The Art of Spiritual Direction: a guide to Ignatian practice by Jos Moons SJ, with a foreword by Paul Nicholson SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.99/£18.99) Most of us recognise in areas of our life and leisure that training is important, and that practice is needed to keep in trim. Yet when it comes to matters of the…
Let us Dream: The Path to a Better Future by Pope Francis with Austen Ivereigh (Simon & Schuster (£10.99) This new book by Pope Francis is a very striking one. It contains, which is unusual in Papal works, pages of autobiography of the three periods of his own personal moments of isolation, moments akin to…
Inspiration for all Seasons: Celtic Wisdom for Today by John Scally (Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh, £14.99) Coming to hand just at the end of one year and the beginning of another, with many changes of all kinds in the offing here in Ireland, and around the world, this book was a delightful surprise. Here,…
How to be Our Best Self in Times of Crisis by Stuart Breen and Tom Gunning (Veritas, €7.99) As human beings we seemed made to thrive at times in moments of danger. Yet the present pandemic, being what it is, created great and unexpected troubles: physical, mental and spiritual. This little book by two writers…
Readers may forgive me at this season of peace and goodwill, having already written about my most enjoyed book of last year (The Irish Catholic December 24, 2020), for concluding here my thoughts about 2020 with something I wrote during this Covid-19 year, which – I now discover – seems curiously ad rem: A Poem for 2021 Bunting…
For centuries Jerusalem and the Holy Land was a place of great mystique, the hope of pious pilgrims as the object of a once in a lifetime visit. But over the course of the long nineteenth century this began to change: new techniques of image making and reproduction began to alter the ideas that people…
The Christmas season has always been the time when families buy more books than they do at other times of the year. Here, arranged in something like order of age, are some suggestions from this year’s new offerings. The Dead Zoo by Peter Donnelly (Gill Books, €14.99) This artist’s most amusing books about the president up…
The World of Books by the Books Editor Literacy for both young and adult is an essential of social life. So these days teachers, politicians and booksellers are all agreed on the need to encourage reading. Easy enough with girls, it seems, but boys need more encouragement. So at Christmas all the deluge of new…
This has been a strange and difficult year for publishers, large and small. As religious and spiritual books come largely from small firms, they have been hit very hard. With lockdown across their main markets closing bookshops, online purchases, click-and-collect, and special localised deliveries have been the trend. So sales do go on, but many firms…
Christmas Tradition, Truth and the Total Baubles by Nick Page (John Murray Press, £6.99) The contents of this book may seem very familiar to some readers, for every Christmas articles and books appear about the traditions of the Nativity and the events surrounding it. Nick Page, who is an agreeable yet well-informed writer with an amusing…