To finish off the year, I have two books I’m basically finished with, or at least will be by the end of the year.
The first is something that has been part of my daily holy hour for the year: A Year with the Mystics, compiled by Kathyrn Jean Lopez. This is basically 365 days worth of reflections from various saints with a prompt for further consideration and a closing prayer. On the one hand, there are some really good reflections in here. On the other hand, it was frustrating at points because, by the author’s words, this was not necessarily meant to be read starting on January 1, so it’s kind of random where reflections fell. It really took me out of it when, for instance, there was something about Christmas in the middle of Lent. Very mixed bag for me.
The other is The Life of St. Francis of Assisi by Saint Bonaventure. This the TAN Classics reprint of a translation from 1867. Certainly, this is a classic. I do have some struggles with it. The first is that it is not a chronological biography, but rather a thematic reflection on his life. The second is (and this is somewhat common for some saint biographies) he is presented as so perfect that it can become frustratingly impossible to relate with him. This is a similar reason why I stopped reading the classic biography of St. John Vianney. Another difficult is just the language. I’m not sure if this is due to the original by Bonaventure, or the translation from the 19th century. These are long (long) paragraphs with sentences composed in ways that would never be done today. Sometimes it makes it difficult to follow. Again, I don’t know if that’s an artifact from the original or a (now) old translation. That being said, it does not get more classic than this.
So, there you
have it. At least 52 books in 2025. Would I do this again? Probably not.
It did push me to read more, which was the objective. It also encouraged me to read more classics
that I have been wanting to get to. That
being said, it also discouraged me from reading certain books because I
knew that I could not finish them in a timely manner. My year experiment is done, but I may revisit
this. Perhaps a monthly update and some
things I have read?
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