Category: BOOKS

  • THREE GREAT CALIFORNIA MEMOIRS AND A BLESSED ADVENT

    THREE GREAT CALIFORNIA MEMOIRS AND A BLESSED ADVENT

    Blessed Advent to all!

    In this week’s Angelus News column, I consider three great California memoirs: God’s Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine, by Victoria Sweet, MD; Dear Los Angeles: The City In Diaries and Letters, 1542 to 2018, edited by David Kipen: and Joan Didion’s Where I Was From.

    So many memoirs, so little time…I’ve already got the draft of a column called “Three MORE Great California Memoirs.”

    Meanwhile, I came across this essay from a book of Christmas readings that’s on my list to read and feature in 2026. “The Dangers of Advent,” by J.B. Phillips, the essay’s called, and the blurb runs: “No amount of familiarity with the trappings of Christmas should blind us to its quiet but explosive significance.” Check it out.

    I’m off to NYC December 22 for a week. This will be the second year in a row I’m on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for Christmas and I just may make it an annual ritual. Cannot wait to walk the frosty streets, see the lights, and mingle with the world’s hoi polloi as we await, whether we know/recognize it or not, the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

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  • JANE EYRE,A WRITING WORKSHOP, AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING

    JANE EYRE,A WRITING WORKSHOP, AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING

    This week’s Angelus News column is on one of the world’s most beloved novels: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. I read it last summer for the first time since late childhood and realized I’d missed a whole lot.

    As reported earlier this week, I’ll be giving a week-long Memoir Writing Workshop at St. Andrew’s Abbey in Valyermo, CA, July 6-10, 2026. More on this anon and would love to see you there.

    I’m off to the Central Coast next Tuesday with two kinds of home-made cookies and a surprise snack for my hosts! Happy Thanksiving to all.

  • JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA FOR A MEMOIR-WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    THE FLAME WITHIN: WRITING YOUR LIFE

    JOIN ME AT ST. ANDREW’S ABBEY IN VALYERMO, CALIFORNIA JULY 6-10, 2026 FOR A WEEK-LONG MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP!!

    This week-long memoir writing workshop with award-winning author Heather King offers a unique opportunity to reflect, write, and grow. Designed for writers at any stage, the workshop emphasizes the value of the creative process, while the peaceful rhythms of St. Andrew’s Abbey will afford space for silence, self-inquiry, and honest expression.

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  • THE FABULOUS ART OF PHILADELPHIA’S BARNES FOUNDATION, THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, AND RADIO TAISO

    THE FABULOUS ART OF PHILADELPHIA’S BARNES FOUNDATION, THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE, AND RADIO TAISO

    In this week’s Angelus News column, I give my take on a recent visit to Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation, a world-class collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modernist paintings.

    So overwhelming was the bounty that I ended up collapsed on a bench, gazing mutely for several minutes at a tiny Cézanne of a white plate, a bunch of grapes, and a single peach.

    In other news, I am reading The Intellectual Life by Fr. Antonin Sertillanges, OP, first published in 1921–who says I’m out of step with contemporary culture?–boning up on Rembrandt and van Gogh for my Jan. trip to Amsterdam, ascertained from my airbnb host there that I can do a laundry at her place and put it on a drying rack, booked a shuttle bus from Tucson to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport for Dec 22 when I fly to NYC for Christmas, made a Walmart Superstore run for the Thanksgiving cookies and snacks I’ll bring to my friends in Santa Maria, CA, that week, watered the oleander out back, vacuumed the car, filled the birdfeeder for the finches, and on the advice of a friend from Maine just my age have started doing this Japanese exercise routine, only takes 3 or 4 minutes, called Radio Taiso.

    According to an article I read, the whole country performs these exercises every morning in synch and then they are all cheerful and limber and live to be 120.

    All together now!

  • AN ELIE WIESEL DOCUMENTARY, PHILADELPHIA GARDENS, AND SILENCE

    AN ELIE WIESEL DOCUMENTARY, PHILADELPHIA GARDENS, AND SILENCE

    This week’s Angelus News column is a reflection on a 2024 documentary, directed by Oren Rudavsky, called Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.

    Plus the Holy Spirit Adoration Sisters, art galore, and the glories of Philadelphia gardens over at Substack.

    And my take on Jane Brox’s Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives.

    If you’ve enjoyed my work for the last year or two, or 10, or 15, plase think about supporting it with a free or paid ($5/month) subscription at DESIRE LINES: BOOKS, CULTURE, ART.

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER AUGUST 15, 2025: OVERWHELMED WOMEN, THE ASSUMPTION OF THE BVM, AND A MEMOIR WRITING WORKSHOP

    This week’s Angelus News column is on a book called The Most Overwhelmed Women of the Bible by Mary DeMuth. Granted, they didn’t have e-mail and cell phones, BUT.

    Today of course is a beautiful Solemnity and a Holy Day of Obligation: The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary body and soul into heaven. A few years ago, I went to a Mass at a women’s retreat place and the “progressive” priest man-splained the whole homily about how of course we women didn’t believe such nonsense, and all but apologized on behalf of the Church for having to celebrate the feast. I can’t bear playng “the woman card,” but give me a break–he didn’t even get how insufferably obnoxious it was to be forced to sit and listen to a guy tell me what I was supposed to believe and feel…especially because I was in fact trembling with joy at the thought of Our Lady’s special way of being welcomed into Paradise, there to be crowned QUEEN OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.

