Here Are the Books We Are Reading This Summer

Each year, The Tablet polls its readership about the names of books they are planning to read over the summer months. Here is the first installment of the results:

Summer Reading in the Bechtel Tradition

I RECENTLY MET the good people of St. Benedict Elementary School in South Natick, Mass., which offers classical Catholic education to some very fortunate youngsters. The extensive summer reading lists the school suggests to those kids’ parents put me in mind of my high school English teacher, the late Father W. Vincent Bechtel – who did not, however, do suggestions, and made sure that his charges kept their noses to the grindstone from June through August by assigning us at least a half-dozen novels every summer. Some of them, like Paul Horgan’s “Things As They Are,” I still re-read with pleasure, a half-century later.

Summer Reading Lists Wanted

The Tablet is compiling its list of books that people in the diocese are reading this summer.

Friendship With Books

Dear Editor: “There is no Frigate like a Book/ To take us Lands away/ Nor any Coursers like a Page/ Of prancing Poetry –/ This Traverse may the poorest take/ Without oppress of Toll –/ How frugal is the Chariot/ That bears the Human Soul.“

What We Are Reading This Summer, Part II

Cindy Brolsma Gange Parishioner, Holy Name, Windsor Terrace “Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium,” An Interview with Peter Seewald “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee Jayward Chan Parishioner, St. Bartholomew’s, Elmhurst “Go Set a Watchman,” by Harper Lee “Wolf Hall,” by Hilary Mantel “Bring up the Bodies,” by […]