Welcome to the third (a fitting number indeed) installment of the Summa Book Club.

Next month will be all about the Creation. That is a mere 27 articles this time around. Enjoy it, this is one of the shortest sections of the whole three-year schedule.

• Q44. The procession of creatures from God (4 articles)

• Q45. The mode of emanation of things (8 articles)

• Q46. The beginning of the duration of creatures (3 articles)

• Q47. The distinction of things in general (3 articles)

• Q48. The distinction of things in particular (6 articles)

• Q49. The cause of evil (3 articles)

Structure

Looking at the outline, it is clear to see that most of the section is the Three Divine Persons of the Trinity considered “absolutely” as meaning “in themselves” rather than the last five questions, which compare them to each other.

Even that section has a breakdown, with four general questions to establish what we even mean and know by “person” and why it would be three of them. The person part we will talk a little about later on in this post.

The Son and the Holy Ghost each get 3 questions devoted to them when the Father only gets 1. The three have the same structure. One about their “procession” and two about titles. As Aquinas shows, the Father doesn’t “proceed,” so it makes sense that He wouldn’t have that one.

The titles (with the other two persons, these sections are more significant and real than they may sound when I use the word “title”) regarding the Father are included in one question rather than two. It is worth noting that “names” of God were covered earlier. These are fitting for the Father, though they apply to all Persons.

Reflections

Imagine a narrow European alley. The walls are close. Steps jut out along with other features. This is how I thought about trinitarian theology. Over the centuries, the Catholic faith has deemed what you can’t say about the Trinity. Big walls on either side. Further distinctions are stairs and stones that block off heresy. And this was impressive to me, how much has been “figured out” via negativa. But this system doesn’t give us things we can say positively. With all that blocked off space, you don’t risk navigating through the alley.

In this section of the Summa, Aquinas drives a sports car through the alley at 60mph.

Confident and calm, not even scraping the sides. The car’s engine in this metaphor is metaphysics. He relies on a well-thought-out idea of “procession”. And this is one of the cool things about the Summa. Yes, it includes a lot of metaphysics and philosophy, but Aquinas uses them as a foundation to do something more: theology.

Crazy how many times you can hear “begotten not made” or “who proceeds from the Father and the Son” and yet not think about it. I mean, you might think about “and the Son” if you like debating with Eastern Orthodox, but the words “begotten” and “proceeding” are not mediated on until you get to stuff like Q33.

After three months and so many questions, one tip for reading the Summa is this: when you are reading the objections first, note in your mind which ones you find the most interesting or convincing. This way, you engage more with the content because you are analyzing it enough to make these rankings, but also, you will now pay more attention to the replies (the ones of your top questions at least).

There is a very real sense that I started to get around question 39 that all the attributes of God, like wisdom and essence, are not being personified in Father and in Son. It is a lot like the experience of knowing something abstractly for a long time and then experiencing it in person.

In these sections, you notice how often Aquinas has recourse to rules of grammar. In other sections, he references aspects of math. This shows how smart he is. It makes me feel bad because those are subjects I’ve learned, but haven’t retained. So I cannot follow the comparison he is making as well as I would like.

Favorite Argument

In article 2 of question 38, Aquinas asks whether “Gift” is an appropriate name for the Holy Ghost and answers like this:

In proof of this we must know that a gift is properly an unreturnable giving, as Aristotle says (Topic. iv, 4)—i.e. a thing which is not given with the intention of a return—and it thus contains the idea of a gratuitous donation. Now, the reason for donation being gratuitous is love; since therefore do we give something to anyone gratuitously forasmuch as we wish him well. So what we first give him is the love whereby we wish him well. Hence it is manifest that love has the nature of a first gift, through which all free gifts are given. So since the Holy Ghost proceeds as love, as stated above (I:27:4; I:37:1), He proceeds as the first gift. Hence Augustine says (De Trin. xv, 24): “By the gift, which is the Holy Ghost, many particular gifts are portioned out to the members of Christ.”

The Holy Ghost is a gift because a gift is related to love. That is nice and simple. It is proved earlier and later in this section that the Holy Ghost is related to Love… the Love between the Father and the Son, in fact, but that is more discussed.

Defining Key Terms

Much of this section hinges on the precision of definitions, and that is the work of Q29.

Person

“the definition of person given by Boethius (De Duab. Nat.) …—that is,”

“a person is an individual substance of a rational nature.”

The full quote says this definition is insufficient… but that quote is an objection. That means Aquinas believes the definition is sufficient. I agree, look at the examples.

• Socrates is a person because he is a rational, individual substance. Mankind is not a person because, while rational and a substance, “mankind” is not an individual.

• Dogs are not persons because they are neither rational nor individual. Your dog Fido is still not a person because not rational, however, Fido is an individual, so it makes a certain philosophical sense that you think of Fido as “more of a person” than when you think about dogs in general.

• St Michael the Archangel is rational, individual, and substantial, so he’s a person. He isn’t material like our other examples, but that is fine.

Because you could never say that God is not a substance, or not rational, or not one, that means that God is a person too by this definition.

That there are three persons is perhaps less clear from that logic, but we can turn to Aquinas in the next question (Q30) to get this:

The definition of “person” includes “substance,” not as meaning the essence, but the “suppositum” which is made clear by the addition of the term “individual.”

This means we are not saying there are three substances-- that would be heretical. The reason that these supposita are separate is that they have a distinction by origin (which is established in Q28). Related and important, but with justification over my head to explain, this means that the word “person” also means relation.

Hypostasis

(Q29 A2) “In the usual way of speaking, it means…

the individual of the rational nature, by reason of the excellence of that nature.”

He also points out that

‘the individuals of the genus substance

…should have a special name of their own, for they are called “hypostases,” or first substances.”

Among the Greeks, the term hypostasis is something more specific than substance, as in a particular individual… which would be closer to Aquinas’ definition of person.

St Jerome said “poison lurks in the word” because to non-Greeks, you could learn hypostasis as substance (which could be correct) but understand the “substance” part of the definition to be related to essence… which we noted above would be heretical. It is better, in Aquinas’ opinion, to translate this to “subsistence.”

Bringing them together

To summarize, a lengthier quote which also gets into the idea of the term “subsistence”:

“Substance means a subject or “suppositum,” which subsists in the genus of substance. To this, taken in a general sense, can be applied a name expressive of an intention; and thus it is called “suppositum.”

It is also called by three names signifying a reality—that is, “a thing of nature,” “subsistence,” and “hypostasis,” according to a threefold consideration of the substance thus named.

For (1), as it exists in itself and not in another, it is called “subsistence”; as we say that those things subsist which exist in themselves, and not in another. (2) As it underlies some common nature, it is called “a thing of nature”; as, for instance, this particular man is a human natural thing. (3) As it underlies the accidents, it is called “hypostasis,” or “substance.”

What these three names signify in common to the whole genus of substances, this name “person” signifies in the genus of rational substances.”

I take this to mean that all persons are hypostasis, but only rational hypostasis are persons. Hopefully, I haven’t been philosophically poisoned and become an accidental heretic. I will correct this post if such an accident comes to my attention.

Essential Attributions Appropriated to the Persons

I mentioned above that when reading about attributes ascribed to the Persons of the Trinity, I felt there was a “coming into focus”. The God of the first question, which we knew in the abstract by logically removing any limits from our conception. In these questions, you have those same broad attributes like oneness and being, but each is given a different flavor in different persons. As Aquinas puts it:

Our intellect, which is led to the knowledge of God from creatures, must consider God according to the mode derived from creatures. In considering any creature four points present themselves to us in due order. Firstly, the thing itself taken absolutely is considered as a being. Secondly, it is considered as one. Thirdly, its intrinsic power of operation and causality is considered. The fourth point of consideration embraces its relation to its effects. Hence this fourfold consideration comes to our mind in reference to God.

What follows is a very long elucidation of these attributes. I do my best to summarize below, but if you didn’t get there in your reading, this part is well worth it. Note: When I say “is” in each instance, it means “to that person is appropriated” whatever attribute.

In God’s Being

• The Father is “eternity”, being without a principle.

• The Son is “beauty,” which includes the Son as

  • perfectly the nature of the Father,

  • an Image in harmony with the Father, and

  • The Word is the clarity of the divine Intellect.

• The Holy Ghost is “use” in the wide sense of “to use” as “to enjoy.”

  • The Holy Ghost is Love and Gift (mentioned in another article), and gifts are to be used and enjoyed.

In God’s Oneness

• The Father is “unity.”

• The Son is “equality.”

• The Holy Ghost is “union.”

God in the sphere of Causality

• The Father is “power.”

• The Son is “wisdom.”

• The Holy Ghost is “goodness.”

God in relation to His effects

• The Father is “from Whom” as the relationship of the maker.

• The Son is “by Whom,” not that the Son is an instrument the Father uses, but in the way an artist works by his art.

• The Holy Ghost is “in Whom” in the way things are contained in God as He, in His goodness, preserves and guides them.

Or to make that all much easier in the form of a graph.

Aquinas’ Trinitarian Reading List

Today I am doing another bonus section, one that I think everyone will like in theory, but few will use: a reading list.

In most editions of the Summa, every time Aquinas references another work or appeals to authority (which is often), they will give you the citation. Since I have already broken up the Summa into topical sections, that means if I pull out these citations, I can get Aquinas’ selected readings as if he were designing a class.

I don’t promise that this is a complete list; I probably missed things. I am not including the bible verses. Please let me know if you like this list format, though.

1. Aristotle (honestly, Aquinas can fit Aristotle… at it seems these same books, into just about everything)

   1. Physics

   2. Metaphysics

   3. Categories

2. Athanasius

   1. Creed

   2. Sometimes Aquinas just says Athanasius, but from my research, his main Theological works would both apply, being

      • Orations Against the Arians

      • On the Incarnation

3. Augustine

   1. De Trinitas

   2. De Fide ad Petrum

   3. Contra Maxim.

   4. De Verbis Domini, Sermon 38

   5. Super Ps 2:7

4. Boethius

   1. De Duabus Naturis

   2. De Hebdomadibus

   3. De Trinitas

   4. Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories

5. Damascene

   1. De Fide Orth.

6. Dionysius

   1. Div Nom.

7. Gregory

   1. Moral.

8. Hilary

   1. De Trinitas

   2. De Synodis

9. Jerome

   1. Letter of Jerome to Pope Damasus

10. Master of the Sentences

    1. Sentences

11. Origen

    1. Homily in Joan.

Someone let me know if this reading list kind of section is helpful and, if so, is there a better way to format it. (Maybe it should be after the conclusion? I don’t want people to think it was my sources, though.)

Conclusion

That was a pretty long one, don’t expect this every week. Join in the fun with your own questions or observations in the comments. (Or corrections if I got something wrong).

Leave a comment

This is the link for the GroupMe. Feel free to go on there and discuss beyond the comments, but remember that I won’t be hanging out there much.

And if you feel like you would have been a rich nobleman or noblewoman in the thirteenth century (or some generous merchant), you can support my scholastic philosophy here.

Welcome to the second installment of the Summa Book Club.

Next month will be all about the Trinity. There are 17 questions and 74 articles (a little less than last time).

• Q27. Procession of the divine persons (5 articles)

• Q28. The divine relations (4 articles)

• Q29. The divine persons (4 articles)

• Q30. The plurality of persons in God (4 articles)

• Q31. The unity or plurality in God (4 articles)

• Q32. The knowledge of divine persons (4 articles)

• Q33. The person of the Father (4 articles)

• Q34. The person of the Son (3 articles)

• Q35. The Image (2 articles)

• Q36. The person of the Holy Ghost (4 articles)

• Q37. The name of the Holy Ghost, as Love (2 articles)

• Q38. The name of the Holy Ghost, as Gift (2 articles)

• Q39. The persons in relation to the essence (8 articles)

• Q40. The persons as compared to the relations or properties (4 articles)

• Q41. The persons in reference to the notional acts (6 articles)

• Q42. Equality and likeness among the divine persons (6 articles)

• Q43. The mission of the divine persons (8 articles)

But today we are focusing on the various powers of God.

Structure

The big distinction St Thomas uses to structure this section is that between the intellect and the will. There is actually an ongoing Franciscan vs Dominican sort of debate on which of the two should be considered more primary. Thomists are intellectualists and say that intellect has primacy. Aquinas will tell us that God IS Truth but can will things apart from Himself.

This is why he starts with God’s knowledge and spends time on truth itself. But much of the interesting stuff: providence and predestination (more on that later) pertain to both the intellect and the will.

Favorite Argument

My favorite argument this time is about proving God’s mercy.

“Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, as seen in its effect, but not as an affection of passion. In proof of which it must be considered that a person is said to be merciful [misericors], as being, so to speak, sorrowful at heart [miserum cor]; being affected with sorrow at the misery of another as though it were his own. Hence it follows that he endeavors to dispel the misery of this other, as if it were his; and this is the effect of mercy. To sorrow, therefore, over the misery of others belongs not to God; but it does most properly belong to Him to dispel that misery, whatever be the defect we call by that name. Now defects are not removed, except by the perfection of some kind of goodness; and the primary source of goodness is God, as shown above (I:6:4).” (Q21, A3)

1. A merciful being wants to dispel misery.

2. Dispelling misery is to remove whatever defect that causes the misery.

3. Removing defects means to make them more perfect and more good.

4. Perfection and goodness come from God.

Thoughts and Reflections

He uses the example of a house a lot to illustrate causes and intentions. The architect holds a plan for the house in his head and that is the form. I like the idea of having one (or a couple) go-to examples that you just repeated apply to more difficult philosophical stuff. Another one he uses a lot for knowledge and language matters is “Socrates sits” as a statement of fact.

The kind of thinking that Aquinas uses is so foreign and philosophically based that it would just never work on a typical non-Thomist, non-Aristotelian counterpart in a debate. It really works better when you are going in with the mindset, ‘I think this is true and I will figure out what he means’.

This is too bad for winning debates and dunking on the Protestants, but if you can manage to trot it out, you will look really smart… unless someone asks you to explain the metaphysics and you can’t.

In question 20, Aquinas casually goes into the question of whether it is better to be a repentant sinner, or a just man who never had to repent.

“The penitent and the innocent are related as exceeding and exceeded. For whether innocent or penitent, those are the better and better loved who have most grace. Other things being equal, innocence is the nobler thing and the more beloved. God is said to rejoice more over the penitent than over the innocent, because often penitents rise from sin more cautious, humble, and fervent. Hence Gregory commenting on these words (Hom. 34 in Ev.) says that, “In battle the general loves the soldier who after flight returns and bravely pursues the enemy, more than him who has never fled, but has never done a brave deed.” (Q20 a4)

I think this is a good balance. All else equal, sin is bad so better to never do it and never need to repent. But if it results in you being more humble and cautious then the guy who never sinned, the penitent comes out on top again.

One section made me think of the aliens vs angels debate. At least when people say that strange lights in the sky are spiritual beings.

“First, one which belongs to the supreme Deity, Who first and foremost has provision over spiritual things, and thus over the whole world as regards genus, species, and universal causes. The second providence, which is over the individuals of all that can be generated and corrupted, he attributed to the divinities who circulate in the heavens; that is, certain separate substances, which move corporeal things in a circular direction. The third providence, over human affairs, he assigned to demons, whom the Platonic philosophers placed between us and the gods, as Augustine tells us (De Civ. Dei, 1, 2: viii, 14).” (Q22)

“The divinities that circle the heavens” sounds like he is talking about planets and stars as if they are angels. By this definition of “having some providence over individuals that are generated and corrupted” then yeah, that is more so angels than planets. I wonder why he imagined the two to be the same.

