a happy face. Joy was hard work: “It is always hard, all the more reason why we should try to acquire it and make it grow in our hearts.”