This piece was originally January 25, 2020 on my previous blog. Well, I beat my previous record, and in 2019 I managed to go through close to 80 books. I credit this mostly to the fact that I got off all social media, except for this blog, and also unsubscribed from Netflix. Amazon Prime was the only streaming video service I had, but I rarely used it, and I’ve now taken a hiatus even from my Prime account. It’s kind of amazing what you can accomplish when you cut out so many little distractions from your life and embrace opportunities for boredom. Boredom will drive you to do a lot of things that you might otherwise avoid; such as those dishes waiting in the sink or that book you keep meaning to pick up. Cutting out distractions also gives you the space to think your own thoughts and process whatever might be going on in your life. Seriously, I strongly recommend giving it a try. Take a break from social media, leave the TV off, have face-to-face conversations with people, sit with your own thoughts, read a book. So what did I actually read last year? I didn’t exactly have a reading plan, but I did have some specific focuses geared towards my current writing project. I read a lot about dinosaurs. And because my own protagonist is male, I read a lot of books by male authors that were either personal memoirs or focused on male characters. I’m not sure how John Green manages to get into the psyche of the opposite sex, but this technique has been working pretty well for me....

This piece was originally posted January 14, 2019 on my previous blog. I read a lot of books last year. Like, a lot. 60+, with some short stories and essays thrown in as well. I read books that fundamentally changed how I view the world and how I live my life, such as 12 Rules for Life, Food Freedom Forever, Mother Teresa, The Gulag Archipelago, and The Everlasting Man. I read classics, such as Dostoevsky’s The Karamazov Brothers, for the first time. I re-read some of my all-time favorites, such as Ender’s Game, The Hobbit, and the entire Chronicles of Narnia. I started to explore some of my new favorite authors, such as G.K. Chesterton and Flannery O’Connor. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis really started to dominate the second half of the year, which was probably a result of attending my first Chesterton Conference, and yet there is still so much more to read of both of them. As more of my nieces and nephews have started reading on their own, I also began delving into more Children’s and YA fiction, such as Gregor the Overlander, Redwall, and Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, so that I would be able to both offer recommendations on decent books and be able to discuss those books with them as well. I attempted (and failed) to read the Harry Potter series. Again. I have always loved books and reading, but I don’t think I have ever read as much in as short a time frame as I did last year. But there were a few different factors that made it possible. First, I started to...

This article was originally published in The Catholic News Herald of the diocese of Charlotte. This is a beautiful time of year when many people, regardless of spiritual or religious beliefs, take time to reflect on what they have to be grateful for. Even those who are suffering through hard times or illness will strive, at least for the holiday season, to list a few blessings in their lives and to give thanks for them. As Christians, it’s easy to say that we should be thanking God for our blessings all year long, but we don’t always succeed at doing that, and sometimes we don’t even know the blessings that we should be thankful for. God’s ways are not our ways, and the path is rarely smooth. The past few years especially have been a hardship for many, with fear and uncertainty, the loss of friends and loved ones, and an atmosphere of contention and judgement. It can be difficult to see where God might be working, how He is still caring for us even when we can’t see the direct evidence. Yet, we should still be giving thanks and trusting that He is at work, nonetheless. A few years ago, I read the book “The Hiding Place” by Corrie ten Boom, and it has since become a favorite of mine and one that I turn to regularly for consolation and wisdom. Corrie and her family were Christians living in Holland, and during World War II they became leaders in an underground movement to hide Jews and help them escape the country. When they were eventually discovered, Corrie, her father...

This article was originally published in The Catholic News Herald of the diocese of Charlotte. Oct. 7 marked the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which was originally known as Our Lady of Victory. The date commemorates the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when the armies of the Christian west, united as the Holy League under King Philip II of Spain and Pope (later St.) Pius V, defeated the Ottoman Turks who would otherwise have conquered and blotted out all of Christianity from Europe. The pairing of the titles Our Lady of Victory and Our Lady of the Rosary highlights an important truth of our faith: It is through the power and prayers of the rosary that God and His handmaid, the Blessed Virgin Mary, will triumph over evil. After the victory at Lepanto, the Venetian Senate had a picture painted to commemorate the battle along with these words, “Non virtus, non arma, non duces, sed Maria Rosarii, victors nos fecit” (“Not valor, not weapons, not leaders, but Our Lady of the Rosary made us victors”). During the crisis that led to the battle of Lepanto, Pope Pius V knew the martial potency of this devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The pope knew that they were fighting a holy war, that it was souls at stake as well as lives, and they needed prayers and spiritual weapons if Christendom was to be saved. As the fleet of the Holy League set out to make history, every Christian soldier was equipped with a rosary. Throughout Europe, the rosary was being prayed by the faithful for the success...