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

From the Catholic Book Publishers Association:

HARDCOVERS

1. Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light
Mother Teresa with Brian Kolodiejchuk. Doubleday

2. Introduction to the New Testament
Raymond E. Brown. Doubleday

3. Jesus of Nazareth
Pope Benedict XVI. Doubleday

4. The Dream Manager
Matthew Kelly. Beacon Publishing/Hyperion

5. Simply Christian
N.T. Wright. HarperOne

6. Mother Angelica’s Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality
Raymond Arroyo. Doubleday

7. The Apostles
Pope Benedict XVI. Our Sunday Visitor

8. Celebration of Discipline, 25th Anniversary Edition
Richard Foster. HarperOne

9. Catholic Household Blessings & Prayers
USCCB Publishing

10. Wisdom Books: The Saint John’s Bible
Donald Jackson. Liturgical Press

PAPERBACKS

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

2. Mere Christianity
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

3. My Life with the Saints
James Martin. Loyola Press

4. United States Catholic Catechism for Adults
USCCB Publishing

5. The Screwtape Letters
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

6. The Great Divorce
C.S. Lewis. Harper San Francisco

7. The Handbook for Today’s Catholic
A Redemptorist Pastoral Publication. Liguori

8. My Struggle with Faith
Joseph Girzone. Doubleday

9. Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church
Libreria Editrice Vaticania/USCCB Publishing

10. Seminary Boy
John Cornwell. Doubleday

The Boston Red Sox won the World Series last night, the third four-game sweep of the series in the last four years. It was a splendid season. We now face the looming cold gray months with only football to divert us. Some years ago, when the World Series ended three weeks earlier than it does today, Bart Giamatti, former Yale president and baseball commissioner, wrote this elegy for baseball:

“It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come out, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone.

“You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

“Today, October 2nd, a Sunday of rain and broken branches and leaf-clogged drains and slick streets, it stopped, and summer was gone.”

The Blessing of Christmas (Ignatius Press) is a beautifully-presented edition of seven Advent and Christmas meditations that Joseph Ratzinger wrote while he was Archbishop of Munich. The text is enhanced by gorgeous color illustrations from classic paintings of the Christmas. The Pope says that the meditations have one aim: “to awaken that internal act of seeing which can perceive the truth in the words of scripture: ‘The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior has appeared to us.’”

The Apostles (OSV) collects 21 talks that Benedict XVI gave during his weekly general audiences in 2006 and 2007. The pope talked about the apostles, their close co-workers, and the origins of the church. OSV has published an accompnaying A Study Guide for the Apostles by Amy Welborn.

The Essential Pope Benedict XVI by John F. Thornton and Susan Varenne (Harper SanFrancisco) is a collection of his most important writings and speeches. Joseph Ratzinger wrote about every important topic in faith and religion. To find out what he thinks, start here.

Ted Gioia imagines a Nobel Prize in Literature from an alternate universe, one “in which the contributions of Proust, Kafka, Nabokov and Joyce are not forgotten. . . . in which genre writers have a chance. . . . a Nobel Prize in literature that doesn’t bend over backward to exclude native born U.S. writers (only three honored during the last 52 years!).”

This year’s winner is J.K. Rowling. Past winners include John le Carre, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Dylan, Philip K. Dick, and Dr. Seuss. The complete list is here.

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

–Czeslaw Milosz

One of the most appealing of the new fall books is Bert Ghezzi’s The Heart of a Saint: Ten Ways to Grow Closer to God (The Word Among Us Press). Ghezzi writes about ten saints who exemplify different paths to holiness. His goal in writing is intensely practical and pastoral. We’re not to be intimidated by these holy people. Ghezzi wants us to learn from them as we set out on our own paths to holiness.

I especially liked the the chapters on modern saints — Katharine Drexel, Dorothy Day, Pope John Paul II, and Pier Giorgio Frassati. (The picture of Dorothy Day on page 67 alone is worth the price of the book.) He also tells the stories of some saints whom you probably haven’t heard of: Aelred of Rievaulx, Angela Merici, and Roque Gonzalez among them.

Ghezzi has written sixteen books. This is one of his best.

If you are in the Chicago area, you might want to drop in on the “Writing and the Catholic Imagination” lecture series at DePaul University. The first talk is next Monday, October 29, and it features Mark Bosco of Loyola University talking about the 20th Century Catholic literary revival. Other speakers include Paul Elie, Marilynne Robinson, and Ron Hansen. The schedule is here.