Predestination

I want to double down and make clear that I am no expert in theology. But we need to have a section that covers the thought that probably a lot of people have reading this section… a thought that I had at least.

Are the Calvinists way more right than I thought?

Specifically, regarding the doctrine of Predestination. To be fair I know their stance mostly through memes. The answer seems to be they are wrong about it, but they are not so far off as the memes lead you to think.

I want to try to explain it best I can1 while being as simple as possible.

Predestination

Predestination is defined as the idea or plan of God to direct a rational creature towards the end of eternal life.

God has a plan to give humans (and angels) to eternal life. For Aquinas, the word predestination is only for the good outcome. Calvin says going to hell also falls under the term predestination. Catholics now call that idea double predestination, slightly buying into the term.

“It is fitting that God should predestine men. For all things are subject to His providence... Now it belongs to providence to direct things towards their end” (A1)

Reprobation

Not everybody goes to heaven even though rational souls are oriented to that end.

“reprobation is a part of providence in regard to those who turn aside from that end. Hence reprobation implies not only foreknowledge, but also something more... Therefore, as predestination includes the will to confer grace and glory; so also reprobation includes the will to permit a person to fall into sin, and to impose the punishment of damnation on account of that sin.”

God does will that people go to hell. But note the italics on the word permit. This is God’s permissive will. It is chosen for the higher goods of justice and free will.

Why/How Does God Choose the Predestined?

Article 4 tells us that the predestined are actively chosen (not merely permitted). We choose something when we see good in it. God is the other way around, He puts good into things by choosing them.

Article 5 tells us that the choosing is not by merit. We aren’t earning it with our good actions. “What is of grace is the effect of predestination” and grace is not earned, it is freely given. However, predestination is not solely caused by grace it also (secondarily) caused by free will:

The providence of God produces effects through the operation of secondary causes... That which flows from free-will is also of predestination. We must say, therefore, that the effect of predestination may be considered in a twofold light—

Predestination, he says can be taken two ways. “in one (1) way, in particular;” an effect of predestination can be the cause of another effect…

a subsequent effect being the reason of a previous effect, as its final cause; and the previous effect being the reason of the subsequent as its meritorious cause, which is reduced to the disposition of the matter. Thus we might say that God pre-ordained to give glory on account of merit, and that He pre-ordained to give grace to merit glory.

On the other hand, we are not allowed to say that free will is the whole story, that wouldn’t leave any metaphysical room for God’s will. So “in another (2) way, the effect of predestination may be considered in general.”

It is impossible that the whole of the effect of predestination (in general) should have any cause as coming from us; because whatsoever is in man disposing him towards salvation, is all included under the effect of predestination; even the preparation for grace. For neither does this happen otherwise than by divine help…Yet predestination has in this way, in regard to its effect, the goodness of God for its reason; towards which the whole effect of predestination is directed as to an end; and from which it proceeds, as from its first moving principle.

Why/How Does God Reprobate Sinners?

The Catechism way to say it :

“God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end” (CCC 1037).

The Summa way to say it:

“Reprobation, however, is not the cause of what is in the present—namely, sin; but it is the cause of abandonment by God. It is the cause, however, of what is assigned in the future—namely, eternal punishment. But guilt proceeds from the free-will of the person who is reprobated and deserted by grace.”

Summary:

1. God predestines to heaven, and reprobates to hell

2. Why he predestines flows from grace and free will.

3. He reprobates by His permissive will

Can we apply this understanding to the memes about Calvinism that float around.

This one is right in that God does not actively will damnation. Here it also does not account for free will. On the other hand, the fellow here should not think that eternal life is entirely based upon what he does alone. A good correction might use the quote above.

The “sharing the Gospel language” in the yellow is actually something we should agree with, God is willing such things simply and consequently. But, the pink guy is wrong that God positively wills sin and reprobation. God doesn’t use sin as a means for anything either, He merely permissively wills those things.

Again, this one is a little unfair because the truth is very close. Because God does predetermine your good actions… through grace. What He does not do is predetermine the bad actions in the same way, He merely permits them.

As for “predetermining” everything, we cannot say that God positively wills evil (if you want to include evil as a “thing”). But He does foresee them and arranges that greater good may come.

Conclusion

Okay, all that was a lot, but I think it needed to be done. Let me know what you think in the comments. (Or corrections if I got something wrong).

This is the link for the GroupMe, feel free to go on there and discuss beyond the comments, but remember that I wont be hanging out there much.

And if you feel like you would have been a rich nobleman or noblewoman in the thirteenth century (or some sort of generous merchant) you can support my scholastic philosophy here.

Leave a comment

Welcome to the first installment of the Summa Book Club. Each month, I am reading a selection from The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas with a few goals in mind.

• Dive deeper into Catholic faith and tradition

• Read smart but difficult philosophical and theological content

• Make that content as simple and accessible as I can for myself and anyone else following along

From March to November, we are reading The Prima Partis. Here is the schedule:

• March: Theology in General, God’s Existence and Essence

• April: God’s Power and Operations

• May: The Trinity

• June: Creation

• July: Angels

• August: Matter and The Six Days of Creation

• September: Man’s Essence, Power, and Operations

• October: The Origin of Man

• November: The Government of Creatures

Next Month’s Readings (April)

• Q14. God’s knowledge (16 articles)

• Q15. Ideas (3 articles)

• Q16. Truth (8 articles)

• Q17. Falsity (4 articles)

• Q18. The life of God (4 articles)

• Q19. God’s will (12 articles)

• Q20. God’s love (4 articles)

• Q21. God’s justice and mercy (4 articles)

• Q22. God’s providence (4 articles)

• Q23. Predestination (8 articles)

• Q24. The book of life (3 articles)

• Q25. The power of God (6 articles)

• Q26. Divine beatitude (4 articles)

That comes out to 80 articles, budget time accordingly. Now on to this month…

Structure

To start I’d like to talk about the structure of this section of the Summa. After all, part of my role here in this read-along is to break down the work into themes rather than equal sized chunks.

This section talks about God, and the “metaphysics” of God. These kinds of metaphysical questions, I suspect are par for the course in the Prima Pars. I have read more sections in the Second Parts so I assume that it is then toned down.

We are talking here about God and what He is like. We haven’t gotten to the trinity yet, so don’t be expecting breakdowns of the three persons of God. This is the structure of these questions.

The big part is the “How God Exists” section and its subsections. Each heading, you may notice, could be defined as “not” something.

• Simple = Not composite

• Perfect = Not wanting in actuality

• Infinite = Not finite (bounded, ending)

• Immutable = Not changing

• Unity = Not many

This is because God is so beyond us that we cannot really talk about what he is… only what he is not. Though there are some exceptions, Aquinas explains it like this:

Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.

Therefore, we must consider: (1) How He is not; (2) How He is known by us; (3) How He is named.

Now it can be shown how God is not, by denying Him whatever is opposed to the idea of Him, viz. composition, motion, and the like. Therefore (1) we must discuss His simplicity, whereby we deny composition in Him; and because whatever is simple in material things is imperfect and a part of something else, we shall discuss (2) His perfection; (3) His infinity; (4) His immutability; (5) His unity.

Here you see that some extra time is spent on simplicity, just a couple more words, but it seems important that it leads in a way to the others.

Simplicity covers that God is…

1. Spiritual

2. Purely form

3. The same as his essence

4. The same as his existence

5. Not in a genus

Some of those terms we will describe later on in the “themes” section. So if you only read a little bit, maybe make it Q2 on God’s existence and Q3 on His simplicity.

Initial Thoughts/Reactions

I am in over my head. I did not read as fast as I thought I would based upon the first question. The infinity, immutability, and unity sections got me especially. I don’t know what exactly I thought reading a question would take, but for many of them, 30 minutes was not enough.

This doesn’t mean I am not enjoying it.

I liked reading sections out loud with no context for my wife to hear. Especially when they were extra philosophical sounding, she would look at me weird and, I assume, think that I am both smart and also kind of a dork.

At the very least I am proving these things to myself. While it is true that I am going slowly, I can feel myself getting smarter as I struggle through abstract thought, apply philosophical concepts. Already, i will read articles online and realize that the terms are a bit confused, don’t hold up, or at least aren’t used in the same way St. Thomas uses them. The dorkiness is also there, which will hopefully not mature into pretentiousness.

But I must have already had some of both dorkiness and pretension because I was often reminded of past conversions.

One time, I was training to teach a Catholic summer program. I got tripped up in a discussion with a fellow (rival) teacher in training. I was talking about transcendental attributes of God as Truth Beauty and Goodness, he said the phrase was Truth Beauty and Oneness. He said Goodness was implied. I said that the Oneness was implied, though I wasn’t exactly sure what was meant as oneness as a transcendental. If I had read just a little bit of Aquinas I would have read that:

Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea

And I probably could have figured out that oneness applies as well. Though I am still not quite sure if the phrase oneness, in this context, means unity, simplicity, or something else.

Favorite Argument: “every composite is posterior to its component parts, and is dependent on them; but God is the first being” therefore he cannot have component parts.

There has been more math than I expected. This certainly made it harder to follow. I like math, but I didn’t have to go very far in the abstract stuff in college. Being an economics major, you need to know some decent statistics, but really excel will do most of the work for you.

Infinity in math is a little mind-bending and impressive, and in that way a nice meditation on God, numbers and quantity is not the kind of infinity that God is… so the meditation kind of doesn’t work. But it also kind of works more, whatever is boggling and mysterious about infinity… God actually goes even beyond that.

Article 2 in the infinity question reminded me of the “rock so heavy” question: Could God make a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?

The normal answer is that such a rock can’t exist, so it doesn’t really put any limits on the power of God. That still felt kind of limiting to me though. In my younger days I always thought it would be interesting to say “yes, but he could still lift it because God is not bound by the laws of logic… just look at the trinity where three equals one.”

But after a little bit of Aquinas it occurs that such a rock would have to be “supremely” heavy. It would also have to be a body, because rocks are physical, not spiritual. So to be so heavy it could be extremely dense, but no matter how dense something is, it could still be heavier if it was the same density, but only bigger. So now, to be supremely heavy, you would also need to be infinitely big, the rock would take up the whole universe of physical space. I think all this logically follows, but I would have never thought in this way before.

The funny part is this: if a body already takes up all space, it cannot move. You cannot lift it because there is no space to lift “into”.

Yeah, it is basically saying once again that such a rock cannot exist. But it is intellectually satisfying to show that even if it did, it couldn’t be a liftable object.

Towards the end, Aquinas distinguishes God in Truth from God in opinion. Basically that pagans will use the term god and just be wrong.

It is evident that a Catholic saying that an idol is not God contradicts the pagan asserting that it is God; because each of them uses this name GOD to signify the true God. For when the pagan says an idol is God, he does not use this name as meaning God in opinion, for he would then speak the truth, as also Catholics sometimes use the name in the sense, as in the Psalm, “All the gods of the Gentiles are demons” (Psalm 95:5).1

This combined with all the really solid working out of Gods being reminded me of this meme.

Because what this Gervais quote is doing is just using that “god as opinion” idea and bashing that. If you look at everything Aquinas proves about God as existence itself then you would see how stupid the quote looks to a Thomist.

It’s just not true that most of those 3000 (mostly pantheistic) gods are what Christians are talking about. Even when people were more pagan, a good number of Romans didn’t really believe in the Roman gods. They certainly didn’t think they were supreme being, simple, supremely perfect, etc.

I understand the objections more than the replies in most of these. My first thought was that this probably means I am more susceptible to logical fallacies than I assumed. But when I think about it more, Aquinas’ logic is usually good in the objections, and the replies challenge a premise. Usually, it turns out that the definitions were wrong.

I can hardly feel bad because these definitions are precise and Aristotelian and frankly should probably be in Latin. Definitions are the most simple part of an argument, but that doesn’t mean they are easy. In fact maybe it means they are harder.

Our intellect cannot comprehend simple subsisting forms, as they really are in themselves; but it apprehends them as compound things in which there is something taken as subject and something that is inherent. Therefore it apprehends the simple form as a subject, and attributes something else to it.2

Our intellects better attend to compound things. And then we can break them up into things more simple and abstract. In the quote above Aquinas is referring to God as the supremely simple subsisting form, but I think this idea carries over.

Speaking of definitions.

Themes

Lastly, we can talk about some repeated themes in this section. If you are confused, maybe these will help you. These are probably many of the same themes repeated throughout the whole part so it can help us both going forwards. That said, if I am covering these now, it will be interesting to see how this section evolves.

It is also worth noting that I am still new to Thomism and Aristotelianism and my explanations of terms or even choice of terms could be off here. For each I will link a resource with a footnote that has a little more clout.

Forms3

Forms are what make things themselves. Peter is a man and John is another man. They share “manliness” clearly. You cannot go and touch “manliness” like you can touch Peter (with his consent I would hope). But the form of man is still real.

Act and potency4

I am writing this, but I have the ability to go for a walk instead. Your shirt may be white, but that same shirt could end up dyed blue. It is not against my nature as a human to go for a walk, it is not against the nature of shirts to be blue. Water is actually liquid but potentially solid. Once it is ice, that ice is potentially liquid but actually solid.

The way I am and water is right now is “act” or actuality. These powers I have, or that water has to be different are potencies or potential. Potency is real, but you once again can not touch it. There are also some actual things that you cannot touch like angels or God, things without bodies.

These are related to matter and form, because matter is actualized by a specific form. The form of a thing is its act and the matter of a thing is its potency.

Little Johnny is a boy with the potential to become a man, once his matter acquires the form of man, he is one.

Fido and Spot both have the form of a dog, they share that, but they are not the same individual. For Aquinas, what makes them different is that they have different matters that were actualized.

Yeah these are foreign ideas to non-metaphysicians, but it implies something even more foreign.

Prime matter5

I have to think about primary (or prime) matter in a very specific way because I am tempted to think about it in terms of atoms and particle physics. Imagine a rabbit, it is made of matter, for the sake of simplicity we can call it rabbit matter.

If the rabbit gets eaten by a wolf, the rabbit matter becomes wolf matter. Not too crazy so far, that is what eating is. But the rabbit did not become the wolf. The rabbit no longer exists. So what was the matter that underwent the change from rabbit to wolf? Primary matter.

The rabbit matter and wolf matter that we can see are secondary matter. If we can see it, it has been actualized. It has attributes. Primary matter doesn’t have any attributes, it is defined as pure potency. So although it doesn’t have any form, it can have any form. Lots of potency.

When forms come into being or cease to be, it was matter that did the becoming or the ceasing.

I will just quickly note that Aquinas has not only been concerned with first matter, but what things are first “in idea” like when he talks about goodness and being.

the first thing conceived by the intellect is being; because everything is knowable only inasmuch as it is in actuality. Hence, being is the proper object of the intellect, and is primarily intelligible; as sound is that which is primarily audible. Therefore in idea being is prior to goodness.

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Conclusion

There you are. Please join in the fun with your own questions or observations in the comments. (Or corrections if I got something wrong). Some things to consider:

• I basically did not even mention the most famous section here—the five ways to prove God’s existence in Q2, what do we think of them?

• What is the relation between God’s simplicity and unity, they sound very similar in English usage.

• If you take a broader view of the idea of “first” beyond just time, does that help with any practical things for you?

