....or, you gotta do something while you're lying on the couch coughing your lungs out.
#54: Deafening by Frances Itani. This is our book club book for this month. The story of a young woman, Grania O'Neill, who becomes deaf at age 5 after a bout with scarlet fever. Her grandmother fights to get her educated, while her mother, consumed with guilt prays for a miracle. Grania is sent to a school for the deaf, where she is educated and finally meets Jim, a hearing man with whom she falls in love. He goes off to work as a stretcher bearer in France and Belgium during World War I. The book is a study in contrasts between her quiet world of wait and worry, and his noisy world of fear and pain. The key to everything is language--and its power to connect us.
#55: Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles by Raymond Arroyo. Lent to me by a friend from church, this is an interesting look at Mother Angelica, foundress of EWTN. Love her or hate her (and I fall squarely on the love side of that equation), what she has done is amazing. I wasn't aware of the severity of her medical problems. I would love to quote you some passages from this book, but I can't. I had to give it back. But something that Mother said is rolling around in my head (and this is at best a paraphrase): "When you step out and try the ridiculous, He'll step out and do the miraculous."
Next book up: J.R. Powers' book Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?
