Books like The Clown — picked by fans

Many of us, when young, read Looking-Glass with Carroll’s first work, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but it was as an adult, eager to reflect philosophically, that I began to appreciate deep puzzles within our language and consciousness – and these are more prominent in Looking-Glass.  

I taught philosophy for many years – oops, not true, I don’t think philosophy can be taught. Rather, I encourage people to step back and think philosophically by confronting paradoxes, using their imagination, and looking beyond appearances. I often recommend Looking-Glass to achieve a sense of bewilderment and the delicious desire to dig into and question everyday assumptions of living.

In days of youth, I would have short holidays on Greek Islands and in countries such as Turkey and Egypt. Later, I briefly lectured in philosophy at the University of Khartoum. The atmosphere of those places — the cultures tied to religions, the hazy hot climate, the pace — well, I found those in Justine (set in Alexandria). The book still appeals to bringing out the fluidity of relationships, ways of seeing others, of interpretations. It is the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet; other volumes look at the same events, but through the eyes of other characters.

I frequently return to Plato and his portrayal of Socrates. The Phaedrus intrigues me. It is a difficult work for piecing together, yet with fascinating thoughts, taking us from rhetoric to erotic love to the search for Beauty, Truth, the Good.  What it is to be human continues to baffle me — not least because we often do have a sense of 'going beyond' the mystical. Yes — I do write as an atheist.  

As a teenager I was struggling to understand the absurdities of life, and then I read Nausea, and found what I was looking for.

This is Sartre’s existential philosophy through fiction. It makes it readable and understandable to the layman and is a compelling psychological study of a breakdown brought on by the absurdity of life. It serves as a panacea when feeling overwhelmed by the fruitlessness of existence, from the absurdity of mortality to the solution to finding a sense of purpose.

It gets into the guts of the mental trauma of questioning anything and everything. Fortunately, there is a way out, and Nausea points the way.

The leading expert on the Holy See during World War II, Ventresca offers us an immensely readable and authoritative biography of the elusive Eugenio Pacelli. In many ways, it surpasses all previous biographies in its comprehensive and convincing analysis of its central subject, Pope Pius XII. Ventresca adeptly bores through the polemical and problematic arguments that encompass the decades-long “Pius Wars” and offers us a balanced portrait of Pacelli, who is neither a condemned reprobate nor an exalted saint. Rather, Ventresca shows that Pacelli was a man of his time, burdened with nearly insurmountable challenges, who nevertheless consistently preferred to address them through a diplomatic path of prudence and caution that always placed the needs of the institutional Church before all other concerns.  

Wolf argues that many conclusions that historians have made about Eugenio Pacelli’s conduct during the 1920s and 30s are valid, having confirmed this in his own investigation of the records released by the Vatican Secret Archive from Pius XI’s pontificate. At the same time, Wolf provides much-needed contextualization to trace the debates within the Vatican around central decisions taken by the Church’s hierarchy in the face of authoritarian regimes. Primarily utilizing four archival record groups from the Nunciatures of Munich and Berlin, Papal Secretariat of State, the Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Wolf reconstructs Rome’s view of Germany from 1917-1939. He shows clear patterns in the choices that Eugenio Pacelli made as Nuncio in Munich and Berlin and as the Holy See’s Cardinal Secretary of State. Wolf’s writing style – made available in this fine translation – makes this complex history… show more.

This is the first book I read that confirmed my own intuition—that Hitchcock’s works are as rich and complex as great literary works.

Brill’s book was a relatively early work of Hitchcock criticism, but an enduring one, a humanistic study with considerable attention paid to the films’ aesthetic and religious dimensions. The latter is fitting because Hitchcock was a deeply Catholic director.

The book offers excellent analyses, with good attention to cinematic and artistic features.

Gah! Virgins! I should mention that this book was actually written in the 80s and flashes back to the 50s, but in the spirit of this list (and simply because I flipping love it), I’m including it here. Peggy and Sean are two good little Catholic teens navigating their senior year of high school. Sean is slated to enter the priesthood upon graduation, testing the limits of the pair’s carnal restraint in the final days of their relationship. I don’t think there’s a book in the world that has influenced my storytelling more than this one. It’s hot, hilarious, and heartbreaking… and pretty much serves as the blueprint for my own book. Highly recommend.

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!

I sort of always knew that the tortuous line of Catholic popes was a road of corruption, war, treachery, conquest, and gathering of secular and sectarian power.

When I started reading this book, my preconceptions were severely beaten. The history of papal rule turned out to be far more bloody. What disturbed me greatly, something I should not have found surprising is that this process is happening even today. I could have dismissed this work as simply another anti-Christian smear campaign were it not for the solid research and undeniable supporting facts. I had to accept the veracity of what I read, understanding why the Church never adopted the concept of separation of powers. To do so would mean its destruction. What to do? More research, of course.