• If these ideas are kind of new to you, can you play with the implications to come to interesting new arguments or conclusions? (i.e. infinite rocks)

This is the link for the GroupMe, feel free to go on there and discuss beyond the comments, but remember that I wont be hanging out there much.

And if you feel like you would have been a rich nobleman or noblewoman in the thirteenth century (or some sort of generous merchant) you can support my scholastic philosophy here.

If you have not been persuaded as of yet, here is the announcement post.

You can read more of the specifics there.

Here is the schedule for the first nine months, which will cover all of the Prima Partis (aka the First Part).

• March: Theology in General, God’s Existence and Essence

• April: God’s Power and Operations

• May: The Trinity

• June: Creation

• July: Angels

• August: Matter and The Six Days of Creation

• September: Man’s Essence, Power, and Operations

• October: The Origin of Man

• November: The Government of Creatures

At the end of this post is the specific breakdown of Questions for March and some suggestions on handling them.

How to Join the Book Club

Read along. It’s that simple.

You may want to only read the posts and not read the articles of the Summa. Conversely, you may read the Summa but only check the posts for the schedule and ignore my commentary.

On the more involved end of the spectrum, you may comment on the posts, asking questions of the other readers or me. You can take it further by joining the official GroupMe to talk at greater length and more generally. (Fair warning, I will probably not be there very much, as this is still a side project for me and not my only one.)

This is Free?

Yes, but I will be getting a lot out of the time I spend reading and thinking about such intelligent work. The deal is that if I have to pause or delay, or change the schedule, I will just do it.

How Hard Will This Be

I won’t lie, some of the months will be quite difficult. It’s not the word count that will get you; it’s the density of ideas.

So first of all, the pressure should be taken off. Don’t feel like you have to keep pace with me or this practically arbitrary schedule. The blog posts will still be there even if you don’t finish those sections for months or years.

Secondly, if you are determined, you could do what I plan on doing: reading ahead to have a bit of a buffer for whatever life throws at you.

Third, if this is the first time you have read a particular question or article, remember that there is no rule that says it must be the last time you read it. If a question or article, or a reply to an objection is tripping you up, you can skip it.

I want to read every word for my ego’s sake, but there is really no way I can prove that to you. There are simply too many ideas

The Readings for March - Existence and Essence of God

• Q1. The nature and extent of sacred doctrine (10 Articles)

• Q2. The existence of God (3 Articles)

• Q3. The simplicity of God (8 Articles)

• Q4. The perfection of God (4 Articles)

• Q5. Goodness in general (6 Articles)

• Q6. The goodness of God (4 Articles)

• Q7. The infinity of God (4 Articles)

• Q8. The existence of God in things (4 Articles)

• Q9. The immutability of God (2 Articles)

• Q10. The eternity of God (6 Articles)

• Q11. The Unity of God (4 Articles)

• Q12. How God is known by us (13 Articles)

• Q13. The names of God (12 Articles)

That is 70 articles. A little less than 3 per day. I have started reading by now, and I will tell you that I recommend doing no more than 4 or 5 articles in one sitting and giving it at least an hour between sittings.

That is what I have made my rule at this point, with one exception: on Sundays after mass, I am trying to do a few more than that in hopes that I can expand my attention span and capacity for Thomistic metaphysics.

In terms of time, I have learned to budget around 30 minutes for those 4 - 5 articles. Sometimes I go quicker, but sometimes I just tell myself, “You read it, maybe even twice, you have to move on.”

BTW, the Summa must be in the air or something because just finished a giant illustrated Summa in a collab with a new Ave Maria Press book by . I had no idea either was happening, but both look super cool.

Happy reading new year, men of Substack. Each month, I have challenged you and myself to read more books. I have switched to only four books each month. But gosh-darn, I intend them to be trickier, more important books. So to kick it off, I am going to tell you about how a book that is 1600 years old is still relevant today.

                                                         THE CITY OF GOD
                                                        by St Augustine of Hippo
                                                    Abridged by Vernon Bourke

I read this abridged in a yellowed paperback. It was abridged further after a few weeks of reading when it fell apart in my hands. Still, I finished every word there, and in the end, it was the pieces of the great Saints’ arguments that fell together best.

In Confessions, his more famous book, Augustine starts with his sinful youth. Maturing, he sees sin’s deficiencies, but not the true alternative. Eventually, he’s convicted of Catholic Truth, but he remains tangled up in vices until a dramatic turning point. In City of God, the same story plays out for society.

The work is arranged as follows:

Part one responds to the criticisms that legal Christianity was causing the fall of the Roman Empire, which was the beginning. St Augustine refutes this by describing the pagans’ errors. As in Confessions, he pokes holes in their logic.

Only in part two is Truth revealed. To explain how theology ought to relate to politics in every situation, he outlines the titular City of God, made of every past and future saint and all the good angels, and the Earthly City populated with all the damned rest, including fallen angels.

But Books XV through XVIII show that ever since the flood, the two cities have been intermingled, tangled together as Augustine himself was before his dramatic turning away from vice, half in the City of God, half in the Earthly City. That is, until the final judgement.

Both individuals and society struggle with attaining the good and resisting evil. It can help both to have a philosophical understanding of each.

In 2021, I taught a one-week teen theology class. I explained that evil is not a substance but the privation of a good, for example, that theft is a privation of property. This makes sense. God is good and would not create evil.

One teen replied, “What if good is just a lack of evil?”

Her point, while clever, doesn’t hold up. I was reminded of this reading City of God. Augustine repeatedly attacks plays for pagan gods. The Roman gods lie, cheat, and commit adultery. The plays depict this. Citizens supposedly honor them by showing their depravity.

Perhaps flipping values, where good is “lack of evil”, solves the paradox. If shame is the true substance and these gods create, they are themselves shameful. Otherwise, they wouldn’t exist, being only privation. A privation cannot create the substance of shame.

This situation proves the thesis wrong. Shameful in their essence, how could one dishonor Roman gods? It must be possible, if shame is true existence rather than honor.

To show them as shameful would be to tell the truth about them. That would be respecting them as they are and honoring them. If you hide their shame, that also honors them, because you don’t want people to know the shameful truth.

It’s a worse paradox. The only resolution is that Roman gods have nothing to do with existence and creation. They are poetry at best and demons at worst.

Not coincidentally, Augustine developed the privation understanding of evil. Just as it was essential to his rejection of Manichaeism, it pervades his political work. Perhaps a much simpler response to the challenge would be something like this:

For every man seeks peace by waging war, but no man seeks war by making peace.1

A contrarian may say that some people do seek war; Augustine has an answer.

they who make war desire nothing but victory — desire, that is to say, to attain to peace with glory.2

Regarding anarchists and revolutionaries,

they who intentionally interrupt the peace in which they are living have no hatred of peace, but only wish it changed into a peace that suits them better.3

-Book IXX, Chapter 12

That even wars are all seeking peace doesn’t mean that all wars are good. The single political idea for which Augustine is most famous is that of the just war. There are many things that make a war unjust.

Likewise, in City of God, he shows us that earthly politics will always lack true and perfect justice. In the words of privation theory, it will have some evil. This makes sense because a government without justice is going to be a little evil.

“Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms?”…Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. [W]hen [Alexander] asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered…

What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you who does it with a great fleet are styled emperor.

-Book IV, Chapter 4

Organized criminals (robbers, pirates, mafia) band together for power, profit, and ego. Without justice, this is all a government is doing.

There is much more in The City of God. The political scientist, the bible scholar, the historian, the philosopher, and the theology nerd all have something for them. It’s all the more impressive that each of these is woven together so well.

• One L: The Turbulent True Story of a First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow. This account of law school in the 1970’s was fun to read, though I disagree with the author on the failings of the Socratic method; I think it seems cool.

• Confessions by St Augustine of Hippo. I finally read the second half for the first time, and the portions on memory and time were wonderful. I fear I did not understand most of the final two chapters on Genesis.

• To Build the City of God by Brian McCall. This was a look into the world of the 2014 era US politics, through a traditional lens… before trads were everywhere. All still relevant, McCall should be especially noted for his expertise on usury.

Catholic Conversion Books Starter Pack

In reading Confessions, I got to thinking about my own faith. I did not convert, but as a young man, I certainly needed to decide how seriously to enact it. I wanted intellectual backing for action, and I wanted to know which actions to take.

Much of that involved reading, at least as much as prayer and self-reflection4. In case you or someone you know is at a similar turning point in life, here is a list of books that helped me then, or I believe would have helped had I read them earlier.

This is in order of difficulty to read, not that such an order should influence you.

1. Humility Rules by J Augustine Wetta O.S.B.

   1. This is a playful guide to the rule of St Benedict for young adults. It can be read in probably an hour. Many of these books are either practical, apologetic, or inspirational. This is all three on top of being short.

2. Resisting Happiness by Matthew Kelly

   1. I almost don’t want to mention it because I am not a Kelly fan. But his personal story with the progressive addition of spiritual practices is very useful. Good for ambitious, productivity types. Take with grains of salt.

3. Wild at Heart by John Eldridge

   1. This is a Protestant book, but one of the most keyed-in takes about masculinity, and it really doesn’t resort to stereotype.

4. St Thomas Aquinas and St Francis of Assisi by GK Chesterton

   1. That two such opposite lives are each so attractive is an apologetic in itself.

5. Mere Christianity by CS Lewis

   1. Again, Protestant, but keeps the arguments to simple and practical tacks that appeal to a neophyte in the faith.

6. Introduction to the Devout Life by St Francis de Sales

   1. This is Kelly’s resisting happiness for Trads. It is eminently practical to follow along with, and also beautiful enough to take into adoration to pray through.

7. Confessions by St Augustine of Hippo (described above)

Podcasts

I will also share some podcasts that I listened to in the same era and felt that really helped. I will always advocate for books more, but I admit that podcasts can be much easier for someone not used to reading and can be listened to while in the car.

• SSPX Podcast “Crisis in the Church” Series

  • Episodes 1-15 are “safe” if you do not wish to hear critiques of Vatican II. These discuss how Catholic teaching relates to various philosophies from Descartes to Existentialism. That’s useful for trads and non-trads alike.

• Early Pints with Aquinas

  • Before the unwieldy but wildly popular (sometimes rambling) conversations, Pints with Aquinas broke down sections of the Summa in twenty to thirty minutes.

That is all this month for books, only one more of these book posts. Let me know what you’ve been reading in the comments. Do you hit four books a month? Five? More?

Fun side note: My wife read more books than I this month for the first time ever, and hence is ahead for the year. She doesn’t forget to remind me of this fact.

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I am excited to more formally announce… The reading and thinking section of this blog, Mens Literae, will be, for the foreseeable future, devoted to a book club. Specifically, I intend for a group reading of one particular book: the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas.

In this post, I will give you the schedule, why I have decided to devote such time and effort, why you should join, and how the format of such a book club will work.

Why I Chose the Summa (Origins)

I consider myself a Thomist the way union members in the 1950s considered themselves Democrats: it seems the people on that side are for me, but I don’t know much about what the title actually means. I aim to change this.

I also firmly believe that the Church needs St. Thomas in a time of philosophical wishy-washy-ness. The Summa Theologica, in English “Summary of Theology,” is by far Thomas’ most famous work. So much so that, despite a “Summa Contra Gentiles,” the Theologica is often referred to as THE Summa.

I have mentioned before that one of my favorite books, Sertillanges’ The Intellectual Life, recommends reading the Summa in Latin as the best way of studying theology. He mentions this in the context that one ought to study theology (and philosophy) as an important prerequisite to studying anything else.

I think I agree (though I am too impatient to learn Latin first). To be a reader or writer of anything, it is appropriate to have solid theology and philosophy as a base. The Summa is like a two-for-one, as you will also be exposed to the philosophy of Aristotle, whom Aquinas calls THE Philosopher.

It is not that I have never read any of the Summa, I have read long bits of it out of curiosity or a specific project dictated. Even so much as to use its style on my own. Now is my time to read it in full.

Why YOU Should Join Us (Ends)

For the Catholic Substack set, the Summa needs no introduction. By the wonders of algorithms, if you are reading this, you have probably considered reading the Summa before.

The first reason is that you want a comprehensive handle on theology and the philosophy involved therein. Those who love the faith want to know more about it. The Summa Theologica can give this. Even if you don’t remember (or even always understand) what you have read, you will probably remember where to find it when a relevant situation reminds you of a concept. Because the faith is so consistent, the parts that you can recall may be all you need to logically determine parts that you cannot.

Secondly, you may want to be generally smarter, as I explained in my rationale. Yes, it is difficult and dense and abstract. If you can get your brain on a steady diet of the difficult and abstract, you will certainly find it to be faster and more adept in the abstract going forward. After Aquinas, the intellectuals of Substack or The New York Times won’t be so intimidating.

Thirdly, you may want to use the Summa in your own writing. Or the things that the Summa draws upon (notably Aristotle and the Bible). Reading through the entire Summa will give you a mental index of what is available to draw from and a richer context to verses in scripture that you almost certainly haven’t considered.

You may have a hundred other reasons, or a simpler one I haven’t considered. The point is that if you have been meaning to read Aquinas and putting it off, this is the invitation.

Read along, or at least start. It will get easier as you go, and the monthly posts will (I hope) help to make the material less difficult. I see no reason why not, as the full text is easily accessible on New Advent. Perhaps that it shows only one question at a time makes it less intimidating.

Format (In General)

The Summa itself is in three parts. Part 1 concerns God and creation (existence). Part 2 concerns morality. Part three concerns Christ and the sacraments (the church). Each part has many questions, and each question has between one and seventeen articles as part of it.

These articles are the minimum you would probably want to read in a sitting. They are quite short but contain a lot within them. They are all arguments for or against a question. He also includes counterarguments and replies to those counterarguments. Because there are so many articles and they are already organized around the larger questions, it is the Questions that we will use as an organizing principle.

There are Summa reading plans out there already. It simply breaks it down into 5 questions each week, so about 20 a month (though from time to time closer to 25). There are also suggestions that you sort of read it backwards to start with the more accessible and move to the theological/philosophical after getting used to the format.

I have broken it down a little differently. The thinking of Thomas Aquinas is very structured; as such, different questions are related to each other, sometimes very closely. It makes sense to me to organize the readings around these topics, just as the articles are organized around questions.

This means that the number of questions each month varies, but my hope is that the longer sections will still be easier to read because your mind will be attuned to the same topic. The material is hard enough without switching from Angels to Matter in the course of one reading session.

What Will the Blog Posts Look Like? (In Substance)

First and foremost, they will have the next month’s schedule of questions and articles, and the theme they are around.

After that, my guiding themes are simplicity and accessibility, both for me as a writer and you as a reader. So I am sure the posts will evolve throughout the course of the schedule.

At least, I will want to look at the overall structure of how the questions are related and any repeated themes they all share. This will help to simplify things.

For accessibility, that involves having a little fun. I have been imagining that I will try to identify a favorite argument, one that is cool or I haven’t thought of before. I may give “shoot-from-the-hip” reactions. Any questions I have, I will not be afraid to point out. This will save me time from doing too much extra research.

Please feel free to suggest any ideas you may have to accomplish these two goals of accessibility and simplicity.

On the reader’s side, to get the most out of this, I think the best thing is to comment on the post with your own reflections and questions. (Of course, I would be very excited to see members writing their own lengthier commentary in separate posts based on what I have said and those in the comments.)

I have also made a GroupMe for the purposes of discussion. I like GroupMe because it doesn’t really push you onto any other aspects of its platform or ask you to use it more, like a Discord (or even Substack’s feature). It is also something I already need to use from time to time because of my flip phone. (I will put the link in the actual posts.)

