The Australian summer means many things: the beach, the cricket, the tennis, the humming of cicadas. But equally a hallmark of this leisurely season is the opportunity for reading. Not the harried reading of the semester, which must be squeezed in the midst of weighty hours wrestling with textbooks;  summer reading is quite another phenomenon altogether. During the halcyon days of the summer break, we have the opportunity to lose ourselves in the vastness of a book for hours. Immersing our bodies in an expanse of water, immersing our minds in an expanse of words; summer is our opportunity to leave behind the trivialities of the day-to-day working round, in search of an encounter with something greater.

It is a cliché, of course, but nonetheless true: reading does offer us this opportunity to escape the limits of our mundane lives. In books, other times, other lands, other worlds lie open; as C.S. Lewis noted, the reader lives in a mental universe whose horizons are wider and richer than those of the non-reader.  The freedom of the mind to wander at will across the centuries which reading provides seems more important than the freedom of the body; James I said he would be content to be a prisoner in the Bodleian Library, and I could endorse the same sentiment with regard to the Fisher (so long as regular hot meals were forthcoming, and comfortable bedding were installed).

There is an alternative point of view, of course. It is true that over-indulgence in reading can cause a sort of mental indigestion, in the form of the voracious reader who can parrot every argument and sentiment he has ever read, but who has never giving himself time to reflect on what he has read and let it develop into original thought. This is a weakness of mine, perhaps, as my fondness for over-quotation, evident in this article, attests!

Could I go as far so as to agree with the aphorism of Jorge Luis Borges, that “paradise will be a kind of library?” I think this is indicative of a broader difficulty all of us face sometimes: the promised ecstasies of heaven can sometimes seem rather vague and colourless compared with the concrete, down-to-earth joys we know in this life, from the barbecue and the beach to our books. As great a Catholic as the French novelist Georges Bernanos confessed on his deathbed, with perfectly understandable human emotion, that he had loved this beautiful earthly life more than he had ever dared tell. We fear leaving it; we would prefer to imagine heaven as a continuation and intensification of the richest parts of our life here below.

And in a sense of course, this is right, as long as the thought is not taken too literally. Whatever joy we experience in things here below exists because we find in them faint echo in them of the wisdom, the beauty, the love of God. In heaven, the types will have departed, and we will be face to face with God, eternally in communion with perfect wisdom, ever apprehending more and more of the truth of things: all the pleasures we have found in the books, and in life, will find their perfect fulfillment. All our joy in words attests to our eternal destiny with the Word.

Patrick Giam

In his General Audience of March 12 last year, Pope Benedict spoke on two ecclesiastical writers who lived in the period immediately following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. One of these was Ancius Boethius, who from a noble Roman family rose quickly to the rank of consul under the Ostrogoth King Theodoric. He also devoted himself to the study of a range of philosophical, religious and other subjects. A deep knowledge of Greek philosophy and literature, something that was becoming rarer even in his own times, enabled him to write The Consolation of Philosophy while imprisoned in Pavia, having been accused of plotting against Theodoric. Scholars maintain that it was likely that he completed the book from the basis of his memory and genius alone.

Pope Benedict pointed out Boethius’ work as an important reminder that a “fatalistic acceptance of a condition of suffering is nothing short of perilous... because ‘it eliminates at its roots the very possibility of prayer and of theological hope, which forms the basis of man’s relationship with God’”.

Having spoken to a couple of peers who also read The Consolation, I am convinced that any serious reader will find something of interest in Boethius, and that which will grab them most will differ according to one’s particular interest. As for me, it is his dialogues on a range of philosophical subjects from chance to free will, from suffering to the supreme Good, which highlighted Boethius’ role as a link between the ancient world and that of medieval philosophy. But there is also a spiritual dimension in the work that flows from its combination of poetry and philosophy, a fusion which indeed proves consoling yet also provokes concern over the modern age.

James Baxter

I am currently re-reading the autobiography of Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk and writer who died in 1968.  It was first published in the United States in 1948 with the title The Seven Storey Mountain and in Britain the following year as Elected Silence.

It is a very interesting book simply because Merton had a very interesting life.  It is the story of Merton’s childhood odyssey through France, America and England, his days as a debauched, directionless undergraduate, his conversion to the Catholic Church, his aborted attempt to enter the Franciscans, and finally his entry into a Cistercian monastery in Kentucky.

Unlike some – or perhaps most – spiritual classics, The Seven Storey Mountain would easily be understood by most readers.  It is not daunting in either its expression or its depth.  Merton moves with ease between the abstract and the concrete.  He pauses occasionally to make a theological or philosophical observation, before continuing with very detailed descriptions of what he was thinking, saying and doing at a particular point in his life.  It is also beautifully written.  Merton had lectured in composition and English literature prior to entering the monastery, and his mastery of these disciplines is evident from the first sentence of the book.

Daniel Hill

I am reading the translated Don Cammillo series by Giovanni Guareschi.

The book is a collection of short "fables" about Don Camillo, a country Italian priest and his nemesis Peppone, the Communist Mayor of a small Italian town on the Po river in post-war Italy. The two share a love-hate relationship with erupts in stories of deep inslight an hilarity. As a character, Don Camillo is a man of virtue and strength, capable of 'chastising' many with his burly arms, which often gets him in and out of trouble.

The conversations Don Camillo has with Christ are insightful and charming and reminds one of the simple way to approach the Lord. The work is simple and very readable and recommende for someone looking for light reading that does not dull the mind.

David Collits

At the moment I am reading Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour, George H. Nash’s The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America and Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of Christ. 

Waugh, famous twentieth century English convert to Catholicism and author of Brideshead Revisited, explores the experience of a World War II Catholic soldier, Guy Crouchback, in Sword of Honour.  Like Brideshead, it is written with a sense of melancholy, as Guy finds himself in different theatres of the war in different parts of the English army.  Not seeing much combat there seems little design to Guy’s military activities.  A bit like Charles Rider, Guy seems to float through life without huge emotion; rather things happen to him in a seemingly haphazarded manner.  There is an important lesson here – life, despite our best intentions and our most stringent plans tend to get away from us.  So what do we do?  Trust God and believe that His Providence will take us to where we are meant to be.

Nash’s work is an intellectual history of the conservative movement in the United States in the mid-twentieth century.  It contains much food for thought for a young Catholic.  In particular, it traces the emergence of a strong religious defence of Western tradition as one of the strands of the movement.  Indeed, a major plank of the conservative critique of liberalism is its ambitious and presumptuous aim to remake society according to the dictates of human reason and structures.  The Christian insight about original sin and the lessons of the twentieth century show how dangerous this is.  Nevertheless, as the author notes, there is hope: if ideas have consequences (to borrow the title of Richard M Weaver’s book), it is possible for Catholic ideas and intellectuals to change the world for the better.

Finally, the Imitation is a work not needing much discussion from me.  A short work, it is steeped with practical but deeply spiritual advice on improving one’s disposition to oneself and God.