    I felt exactly like the hungering and thirsting send-off crowd in Titian’s painting–

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 11, 2025: OUR FATHER WHO ART IN AN IRON LUNG

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JULY 11, 2025: OUR FATHER WHO ART IN AN IRON LUNG

    This week’s arts and culture column is a review of a memoir (his first book, at 75!) by my college friend Dougie Dodd.

    Our Father Who Art in an Iron Lung is a memoir about growing up with a father who was stricken with polio in his early 30s and lived 21 more years.

    I visited the Norton Simon Museum today, home of Van Gogh’s “The Mulberry Tree,” Zurburán’s “Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose,” about which the Pultizer Prize- winning food critic Jonathan Gold once wrote an iconic essay, and Cézanne’s “Tulips in a Vase.”

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 20, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 20, 2025

    Public shaming, scolding, and snitching aren’t punishable by law, but everyone knows betraying a friend is a dastardly moral crime.

    Or everyone used to.

    In this culture where calling out “friends” is actually lauded, in this week’s Angelus column I ponder the nobility of the martyrs who went the other way and died under torture.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 13, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER JUNE 13, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about a 1963 film called A Child is Waiting, directed by John Cassavetes. Burt Lancaster plays the psychiatrist director of Crawthorne, a state institution for children with mental and emotional disabilities, and Judy Garland is a new teacher who challenges his methods.

    Over on Substack you’ll find a review of Tove Jansson’s A Summer Book and another of Rose-Lynn Fisher’s A Topography of Tears.

    June is the hottlest month of the year here in Tucson, but I sort of like the long afternoons inside with my films and books and then Evening Prayer and Mass at Newman Center (I have other options as well).

    Still one slot left in my next Writing Workshop–it starts a week from tomorrow, so last call!

    PART OF THE BRIEF, GLORIOUS CACTI BLOOM FROM EARLIER THIS WEEK

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 30, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 30, 2025

    This week’s arts and culture column features a podcast (the only one I listen to, actually) I HIGHLY recommend: Haptic & Hue.

    From the H & H website:

    Haptic & Hue explores the way in which cloth speaks to us and the impact it has on our lives. It looks at how fabric traditions have grown up and the innovations that underpin its creation. It thinks about the skills that go into constructing it and what it means to the people who use it. It looks at the different light textiles cast on the story of humanity.

    All of humanity, not only women. This is a quality offering, and the people who make it do the world a great service.

    Other news: The entire month of May in Tucson has been heaven. Temps haven’t yet soared to the uncomfortable 100-degree plus range. I spend each early monring on my front patio enjoying my aviary. A pesky ground squiirrel has teken up residence under an adcaent shed and keeps trying to dig a burrow in the back yard which I just know would extend underneath the house. Let’s just say I am an a first-name basis with several of the personnel at Termagon.

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 23, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about the (my) unfortunate tendency to want the people I help to have PROMISE! Ha ha, good luck with that! Just ask Jesus…

    On other fronts, I am having fun over at Substack and invite you to join me there.

    I’m working up a column on four or five California food writers, which will make for some juicy reading.

    I’m looking forward to my upcoming visit to LA, followed by a retreat at St. Andrew’s Abbey.

    I have subscribed for a month to MAX in order to watch ROLAND GARROS aka the French Open. It took me months to recover from Garbine Muguruza’s retirement, but now my gal is Peyton Stearns.

    And I am deep in silence, solitude, gratitude, and prayer.

    Wishing one and all a lovely three-day weekend.

  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 3, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER MAY 3, 2025

    This week my Angelus News column features several iconic California novels:

    “West was an eccentric and a huge boozer. He died at 37 when, en route back to LA from a trip to Mexicali, he ran a stop sign near the Salton Sea and caused an accident which killed him and his young wife.

    He achieved posthumous semi-cult fame and “The Day of the Locust” was later made into a movie.

    That’s a story with California written all over it.”

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  • WEEKLY NEWSLETTER APRIL 5, 2025

    WEEKLY NEWSLETTER APRIL 5, 2025

    This week’s Angelus News column is about the C.S. Lewis essay, “The Abolition of Man.”

    If you’ve been following along, you know I have launched a new Substack: DESIRE LINES: BOOKS I LOVE.

    Here’s a complimentary post, free to all, called Bring Back Betty MacDonald!

    From hereon in, most posts will be available to paid subscribers only.

    I’m very excited about sharing my love of books, and hope you’ll come along for the ride!

    GOD AND MAMMON

    “You remember some of the “harsh” sayings of our Lord: Let the dead bury their dead, Unless a man hate his father and his mother, Sell all thou hast: what are they telling you if not the same thing: you cannot serve God and Mammon, you cannot be at the same time a Christian and a self-complacent egoist, you cannot claim to follow Christ if you give only half of yourself to Christ. There is no way to life except through death and re-birth: that re-birth in the Spirit means a full surrender of will, through love, to the will of the Spirit.”

    –Gerald Vann, OP, The Pain of Christ

  • INTRODUCING MY NEW SUBSTACK–BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!

    INTRODUCING MY NEW SUBSTACK–BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS!

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    DESIRE LINES: BOOKS I LOVE. Memoir, eccentric travel, family dysfunction, pilgrimage, prayer, biography, the vocation of art, sinners, saints. I write myself.

    HERE’S MY WELCOME PAGE.

    READ MY OPENING POST HERE!

    If you love books, you’re going to love this Substack. Many of you have followed me for years–subscribing would be a beautiful way to support my efforts. THANK YOU!!

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