Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life (1912).

"Second Friends", by Milton Walsh. Comparing the views, on a wide range of topics, of Ronald Knox and C S Lewis.

"The Travels of Marco Polo", by himself (well maybe). Second reading

"Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music", Tricia Tunstall
A powerful, uplifting read.

"Changes at Fairacre", by Miss Read. Almost finished with the series.

The comments on this YouTube video. Seriously, treat yourself.

I just reread Daniel, hoping to get a better handle on Wallace Stevens' Country Words

I sang a canto in a canton,
cunning coo, O cuckoo cock,
in a canton of Belshazar
to Belshazar, putrid rock,
pillar of a putrid people,
underneath a willow there
I stood and sang and filled the air.

…the sun appeared
and reddened great Belshazar's brow:
O ruler rude with rubies then,
attend me now.

The most remarkable recent reading I've done is Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat about the fall of France in 1940 and the failure of imagination that precluded taking timely steps against the catastrophe. A short but very gripping book, if you can get hold of it.

I was reading The Day Is Now Far Spent by Robert Cardinal Sarah and re-reading Murder at Golgatha by Ian Wilson. As far as I am aware, neither of these made it out of our house after the tornado.

My Liber Brevior did make it out, but it was very damp. But I've been using it, since, anyway.
While I was singing through parts of it yesterday, I attempted a look deep into parts of the binding, only to find mold. =( I ordered a new copy of it. I've not yet repurchased the other two.

Gothic Voices, by Margot Fassler - a study of the development (late Xth - early XIVth centuries) of the sequence at St Victor, St Denis, Notre Dame and the environs of Paris.

Sarum Close, by Doris H Robertson - a study of choristers and their domestic life for roughly 700-900 years.

A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (why this?) I belong to the Epicure Book Club, which exists for the sole purpose of my reading fiction that I would rarely otherwise read.

Inside the Offertory: Aspects of Chronology and Transmission, by Rebecca Malloy.

I've been wanting to re-read Lewis's The Great Divorce.

Chris's Hapsburg twilight sounds awfully interesting to me and I may have to acquire it - and he may enjoy The Last Descendant of Aeneas: the Hapsburgs and the Mythhic Image of the Emperor, by Marie Tanner. This is a fascinating book for all royalists. Unfortunately, I am currently stalled about half way through it. An excellent book.

C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. I've been putting that book off for too long.

J. S. Bach: The Learned Musician by Christoph Wolff

Guilty pleasure reading are all these WW1/WW2 books I've acquired. I'm a sucker for Stephen Ambrose.

Fulton J Sheen's "The Life of Christ"

A very interesting, inspiring, and unusual book that I read a few months ago is
A Time to Die. (Ignatius Press)
I can't locate the book just now and don't remember the author, but it had a forward by Cardinal Sarah.

It is about the attitudes toward and preparation for death in seven French monasteries. It also details the care for the dying and how death is integrated into the life of the monasteries.
For such a subject, this book was quite inspiring and I would recommend it highly for those who are caring for the dying and for those who are dying, and those who are grieving.

One thing that stood out for me was the certitude that both the dying and those who cared for them had that they would be going to be with their loving heavenly Father and to meet Jesus. Not a word or a thought was given to the subject of purgatory. Their faith in going directly to God, often after great suffering, was indeflectible.

Story of A Soul By Therese of Lisieux
From the Depths of Our Hearts by Benedict XVI and Cardinal Sarah
The Spirit of the Liturgy by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

The Memoirs of St. Peter by Michael Pakaluk
The Traditional Mass by Michael Fiedrowicz
Visions of the Fathers by Rabbi Abraham J Twerski M.D. (Pirkei Avos with commentary by Rabbi Twersky).

Oh yes- also “Watership Down”. Never got around to reading it before.
And Antonin Scalia, “On Faith”.
One of his sons is Fr. Paul Scalia, whose book “That Nothing May be Lost” is worth reading,

At the risk of causing a flame war, The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 by Annibale Bugnini. It is a fascinating account of the post-conciliar reforms, and the thinking behind them. I'm about 3/4 through it, presently at the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I've been through the chapters on the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

The two most important things I have learned: one, what Mgr. Bugnini and modern liturgy haters often claim Mgr. Buginini said in his book is often taken completely out of context, or quite simply false.

The second is that in spite of what many think, Pope St. Paul VI's imprint on the decisions made are very evident, for example it is he who insisted on removing the imprecatory psalms and verses from the Liturgy of the Hours, and moreover his involvement was not at all passive but was very active and he approved and vetoed many decisions of the Commission working on the liturgy after thoroughly studying the requested changes. What happened, happened with his approval, sometimes even reluctant approval for mostly pastoral considerations (e.g. communion in the hand).