Schedule (Matter)

The first thing to notice is that the whole thing will take three years. That is a lot of time and an intimidating investment. Don’t let this intimidate you, especially since you can bail out at any time. As for me, who am here committing (under consequence of social embarrassment) publicly to read all this, I am buoyed by two facts:

1. I have been doing book review posts of 4 to 5 books a month, every month, for the past year. And even before that found the time to read roughly the same amount.

2. I have been thinking about reading the Summa for more than 3 years in the past, so it seems unlikely I will decide I no longer want to.

The second part is just a little too long to finish in a year, so it invades both years one and three. The logical demarcations I chose didn’t quite make it to perfectly three years, so there will be two “breaks” on the two anniversary months of the project. This lets you read something else (or nothing) for a change, or it can be time to catch up after falling behind.

In grey after the questions, but before the topics, is the number of questions that month. The highest it gets is twenty-four, which will be heavy. The months of twenty-two are balanced out with months with fewer than ten articles. I hope this will provide a seasonality that will feel more natural and human than a relentless march of 20 every month.

While ABSOLUTELY subject to change and alteration, I hope to post each reflection on the last Tuesday of the month for each. This is different from my book reviews when I wait for the month to be completely over. I think it strikes a balance between people who can’t finish until the 31st (they can wait a few days to read it) and people who want the following month’s schedule of questions for the sake of planning.

A helpful bonus

I am going to be doing this all completely for free. Don’t feel guilty, I will likely be getting more out of the process of writing the posts than anyone who is simply reading.

I will not be spending crazy amounts of time on it, and if it has to be put on pause, I will humbly inform the club that such is life.

However, if you appreciate the concept and community on offer for free, I will put a link in each post to one of those “buy me a coffee” sites. I assume it is fairly simple to set up, and while I do not see my efforts here as a formal corporation, I can enjoy the idea of a coffeeshop chat.

But not in this post. The only thing you should do now is to subscribe to get the actual book club posts and any other information on the venture.

Subscribe now

At the small chance you are wondering what will become of my monthly book reviews, they will be put on hiatus. If I read something that seems especially in need of a review, I will still write it up, but Aquinas will now be my monthly priority.

If there is demand for reviews, perhaps my friends at Dreaming of the Rood would commission an occasional review of books of Catholic interest, should they ever get around to doing physical media. It would be something I’d be open to at least.

I resolved to be a more consistent reader in 2025 by finishing exactly 5 books each month. The only exception was May, when I read ten. In total, I read 65 books in 2025.

Reading bloggers discuss such goals frequently. They usually are in favor. But there are opponents. In judging books, I consider five elements.

The battle of many books or few rests largely on (1) depth versus (2) breadth. Also, books contain (3) facts. Different fields have (4) canons, the classics. None of these matter if you aren’t reading at all. So, conversation around choosing books often falls to (5) motivation.

When I hear critiques, they seem to focus on two of the five elements I listed above. Arguing that the goal setting itself is one of the following:

1. Lacking in depth: a total number that is too high pushes out deeper reading in favor of books easier to finish. Even if one does read these longer works, they are reading it too fast to get all the value.

2. Poor motivation: your motivation becomes the number and the finishing rather than learning. You may get “stuck” with books you don’t enjoy but feel you must finish because of sunk time costs.

I agree with the first, but take issue with the second.

In February, June, July, and September I subbed in a book that I may not have read otherwise because it was a fast finish. But these were solid books in themselves.

But depth was a struggle. In one case I completely put down a book. It was too hard to finish quickly. With others, I meant to read a book in one month and finished it a few months later, having temporarily set it aside in favor of something shorter.

When I use “depth,” I mean the connections made between facts: the patterns, the mental models. At higher levels these things are Truths. A formative book for me (and one I reread in May) is The Intellectual Life by AG Sertillanges. He says,

“Details are nothing: facts are nothing: the important things are the dependences, the transmissions of influence, the connecting links, the exchanges, which constitute the life of nature.”

The details themselves are not as important as the major theses.

The motivation critique is legitimate. Breadth offers a solution. If a book is a slog, set it down and pick up a new one. St Thomas Aquinas would call this the vice of curiosity. A loyal Dominican, Sertillanges is not a fan.

What we are proscribing is the passion for reading, the uncontrolled habit, the poisoning of the mind by excess of mental food, the laziness in disguise which prefers easy familiarity with others’ thought to personal effort.

But broad need not be code for random or exciting. He also says.

We want to develop breadth of mind, to practice comparative study, to keep the horizon open before us; these things cannot be done without much reading.

There are two kinds of breadth, novelty for its own sake can be motivating but is definitely undisciplined. But comparative reading is helpful in making connections. What we should be concerned about is books that are too easy.

Mortimer Adler in How to Write a Book describes it like this:

If a book is easy and fits nicely into all your language conventions and thought forms, then you probably will not grow much from reading it. It may be entertaining, but not enlarging... It’s the hard books that count.

I hope literary canons, the final element, can be a purer motivation. Knowing a book is widely respected is exciting. If I’m not totally enjoying it, I can trust that the difficulty means I’m learning. It is also the path to developing a literary taste which enjoys the canon.

A more important benefit is that a good canon reflects all the books that are the deepest in an area. Reading across them also provides the best depth.

In summary, details and breadth are oriented to depth. Motivation and depth are often opposed. A map of depth is offered by a relevant canon, the esteem of which can help with the paradox of motivation.

Going into 2026, I am dropping down to four books a month from five, but I also plan on adding in two extras to bring the total to 50 books. After a year of exposure to new areas, I am eager for more of the canon and depth in the areas that are important to me.

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BEST BOOKS

I would be remiss if I didn’t join in the new year tradition of blogger-intellectuals by giving you the breakdown of the best books I read.

Categories

Instead of a straight ranking Old Books (Those originally written before 1800), New Books (2020 - 2025), since this is a Catholic publication: Theology, and then finally Fiction and Non-Fiction

Participants

To add further value to you the reader and to make the whole list less of a exercise for my own ego, alongside my winner will be those of two other participants.

I have asked the minds behind Dreaming of the Rood: J.A. Siemer and J.M. Terry to contribute to this list. They have kindly agreed. A large portion of my readers have come from Dreaming of the Rood, and more importantly, I have the pleasure of knowing it’s creators personally. I know each contributor to be a man of taste and well reasoned opinions.

Old Books

Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians by St Thomas Aquinas. To a genius, everything is connected and there is clear structure in what others find muddled. I am an Aquinas fanboy and Aquinas is a St Paul fanboy. St Thomas is rigorous in teasing out each implication of practically every line and comma. Of everything I have read or participated in, this was the most deserving of the name “bible study.”

-Barrett

The Confessions of St. Augustine. Augustine’s recounting of his life to God as part of a reflection on God’s providence in history. I read the first eight books with my students and have thoroughly enjoyed it more than any other reading of it that I’ve done. I especially liked this reading because has been helping me think more about providence and how it functions in our lives.

-Joe

The Cloud of Unknowing, by Anonymous English Monk. The Cloud of Unknowing is a arguably the most beautiful mystical text that came out of the English Catholic patrimony. In a time where we Catholics can sometimes fall prey to over-rationalized theology, The author (who was an anonymous English monk) challenges us to see God like the dark cloud that enveloped Moses, only accessible through experience of his divine love. The author argues that we can only come close to that cloud of unknowing through a fervent desire for God, not through the intellect.

-Jake

New Books

Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte is a book I expected to hate. And yet, it delivered a short, but organized defense of notes and note-taking. I like this system even if I haven’t completely adopted it. I still think “second brain” is an unfortunate title, conjuring images of the transhumanist downloading his memories. But if anything, Forte is in favor of the human mind and it’s ability to grapple with nuanced ideas. I also believe the central tenets of his note-taking philosophy could be utilized on paper, further distancing him from the cringe-inducing transhumanists.

All of that to say, this is the honorable mention. For my true favorite of the year, I will defer to the opinion of Jake...

-Barrett

Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. Against the Machine was a Christmas gift from my wife and was well worth waiting for. Kingsnorth is, in many ways, giving us a primer on the impending collapse of the Christian West and (though I haven’t finished it yet) perhaps some keys ways of navigating the future. While I might quibble with a point here or there, the book is excellent. Probably the best work on this topic. If you’re wanting to better understand what’s happening in the world around you and what is to come, this is the book for you.

-Jake

I don’t think I read anything written after 2020 this year, to my shame.

-Joe

Fiction

The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien with honorable mentions to For Whom the Bell Tolls and Call of the Wild. Like everyone else, I had seen the movies and thought I had gotten most of the benefit (or maybe lost much of the benefit) of reading the book. I was wrong. There is more content, yes, but there is also more substance. The world of Middle Earth embodies the best of the Middle Ages in their Catholicity. Stylistically, despite being intimidatingly long, no chapter overstays it’s welcome.

-Barrett

Sword and Citadel by Gene Wolfe. This is a story about Severian, a journeyman of the torturers’ guild in a far-future Earth with a dying sun. The romance of the setting mixed with the strangeness of the main character, makes for a rather unforgettable book and I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind since then.

-Joe

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol is, of course, the classic Christmas story of the English speaking world. It likely needs no introduction but just in case you’re unaware, the story follows a greedy miser named Ebenezer Scrooge who is visited by three ghosts just before Christmas day. The tale perfectly reveals Catholic social teaching though Christmas spirit. As Marc Barns of New Polity recently said “If you wanted to ever characterize the Catholic social teaching of the Church, you can do far worse than to characterize it as Christmas every day of the year.”

-Jake

Theology

The Ascent of Mount Carmel by St John of the Cross. I read a lot of John of the Cross this year, inspired by visiting Avila, the hometown of his fellow Carmelite: St Teresa. Sanjuanist thought is most famous in Dark Night of the Soul. Don’t get me wrong Dark Night was good, but for a spiritual beginner, in the actual practice of mental prayer if not it theological knowledge, Ascent was more applicable. The way John works with scripture and builds his advice off of his own poems is infectious. Far from fluff, St John of the Cross calls you to detachment from the start.

-Barrett

The Breviloquium by St. Bonaventure. This is probably my favorite work of medieval theology that I’ve read so far. It is Bonaventure’s equivalent to the Summa, though it is quite different in structure. Bonaventure wrote it to be a textbook of sorts for the friars and it was held in such high regard that, allegedly, the Pope considered studying this book to be enough to gain a license to teach theology anywhere in Europe.

-Joe

Chastity by Bishop Eric Varden. I’m completely convinced that Erik Varden is the best kept secret of the Vatican today. Varden is both a Bishop and a trappiest Monk, which is a wonderful combination. He is a Roman Catholic theologian and yet he is a Syriac scholar, both in terms of the language and theological literature. With this all said, it should be abundantly clear that a book by such a man would be far from the lame purity books that dominate that subject. To give you an idea of it’s quality, the book doesn’t even give a definition of Chastity until near the end of the first part of the book. Before that, Varden leads the reader into the realm of Syriac theology of creation as found the ancient text, The treasure of the caves. I cannot recommend a theological work more than than this one.

-Jake

Non-Fiction

The Everlasting Man by GK Chesterton with honorable mention to Ultra learning and The Making of a Chef. Chesterton occupies near mythical status as a Catholic writer/journalist. Everlasting Man is a simple apologetic work, that uses all of human history and civilization as fodder for it’s arguments. He manages to use the secular interests of Christ’s opponents like anthropology and history and turns it around on them. The overall structure is as clever as the individual turns of phrase.

-Barrett

The Eucharistic Liturgies: Their Evolution and Interpretation by Paul Bradshaw and Max Johnson. This book is a survey of the history of the liturgy from the apostles down to the present day. I believe it is a standard work for students of the liturgy and, though I had my quibbles with it (such as Bradshaw’s pet theory that the Eucharist did not come from the Last Supper) it filled in many of the gaps in my knowledge of the liturgy’s development over the centuries.

-Joe

Books I Read 12/25

• Evicted by Matthew Desmond. I don’t usually read social commentary that is so personal. Natural empathy can manipulate openness to policy. But I found the stories of poor families in Milwaukee to be compelling (Desmond expertly keeps himself out of the narratives even when he’s an eyewitness). I will also be thinking (perhaps writing) a lot about the corporal works of mercy in the coming years. This book helped to start that.

• Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. The eighth in the Wheel of Time series. I enjoy reading one of these once or twice a year. It reminds me of my middle school days eagerly awaiting the next Rick Riordan installment.

• Living Flame of Love by St John of the Cross. Like most of John’s work, this is a poem and a subsequent breaking down of the poem. It suffers even more from the problem of “seeming too spiritually advanced” than other works, but I liked it all the same.

• A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens. [see Jake’s review above]

• The Twelve Minor Prophets. You can read these twelve “books” (16% of the books in the bible, but not 16% of the words) in 24 days. It takes less than 3 chapters a day. This may have been my best Old Testament Advent reading yet. It may also be even easier (compared to Isaiah and Jeremiah) to pick out the prophecies of Christ, which is what a good Advent is all about.

2026 Reading Plans

In January and February, I will continue to to review the books I read. Frankly I will probably keep doing short reviews on my own because it has been good for me.

But starting in March I will start a new project: reading the entire Summa Theologica by St Thomas Aquinas over the course of three years. Soon, I will post my reading plan, that keeps each month on the same theme. I will be switching the Mens/Litterae posts to this Summa read-along. I hope you will join me.

This month, I am switching up the format. I want to make the most of this time every month to reflect on the books more deeply, so I have added reflections on the one book this month I feel you all will be most interested in. I also have some other reading based content in this post if you stick around.

Here at Crusade for Manliness, I read five books and report back. But more than that, I challenge you to read more and to think more. This gets us of the screens that are killing our attention span and our humanity. We are reading to spend the time doing so and to learn a variety of wisdom and skills.

So, whether you have been reading the reviews every month or this is the first one you have stumbled upon, please participate. Use the button bellow to discuss what books you read in November and plan to read in December.

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                                                   AGAINST THE MACHINE:
                                                 On the Unmaking of Humanity
                                                             by Paul Kingsnorth

It seems that everyone on a particular part of Substack is reviewing Kingsnorth’s latest work, which started here as a series of newsletter entries. Remembering where things come from happens to be a central theme of Against the Machine.

Equal parts historical techno-criticism and spiritual political philosophy, this book wants to do a lot. It would have been enough to show how AI, transgenderism, COVID lockdown policies, immigration, and overprocessed foods all have to do with each other. This is thanks to a highly useful term and lens. The bulk of the book applies this spiritual and historical lens of “The Machine” to each of these issues-of-the-day in turn and more. I would say only a few of these critiques fall flat. But Kingsnorth is also a poet, and he tackles each section with wonderful turns of phrase which make up for a occasional lack in substance.

Other critiques I can level is his platforming of Philip Sherrard’s idea that Sts. Augustine and Aquinas are somehow responsible for Descartes and Bacon ruining all of Western philosophy. Downstream of this is his lack of nuance in critiquing science. Absolutely, science as a cult and philosophy is as the root of the Machine. I would draw a distinction between lowercase science and uppercase Science or scientism. At it’s best little s science can investigate material and efficient causes. It enters the realm of religion when it tries to control or dismiss final and formal causes.

