A popular prayer book restyled

The Glenstal Prayerbook: A Benedictine Book of Prayer

(Red Stripe Press,  €14.99 /  £13.00)

Back in 2001 the first form of the Glenstal Prayerbook, then  published by Columba Press,  was a great popular success.  It  brought the old established prayer tradition of the Benedictine order out of the monastery and into the hands of the ordinary reader.

This new iteration, reformatted and redesigned is intended to renew that success, but in a way perhaps more in keeping with the times. The major change is to use the popular version of the Bible by the American pastor Eugene Peterson, where he attempted to present the texts in a version that related not  centuries of religious language, but to the speech current in the homes and streets of today.

But one mature reader I showed the book to commented immediately that such a book will have a large audience in the older readers whose sight is perhaps more challenged than it once was. She found the type too small to be readable comfortably and not black enough (though that is a common fault now with many publishers).  The book is also a little on the small size and is very tightly bound and hard to hold open with comfort.  But these faults  can soon be put right in the new editions that will surely follow.