A Review of Books

This is not about any book in particular

It’s been a while since I’ve written a paid subscriber-only newsletter, so that’s what this is. I’m grateful to people who are willing to support my work financially, and this is a way that I can share a little bit extra of myself with you. Many times I try to review something that’s popular in media at the moment, like movies or TikTok trends, but I honestly haven’t been engaging with very much media worth reviewing lately. This week so far I’ve watched the Netflix Jerry Springer documentary and season 2 of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, just to give you an idea of what I mean.

I’m a committed Catholic who strives to pray without ceasing, but for a while I’ve only been doing sporadic spiritual reading. I read a lot about my faith through articles and snippets on social media, but actually sitting down with a book with the intention of learning about God and how I can be in better relationship with Him has just not been happening. I have a stack of books, like I imagine you do as well, all of which I think will lead me to heaven if only I were to crack them open.

Part of my therapy right now is to be absolutely meticulous about a bedtime routine. Nights are hardest for me with my mental illness, a time when it is necessary to let my guard down so I can get to sleep. Letting my guard down means letting go of the coping skills that I use to survive throughout the day. And yes, I am pretty much always using a coping skill, whether that’s deep breathing or grounding, or some sort of self-talk or having a video on in the background.

Enter: the bedtime routine.

As I was putting together my bedtime routine, I wanted to do things that I used to do when I was in the convent, where my whole life was basically one routine. In addition to basic hygiene, I knew that prayer and other ways of lifting my mind and heart to God would be an essential part of it. Re-introducing spiritual reading seemed ideal.

I review a fair amount of Catholic books, but I consider reading them to be work. It’s a very different way of reading a book, thinking of how it might help people or how some people may be confused by it, even if I’m not personally impacted. I take recommending a book seriously, as in any given year OSV News, one of the publications I right for, publishes maximum one book review a week. I would never review a spiritual book I felt I could not recommend, and I have often declined to review books because drawing attention to them, even to critique them, would be a disservice to the reader.

I wanted my spiritual reading to be different. There was a book I bought about a year ago recommended by a priest as one of the best books he had ever read, and he recommended it highly. The book is by a popular Catholic psychologist, one who has written many books, although this was my first time reading his work.

Reader, I did *not* like this book. And the reason I didn’t like it is similar to why I don’t like a lot of popular spiritual reading books.