I am recommending this book, it has great stuff, but before I return to it’s praise I want to finish with AI. Kingsnorth is worried that AI superintelligence is coming enabled by the demonic. I don’t doubt that Big Tech is dealing in demons, but my stance on AI is ultimately that, like climate change, the predictions have been highly exaggerated. Things like intelligence and nature are much stronger than scientism presumes. They cannot be mastered no matter how good or ill our intentions are.

Kingsnorth started in the environmental movement, I don’t know how many have followed him to Substack and orthodoxy and reactionary radicalism. I suspect that in terms of politics he is meeting with mostly agreement. If I am looking at some of the chapters as lacking “umph”, it is perhaps because I have already been convinced of the problem. That’s not his fault. That is why I want to focus on his final chapters in which he discusses where we ought to go from here.

In these final sections and a few other times throughout the book, Kingsnorth does something that is at least as brave as his critiques of both liberal and conservative pet issues: he calls attention to his own hypocrisy. It is on a laptop and through a digital service that allows him to do his critique of the tech and the digital. But there is a nuanced answer. In twelfth century China, there were the barbarians that existed entirely outside of the state in caves and away from the government. There were also barbarians within the city walls. On the surface, they obey and get along, but were always suspected of cooperation with those outside.

This is how one rebels... against the machine. Ideally, you can be those on the outside, and Kingsnorth wonders aloud if they day will come where there is no other option. But for now, we can be the Catholics of the early church, living and working in the city, but meeting for mass in the catacombs. In the hidden side of this double life we are to pursue the four Ps he outlines. They prayer, place, past, and people. Those without roots must attach themselves to a place and a people. Learning your past can help with this. This is addressing the awkward part about localism: not everyone starts with a clear place. Some of the most historic peoples and cultures were quite nomadic at times. The place must be chosen.

Ultimately the most important root does not go down, but up: prayer. The book is not explicitly Christian, but I see no other option for this final section of the book. We need to battle against gnostic forces that try to transcend and say nothing matters and at the same time the pleasure focused and measure focused scientism materialists. Only one Creed has done that time and time again.

• The life-changing magic of tidying up, by Marie Kondo. This month I focused on organization and cleaning — this is the classic. The groundbreaking part is not so much “get rid of things” as it is go through each category of things in your place all at once and decide what you actually like and use. My wife and I did the first three categories: clothes, books, and documents and then all of our office supplies.

• Building a Second Brain, by Tiago Forte. Same concept for the digital. I though I would hate this and it would feel transhuman-y. It does not. It is more like a guide to actually finally start that commonplace book you have wanted to do — then how to use it.

• Finding Ultra, by Rich Roll. Really motivating for fitness. Rich goes from alcoholic to vegan triathlete. The hippy Buddhism-y spirituality that came at times was unwelcome.

• Golden, by Jeff Coen and John Chase. Subtitle: How Rod Blagojevich Talked Himself out of the Governor’s Office and into Prison. I work in Illinois politics and was given this book about a scandal that is still in recent memory. Worth it if you are an Illinoisan and like political bios. Not for you if budgets and long trial sections aren’t your speed.

Reading the Times: Advent

I also like the idea of recommending books I have read longer ago that have become timely perhaps in the news or the liturgical season.

The Prophecy of Isaiah

It is a strange one to read all the way through. I did so two Advents ago. It is long for a book of the Bible too. But a few chapters a day will still have you done before Christmas. Of all the Old Testament, Isaiah has the most prefiguring of Christ. That is what Advent is all about after all, so it seems the most appropriate next to The Gospel of Luke.

Probably, you will get much more out of it if you have a good commentary. I cannot recommend one that I have read. But a quick Google reveals Commentary on the Book of Isaiah by Fr. Mitch Pacwa S.J. who is Jesuit but it is put out by TAN Books. Personally, I would go towards something like Origen’s Homilies on Isaiah or Homilies on Isaiah and Jeremiah by St John Chrysostom.

Still, if you’d rather, you could perhaps make an excuse that A Christmas Carrol by Charles Dickens is on theme for Advent because it inspires you to examine your conscience. A bit of a stretch, but it could make a good Substack article.

December Reading Plans

Catch up with us next month for Decembers books. I am thinking about service in my life and got Evicted by Matthew Desmond to learn more about poverty in America. Also from my local library I have The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. It is the eighth book in the Wheel of Time series and it’s been over a year since I read number seven so it seemed “Time”. They are long so we will have to see if I don’t swap it out before the end of the month and push it to January. Otherwise, my Advent spiritual reading will be The Twelve Minor Prophets this year. No, that’s not a book about prophets or some other clever thing. I literally mean the tiny books in the Old Testament.

What are your reading plans for the next month? Let us know:

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That's all for November 2025. Be on the lookout for an essay about an obscure word I found in a law dictionary and what it means for your soul and society. That should be coming in the next few weeks.

A Time to Kill, by John Grisham. I have to say king of the law thriller John Grisham’s first novel IS more than a law thriller. Race and small town life are major themes. Corruption and morality are pondered too when a vigilante takes matters of justice into his own hands for the sake of his daughter. The main character and the town are fun in a way that you want with serious themes. Also breaking things up are shorts sections in the perspectives of side characters, a fiction device I quite enjoy. I read Scott Turow’s first book last month in the same genre and Grisham is better in all elements but the surprise twist1.

The 2 Hour Cocktail Party, by Nick Gray. Never have I listened to a podcast promotion for a book and retained so much as Nick Gray’s appearance on the Art of Manliness Podcast talking about how to throw a cocktail party. It is everything you want from a life-hack. His advice is easy to understand and implement. It is a system for something that people struggle with but still feel that it is kind of wrong to need a system for. The advice itself is against conventional wisdom and yet perfectly logical once explained. One example: a hard stop after two hours on a weekday means that people are available, they wont be too late, and it will end on a high note. For more go read the book.

Range, by David Epstein. This book is is fun and so highly relevant that I worked its core idea into two conversations before I had even finished reading. We want to hear that you can be world class in things even if you haven’t spent 10,000 hours, and Range provides many examples of just that. The overlapping theme is creativity and curiosity, as well as environments which are conducive to more creative approaches. Not that it becomes easier, his examples include making elementary math classes and memorization purposefully harder, Enrico Fermi’s order-of-magnitude estimation, Van Gogh never holding down a job, and an analogy problem that only 10% of people solve.

The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes. This book, if nothing else, is an example of the kind of range that David Epstein describes. Jaynes pulls in arguments from linguistics, history, and anthropology, but also biology, psychiatry and poetry. He makes a metaphor about metaphors using language borrowed from math all so he can apply The Iliad and The Odyssey to his thesis. If there is a lot of begging the question in this book, readers will be forgiven for not noticing as it is hidden across chapters and domains. I happen to think Jaynes is very very wrong in his theory of consciousness, especially on the interpretation of the Bible and even the classics of Greece and Rome as they apply to human life. That said, I am still quite impressed with the seriousness and consideration he gives and am thankful these ideas never did catch on when he introduced them in the 1970s. However if they had, it may have made the new atheists of the 2000s more interesting to talk to.

The Social Biome, by Andy Merolla and Jeffrey Hall. I didn’t expect to like this one as much as I did since I had already read a good number of communication books this year. Merolla and Hall are academics and offer more focus to studies than stories but their nuance and clarity is refreshing. The Social Biome is at it’s best when discussing tradeoffs of communication, the balance between alone time and social time, deep talk and small talk, or digital vs face to face.

Each month, I read 5 books and review them in the hope that we will all read more, scroll less, and become more interesting people.

Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow. (Warning: contains short but overly graphic, lustful sections. Read at your own risk). This was the first legal thriller as such. Soon after this novel, John Grisham dominated the 90s with hit after legal hit. Turrow uses his long legal career to keep the technical aspects believable, but at core the story is noir. Crooked public servants, politics, and cover-ups twist and turn from beginning to end. Said twists are sufficiently exciting, encouraging contemplation, but not a re-read.

Epistle to the Galatians, St Paul. Epistles are usually heard in the context of the mass, in small portions. I usually like to read a commentary as well if one of my books for the month is from the Bible, but I did not. That said, it seemed very clear to me that a theme was the Jewish law contrasted with the new law. Without being too provocative, when we consider global news, Catholic would do well to remember that the Jewish law is not our own and that we follow something higher.

You’re Not Listening, Kate Murphy. The main takeaway for a lot of people who have read this book was it’s relation to technology, but that really only comes in towards the end. The best societal commentary, I think, was actually Murphy’s discussion of the art of focus groups and listening deeply to a few people as compared to our data based world of quantitative data on huge sample sizes. She is however very wrong when discussing the so called “benefits” of gossip.

The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber1, Ernest Hemingway. This short story is very much about relationships between men and women. Even more, it is about masculinity. The setting of a big game hunt and obvious machismo is contrasted by emotional sensitivity, insecurity, and subtle communication in a way that only Hemingway could pull off.

The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts, Gary Chapman. This book came for free at mine and my wife’s “Pre-Cana” class. A part of me wanted it to be as lame and cheesy as I assumed from the common discussion around this idea. But no matter how critical I was, I failed to poke holes. The five categories represent an extremely resonant and comprehensive taxonomy even if someone somewhere could perhaps produce one equally robust. The only flaw is the blurry lines between categories. Catholics in particular should appreciate how Chapman starts and ends the book with his no-nonsense takedown of divorce, and the call to love actively instead of chasing feelings themselves.

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CHALLENGE: Reading is far less common than it once was, yet the advantages remain. Choose a goal for monthly books and accomplish it. What will you read this coming month? How many books? Share in the comments and I may read it too.

Thinking: we all do it. There are however, many approaches to examine your own thought. Take for example:

1. Learning

2. Decision making, rational or otherwise

3. Writing: basically thinking on paper

4. Existential meaning, and highly related for Catholics

5. Prayer

This month, I have a book for each.

A Mind for Numbers, by Barbara Oakley. Learning is one of the toughest kinds of thinking we can do, and math, for many, is the toughest learning. Oakley seeks to ease the pain. A main theme is taking more breaks. Drawing on Magnus Carlsen, Thomas Edison, and other high caliber minds, she calls subconscious problem solving “diffuse mode thinking”. Provided you have spent enough time in focused mode grappling with the various aspects of the task, a part of you will continue to ponder in the background making more creative connections.

Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman. A Nobel prize winning thinker crashes together two of the most thought-based fields: psychology and economics, specifically decision making and prediction aspects of the latter. Kahneman comes out swinging for psychology, being the best of the two. This book has become a classic among many smart people since its release, and I see why. That said, if I were to continue in economics (where I got my bachelors) a clear path for me would be pushing back in defense of classical, logical economics and the rationality of the human person.

To take one example, there is the Linda problem:

Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations.

Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller.

2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

The problem is that most people will choose option 2, which is more specific so obviously less probable. Kahneman makes much of this and it has become very famous. I would argue that a rational person may choose option 2 if they read it as “Linda is a bank teller and not a feminist” which is a legitimate reading, especially in the context.

There are many other such cases where I believe Catholic academics should be standing up for rationality.

Draft No. 4, by John McPhee. This book is… McPhee expertly… I read this… Often writing is the best way to clarify your thinking. Even oftener, such clarity requires writing multiple times. This is a wonderful collection of essays on the art of writing. Certainly, it seems more useful but less romantic than Stephen King’s On Writing. My favorite was the first essay, on structuring long non-fiction pieces. What is missing for me is more on the research process outside of interviews. McPhee gives a lot to talk to subjects and less on perusing library stacks.

Man’s Search for Meaning, by Victor Frankl. If your only experience with this book is the summary given in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or the dozens of other self-help titles which reference Frankl, you will be disappointed. The reality of the book is much less inspiring. The unfortunate fact is that Frankl was did not consider himself content or at peace in the Holocaust. I do not remember him “considering himself ‘freer’ than his Nazi captors” as is sometimes alleged as the power of independent will. His logotherapy was one aspect, along with many instances of luck, and the value of his medical knowledge, to which he credits his survival. Catholic men should be wary of logotherapy in that it states that you can choose the meaning in your life.

Fire Within, by Fr Thomas Dubay. The highest thinking you can do is contemplating God. IF you do it well enough, you are not even really thinking at all, so says Fr Thomas Dubay. After Happy Are You Poor, this is the second of Dubay’s books I have read. It is also the harder and more complicated of the two. In one sense it must be. Academic treatments of authors’ work, and mystical theology are each hard to read on their own, this is both. But the work is needed

The highest point for Teresa and John is humility. Dubay almost maddeningly does not discuss techniques. Instead, he offers what is obvious once stated, yet too often goes unstated in the modern church. “If we are to love someone completely, there can be no room for a competing love.” The masters of contemplation would not go for the individualism of the 21st century, “Contemplation and self-indulgence do not mix.”

The Call of the Wild - Jack London

Jack London was a manly guy, Buck the dog is a manly dog. Actually, from what I have read, he is somewhat of a super-manly dog. Jack London was an avid reader, he would have no problem with the Crusade for Manliness Five Books Challenge (R) TM. Among his reading interests were Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. The dog’s learning about the rough politics of superiority defined by conflict in the world outside of domestication kind of show it. While I disagree with the philosophies, I am not complaining in terms of plot, this is a fun quick novel.

Coming Into the Country - John McPhee

With Call of the Wild, this also takes place in Alaska (I did take a trip there in July, and I bring themed books, sue me). While I suspected that I would experience it, that doesn’t detract from the joy of reading McPhee. Called at one time, “the best journalist in America”, never have I read non-fiction that was so much like a novel. That is: fun, narrative, structurally complex when you think about it, but in the moment completely natural.

What’s Wrong With the World - GK Chesterton

EEEEEK! That is me fan-girl-ing over Chesterton despite this being a blog about manliness and masculinity.

Like McPhee, Chesterton has an uncanny ability to make complex topics accessible. Read this book (it’s in the public domain and free online). If you retain the ideas here, you will understand political science (read: political philosophy) better than 99% of politicians and professors. His turns of phrase are so often funny because they are constantly true. He is consistently witty because his common sense is somehow quite rare.

I want to write a whole post about how Chesterton baptizes the concept of democracy with just a few offhand quotes in this book when he is talking mainly about something else. AHHHH!

Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare

This is the shortest Shakespeare, and, despite what you may have heard, I would argue that it is quite accessible.

The premise is simple: two sets of twins were separated at birth and receive the same names. They end up in the same town. Confusion ensues. It is simple, but like in Chesterton, the simple becomes sophisticated and funny in the hands of a master. It is claimed that this is a difficult play to read for two reasons:

1. The characters having the same name will make the reader confused along with the characters.

2. A lot of it rhymes, more than your high school Shakespeare.

However, the characters names are labeled in the script with where they are from, a single quick glance to the top of the line of dialogue will always suffice. As for rhyming, it makes these lines significantly funnier. Reading aloud is always useful with Shakespeare and that practice will help with this problem too.

Why We Dream - Alice Robb

Not a book I usually would have read, but I gave extra attention to sleep this month. Fellow book reviewer Alice Robb chronicles the evolving seriousness with which dreams are being taken by the scientific community. She also tests various dream techniques for herself. My favorite two answers to the titular question were as follows… (1) Dreams are symbolic representations of our brain continuing to work on various puzzles and problems that we thought about during the day.1 (2) Dreams are us “war gaming” various scenarios that we may run into in the future so that we are intellectually and emotionally more prepared.

Catholic men may scoff at logging their dreams, or sharing them with a group for interpretation as Robb also tried and described. They would be well to remember two Josephs (one in each testament) that were famously attuned to dreams, along with other in scripture. I would never presume a dream was a message from God, but upon reflection, I don’t think a Catholic could responsibly rule it out.