Whether one likes or dislikes the post-Conciliar liturgy (I am admittedly a fan), I think it is important reading to truly understand how it all came about.

Ora

CGZ - I agree that statement is totally contrary to the purpose of Catholic liturgy*, but it seems contrary also to the delight of Mgr. Bugnini in the Graduale Simplex, and his pride in fighting it through so that even tiny congregations should have the use of authentic Gregorian chant. Is it an accurate translation?
*Also to the direct instructions of SC.

When Msgr Bugnini noted that there was no justification to continue the use of Latin because "the addressee needs to understand what is being said to him", the edifice he had been trying to build suddenly made sense.... but ceased to be Catholic.

Where did he say this? Certainly not in his book. In the book, he is rather more subtle:

"The problem most keenly felt in the area of liturgy was that of the language to be used. It was a difficult and touchy problem with two sides, both of which raised many questions. On the one hand, there was the tradition of the Latin Church and the advantages of using a single, sacred language that was also sufficiently technical from the liturgical and juridical points of view. On the other hand, there was the fact that use of a language unintelligible to many weakened the message and made the divine realities less trenchantly present. The alternatives were to abandon to a great extent the Latin that was an age-old patrimony of the Church or to reduce the effectiveness of what is the most natural, spontaneous and expressive of all signs-the language we use. Given these alternatives, the Council did not hesitate but decreed the introduction of the vernaculars into the liturgy. As Pope Paul VI was to say with St. Augustine "it is better to have the learned reproach us than to have the liturgy remain unintelligible to the people"

(Chapter 4: "Fundamental Principles": II Operating Principles 1. Language" pp 45-46) Chapter 9 is devoted to the shift from Latin to the vernacular.

I cannot find CGZ's statement anywhere in that chapter.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Ora

@CGZ

I see there seems to be two translations... Anyway what is the point of arguing over a quote which is a translation. Did Bugnini approve the translation? Did he understand English well enough to approve a translation?, and do the English words used have a uniform meaning or do different speakers of English, say either side of the 'pond' attribute different meanings to the same word.

Anyway a good companion to the memoirs of Bugnini, would be this,
The Memoirs of Louis Bouyer: From Youth and Conversion to Vatican II, the Liturgical Reform, and After (Angelico Press, August 2015)
N.B. Also a translation! But he describes Archbishop Bugnini as "meprisable" and "aussi depourvu de culture que de simple honnetete," in the original text.

another book that also studies the (De)formation of the Liturgy...
Liturgical Time Bombs in Vatican II: Destruction of the Faith through Changes in Catholic Worship. Davies, Michael (2003)

i do wonder though how (whether) Bugnini ever defended the idea of putting a vernacular Mass into the monasteries and convents. Or did he consider these places full of people as dumb as he evidently considered the faithful to be?

Bugnini ends chapter 9 with a robust rejection of the charge that either the Consilium or CDW discouraged Latin, with references. see DOL index entries for Latin language & Latin Mass

So,...

Oremus - let us pray...(to the Father).
Dominus vobiscum The Lord be with you (that we might address the Father).
'The Lord be with you' is a prayer, it is not addressed to the people - it is a calling down of the Father's presence upon them.

It's an invocation upon with a response: it is at least *dialogical*.

Ora- I wanted to read that as well but it is out of print and mucho expensive to own. I have read the critical but fair Yves Chiron book (highly recommended) and Bouyer's memoirs (which are very good even apart from the juicy chapter on the Council). Oh, well, I will keep an eye out or see if I can get it from the NY Public Library. Also wanted to read Botte's book , but it is also out of print apparently.

The Cross and the Eucharist in Early Christianity: A Theological and Liturgical Investigation by Daniel Cardó. Have been working through it for a month or so now, so you might be surprised that I think it could have stood being even longer. A good read for those interested in the taking seriously the spirituality of the Latin west not only of the Patristic period but even into the early Middle Ages. Was reviewed in Antiphon Volume 23 Number 3.

wow, CGZ... "know thine enemy" is a serious proposition, I suppose.

Francis,

I try to read authors on their own terms, not just through the lens of their adversaries. I have also read (at other times) Margaret Sanger, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Pete Buttigieg, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Annibale Bugnini, and others. I trust that this doesn't make me unusual.

@CGZ

Nah... I have done in depth reading on Wicca, pantheism (Fox), freemasonry, new age, Aztec civ (human sacrifice), witchcraft, earth worship, Egyptian and Babylonian spirituality, etc.

The Bible is correct

All the gods of the nations are idols.