A Nonfiction Summer

 

The lazy days of summer - travel, home, beach, family. While there tends to be a lot of coming and going in summer time as kids are out of school, there is also a decent amount of down time. I don't have summer like a student, but I fully embrace the down time and using that down time for reading. It's too hot outside to really do anything out there, and even if you are out there at the pool, beach, or backyard, the best way to spend leisure time is reading! 

Grab a cold drink, or a cup of tea if you are inside, and learn, grow, think, ponder, dive into a story. The options are limitless, whatever your interest. I seem to have been engrossed in nonfiction lately, so here's some recent reads if that strikes your fancy.

If you like art, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters is so interesting. John Ruskin was an art critic, thinker, advocate for beauty in architecture and art. He was a genius. I read this book on my travels to Atlanta and back, it was a perfect intro to Ruskin on a high level. I will be digging into much more of Ruskin's writings.

Speaking of beauty, I'm studying the transcendental "beauty" with my dearest friend, and we are reading Beauty in the Light of the Redemption, as part of our studies, which is a short intro to Hildebrand's deep philosophical understanding of beauty as being objective, not something subjective and up to each person. Beauty is important-in-itself. I've written about Aesthetics by Hildebrand in a previous post, which is his main masterpiece on this. This is a condensed explanation that is very much worth reading as it will change the way you think about beauty. 

If you are interested in religion and the differences, follow along the journey of faith with Peter Kreeft in his life, From Calvinist to Catholic is a very approachable tale of his spiritual journey. Kreeft has such a down to earth way of writing that's easy to understand, even if he is talking about something complex or philosophical. His concise explanations are so helpful.

Along those lines, I've read through The Early Church Fathers Collection to read the actual letters and documents from the first and second centuries to hear from the men who knew the Disciples, who built up the Church, who passed on the traditions from what they were taught, and who record important pieces of the Church that Jesus started, before there was a New Testament.

If you like history and learning about quirky characters, and you love Britain, Alice Loxton is your author. She's fun and full of facts from history, told in a playful telling of tales. I picked up Eighteen: A History of Britain in 18 Young Lives when I was in Oxford listening to her talk, and had her sign this copy. She takes young 18 year olds from history and tells their story, especially what they were doing at age 18. She includes witty tales from Bede to Geoffrey Chaucer to C.S. Lewis, and many others I had never heard of.  

Lastly, A Dish of Orts, is a collection of random (odds and ends) essays by MacDonald, but they don't feel like odds and ends. Many of the essays are on Shakespeare and they have opened up Shakespeare to me - I had no idea MacDonald was such an expert on Shakespeare. Also, a couple of good essays on the imagination. I feel he has the best insights about imagination as truth bearing, which is where C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien learned from.