Book Reviews

“Suffering is something we love to talk about when it is ours, but dislike hearing about when it belongs to someone else.” Mother Angelica writes as a spiritual mother on suffering in a way that is relatable and understandable. I began reading her book on suffering because I was experiencing both spiritual and …

In Letters to a Young Researcher, Alvitta Ottley writes a series of letters exploring the questions, feelings, and experiences that arise while learning how to do research. As Ottley writes, “This book lives somewhere between practical advice and emotional recognition.” Its three sections focus on learning to be new, …

Alex feels the weight of responsibility for everyone in Artimé on his shoulders as its mage. As we learned in the previous book, Sky’s mother is alive but enslaved by pirates on the Island of Fire. Alex has committed to rescuing her, but he wants to do it the right way, through careful planning and with the right …

Local Optimization is a short and thoughtful reflection on Alvitta Ottley’s path into academia. She presents the book as a personal reflection on the many decision points in her life, describing her approach as “local optimization.” Rather than beginning with a five-year plan, she made the best decision she could at …

“Don’t be so judgmental!” is a phrase one might hear when talking to someone about morality, right and wrong, or good and evil. Dr. Edward Sri writes Who Am I to Judge? to address the problem of moral relativism and how we can respond to it with logic and love. In a relativistic society, each person can have his or her …

Island of Fire improves on the first two books in the Unwanteds series. In the earlier books, the story sometimes felt slow, and I did not always have a clear sense of where everything was going. We learned about Artimé and Quill, and there were battles and struggles to survive, but I never quite felt that there were …

Puffel Meets a Narwhal is the sequel to the earlier Puffel book, written by Sr. M. Gianna Casino, LIHM. In her children’s books, she is always teaching some kind of life value to kids. In this book, the lesson that I took away from it is that there is more to things than meets the eye. The story begins with Puffel and …

Puffel is a beautifully illustrated children’s book. It has wonderful colors that really make it engaging and visually appealing. At its heart, it tells the story of Puffel, a puffin who sees penguins having fun and doing things that he cannot do. He longs to do the same things and says, “Oh, Mama, I want to be a …

Island of Silence is the second book in The Unwanteds series, and it largely deals with the aftermath of the battle between Artimé and Quill from the first book. Artimé has survived and is now able to come out into the open, as well as allow travel between Artimé and Quill. As such, many of the Necessaries in Quill …

Making Sense Out of Suffering is a book by Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher at Boston College. He writes very well, and this book is no exception. Part of what makes his writing style so effective is that it is very accessible. He is clearly a philosopher and knows the subject deeply, but there is a distinction …