Happy Catholic

What do you get when you have a book of eclectic quotes from books of fiction, TV, movies, blogs, and scripture and then add short pithy reflections after each quote or set of quotes? Why you get the new book Happy Catholic: Glimpses of God in Everyday Life
by Julie Davis from the blog Happy Catholic.

The book starts with a short version of her conversion story from non-belief from a family of non-believers and the initial event that started moving her to accept grace and then a realization that struck her after a period of trying to test God. Her conversion story itself is quite interesting and not quite what I expected. She as a lifelong book lover only turned to theology and books on the spiritual life after becoming a Catholic.

Her quote journal has been put to good effect on her blog and this fruit is what drives this book. The quotes in an of themselves our interesting and they really span a variety of sources and the quotes are often not spiritual in nature – at least at first blush. What Julie has done though is adding short reflections on these quotes and how they struck her. As she demonstrates these passages of thought can hit you in different ways as we live our lives. A quote or a plot point that might have struck us one way when we were not living our faiths can take on a deeper or more significant meaning when we come into faith. I really liked her short pithy reflections since they made their points simply and did not try to hammer them home over and over in added verbiage. Some can write long reflections that are quite worthy of the time and some have the gifts to writer shorter ones that also can jog your mind into seeing something.

Now Julie is a self-confessed book skimmer in that she often will skim through a book and then come back later and re-read it. I am not as much of a book skimmer and certainly did not skim through this book for fear of overlooking a good nugget. It also did not hurt that Julie pulled her quotes from areas and sources I also love. To have a book quoting Alice Cooper (now an Evangelical), Futurama, Firefly, SF Movies, and a vast swath of culture not in the SF realm is certainly to my taste, but her reflections should benefit all.

I simply loved this book. I’m not just saying that because she even pulled a paragraph from my blog for inclusion in her book. It is rather cool to find something you wrote quoted. I loved her book even if she pulled from sources such as my blog. I am of the Groucho Marx camp in that I would not join a club that would have me as a member.

One quote of hers I really loved in this book is this “It is my blessing and my curse, I suppose. While I’m laughing, I’m always thinking.” Wow, this is something I can certainly relate to. Though readers of this book will also find themselves laughing and thinking in that she has the gift of making serious points with humor.

You can even get an autographed copy here.