If you want to tackle the Old Testament, the book for you is The Stories of the Old Testament: A Catholic’s Guide by Jim Campbell (Loyola Press). Dr. Campbell guides you through the Old Testament in 100 readings that cover the central texts, essential stories, and major figures. Dozens of informational pieces supply cultural, religious, and political background.

The Bible Made Easy: A Book-by-book Introduction by Timothy Schehr (St. Anthony) supplies a quick and concise introduction to each of the 73 books of the Bible. Fr. Schehr, a scripture professor at St. Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati, doesn’t quite fulfill the promise of the title, but he gives an brisk and useful introduction.

Praying the Psalms of Jesus by James Sire (IVP) is a close reading of nine psalms that are especially associated with Jesus. Sire’s primary purpose is to deepen our prayer, and he serves this end with solid scholarship and spiritual insight.

The term “evangelical Catholic” is catching on.

John Allen has written that Catholicism has steadily become more evangelical since the arrival of John Paul II in 1978. Now the theologian Robert Barron embraces the term in his new book The Priority of Christ. The book’s subtitle is “Musings of a Post-Liberal, Post-Conservative Evangelical Catholic.” He wants to retire the terms “liberal” and “conservative” replace them with “evangelical.” It means, he says, “that we should be Christ-centered, eager to proclaim the faith, and deeply desirous of bringing people into the mystical body in which we have found such abundant life.” There’s an interview with Fr. Barron here.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a new movie starring Brad Pitt, is based on a novel by Ron Hansen, one of my favorite Catholic authors. Mariette in Ecstasy and Atticus are wonderful novels. Barb Nicolosi thinks the new movie is Oscar-worthy.

Publishers continue to use the web to search for writing talent. Amazon.com and Penguin Group have launched the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Contestants will submit their novels online. Readers will vote for the winner, who will get a publishing contract.

Book marketing guru M.J. Rose writes about authors doing blog tours.

Finally, the UK Guardian reports that there’s a new contender for the world’s worst poem.

Here’s a thought-provoking blog post about how organizations should think about the Web. Search technology changes everything.

“No one visits a Web site’s home page anymore—they walk in the back door, to just the place Google sent them. . . . Not only are there literally a million ways to discover you and your offerings, but rarely people hear your story the way you want it to be heard. The idea of a home page and a site map and a considered, well-lit entryway to your brand is quaint but unrealistic.”

The Roman Catholic Church: An Illustrated History by Edward Norman (University of California Press). A gorgeously illustrated book with an excellent text by a leading British Catholic writer. It’s the best short history of the Church that I know.

God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis by Philip Jenkins (Oxford). Everything that Jenkins writes is worth reading. Here he argues that Christianity may have a brighter future in Europe than is commonly believed.

Barbara Nicolosi has some provocative thoughts about the challenge of creating believable stories and authentic heroes from a Christian standpoint. She’s addressing Christians who want to make movies, but her ideas are relevant to artists of all kinds (and to readers and movie viewers as well).

The great danger for Christians is sentimentalism: “We want to show that God is basically in charge of the world so everything is really okay. We want to give God the benefit of the doubt.” This leads to false art that “presents a fantasy religion in which believing in Jesus means no suffering.”

She quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald: “Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy.”

Doubleday’s Religion Group, publisher of some of the best selling Catholic trades titles, has been merged into the company’s evangelical WaterBrook Multnomah division. Bill Barry, publisher of Doubleday Religion, is leaving the company. Trace Murphy remains as editor-in-chief of Doubleday Religion.

Doubleday Religion has published the recent Catholic best-sellers Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI and Mother Teresa’s Come Be My Light.

The London Telegraph reports that sales of Christian books have nearly doubled in the UK in the past decade — to £110m a year, up from £60m. This is surprising. Britain is the quintessential post-Christian society, as the British publishers I know attest.

Nevertheless, religious books are marginal items for UK booksellers. “Some retailers are thought to also believe that large book sections dedicated to any individual faith could be a magnet for fundamentalists, something that could have security implications.”

Seth Godin: “Authors are brands. Some are billion-dollar brands, some are tiny ones. The web is custom made for authors, but so far, it’s largely going unused.”

Seth has some ideas about how to improve the situation.