In just 30 days, I learned about how to be an expert communicator, the ins and outs of spotting liars, medieval economic practices, and how to get to the top of any field.

Each month I try to read five books, this June I had the extra goal of trying a few new things socially and I wanted to complement that with two books about human relationships.

Supercommunicators - Charles Duhigg

This one started off so well, but trended down in my opinion. His three pillars of conversation are “what are we talking about” “what are we feeling” and “who are we” more or less. The last dove into race and so called “hard conversations”.

Honestly I have retained more about the examples he used, a Netflix exec being fired for mentioning a slur by name, but not using it, and the difficulty in writing The Big Bang Theory when nerds are not supposed to understand their feelings well.

The only one that made me feel like the communication lesson was super was when he talked about the questions to make you fall in love that went viral years ago. You can use them just to make friends too, and I had already heard of them.

That said, I liked it enough that I am interested to read Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better by Duhigg.

Talking to Strangers - Malcom Gladwell

I think it is now cool to not like Malcom Gladwell and that it started around this book, but I liked it and I am not ashamed. (The only other I have read is Outliers).

For one, the writing style, pacing and structure is just good. He did something interesting with an opening illustrative case and the whole book builds back towards it.

The book is about how interactions with strangers go wrong and as such is often dark. Even the tangents are sometimes dark, but very interesting topics that I would read in themselves. The data science behind suicides and crime or the psychological debate on whether torture works were there, but so was a quick analysis of a scene from Friends by a facial muscle researcher.

I had kind of hoped it would be about how to talk to strangers more, but I know of other books like that and was by no means disappointed.

The Hound of Distributism - Richard Aleman

This is a collection of essays about distributism. There is so much in here and I will direct the interested reader to the more in depth review on Front Porch Republic. For me I will tell you two things that this book was NOT.

One, this is not a naive basic level introductory work. The opening two chapters may lead one to believe that if you have read Belloc or listened to New Polity, that you have already passed this level of distributism. I assure you, whatever level this is, it is not level one. Though they would of course disagree with much, even East Coast Finance bros would have to admit that these are, in addition, well educated authors in economics and political science. That said…

The second thing, is this is NOT gatekeeping distributism with complicated econ. I will admit that I had to read the banking essay a little slowly, but there is also (as mentioned above) two very accessible opening chapters, and an article on gardening along with one taken from Chesterton himself. If you fear that, rather than too simple, this will be too complex, fear not and read away!

Meno - Plato

Can virtue be taught? Most of us in Catholic-culture-tradition-re-enchantment-distributist-scholastic-Substack world would say yes. Socrates says no… probably.

But every teacher should read this short and fun dialogue, if I cannot convince you, perhaps this podcast on it can. The first and obvious digression Socrates takes is “what is virtue” fair enough. But, classic philosophy, he also asks “is teaching and learning even possible?” which is much weirder.

If you don’t know something, how can you know if you learned it?

I might be off a little, but it is certainly interesting and leads to some strange conclusions in the dialogue about “remembering past lives” and an even stranger sequence where Socrates teaches a slave boy geometry and basically pretends that he is not teaching him.

Anyway, it is one of the better dialogues and short. I will leave with one of the best reactions to Socrates eternal questioning.

And you seem to me… both in looks and other respects, like the flat torpedo-fish of the sea. For, indeed, it always makes anyone who approaches it grow numb, and you seem to me now to have done that very sort of thing to me, making me numb. For truly, both in soul and in mouth, I am numb and have nothing with which I can answer you.

-Meno

I just think that is pretty funny. A platonic roast if you will.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You - Cal Newport

This is the second time I have read this, it barely took a year before I wanted to do the second read. All Winter and Spring this year, I was in job hunting mode. Yet another power of reading so many books per month/year is that when you have a problem, you have probably read something that can help you1.

Whether it did directly is debatable, but it is a short, highly structured, and intellectually very fun read about the theory of careers. What is here can be applied to any application system or none at all, it can be used to get one promotion or plan a whole life of work.

They key is that dream jobs and passion are either completely fake or too ethereal to make any plans around. The question should really never be “what do I like?” but “what am I good at.” Of course for a recent college graduate the answer is usually: nothing in particular (except for school sometimes2).

The answer is to, at the beginning, suck it up and start at the bottom, but to really figure out what skills are important to moving up and aggressively practice them, always being just above your comfort zone. If someone will pay you for the new skills, you are good enough and you can get more control in your work life (which may or may not mean more money).

I really like seeing what other people are reading so comment below what you read this month… or plan to read next month! Here’s some of what you will see on my list for July (hopefully).

• What’s Wrong With the World - GK Chesterton

• Call of the Wild - Jack London

Each month here at Crusade for Manliness I challenge readers to choose a number of books out of their comfort zone (mine is 5), read them, and report back. If all this did was get us off our screens it would be worth it, but there are so so many good books out there.

But in May I had an extra challenge, I wanted to work on the foundational habits of my reading life: so for one month only, I doubled the count. I finished 10 books in just 31 days.

10 good books is too many, I don’t plan on doing it again, but here is the list and my thoughts.

Poetics - Aristotle

You may be tempted to think Poetics is largely about poetry. This is not true. In 2025, it would be more correct to say that Aristotle discusses story structure more like a Robert McKee or Joseph Campbell. He outlines what the elements of a story are (in either a drama or comedy) and has strong opinions about which elements are the best and even which types of plots are best. He can make value judgements because he has a stance of what drama and storytelling is for. Poetics is story structure with a telos.

Now, in fairness, most of the stories whose structure he is discussing were in verse in the Greek. Accordingly, he has a much more poetic treatment of syllables and stress towards the end. My translation kept that section in Greek (cause how could that really be translated) so what is already a weird subject for me became completely unintelligible.

He uses many examples. I have read The Iliad, The Odyssey, Antigone, and am roughly familiar with the Oedipus cycle so I could barely follow along. It is probably best to read more than that to get the most out of it.

How to Read Poetry Like a Professor - Thomas Foster

This was much more about poetry and it worked on me. I can see how it would be more useful to structure a class around this book than read it through in 3 days like I did, but I will make my critique anyway that I think the book was roughly backwards.

He starts with the technical stuff and only later gets into things where you are interpreting meaning in poems, voice, metaphor, one of the better chapters was on making you see normal things as strange. In fact, some of the best stuff came in the conclusion. I’m not sure if this is realistic, because I am very much a poetry noob, but I was hoping that this book could show the deeper meaning behind the words themselves.

My biggest takeaway was the rule to read poems following all grammatical conventions, pausing at commas and continuing over line breaks like you would in a novel. The rules like read aloud and read twice were ones I had heard before.

Story of a Soul - St Therese of Lisieux

How had I not read this before? It’s the biggest saintly autobiography since Augustine’s Confessions (which I’ve never finished). A mainly Catholic audience will already know the message of all the little sacrifices of a mostly normal life being enough for a heroic level of virtue. A bit fewer people may know how family focused the story is, Therese’s father gave every daughter to the convent and the sisters love each other deeply. But an aspect that seems talked about much less are the psychological aspects that are implied.

That Therese can remember minor (very minor) sins, writing in her mid to late 20s from before she was 10 implies that it probably bothered her for all those years. And as much as we think of society as more Christian and modest back then, the family was still counter-cultural. Therese prays that her sister not yet a nun will be unable to go to a dance. Her father requests that people not compliment her. A family that acts like this today, just like back then, would be labeled extreme and judged accordingly (even by fellow Catholics).

It was very helpful to have read John of the Cross’ Ascent of Mount Carmel and Dark Night of the Soul going into this, I felt like even the headier spiritual content had a reference point for me and it didn’t slow me down too much.

The Intellectual Life - AG Sertillanges

This was a re-read for me. I first read this Dominican monk’s guide to thinking in the fall semester, Freshman year of college. Reading it again, I realized it how much it has influenced my strange combination of Catholic and productivity obsessions.

He gets theoretical in the pursuit of truth and a certain humble greatness, but also very practical, down to note taking, and advising that everyone study theology along with whatever else. I agree. He also says that you should learn enough Latin to read the Summa Theologica in the original or else it’s not worth bothering being an intellectual at all… I don’t go that far.

Sertillanges, if I had to guess, would be a little bit against my program here of five books a month. He argues that with very few books, you can still gain a lot of real knowledge, and going deep is better than going broad.

Spiritual Canticle - St John of the Cross

The third step in my quest to read all of St John of the Cross, Spiritual Canticle is pretty different from Ascent and Dark Night. Here John is more completely in the style of analyzing his own poem. The chapters are short and based on the stanzas. The poem is longer and draws on more nature metaphors than the Dark Night poem.

There was a lot of good stuff there, and probably works better if you read one stanza/chapter of commentary at a time over weeks and weeks rather all at once. They follow a general progression that is supposed to match the spiritual life, but each commentary is semi-self contained. John will go on fairly distinct tangents making each almost like a sermon or short theological essay.

First Epistle to the Corinthians - St Paul

It’s the bible, what more do you need? Reading an epistle straight through is a good thing to do, but I haven’t since Romans in high school. Obviously, the Church spreads it out over many masses and jumbles the order and that is right and proper because it is a lot to take in. The original audience would have read it all in a row and the problems applied to them directly.

The Corinthian’s issues and Paul’s advice are still relevant (according to the Holy Ghost, who spent valuable grace resources to inspire it). That said, it’s harder to apply it being further removed. It would be helpful to have some tradition to guide us…

Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians - St Thomas Aquinas

The fourth book I read this month by a canonized Saint, not too shabby. I am hooked on commentaries. Obviously, Aquinas is a smart guy, but right from the beginning he shows that there is this elegant structure to the epistle based around sacraments (not all of them but still).

The sections in this commentary are a lot like John of the Cross stanzas except that they are not easily split between verses. Aquinas breaks up the sections by what he believes St Paul’s intentions were. (It is worth noting that St Paul is believed to have appeared to Thomas Aquinas on occasion). But, like John of the Cross, he takes opportunity in some topics to go deeper on the philosophy, on transubstantiation for example. This is a lot of fun, but also very deep and complex. I printed the commentary out on standard printer paper, and wrote many numbers and underlines in the margins.

Aquinas, at times, may be almost too smart for his own good by not numbering his points, subpoints, sub-subpoints, and yes often sub-sub-subpoints. I know that he has this structure in his head because he will describe it in the opening paragraph of each section. This sounds like something along the lines of “Paul does this in three ways, the first way has two parts, and the first part is for three reasons, the first reason is this:”

How to Read a Book - Mortimer J Adler

I should have read this in public, it is kind of funny. However, a joke or prop book it is not. Adler taught at Columbia and the University of Chicago. He served as chairman of the board of the Encyclopedia Britannica and put together the “Great Books of the Western World” list. (Three books from this month are on the list).

This guide starts with a critique of how we teach children to read, which is a mild obsession of mine, but that only lasts 10 or 20 pages. Next, he talks about how to skim books, and tell if they are any good from the title, the description on the back and the table of contents… a very professor-like skill that never gets talked about. But most of the book is how to do— in depth and broken down by genre— the kind of reading that Sertilanges was talking about: slow, deliberate, analytical, and of great books.

In fact, he says (and sells it) that if sentences in a book don’t confuse you, if the content isn’t over your head, then the book isn’t really going to give you understanding, it will only give you facts. If you understand what the book is saying, you understood that concept already, you were just missing facts. I don’t know how to reconcile this idea with the certain “ah-ha” moment I still get even when a book isn’t tripping me up much.

The Aeneid - Virgil

After the Iliad two years ago, and the Odyssey last year, the Aeneid is next. Unlike the Greek epics, this translation (which I also listened to) rhymed. That really captured some of the poetry for me. That said, I didn’t like it as much as Homer’s epics.

I see the parallels between them, that the first half is roaming in the seas and the second half is battle where one soldier has a highly aggressive attitude and big ego, Virgil doesn’t hide these things, but there were also parts where I zoned out and lost the thread. I imagine this is worse in Virgil’s pastoral works. It didn’t bother me that the whole story leads to the greatness of Rome and is basically propaganda, but I didn’t like it either.

Perhaps, I feel guilty because I feel like I should like Virgil, Dante and St Jerome were big fans and they are better qualified judges than I am. I will have to reassess when I read him again one day, but I also think there was more content in Homer that I could recognize from things I had heard of in trivia or referenced in other works.

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

I have been a Catholic nerd for at least five years now, but I have only now finished Lord of the Rings. I only started it last year after reading the Hobbit. I don’t think all Catholic have to read it, but the desire I (somewhat) had (and know some others do have) to NOT read it in protest is misplaced.

There are not many pieces of media that unite a American Catholic culture in this time of modernism and straight up liturgical crisis in some places. And then there is the value that fantasy has as a genre. It touches the same part of human instinct as the “re-enchantment” movement, or Catholic men’s love for medieval times, or just large vistas of nature. Fantasy does all of these things by it’s nature. I don’t know for sure if LOTR is the single best and most Catholic piece of fantasy fiction, but if there is a better and more Catholic book, that book is not as famous.

What I do know is that I hope to have kids on day, and after reading them the Hobbit, but before letting them see the LOTR movies, I hope to read this very long book again, to them, out loud. Some of the chapters are pretty long, but at 62 chapters that is just over two months.

In 30 days, I learned how to grow in spiritual perfection, shut down pagans with style, and perfect the fundamental dishes of French cuisine.

Here at Crusade for Manliness we believe that Catholic men should push their limits and make good use of their time. One chosen way we do that here is the monthly reading challenge.

Do you dare to take up the challenge? — Choose a number of books that will push you, it need not be 5, and get it done. Report back next month.

Did you join us last month? — Put your books in the comments below. Let us sharpen the irons of our minds and put new books on our radar. Whether to avoid or pursue is up to you as the captain.

GK Chesterton is awesome. I’ve gone back to him after a year off to attempt and make my own writing more witty.

The Everlasting Man delivers on the wit and the paradox, but more than that. Even more than Orthodoxy (at least how I remember it), GK sets out with a plan. Starting from cave men and working towards the New Testament era Roman Empire, he makes you see history poetically.

Then in the second half, that natural poetry established, enters Christ. In atheist/agnostic apologetics there is a particular argument. It goes, "Christianity is one of many religions. It makes sense it the context of it's time and place. With rigor and style, Chesterton dismantles every argument along those lines. Christianity and especially Catholicism is anything but a product of its time. This leads credibility to those of us who believe it to be eternal.

Key takeaway for me: The Church goes in cycles. Like Christ it's head it knows that suffering is important. I don't know why this did not occur to me sooner. Christendom and high levels of acceptance are the anomaly and are unlikely to last long.

This was a quick read that got me back on track when I was worried about a library book not coming in on time. I initially remembered Ryan Holiday for his notecard system.

That said, I have been surprised how many times I have returned to the basic idea of “look on the bright side” made manlier by association with ancient Rome, US Presidents, and entrepreneurs. Stoicism is wrong, and this book didn’t really teach me enough about the philosophy to even tell you how. For good philosophy, read Aquinas. But for men who can take with them a grain of salt, and are prone to pessimism, this book may be a good option.

If you’ve been following along you know I read Ascent of Mount Carmel in February. After visiting Avila on my honeymoon, I’ve been diving in to Carmelite theology (I lean naturally Dominican, but my lovely wife is thoroughly of Carmel).

