Recommended Out-Of-Print Reading

Since my Easter post drew a couple of comments, I thought I'd follow up a little bit.

First, I was raised Catholic. But the Miracle of Transubstantiation thing isn't what turned me away from the Church. These days I'm more in the "Spiritual but not religious" box. I don't have a problem with a higher being setting the wheels in motion, but I don't think that there's anything looking down on us that (who) can be swayed by our adoration and prayer. But that doesn't mean that I can't look at the way the Golden Ratio appears everywhere in nature, or watch my garden growing, or even the liquefied locomotion of a pretty girl walking down the street and say "Yeah, there's some god in all of that."

At any rate, there are a couple of books out there that you should read. I'm not posting links here because they're out of print and you should go find the best deal that you can. They were all written by John Powers. One is titled Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?, the second is titled The Last Catholic in America, and the last (and, in my opinion, best) is called The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice Cream God. They're all fictionalized memoirs of growing up as a Catholic in the Chicago suburbs.

If you're a Catholic, you'll find yourself laughing with recognition at the situations that come up in these books (e.g. being a seven year old and trying to keep track of your sins on your fingers so you can get them correct in Confession, as in Last Catholic, or trying to keep the solemn face on at a funeral, as in Unoriginal Sinner). If you're not Catholic, you'll find them funny and bittersweet anyway.

I guarantee you will find them enjoyable. GUARANTEE it. If you don't like them, send me the receipt  and I will personally buy the book back from you. Does it get better than that?

Comments

[MJ]

A money back gaurantee? Who can resist that? The books sound like they'd be fun to read. It made me think of the time that I went into the confessional with a list of all my sins written down. I kept moving the crackly-sounding paper around in the confessional because it was so dark that I couldn't see my list of sins! I can also remember the priest saying, "You sound like you really prepared for this!"

[Claude]

Heh. I remember one time when I was a teenager and I showed up at the wrong time. A priest spotted me and said he'd take me anyway. We wound up in one of the "new rites" confessionals, where you don't go into the closet with the sliding door and the screen and all that. It's a face-to-face chat. Picture a teenage boy discussing his sins directly to a priest who's munching on Oreos. Good times.