An Unintentional Lenten Literary Theme

I've been on a roll with good books to read lately. This is not always the case. My reading sort of waxes and wanes. I'll go for awhile not having anything particularly compelling to read and then all of the sudden there are multiple books that I want to read.

Thankfully, I'm in the latter stage at the moment. Want to see? Of course you do!

A. buys a lot of books for the boys, especially the older two, based on things he would have liked to have read himself when he was younger. Or that he wants to read now. I'm not sure where he came across this one, but the title gave me pause.

Hmm.

Based on the title and the fact that I know how inappropriate books about the special forces can be, I thought I'd better vet this one before handing it over to my sons. I read the first half of it, which was actually very entertaining. By the time I got to the author's time in Rhodesia, I sort of lost interest--I'm not really very much for detailed military maneuvers--but I had read enough to know that the author was quite circumspect in what he chose to share about his personal life. I appreciated the delicacy with which he talked around the various situations involving women that are an inevitable part of any soldier's memoirs. Plus, he was very funny. Also a bit crazy, maybe, but in an adventuresome way.

Good job, A.

Next was a book that I bought for my sons, after seeing it on the shelves at the hotel I stayed at in January. I don't have a photo of it, but its title is Cold Sassy Tree, and it's by Olive Ann Burns. I had a copy of it for the longest time. I think it eventually fell apart and I never replaced it, but I thought the boys would like it, so I bought it for them. I re-read it last week and it really is an excellent book. It's set in a small town in Georgia at the turn of the 20th century. I've always loved Southern fiction. The narrator is a 14-year-old boy, and the author nails the character of a teenage boy coming of age. There are some things in it that I had forgotten about that make it maybe not appropriate for my ten-year-old quite yet, but the older two boys really liked it.

Good job, me.

And now for what I'm reading at the moment. 

I didn't plan this, but I apparently have a religious theme for all my books for this start of Lent.

I started reading the Catechism after I finished the Bible. I only read maybe five pages a day. Maybe more, maybe less, depending on what I'm reading about and how interested I am in it.

With God in Russia was written by a Catholic priest about his time as a prisoner in Siberian work camps during World War 2. Our priest loaned it to my older son, thinking he would like it. He did indeed really like it, as did his next-youngest brother. Both of them loved it, in fact, so I thought I'd try it. I was assured by my sons that there was nothing really disturbing in it, and indeed, it is remarkably drama-free considering the drama inherent in the man's situation. It's interesting to read older memoirs like this one (it was published in 1964), because the authors don't try to shock their readers like I feel modern authors do with the more salacious or disturbing parts of their lives. I'm sure this priest saw the absolute worst humanity could be in these situations, but that's not what he focuses on. 

Of course, I'm only about a quarter of the way in, so it could get way worse, but I don't think it will.

And last, the Janette Oke book was one I picked up from the book-sharing shelf at our local post office. I had I think every Janette Oke book when I was in middle school. I loved them. They're Christian fiction, sort of vaguely homesteady--set in Canada during their period of settlement--with some very chaste romance. My equivalent of a "fluff" book, I guess.

What are you reading right now? Anything you'd recommend for my next waning period?