Peter CostelloAt this time of the year the bookshops are filled with books of all kinds, a great many simply produced for immediate seasonal sale, with little hope that they will be of any lasting value to anyone in the months, let alone the years to come.
However, among these daunting piles of printed paper for which whole forests have been felled, there are some titles which may well be of special interest, for one reason or another, to readers of The Irish Catholic. On these pages we present our seasonal selection of some of them.
TWO PONTIFICAL BOOKS
One of the most interesting books of the last two months as been the recollections of Pope Benedict XVI gathered in interviews by his old and intimate friend the German journalist Peter Seewald, Last Testament: In His Own Words (Bloomsbury, £16.99).
This is rather bleakly labelled by his publishers as the Emeritus Pope’s “last book” – which cannot be really true. It contains his own account of why he resigned his office – serious heart problems prevented him from travelling aboard on the pastoral journeys which are now such an important part of the Pope’s work.
Having witnessed the manner in which the increasingly frail St John Paul soldiered on, he felt he owed a duty to the Church to let a younger man follow him. But though these passages were concentrated on by the press, the book provides a review of his whole life, as a teacher, a theologian and a Vatican official, his critical experiences and his aims and endeavours.
Seewald has managed to create from their conversations a very remarkable book, which will be read with avid interest by many kinds of Catholics.
In contrast is another book, now in the shops, The Tweetable Pope: How Francis Shapes the Catholic Church 140 Characters at a Time, by Michael J. O’Loughlin (Lion, £7.99). The Pope has found (like Donald Trump) that the tweet provides a sense of immediate contact with a mass audience, in a way which was impossible in previous generations.
Instead of papal thinking being strained though the press department of the Vatican, fronted all too often by priests whose grasp of the idioms of English are not always strong. Author O’Loughlin is a staff reporter on the Boston Globe’s magazine Crux, which reports on “all things Catholic”.
The idea of a Pope with a Twitter account may dismay some people; but then, as the author points out, the tweets enable Francis to reduce important things to their basic essence. He reveals just how these messages, through the wide range of topics they cover, and the immediacy of their impact, “both builds the Church and challenges vested interests”.
If Benedict’s book reveals much about where the Vatican has came from, this analysis of Pope Francis illuminates where the Church may be going.
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHRISTMAS
At this time of the year families are so bound up in the traditional feasting and good will, that individuals may find they have little time to think about the meaning of the Nativity, as Christians are so often urged to do by their priests and ministers. Perhaps Hidden Christmas: The surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ by Timothy Keller (Hodder & Stoughton, £12.99) will help.
Here is a book which may provide some new and perhaps stimulating insights. The Rev. Timothy Keller is a Presbyterian minister who established Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.
His ministry concentrates on that district’s young professionals and artists (the very people who to the dismay of their parents seem to have no religion at all). Keller thinks they are “disproportionally influential” in creating the common culture of today.
His fresh and perhaps surprising take on the Nativity begins by pointing out that Matthew’s Gospel, from which so many of the popular ideas derive, opens with a genealogy which very unusually includes the women in the family line of Jesus. As we all know only too well Middle Eastern cultures, today and in the past had little regard for women.
Now he points this up, not for a fashionable feminist reason, but to demonstrate that a careful reading of the genealogy reveals not a regal line, but a resumé of sin and deceit. It underlines an essential feature of Christianity “that people who are excluded by culture, excluded by respectable society, and even excluded by the law of God can be brought into Jesus’s family”. Would that all would bear that in mind.
At the end of the book he returns to those young professionals and their belief that doctrines don’t matter; that it’s living a good life that counts. But, notes Keller, that is a doctrine: salvation through good works.
So good Presbyterian that he is he brings his reader back to the need for grace. (But as Paul says (Ephesians 2:10), “Genuine salvation is entirely of God and it inevitably results in a life of good works.”)
Earlier he had noted a remark by Vaclav Havel that pursuit of the good was not enough, a “turning to and a seeking of God is needed” as well. Into a very few pages Timothy Keller packs a very great deal which will be read with interest and insight by all Chrstians.
… and elsewhere in the book shop forest
Readers of this paper will be familiar with Mary Kenny’s column. What they do not all realise though is that she writes for a wide range of papers and magazines on a weekly basis. She is a remarkably active writer, who manages (miraculously) to find something fresh to say to each of her audiences.
In this book, taking a year as it comes, she deals with many things. A Day at a Time: Thoughts and Reflections through the Seasons (New Island Books, €11.96) covers not only the insight on religion and spirituality, which readers enjoy in these pages, but other aspect of her life.
She is fully aware of what life can bring to everyone in its course, but she remains always resourceful, entertaining, and filled with good will towards nearly everyone. This is a book for Christmas which will last the whole year through.