Ascent was more applicable to me, which makes sense because it is first in the spiritual progression. (I know I said it was still too holy for me. I’ll stand by that, but this puts it in better context and challenges me prepare for the night of sense). But Dark Night is a classic for a reason. It is a more complete work, and despite the title of mystic, John is an organized man.

The Dark Night of spirit is intense it seems, though it lets up now and again. My understanding is still shaky, and I will be going over it again in pieces and checking my notes. Basically though it seems that, for privileged souls, aka for anyone who wants to reach the unitive way (the highest level) here on earth, you cannot stay in a “retreat high” spirituality. Love God for God.

Attachment to anything but Our Lord, including feeling loved by Him or general positive attitude in prayer, needs to be purged. It needn’t be permanent (I think) but the point is that the attachment is no longer there… so it wouldn’t bother you even if it WAS permanent.

Did I read a cookbook cover to cover? Yes, I did.

Salt Fat Acid Head is more than a cookbook. Nosrat breaks the book into two parts. Part one is the fundamental of each element. Part two is about 100 recipes, essential dishes in essential categories. They reference each other and part one back and forth like a Wikipedia article.

This month I was trying to get better at cooking. This is a different project, separate from five books a month. (I still owe a post on this challenge). If I was not doing five full books, I would have only read the first part and saved the rest for later. There are two other things that set this cookbook apart.

One is that the illustrations are fun and useful. I've learned from experience that useful visualizations are a rare accomplishment. This book is full of them. Drawings instead of photos help to lower the pressure on the chef following along. Which leads to the second cool thing. This book has given me the valuable cooking skill I didn't know I needed. The focus on improvising is perfect for making leftovers taste better.

Any man, but especially bachelors with no cooking experience should read this. That also includes the recently married like myself.

Have you ever seen spy movies and wanted to know what it’s really like at the CIA? I’m sure there are plenty books on it, but this one covers a different CIA: The Culinary Institute of America. It is the Hogwarts of the culinary world.

Ruhlman starts off as a journalist covering from the outside, but gets invested fast. This is exactly what I hoped for, the ambitious, perfectionist, organized side of professional chef-dom. I was so convinced of him in this world that I was sure he must have ended up as mainly a chef. He is still mainly a food writer, but he has been highly successful in that field.

But I wasn’t kidding when I said Ruhlman makes it the culinary Hogwarts. Anyone who wants to read Harry Potter, especially the earlier ones, again for the first time could do worse than The Making of a Chef. Ruhlman accomplishes this comparison for me in many ways.

His passion for food and cooking and respect for the subtlest differences or skills elevates it to a level almost magical, at least in the sense of beyond common knowledge or hard to explain powers. Second, he makes the institution of the CIA seems a bit mysterious in a Rowling-esqe sense, the journalist side of him wants to know WHY things are done structurally and uncover the history of the place and curriculum.

But more than either of those, what drew my attention to the comparison was the characterization of the instructors. The personality of each chef is wholly unique, though they have roughly the same lifestyles and skillsets. Further, these unique and quirky personalities seem fitted to the subject they teach, whether it be breakfast foods, preliminary skills, charcuterie, or baking.

I recommend this to all readers secular and Catholic alike, because it wouldn’t hurt anyone to get into cooking. But especially men, to see the ambitious and craftsman side of the culinary arts.

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My last post was all about reading: why and how to do more of it.

A very practical reason to read more is of course that you will be on various digital technologies less.

You may, if the word counts are high enough, become chronically offline.

I imagine this audience has plenty of books they’d like to read, or rather, subjects they’d like to know about and grasp.

I am issuing a challenge: Set a number of books each month beyond your normal capacity, read them, and comment back here next month.

I have been taking on this challenge (to varying degrees of success) for almost a year now, while balancing a lot of other things. I know 5 is possible. Anything less than 3 is probably too easy.

There are a few big Substacks that have audience chats on a regular basis, usually behind a paywall. I have a small readership but I love talking about books and have no doubt the reading (especially at an impressive number) of any reader will be interesting.

In the very least, I will use this as social pressure to maintain my reading. And non-participants can try to use my lists as recommendations for or against.

Either way, here are my lists from January and February. Drop what you’ve read so far in the comments if you dare to take on the challenge.

January

The Man Who Quit Money

Mark Sundeen

As a self described distributism perusing an economics degree among all the capitalists (and the occasional socialist) who do the same, I had to read this one. I don’t know what I expected, maybe I was hoping for more self sufficiency farming kinds of things. The subject Dan Suelo, lives in a cave and is a dumpster diver. It is more profile than biography. The religious element is strong, but is almost trying not to be Christian. The economics at the ends seems right to me.

Living with a SEAL

Jesse Itzler

This was a very fun book about David Goggins before he was (as) famous. The author has Goggins train him for 30 days. The book chronicles this training. It never mentioned his name in the original print (Goggins asked to be anonymous). I love the 30-day challenge as a structure. I didn’t know who Jesse Itzler was, but despite having some raunchier Hollywood anecdotes, he grew on me as a character.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

Set in Spain during its civil war, this one really touched me. Better than Farewell to Arms, at least as good as The Sun Also Rises. It’s longer than both, and a better depiction of war. I think Hemingway got the rep of terse undecorated language unfairly. The prose isn’t flowery, but it isn’t as spartan as you might expect if you have only heard about Hemingway’s writing. The picture of atheism during wartime is interesting, in a Catholic nation like Spain there is disrespect but also a tension. Faith and Truth last.

The Sports Gene

David Epstein

This was the second book that I read under the theme of fitness. Both this at Living with a SEAL I found at the library on the shelf. Epstein is a reporter for Sports Illustrated with a focus on science writing. His ability to break down genetics science for a standard audience is truly impressive. He touches on race and gender through the lens of sports in way he probably wouldn’t had the book come out a few years later. He has a track background so there is a focus on running, which I liked.

Faith and Fatherhood

Integrity Magazine

This collection of essays from Integrity Magazine on the theme of fatherhood simply rocked. They were punchy in setting high bars that resonated with a man who wants to follow Christ. I liked that it did not waste time in trying to make exceptions for women who may feel the same way, basically writing off that debate. The normal trad fare of having a lot of kids and living in the country, but with the logic and sociology to back it up. It kept referring to “Catholic Action” which was a hallmark of the time, but we would think about that general idea a little differently now.

February

Eat That Frog

Brian Tracy

This book and the next were part of what I called “productivity month”. It is a very quick read, but honestly a good intro to productivity thought. His chapters are all self contained, some definitely overlap. Don’t go to this book for multiple examples or troubleshooting, it is bare-bones.

Getting Things Done

David Allen

This is a productivity classic, that I had never read until now. This is all about going deep on the one system. I understand now why people think it is too complicated or abstract. Still worth reading for sure. Two main takeaways. Make sure every goal is clearly defined by what the next action is and what “done” looks like. The second: get your tasks and projects and anything else productivity related out of your head and into a system.

Crito

Plato

Much better than Apology that comes before it, though it seems to assume you have read it. I knew it was about why Socrates refuses to escape, but I did not (for some reason) expect so much about civil disobedience or the nature of the state in general. I did not always agree, but can respect solid political philosophy. Crito the character is not the best debater of the dialogues. He just wants to help and Socrates is just going on and on while he basically says “sure” to every point.

The Checklist Manifesto

Atul Gawande

Atul Gawande was apparently a popular medical author before this book. By describing how checklists are used by pilots, construction crews, and even venture capitalists, he instructs anyone on how to use the simplest tool to be more consistently at the top of your game. He himself is a surgeon and part of the WHO effort to add checklists to surgery, this forms the narrative arc of the book. I lowkey want to make checklists for everything now, but have to remember that it is for complex tasks with items you’d otherwise forget.

Ascent of Mount Carmel

St John of the Cross

The “prequel” to Dark Night of the Soul; I wanted to read this first. John of the Cross is a mystical dude, but clearly very smart. It was actually never finished so it ends very abruptly. What we do have is a call to detachment from the world in the extreme. He is after Aquinas’ heart in his nested distinctions of faith, hope, and charity or memory, imagination, and will though they are not always using the terms the same way. Much of the advice is meant for those more advanced in holiness than I, but that is not a reason to write it off. Those who persevere through will be rewarded.

In 2023 I decided that I would read 40 books in 2024. Somewhere along the way I decided I would rather average a book a week and later I decided that 5 books a month was even better.

I didn’t make 5 every month, or even one a week. I finished just short at 51 books in the year of our Lord 2024.

I have eclectic interests, so it is really unlikely that there are any readers who would want to replicate my list. More interesting is what a real year of reading looks like when you read more books in a month than most American adults will in a decade.

That is a sad fact, literary Americans are going extinct.

I will try to convince you, a dear Substack reader interested in virtue and masculinity and creative localist musings, to read more yourself. I will try to be brutally honest in reading techniques so that such quantity seems eminently reasonable rather than intimidating.

Chapter 1:

Society’s Reading Habits and Increasing Illiteracy

We don’t read much. It occurs that I may need statistics because the Substack audience is atypical in this matter.

According to Statista, 42% of college graduates never read another book after college. I am about to finish college, and I suspect that this number is low. Otherwise bright and ambitious students will still choose majors like engineering or accounting where they can make a lot of money, but not even have to read books during college.

Then you have the students who may be in more humanities based majors or at least classes. They are (often) not reading the assigned books. Professors are increasingly not assigning full books because “students today cannot handle it”.

About this same number, 44% of American adults will not read 1 book in a year. I think an average book for an adult could be set at 300 pages.

For those of you who haven’t read a math book… that is less than 1 page a day.

There was a viral challenge, 75 Hard, that was mostly about fitness. It dared participants to follow a diet perfectly for 75 days or restart at the beginning. It demanded you workout twice a day 45 minutes at a time (one of those being outside no matter the weather) and again, start from the beginning if you failed. On the same list of challenging requirements was to read 10 pages a day.

Following a consistent diet or workout routine are known as very difficult feats of discipline, most people wish that they did these things and cannot because they are so challenging. Reading 10 pages is now considered just as challenging as 45 minutes of pushups in the snow.

We are not reading, so naturally, we are losing our ability to read.

20% of adults in the US cannot read above a 5th grade reading level. 50% of adults cannot read above an 8th grade level.

Some modern writing guides will say it is best to write at an 8th grade level to increase comprehension and that a lower (8th or 9th) level is indicative of a more talented writer. Despite that, I don’t think that complex, important, ideas are best described at that level. For example, the US Constitution, according to the very useful Hemingway editor website, is at a 14th grade level. I suspect that being coded with this reasonable sounding, but ultimately wrong advice is a reason that AI has such a boring, non-committal style of writing.

It turns out that some things we take for granted, phonics, comparing and contrasting, and remembering the beginning of an argument by the time you get to the end of it, are not instantly learnable by iPad kids.

Digital reading does not bridge the gap. No one is improving their comprehension from Instagram and Facebook captions. Studies popularized by the Atlantic article “Is Google Making us Stupid” also prove that when people read on a screen, they almost cannot help but skim. I am guilty here, I will sometime read articles online backwards I am so bad with skimming, but never on physical books.

That so much of reading in academia is now online explains why college students don’t have basic academic habits, across both soft fields and harder ones. Part of the M in STEM is Statistics, and they are screaming “Americans are increasingly illiterate!”

“So what?” says the STEM major through his six figure starting salary. “I didn’t need to read to learn advanced math and engineering, I wont need to read after college either!”

Chapter 2

Why to Read

Some people argue for reading along these lines…

1. Author X researched, wrote, and edited this book for 5 years

2. I read this book in 5 hours

3. Therefore, I have been incredibly efficient in downloading 5 years of information and thought in only 5 hours: an incredible investment!

It’s incredibly stupid.

I have even heard people add up those 5 years per book (or whatever it is) and claim that their “mental age” is in the hundreds or thousands, like an Abraham of high finance (because these kinds of people are always super into the stock market).

Reading a book does not make you as smart as the author… obviously. It doesn’t make you as smart as the author on that topic… also obviously. It doesn’t even make you as smart as the author on the content included in the book at the depth included in the book, because they know why it’s included and why the order of information matters and probably just remember it better than you would to boot.

Reading exposes you to more ideas, usually real ideas, as in fully formed conceptions of the world. Ideas are not the collection of thoughts and things we half heard that make up most of our mental space. With this definition, you don’t get an idea in the shower, you get the beginning of an idea. To become a true idea, it must be developed with true effort.

Ideas and the rational part of the soul required to develop them is what separates us from the animals. Other people’s ideas are what enable me to hold doctrines of the faith which give me a chance at going to heaven (not a guarantee Protestants, sorry).

Fiction and poetry do this too, but often with emotional ideas that, if the author put them into non-fiction prose, would not actually be the same idea. You can’t describe it, so it has to be “danced around” as it were.

The point of reading is then to improve your thinking. It will make it possible for you to develop your own ideas, but even without putting in that work, you can connect the ideas you are reading about to each other and to other people that you meet. Having good thoughts is a prerequisite for having good conversations.

Don’t think this is utilitarian, boosting our thinking to solve problems better (though it will). “Thinking” better, in this mode, also includes loving better, dreaming better, mourning better and all sorts of soul enrichment that cannot be quoted with exact utility.

The STEM major making a mint designing circuit panels may want to read about electricity to enjoy his job a bit more, making connections metaphorically along with literally. But he definitely will want to read to enjoy his life more, enjoy his country more, and enjoy his family more. He will be more of a man.

Reading as a Boon to Masculinity

This is Crusade for Manliness so I ought to add why men in particular should become readers. Some ladies may resonate with the following as well, but that it too deep a rabbit hole for an already long article.

The act of wrestling with thoughts to turn them into original ideas is the rational equivalent of body’s ability to procreate, to make something new from itself. The male procreative role implies a further responsibility to have real ideas.

In procreating these ideas, men specifically must take the initiative. The process starts with bravery and a certain charm. The creative muse (a more feminine concept) is certainly part of the process, but needs to be courted. Inspiration cannot be forced, but it can be romanced. In the world of ideas, this courtship is carried out by reading.

Step by step, you get to know the ideas in the books. Some books are not worth keeping, but help you figure out what you are looking for. Some ideas are special enough to inspire much more loyalty. You’re thoughts mix with those of the various books and ideas are born. Actual new ideas, a unique combination of you and your sources.

These ideas as we’re defining them are powerful, both true and valuable.

They need to be true which touches the masculine role of protector. There are two sides: truth and falsehood, and a battle of ideas for men to fight. Some writers think they are clever by challenging everything, especially religious truths. By denying everything they necessarily have no foundation to their ideas. With no foundation they come off as flimsy and pathetic. Rather than being a starting ground for a whole new set of knowledge, they get rightly thrown out.

Defending the border, the true doctrines that mankind already has found, is the harder, manlier task. Conforming your ideas and your thinking to the whole body of true and beautiful works already existing requires you to read even more to check yourself. It requires real cleverness and nuance. Like a master general, the constraints provide an opportunity for elegance as well.

Getting to this point of battle and romance with books and the world of true ideas is not necessarily easy. The rewards are out there but inconvenient to find. You risk wasting a lot of time and falling among false ideas in disguise.

A true idea that is new could be trivial, much of the news for example, but this is not the hope for an idea. A new and valuable true idea is a rare find. You will need to be exposed to a lot of books with repeated ideas, wrong ones, or simply trivial ideas before you get to those of the best and worthiest kind.

A man needs to machete through the brush of the jungle to reach El Dorado. Choosing a book, and then choosing another are the steps towards this adventure full of both risk and reward. It is exactly the kind of adventure for which the masculine soul longs.

