Books like Encountering Mary — picked by fans

I read this novel when I was twenty-two years old.

I remember exactly where I was (in the kitchen of a dilapidated apartment I loved) and what time of day I read it (early afternoon until early evening). I cackled and sobbed (I am not a sobber), and afterward, I couldn’t get the main character’s voice out of my head for days. He narrated everywhere I went and everything I did.

Before then, I’d always written casual nonsense for my own entertainment, but I knew afterward I wanted to do that—I wanted to make people laugh, horrify them, and put their hearts through the wringer. 

I love Warner’s work because her books address big questions about belief and meaning, such as those behind beloved fairy tales or the heroic history of Joan of Arc. 

In this book, Warner traces shifting legends about the Virgin Mary buried in theological debates, literature, and art over 2000 years of Christianity. Warner reminded me that, although the Gospels seem full of Marys and Mariams, Scripture offers little information about the mother of Christ, which has allowed generations of believers the freedom to envision her as they saw fit. 

I came away from the book wondering why the Virgin’s appearance and wardrobe have not changed much over 2000 years. She is always a beautiful, usually young woman wearing droopy robes and a veil, sometimes a crown or halo, and often carrying a book or a baby. Maybe it’s so the faithful can recognize her when she descends in a cloud… show more.

I adored the film version of this book when I was about ten, and I still remember the saintly Bernadette limping around the monastery, refusing treatment for her deathly disease. The novel’s author was a Czech Jew who left 1930s Vienna and found refuge in the town of Lourdes, where Bernadette Soubirous saw the Virgin in 1858.

As thanks, he wrote this tearjerker about Bernadette and the beautiful lady who appeared to her eighteen times in a grotto outside town. Word got around, and both religious and civic officials challenged Bernadette’s story, mostly because she was uneducated and came from a wretched family. They threatened her with hell and an insane asylum. Yet hundreds of people seemed to be miraculously healed by the waters of the grotto, and most of the skeptics were persuaded. Werfel romanticizes Bernadette’s life, but the story follows the visionary into a convent where she eventually… show more.

I live in southern California, where la Señora de Guadalupe appears all around us in bright murals on grocería walls, on t-shirts and jackets, as tattoos, even as dangling air fresheners. According to the earliest legend, included in this volume, she first appeared in 1531 to a peasant named Cuauh-tlahtoa—a.k.a. Juan Diego—on the hill of Tepeyac, at the edge of modern Mexico City.

The site was sacred to Tonantzin (the local name for a mother goddess), but Mary emerged there at dawn in her bright green and red gown amidst a flowerful garden that resembled the paradise of the Aztecs. It took a miracle for Juan Diego to persuade the Archbishop of Mexico City that the Virgin wanted a shrine built on the hill; he turned up at the episcopal palace one December day with his cloak full of out-of-season roses. When he spilled the flowers at the bishop’s feet,… show more.

I flew through The Lesiana’s Guide to Catholic School book.

It was set, as the title suggests at a Catholic School. There were a lot of themes that I really related to, such as growing up in a religious family and being scared to reveal yourself true identity to your family and friends. I thought the family dynamics were very realistic, as were the characters.

This book was a very enjoyable read!

There are a bazillion romances about good girls attracted to bad boys.

Here’s one about a good girl attracted to a good guy, but neither of them can seem to get past his bad boy past. It’s easy to give lip service to redemption – sure, people change! But to build a life on that change? That’s another thing.

There’s a lot of forced proximity in West Castle that helps bring Caitlyn, our good girl (who has her own flaws), and Jared, our bad boy (who is trying so hard to be a better man), together. The romantic tension kept me reading through to the end!

If you’re older, you probably read O’Connor’s short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” for one or more lit classes; if you’re younger, you may have never heard of her as she is now “problematic” according to the unfunny woke-on-steroids crowd. I love O’Connor because I love characters with moral failings, I love mordant humor, and I love the possibility that even the most irredeemable among us can experience moments of grace. The brief details in her stories do such heavy lifting in terms of irony, for example when a Wellesley undergrad hits Mrs. Turpin in the head with a copy of Human Development in the short story “Revelation.” The action itself – a privileged white college student from an elite school inflicting violence upon a rural white woman – also speaks to our ongoing culture wars. 

Speaking of ancient wisdom: Here you have a manual of right and wrong. You’re not going to agree with all of it, or even most of it. But what I got out of reading this, before I became Catholic, was that some very smart people over the course of hundreds of years had thought through the basic norms of correct action and written them down. The catechism embeds rules for living within a larger framework of reality, built on faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of God. Again, most of you aren’t going to believe that, as I didn’t when I first read the Catechism. But the critical thing is the coherence and accountability in this document. Nothing is out of place. Every rule for right action has some connection to the overarching scheme. There are no inconsistencies (this is the church’s theory, not its actions).

And by… show more.

I read this book the summer I became dean. 

I wanted to get a sense of the recent history of American Catholic higher education, and this book offered a comprehensive intellectual and institutional history of American Catholic higher education—just what I was looking for and felt I needed as an administrator at a Catholic university.

This is a touching story about love and forgiveness, of oneself as well as of others. The novel is partially historical: the narrative shifts between the 1940s and the present day. The storylines are linked by a beautiful rose ring that is important to the heroines in both eras. Both storylines include love, loss, and love re-found, but not before the modern-day heroine must face what her heart is truly telling her. More than one character finds the redemption that true forgiveness can bring, but each also discovers the journey can be challenging. This novel drops a surprise twist in the middle, so keep your eyes open! I had tears in my eyes when the stories converged and brought closure.