While we're at it, if I may beg between choking coughs from my inflamed palate, can parishes please go to the trouble of getting decent incense? Yes I'm looking at you, St. V------. You can find out which manufacturers are cutting theirs with cedar chips like heroin dealers adding baby powder, and avoid them. And skip the allergenic floral additives; frankincense was good enough for Baby Jesus. And clean that thurible once in a while! Besides keeping the congregation from choking, creosote fires are not the flames of Divine Love.

Well done! I keep thinking I need to do that, just read through, instead of just re-re-re-reading the Gospels and Psalms. Hasn't there been a Bible-in-a-year thread on the Chat Board in the past? I was thinking of joining if there's one for 2017.

Thank you, Stacia! The only King I finished was Christine, which a friend in high school assured me was great. It was awful. On the urgings of various friends I started, but didn't finish, Pet Sematary, Children of the Corn, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, and The Stand. I read just enough to be able to give them back the next day with a clear conscience. They were all awful.

This week I finished my Ambrose Bierce, The Spook House. Some of the stories are very good; but the quality is uneven. The title story is one of the more horrific and Lovecraftian; the best is probably "Chickamauga" (his readers would have known exactly what the title referred to--necessary for grasping the story); the recent horrors of the Civil War seem to have allowed Bierce to write with a lighter touch. Three stories, oddly, of only a few paragraphs, are all different treatments of the same concept: people walking along in full view suddenly disappear. Clearly this was a concept that fascinated Bierce, to the point where simply presenting the phenomenon satisfied him. Bierce's own fate makes this fascination especially eerie. I also read a brief but rewarding book by the Benedictine Dom Hubert von Zeller, Praying While You Work: Devotions for the Use of Martha Rather than Mary. Someone else read this a few months ago (under its lamentable reprint title, Holiness for Housewives), but I can't make the search function work and figure out who. Almost done with The Worm in the Bud, and making progress through my collected Arnold.

I'm not convinced there's a fact of the matter in Turn of the Screw. Certainly James wrote stories where supernatural events unquestionably occur; but he's careful to leave the matter unresolved in TotS. The governess' state of mind is more interesting to him than the (non)existence of the supernatural.

Kathy, glad to hear it was no worse. Stacia, congratulations on 52!!!

Hoping for the best with the hurricane. Glad you've got your Kindle loaded and charged, Kathy; priorities! Stacia, glad to see the Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories on your reading list. I read it last October--or was it the year before that? Anyway it was very good, and I especially enjoyed the James story. Middle Girl has started it but must interrupt for a week of camping with my dad off in the wilds of New Mexico. I picked up for her a battered, disposable copy of Wuthering Heights for reading on the mesas and chucking at the rattlesnakes if necessary.

Running.

That's the (in)famous MetLife table. Besides being a couple of decades old and derived from questionable research, it originally specified that height presumes wearing one-inch heels. (It's often paired with the highly dubious wrist-measure method of determining "body frame.")

Erin, may recovery be quick.

I am reading too many books at once, which means none is being finished, so why not add a spooky read? Besides my standby Victorians, J. H. Newman and Matthew Arnold, I'm still reading Richard Pearsall's The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality. Which is more scholarly and less titillating than the title might lead one to believe, and definitely worth the read, but 600+ pages with lots of notes, so slow going. Abundant research went into this book, made more difficult by the submerged and ephemeral nature of much of the primary literature. Pearsall's difficulties in getting access to the British Library's "Private Cases" gets its own anecdote. Recommended for those interested in things Victorian. (While Pearsall does have the occasional salacious-by-Victorian-standards excerpts, they barely qualify as "adult content" in the 21st century, so no worries for the delicate. But plenty of my friends have had a good laugh this week on seeing what I'm reading!) Pearsall has another book, on Victorian Spiritualism, which I may have to check out from the library eventually. I wonder which of his books is more read? I started and then abandoned Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. Just as It Can't Happen Here only made me think how much better my time would be spent reading Solzhenitsyn, Elmer Gantry just made me wish I were reading Voltaire instead. Lewis is unsubtle and unfunny, and I quickly tired of his fish-in-a-barrel satire of the Baptist and Campbellite subculture that thinly veils a contempt for the rural lower-middle class. I took personal umbrage at the Yalie Lewis' sneers at the private Christian colleges of the South and their academic inferiority (we presume to Yale), my dear in-laws having attended a small Campbellite college in Tennessee and gone on to intelligent and productive lives as an engineer and schoolteacher. Anyway, on to better things. For a Halloween read, I picked up The Spook House, a collection of Ambrose Bierce stories published in a Penguin series of scary lit, "Red Classics." See their full list here: https://penguinchecklist.wordpress.com/later-series/red-classics/

Thanks for keeping up this series of threads! I haven't been a contributor but I'd like to start. Oct. 1. Went biking with Wee Girl. Oct. 2. 3-mile run. Weights with Great Girl. Oct. 3. Pilates with Great Girl. Oct. 4. Nada. Oct. 5. 2.6-mile run. Oct. 6. Weights with Great Girl.

#2. The doctrine is "Extra ecclesia nulla salus," and is dogmatic Catholic doctrine. And yet, as with most things dogmatic, there is a surprising amount of wiggle room.

My girls loved The Gold Bug at about that age; but we read a lot of 19th century stuff so the longer and more complex sentences weren't a problem. There's a character who speaks in exaggerated and hard to understand black dialect, which I just read as normal English. The spooky stories of course depend on the child. I read The Tell-Tale Heart to Great Girl around ten years old. When I stopped, she was incredulous that that was the end; she was still waiting for the scary part. But I'd never read one of his supernatural tales to Wee Girl; she'd be in my bed for a month.

