My 2021 Plans

It’s well into 2021 and it’s about time I posted on my annual plans.  Since I am locked into my Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads, I’m limited in what I can choose to read.  We nominate and vote on books, so I can’t predict what will be selected.  On a fair amount of selections, I have to flow with the spirit.

Here’s what I do know.  We are currently reading Acts of the Apostles from the New Testament, and at some point later this year we will pick up on the second part of St. Augustine’s City of God.  We are currently in the process of selecting our next read, and I’m hoping that Dark Night of the Soul (both the poem and his commentary) by St. John of the Cross gets selected.  A number of people have expressed interest in reading it too, so I am hopeful enough to put it in my plans here. 

I am also currently reading Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede, a novel about a middle-aged, career woman who quits her job and joins a Benedictine monastery.  Godden was a Catholic convert.  This is one of her best known novels.

Now that I am finished with Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, I can continue to read more novels from the French.  I have long wanted to read Stendhal’s The Red and the Black.  And so I will begin at some point this year.

As to non-fiction, I really want to read Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition by the recently deceased Roger Scruton.  I would also love to read the confessional autobiography and conversion story, From Fire By Water: My Journey to the Catholic Faith by Sohrab Ahmari.  And also my book short reading list is the recently republished How to Read a Novel by Caroline Gordon.  Another non-fiction book that caught my eye was Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by Ben R. Rich.  It’s another personal memoir which mostly details his project of the development of the stealth fighter.  I am still an engineer with engineering interests. 

The Biblical texts are nicely laid out for me.  I need to wrap up the Old Testament with the late prophets: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.  They will be read both in KJV and RSV translation.  With that I will have completed the entire Bible.  Along with Acts as I mentioned above, I will be reading Revelation again, and this time along with Peter S. Williamson’s Revelation: Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture.  I read the Biblical text last year and meant to read Williamson’s commentary but I didn’t get the chance. 

There are still the unfinished reads from last year.  Dominican Life: A Commentary on the Rule of St. Augustine, by Walter Wagner, O.P., Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith, by Robert Barron, Prince Caspian, from the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis.  I have one more chapter to go with Prince Caspian and then I’ll push onto the next in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 

Of course I’ll read as many short stories as I can, and try to reach that goal of twenty-four short stories for the year.  And I’ll continue to read the monthly devotional, Magnificat. 

And let’s see what Providence also throws in my way to read.