So we ought to be more specific on how to start it.

Chapter 3:

How to Choose Books

Common advice for regaining readers is to “choose books that actually interest you”.

If that is the advice that you feel good receiving, you need some tough love. If you are not interested in a lot of different books, that means you are not a very interesting person.

I believe there are not that many people who feel good receiving that advice, and mostly these writers are trying to get people to read (buy) more modern books that are not that good.

However, if you are an uninterested and uninteresting person, have no fear. This matter is easily remedied. A small dose of reading will get you interested in things quite quickly if the writing is any good.

Starting from scratch

Start with what you have in your head, thinking back there must be a time when you thought “oh I should know more about this” or “oh I should read that”. Ideally, you have some books in your home that you have not read (or have not read lately). These will do just fine.

Maybe it is the novel that was adapted into a movie, maybe it is the biography of an athlete or president. If you think “sounds boring” or “I already know what will happen” that is fine. We are setting a baseline and building an identity. It’s like doing 10 push-ups every morning, you need to build a habit.

Continue with this into method until you get into a conversation where the book(s) you have been reading or recently finished comes up somewhat naturally. Make your educated comment. If you have never been a reader, your friend or coworker will be mildly impressed. You are in. You are officially interesting again, which means you are more interested.

This brings us back to the book lover’s dilemma.

There Are Too Many Options

This is true, there are more good books than time to read them. There are a few ways around this.

1. Read classics

Every subject has classics. No matter how interesting you are, you probably are not interested in all subjects all the time. Let your current obsessions be the guide. Look at lists of “Best Books About X”. There will be some that show up on all or most lists. These are your classics. They may be “modern classics” as oxymoronic as it sounds, but some subjects are currently in their prime.

Once you have read enough of the classics, you can ease off the subject. Each additional work will give you less and less return. My personal theory is that reading 50 books on one subject is as good as any other method for achieving “expertise”. Reading 5 books on a subject is enough to be remarkably adept, assuming the subject is not too broad.

2. Read authors

The satisfying part of reading multiple books from the same author is when you can look at a subject they have maybe only touched on tangentially and confidently say to yourself “I know what that person would say about this topic”.

You approach this satisfaction when you are reading a second or third book of the same author and can recognize where they are drawing from their previous work and where they have evolved their thought. You are reading the ideas as much as the words at that point. But it works with words too. Reading enough of an author gives you a sense of their style.

I think you can get to this “style recognition” and “cross-work theme connection” level at around 3 books.

3. Combine primary and secondary sources

With some books, as you’re reading them, you’re thinking “I am going to have to read this again one day”. With some books, you have never even read them, but have gotten a sense of what they are about from articles and conversations with people who have.

This is the power of secondary sources.

You will reduce the need to re-read by going in or refreshing some key ideas. With some books, like classic fiction, you may not get it at all without some outside help. You will become more intellectual in the proper sense of the word. By engaging with ideas (our sophisticated fleshed out kinds) about a text, you are more likely to have ideas of your own.

Some people say they’d prefer to go in blind the first time to just “experience it for themselves”. Those people are Protestants. I’m kidding. Partially.

You cannot go into anything blind. You were raised in a society in context. Every other thing you have ever read will subtly “affect” your reading of the work. The affect will actually be so subtle as to be negligible because, thankfully, there is objective meaning in the world and words convey it quite effectively for our human purposes.

If the worry is that you will simply adopt the same opinion as the secondary source, the reply is twofold:

1. If you pick the right secondary source, you may be lucky enough to end up with the right opinion. Commentaries on the Gospels from literal saints are better than your blind reading.

2. The objection is kind of ridiculous because the nature of a secondary source is to take you out of purely buying into the primary source. By reading it, you are already thinking critically, why would you magically stop at the next level up. You could read a tertiary source if you’d like, or contrasting opinion secondary sources. You could just cut to the chase though and ask your rational intellect, “is this opinion true?” like you do with all other critical thinking.

With your classics, if they are really classic, you can append your five to five books about those books. You can also go the other way by looking at the sources of your more modern idea books, and reading those together.

I hope it is clear that you will need to upgrade from a single “To Read” list to multiple lists of books by category.

From there you can better sort priority within each list. This can be difficult. Go two books at a time, figure out which is the better of the two for you right now. You may also have to compare categories.

Ultimately, access will help you decide, along with your interests that are stronger in the moment. From your broader “category” lists, take a guess at what would be best for next month. So you’ll have:

• Lists by category or author

• List of “next on deck” books

• List of started books that you are actively reading

• List of finished books

Move items from the top into the next as needed.

If push comes to shove and you are having a hard time deciding what to put in “next on deck”, perhaps try dedicating a month to one subject (I am trying that this year). This would also solve the problem of feeling like you have too much breadth of topics and insufficient depth.

The humble checklist is used by surgeons and airline pilots, it is a required tool of the serious reader as well.

Chapter 4:

How to Read More

I’ve just told you to group books together. An obvious way to read more is to read multiple books at the same time. Jake at the excellent Substack Dreaming of the Rood recently suggested NOT doing this; that starting one book without finishing another was like cheating on your wife.

I beg to differ. At the risk of mixing my prior metaphor, starting books together is like taking your wife to dinner and her childhood friends that you’ve never met are there. She’ll have a good time and you will learn new things about her.

Seriously though, if you come across a book that you knew you wanted to read, or one you are reading references one that you have, you have to start that new book as soon as you can.

Having simultaneous fiction and non-fiction, or dense and popular-audience, or spiritual and secular is too useful to forgo. Worst case scenario you get burned out on something important like deep theology, start resenting a holy topic, and stop reading altogether.

Having more than one enables you to put down a book that simply is not good without losing too much progress on your total list for the month or year. So even if you are worried about finishing books, and I agree that finishing the whole book is important, you will want to read more than one at a time.

Debate settled. You should be actively reading three or more books at once. Obviously you should not jump back and forth page to page though if you want to get your total page numbers high.

To do just that, to boost raw pages, let’s look at some math.

The average page in a book has 250 words. The average non-fiction idea book is in the range of 300 pages. Biographies and fiction are longer. I cannot tell you what an educated person’s reading speed is because it is very very dependent on the genre. Those novels that are more than 300 pages will read far faster than 300 pages of medieval philosophy.

The easiest reading habit to integrate is the evening. For some people this is in bed, for some it may be in an armchair with a warm-lit floor lamp and a glass of bourbon. Either way, 10 pages a day amounts to 12 books a year. 10 pages a day on weekdays and 25 on weekends adds up to 17 books a year. 20 pages a weekday and 100 pages on both Saturday and Sunday adds up to 52 books a year (my rough goal).

Figure out how long it takes you to read 10 pages in your desired genres and scale according to the time you are willing to invest. Remember, 12 a year is already leaps and bounds over the average American. With the right books, a year could be all it takes to become very impressive.

But we can do more to up those pages.

Public libraries are increasingly un-impressive in their selections. Not unlike Catholic liturgy, in an attempt to attract people, they have reduced quality and hence: lost more people. However, libraries share with one another and with inter-library loans you get two major benefits.

1. Access to a lot of the books you will want to read, especially more famous older ones, or modern ones. More obscure theology that is old but not “classic” will remain difficult to find.

2. The due date of a library book will light a fire under you to finish faster than you would otherwise.

If you are struggling to find desired titles with libraries, buy used, but you could also try university libraries or niche subject matter libraries if you have any of either within driving distance.

Similarly to due dates, tracking what books you are actively reading and how many pages you have to go in a consistent system will be psychological pressure to finish faster. Record “pages to go” as often as you can.

At this point you know what books you want to read, and you are carving out time to read them. The oft repeated advice to “always have a book on you” come in here. Little pockets throughout the day can add on to the evening and weekend times we carved out earlier. Most people I’ve worked with spend their lunch break on TikTok. It seems to this writer that Tolstoy would be less embarrassing.

With evening, weekends and the little spaces throughout the day accounted, there is not much space left for reading. If you cannot read for work, the upper limit of reading has basically been reached here. However, that is all theoretical, in practice, there are some tricky things you can do.

I know because I’ve done them.

Chapter 5:

How I Actually Read More with Brutal Honesty

First of all, I have a flip phone. Sunbeam Wireless (a startup founded by Mennonites) makes it possible for me to opt out of constant web access while retaining the ability to look up directions.

Before 2024, I averaged about 20 books a year. So without the smartphone, I could’ve guessed those numbers would go up.

Second of all, I had more than my fair share of eleventh hour reading binges. Having monthly reading goals was fairly crucial for me (though I often did not live up to them). Weekly is too constricting. At any given moment, I am in the middle of 5 to 10 books (maybe more). Finishing 300 pages a week is absolutely doable as I said.

Related to this point, not all books were started at the top of the year or the top of the month. There were a few which I allowed to sit at 60, 70, or 80% read, waiting for when I was behind for the month. There were also a few books that were quite a bit under 300 pages that served the same purpose for a last minute finish. Saint books for kids are often wonderful reads. Books of the Bible are still books. Whether a “collected works” volume is one book or five for your tracking purposes is between you and God.

Thirdly and perhaps most brutally of the brutal honesty, there were times where I straight up shirked responsibilities to read instead. Evening/nighttime may be the most conducive to reading but I “snuck” in “some” extra reading in the mornings with coffee flowing through my blood and brain. And by “snuck in some”, I mean I very obviously read a lot in the mornings.

With the aforementioned coffee and the undistracted nature of mornings, I could beat my evening speed no matter the genre. The cost was my schoolwork as a student, my work for money (I was lucky to have a more flexible part time job), or my sleep.

The thing is though… the work got done.

A lot of the books I read in 2024 were about “productivity”. I honestly did learn how to do more work in less time. But then when you gain that time back, the big moral question is “what do you do with it?”

An obvious wrong answer is more productivity to get even more done and make more money. While perhaps tempting, this ends up in an infinite regress not only shallow, but silly.

In my better moments in 2024, I opted for reading, praying rosaries, and taking walks outside. I cannot imagine a more “productive” allocation of resources.

If it is true that reading enriches the God-given capacity for thought. That places it firmly below ora but above labora in a hierarchy of human action. It is a privilege to be able to trade money in for time for prayer and deep thinking through a book. The monastics show us that with a little bravery and sacrifice, it is a privilege more accessible than you might think.

Appendix

What I Read and My Rankings If You’re Curious

51—The Proximity Principle - Ken Coleman

50—The Fourth Cup - Scott Hahn

49—St Francis and the Conversion of the Muslims - Frank Rega

I know, St Francis and the Conversion of the Muslims sounds like a great title, how dare I rank it low. That was the problem, it should have been knocked out of the park with the subject matter, but it didn’t deliver.

48—The Happiness Trap - Russ Harris

47—Crown of Swords - Robert Jordan

46—To Sell is Human - Daniel Pink

45—A Mathematicians Apology - G.H. Hardy

44—Hail Holy Queen - Scott Hahn

43—Prophecy of Jeremiah - Jeremiah

I’m sorry. I understand the the Holy Ghost is a co-author of the book of Jeremiah and I have ranked it below a book about running 5ks, I have three reasons/excuses.

1. You cannot understand the Bible at the appropriate level just by reading it outright, you need deep prayer and meditation upon it, instruction from someone more learned and spiritual to help you, or in the very least instruction in the form of a secondary source book. Acts 8:30-33 says you cannot understand the bible on your own reading, we need tradition (note: this understanding of Acts 8 is backed by tradition).

2. I don’t really think it is meant to be read straight through like a novel and in isolation. The Church in Her wisdom, splits books of the bible into passages and presents them in various order. She also links practically every verse with other verses, I did not read every cross reference as I came upon it.

3. The Old Testament is just not as important as the New Testament. Inspired, but I read this during Advent to look for things that eluded to Christ. The only reason I can do that is because I already have the Gospels. I truly think a lot of the text is meant for the BC and the early Church converting from Judaism. There is surely stuff in there for moderns, but it certainly less obvious.

It’s also not as good as Isaiah which I read last Advent.

So again, Scott Hahn should not be offended.

42—Problem of Pain - CS Lewis

41—The Thought of Their Heart - Solange Hertz

40—Hidden Potential - Adam Grant

39—Shop Class as Soul Craft - Matthew Crawford

38—Doors of Silence - Anonymous Carthusian

37—80/20 Running - Matt Fitzgerald

36—Hillbilly Elegy - JD Vance

35—The Blatchford Controversies - GK Chesterton

34—Give and Take - Adam Grant

33—Benedict Option - Rod Dreher

32—Durable Trades - Rory Groves

31—The Father’s of the Church - Mike Aquilina

30—Win at College - Cal Newport

29—The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

28—Life of Christ - Fulton Sheen

27—The Immaculata Our Ideal - Fr. Karl Stehlin

26—Open Letter to Confused Catholics - Marcel Lefebvre

25—Saint Louis and the Last Crusade - Margaret Anne Hubbard

24—When Silence Speaks - Tim Peeters

23—Apology - Plato

It is cool to hear Socrates’ origin story, but it simply is not as good as the other dialogues I have read.

22—So Good They Can’t Ignore You - Cal Newport

21—Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris

20—Get Better at Anything - Scott H Young

19—Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss

18—World Outside Your Head - Matthew Crawford

17—How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

16—Slow Productivity - Cal Newport

15—Servile State - Hilaire Belloc

14—A World Without Email - Cal Newport

13—Twelfth Night - Shakespeare

So close to twelfth… but now you know I’m honest.

12—Straight A Student - Cal Newport

11—Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman

10—Heretics - GK Chesterton

9—Henry V - Shakespeare

8—King Lear - Shakespeare

7—Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

6—Political Economy of Distributism - William Salter

5—Odyssey - Homer

Odyssey is better than Iliad. I don’t actually think that is controversial.

4—Orthodoxy - GK Chesterton

3—Introduction to the Devout Life - St Francis De Sales

2—Deep Work - Cal Newport

1—Hound of Heaven: Dominic de Guzman - August Drane

Books and Slowing Down of Culture in 2025

Multiple books I read were about slowness. Some literally, like Slow Productivity, some surprisingly, like 80/20 Running. Some were less obvious, Odysseus took 10 years to make it home after a 10 year war. My favorite books were the ones I went through the slowest. (That is true outside of the year. My favorite novel: War and Peace took me 7 years to read, from ages 13 to 20.)

This could just be a trend in my reading and not indicative of culture in 2025, but if you look at the common alternative to reading: YouTube, you see a similar thing. Even the biggest YouTubers are now taking long stretches of time in between uploads. They are going slower than they used to go. I think this is because internet content has reach capacity. In the main channels of media consumption, even the highest quantity will get drowned out because there is so much content, human and artificial. Quality is the only game in town.

So in 2025 I expect this to continue, I’d point out that Stranger Things is a cultural touch point every time a season is released, not in spite of but, because of the fact that they don’t release every year.

My prediction is an increase in slowness and that this slowness will actually be an advantage. It sounds nice, but these surprisingly slow winners are not just going to be rad trads with new monasticism or conservative intellectuals smoking cigars and pondering in their armchairs. As much as I think those crowds should have more of a cultural say, the power hungry will always get power more effectively than the virtuous, even if it means slowing down.

So maybe, if you want to stay ahead of the culture, don’t just slow down, but opt out. Don’t make your life about consuming media, even books. It is cool to read 51 books, but it is cooler to pray 51 rosaries or have 51 meaningful interactions with a friend. Remember that my point of reading at all was to think, so go to these non-media experiences, or at least… think about it.

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