More Books for Christmas!!!

My husband knows me well enough to just go ahead and buy me books for Christmas.

(He also got me a lovely silver crucifix that I’d eyeballed at Aquinas and More.)

Two were from my wishlist:

Leaving My Beloved Children Behind by Takashi Nagai. After reading Nagai’s Bells of Nagasaki, I’m really looking forward to this, the only other of his books that has been translated into English.

Catherine of Siena by Singrid Undset, the author of Kristen Lavransdattar. This will be the second novel about St. Catherine I’ve read, since I just finished Louis de Wohl’s Lay Siege to Heaven.

and one book that he’d heard several favorable reviews of:

Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen. Kind of fun to be surprised by something off list!

My parents also bought me books, all from my wish list:

Light of the World, the new Pope Benedict book.

District and Circle, a volume of poetry by Seamus Heaney that I don’t yet own.

Human Chain Seamus Heaney’s most recent volume, released in 2010.

I also managed to acquire a few Christmas gifts to myself while I was doing my other holiday shopping:

The Loser Letters by Mary Eberstadt. I picked this up with the gift certificate to Aquinas and More that I won by flooding Dorian’s domestic church photo contest with more photos than all the other entrants put together.

Also, I acquired a copy of The Road from Roxbury from the lovely Melissa Wiley.

These are now on the top of the to be read pile. I’ve got a lovely warm glow of anticipation when I gaze upon my pile. Of course even as I type this, I’ve just realized that I never finished all the books I received for my birthday back in August. I have this problem where I keep getting excited about books people mention and I put them on hold at the library. Then those books of course get bumped to the top of the pile because they have to go back by the due date. And so the books I own get forgotten and neglected. Poor little books, I really do want to read you. But you got shoved into a corner and forgotten.

So add these to my to be read list as well:

Rocking the Cradle Catholic by Mary Moore

Come Meet Jesus by Amy Welborn.

A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep the first volume of Rumer Godden’s autobiography.

Funny how now that I got that post written about my backlog of books from the end of 2010 I suddenly feel this amazing freedom to write about my current reads and even my to be read. It’s like a weight is off my shoulders.