I suspect that's the kind of question that would, if answered, lead to this thread being deleted.

So many people read it that way that I'm often tempted to change my board name to Violent Clown. Hmm, maybe for Halloween...

My apologies. I'd intended the thread title question to make it obviously intended only for those who already weren't planning to watch. Sorry it wasn't clearer.

... instead of watching the Debate? I'm going to go running, and then find a book to read. I can't decide between revisiting Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, or reading Elmer Gantry.

Finished The Caine Mutiny just this morning. A very well-done specimen of the classic story of the boy turning into a man through the experience of war. Still reading--slowly--Newman's Parochial and Plain Sermons (too slowly to finish by the end of the year, but it gives me a goal for next year...) and my little collection of Matthew Arnold's poetry. Meanwhile ... I've never participated in the Banned Books week, but it's high time I got around to The Worm in the Bud: The World of Victorian Sexuality. Which, if it hasn't been itself banned, at least has extensive (if scholarly) discussion of Victorian pornography.

Welcome to the Faith! As many have mentioned above, the best way to teach the faith within your family is to live it. Prayers before and after meals; the rosary; the Angelus at noon; domestic observance of holy days and the children's saints' days. In your community, going as a family (as available) to Benediction, Adoration, Vespers, regular confession. Reading Holy Scripture, reading saints' lives. The old Vision series is excellent. As far as materials, sifting through the options over two decades, these things have proved the most helpful to our family. (Many of them cheaply had through bookfinder.com ) Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact. "The Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact was a Catholic comic book published by George A. Pflaum of Dayton, Ohio and provided to Catholic parochial school students between 1946 and 1972. The digital collection contains twenty-seven volumes running from 1946 to 1972." From the CUA archives. I don't know why more people don't know about this fantastic free resource for younger children. http://cuislandora.wrlc.org/islandora/object/cuislandora%3A9584 Vision books. Many of the Vision saints' lives have been reprinted by Ignatius Press, but many of the most interesting books are still OOP. My girls' favorites include Ursulines: Nuns of Adventure; When Saints Were Young; and St. Therese and the Roses. http://love2learnblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/vision-book-series.html The Year and Our Children (Mary Reed Newland). A gentle guide to living the liturgical year at home. (1956 version) https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/mary-reed-newland/the-year-and-our-children/ Examples and Anecdotes Illustrating the Catholic Catechism (Francis Spirago). Stories for each question in the BC, taken from "modern" (19th century), medieval, and even ancient Greek and Roman sources. My kids literally beg for readings from this. Free online! https://books.google.com/books/about/Anecdotes_and_Examples_Illustrating_the.html?id=AuwPAAAAYAAJ Pictorial Lives of the Saints (John Shea) (also free online). Straightforward, traditional, compact saints' lives, suitable for adults as well. https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=MpGsXL1cPMoC&rdid=book-MpGsXL1cPMoC&rdot=1 My Path to Heaven (Geoffrey Bliss). An Ignatian retreat for children. Brilliant illustrations by the great Caryll Houselander; I scan & print the illustrations for coloring as we talk about each chapter. https://www.amazon.com/My-Path-Heaven-Young-Persons/dp/0918477484 The Catholic Picture Dictionary (Harold Pfeiffer). A great resource for answering questions like, "What is that thing on that other thing?" https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-picture-dictionary-Harold-Pfeiffer/dp/B0007DKV3Q/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474810867&sr=1-2&keywords=pfeiffer+catholic+picture+dictionary For catechesis: My Catholic Faith (Fr. Morrow). Based on the BC; my favorite catechetical resource ever. Note: post-1960 editions are substantially different from the classic 1949 original. You can see some of Part I online here: http://www.willingshepherds.net/Doctrine.htm http://www.bookfinder.com/search/?author=morrow&title=my+catholic+faith&lang=en&new_used=*&destination=us&currency=USD&binding=*&isbn=&keywords=&minprice=&maxprice=&min_year=&max_year=1960&mode=advanced&st=sr&ac=qr The Baltimore Catechism. Can't go wrong with the BC. Free online. Our Goal and Our Guides (4 books). Solid 4-year high school course. Available from OLVS, or used. http://www.olvs.org/shopcart/InvDtl.aspx?InvId=10366&GrdId=&InvCatId= Fr. Laux textbooks. High school level series of 6 books; excellent for adult converts as well. https://www.tanbooks.com/index.php/rev-fr-john-laux-m-a-.html ETA: Adding links as I find them.

??? My source was the OP. Anyway, adding "some" in a strategic place can't make the phrase "rapid instructional experience" any less subliterate cant.

Middle Girl: "He is saying words but they have no meaning."

All these cool foreign language books. I almost feel guilty about forcing Middle Girl through Caesar. (Almost.) I finished a re-read of Richard III, and took Great, Middle, and Friend of Middle to see it last nght, performed by Notre Dame's troupe, Actors From the London Stage. It was five people and very minimal props; a challenge with a cast-heavy piece like Richard. There was considerable gender-mixing, inevitably, and the title role was played by a woman considerably older than the other actors: very successfully, it seemed to me, as advanced age and experience (guile) became both Richard's deformity (dramatically) and his tactical advantage. Halfway through Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, which I recall some earlier discussion of. Very readable, but such a Man's book! I'm going to pass it on to my dad if he hasn't read it yet.

Only if you walk this way while reading it. I finished Kidnapped, and it was certainly engaging enough, though the end was left a bit hanging, presumably with the sequel Catriona/ David Balfour in mind.