Happy New Year! I'm linking up with An Open Book to share about the books that I read at the end of 2025. Last month, I read three books, all very different and fascinating. Let's dive in!
The Curse He Chose, by Sr. Alison Regina Gliot
In this fantastic novel, we follow Elizabeth, a young woman who is left at home while her best friends go to college. As she tries to settle into a quiet life working at a bookstore and missing her friends, she accidentally stumbles into a vampire-standoff--and winds up having to go on the run for her life. I really enjoyed this book. The characters were great; I loved seeing the interactions between Elizabeth and Christopher (the vampire who helps her escape the other vampires). I also really liked the interactions between Elizabeth and her priest. My one complaint is that I wasn't able to place the setting very well, aside from "generic big city." (maybe I missed the part of the book where the characters mentioned it?) This was a fun, intense, fast-paced story and I look forward to reading Book 2! I'm also excited that I now have a good vampire-novel entry point for my kids. Although The Curse He Chose has tense moments, it is not nearly as gruesome or horrific as Jennifer the Damned (another excellent vampire novel) and is much more approachable than Dracula (also an excellent vampire novel). I recommend this book for older middle schoolers on up!
Crabgrass Catholicism: How Suburbanization Transformed Faith and Politics in Postwar America, by Stephen M Koeth CSC
I happened to discover this book in our public library's online catalog and instantly put it on hold; this is the exact kind of niche Catholic topic that I love reading about! Koeth does an amazing job bringing together tons of studies and research to explore the landscape of post-WWII America and the growth of the suburbs, and the impact all this had on Catholicism (he focuses on Long Island, specifically, which I found really fascinating). He shows how the urban "Catholic ghetto" began to change as people moved from the cities to the suburbs, and how the new suburban parishes were very different (in positive and negative ways) from the urban parishes. Koeth talks about the way this helped people's practice of Catholicism shift from liturgical parish-based settings to private, individual devotions, and tied this all into Catholic schools and the widespread implementation of CCD (weekly religious education) classes. Parts of this book were a little slow-going because it includes a lot of information and graphs. But, it was excellent. This is a great book to read and discuss and it provides a lot of helpful context that we need to consider as we strengthen our parishes and Catholic communities today. Also: shortly after reading this, I showed my kids the movie The Bells of St. Mary's, which I saw numerous times as a child-but the movie carries added depth now, since that film depicts some of the topics and struggles that were discussed in Crabgrass Catholicism.
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, By Hallie Rubenhold
I've never read much about Jack the Ripper, but I was really interested to read this book-in which the author challenges the popular narrative that the Ripper's victims were "just prostitutes." Drawing from her extensive research into the time period and the lives of these women, Rubenhold shows that most of the women killed by Jack the Ripper were not prostitutes, and even the woman who was a prostitute had dignity, worth, and a story. At its heart, this is the message of the book: that each woman had her own problems, yes, but also her own loves, passions, interests, and a myriad of societal and cultural factors that she had to navigate. This book was gripping and well-written, and it really brought Victorian era England to life-and convinced me that I am glad I don't live in that time and place! The author made a couple comments about contraception that were eye-roll worthy, but overall I really enjoyed this book and recommend it.
Thanks so much for joining me this month! I have already started reading some amazing books this year, so if you have any recommendations I should add to my list, please drop them in the comments! Also, soon-ish, I hope to share my annual reading and writing in review here on the blog, so stay tuned for that :)
I think my 14-year old would like The Curse He Chose. In fact, I thought I'd gotten her a copy for Christmas, but I didn't. LOL I'll have to order one.
ReplyDeleteCrabgrass Catholicism sounds very interesting. My hometown in the Pittsburgh suburbs had 6 Latin Rite Catholic churches - 2 Polish, 1 Italian, 1 German, 1 Irish + 1 Ukrainian Rite Catholic. In the '90s, the Latin Rite churches were combined into 1 parish with 3 "worship sites." Now it is 1 parish with 1 church building. Meanwhile, the suburbs north of the city were growing and building.