With all the commemorations going on at present it would a good time for readers to remind themselves that there is more to Irish and Dublin history that the Easter Rising. The beautifully produced Dublin: the story of a City, by Stephen Conlin and Peter Harbison (O’Brien Press, €29.99) is very much a summary of two life’s time work and research by an extremely talented artist and an assiduous and careful scholar.
The detailed but carefully designed images of Stephen Conlin bring alive to the past appearances of the city, for which Dr Harbison proves a lively but well written account of the centuries. These by the way are new images and not a reprise of those that appeared in Stephen Conlin’s book for the Millennium.
Revival
Mary Berry of late has seen the revival of a style of cooking that seemed to been dismissed by all the cheerful young pot stirrers who seem these days to achieve instant fame. For Christmas she has brought out Mary Berry Family Sunday Lunches (Headline €29.99), which surely is what every family needs, a weekly get together and a celebration of good relations and good food. If you really must buy a cook book for Christmas, this is the one buy.
The creation of Ireland has been so much on people’s mind that Modern Ireland in 100 Art Works, by Fintan O’Toole & Catherine Marshall (Collins Press, €29.99) makes for interesting reading. Art works is interpreted in a very broad sense, for here are not only paintings and portraits, but other kinds of designs, such as book jackets (An tOileánach, Cré na Cille), items that still have for many people a deeply emblematic meaning. This is a book with an informed commentary which will, quite literally, open the eyes of many readers to the importance of some everyday things they may never have given a thought to before.
Agatha Christie was not the only one who though that a nice warm fire and drawn curtains on a winter night are ideal for reading a good detective thriller. So for your thriller for Christmas readers can do no better than The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories (Faber & Faber, €11.99), by the late great P. D. James. She always managed to combine realistic, well observed human situations with subtle detective revelations. These collected items will be a real treat for more than her die-hard admirers.
Recitals
The Invisible Art: A Century of Music in Ireland 1916-2016, edited by Michael Devan (New Island, €29.99) which is published in association with a series of recitals at the National Concert Hall is a book which has long been needed, music being perhaps a much neglected art indeed compared with painting and poetry in this country. Already nominated for major awards, this is among the most important books published in Ireland this year.
In Ireland thanks to the golden age of early Irish Christianity we are conscious of the beauty and the importance of manuscripts, of the hand-made book, so often a work of art in itself that flourished before the invention of printing. Christopher de Hamel, in Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (Allen Lane, €34.99) explores this realm.
One of the much loved books in my small library has long been a copy of Leo Deuel’s Testaments of Time. This remarkable described the search for manuscripts and records, including Biblical manuscripts over the centuries.
De Hamel’s book now joins it on the shelf. The illuminations that we think of the main beauty of the Books of Kells, are rivalled not only by the beauty of the scripts but also by the content of the books. Though little seen these days these manuscripts carried the course of culture, learning and religion down over the centuries. The ignorance that so often surrounds collections of books does not secure the works of the past from destruction. Here is an opportunity to enjoy some of the great things of the past albeit at second-hand.
Among the host of book about the Irish revolution that have appeared this year, Douglas Hyde: Forgotten Patriot by Brian Murphy (Collins Press, €19.99) must have pride of place, for here was a book that really needed to be written. Dr Hyde was the first president of Ireland. He was an Anglo-Irish gentleman and Gaelic scholar of international standing. His appointment set a headline which a succession of career politicians that followed him came close to erasing. Here is a reminder that the Irish Revival was not entirely about fighting in the street or back lane murders; it was also about the celebration of an ancient culture.
The title of John Bowman’s compilation Ireland: The Autobiography (Penguin Ireland, €23.99) is a bit of a misnomer, for of course Ireland it not merely a long 100 years old; our island has been inhabited by human beings for 10,000 years. What makes us today is the totality of the experiences over that long time, not all of them Celtic or Gaelic by any means. But such carping aside, this collection of accounts showing the last century in the making will be found deeply interesting by many people.
Undoubtedly the sports book of the year has to be Paul O’Connell’s The Battle (Penguin Ireland, €19.99). The autobiographies of sports people, rather like those of any celebratory are often poorly written, ghosted books.
But this account of his life and play by one of the most admired players and leaders of recent times, contains as much about the real tribulations of the man, as the trials of rugby itself. There is for all readers a great deal to admire, and a great deal to learn, about life, sport and leadership from his pages.
Anecdotes
Many readers will not want to miss Ireland’s Own – The 2016 Anthology of Winning Irish Short Stories, edited by Phil Murphy (Ireland’s Own, €14.99), the seventh annual anthology, which contains a collection of 39 stories including fiction, anecdotes and memories from prize-winners and highly commended entrants in the annual writing competition organised by Ireland’s Own, Ireland’s leading family magazine since 1902.
The stories were selected by a panel of judges from more than 500 entries from all over Ireland, north and south.
The stories cover the spectrum of human emotion and experience and feature love, loss and nostalgia. Michael Harding, the award winning writer, actor and columnist provides the foreword for the anthology. An ideal present for those friends and relations living and working abroad.