In his book Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, Joseph Pearce provides a quick overview of what he considers great work of literature. He includes at the end of the book a list of 100 works "every Catholic should aspire to read."
For the most part, I agree with him. And I've used his list to help guide my effort to fill the gaps in my own reading history. Mind you, as a Literature major, a book lover, and as a Chestertonian, I had read many of the works he cites.
Chesterton. Dickens. Dostoyevsky. Tolkien. Lewis. Shakespeare. Sophocles.
Ah. Favorites whose works iIread and reread.
But there have been some works he mentions that I did not like. I tried Don Quixote, and got a hundred pages in before I gave up. I did read a few of Jane Austen's books that I had not previously read, but did not really enjoy them. Manners and romance are not my cup of tea. And I did read both of Flannery O'Connor's novels; too grotesque for my taste.
I decided to tackle Hilaire Belloc. I had only previously read Cautionary Tales for Children (which I had enjoyed) and Pearce's Old Thunder: A Life of Hilaire Belloc. I found the biography informative, but came away not really liking Belloc as a person!
Nevertheless, I thought it was time to tackle one of the Belloc books on Pearce's list: The Path to Rome. I started it a few months ago, but it did not hold my interest, so I drifted away to other works. Still, given his ties to Chesterton, and Pearce's championing of the book, I felt obligated to finish it. So I returned to it.
I did finish it the other day. But I have to admit I did so just to say I did. Indeed, the last third of the book I kept thinking, "Get to Rome already."
It could be that I'm not a fan of travel books or of long rambling works. But even more, his personality got in the way. I did not care about his struggles, and got tired of his commentary and judging. Oh, there were some descriptive passages that were quite fine, and I could appreciate them as examples of good writing. But that's about all I did enjoy.
I have his The Four Men on my bookshelf, and Pearce is even higher on that book than on The Path to Rome, but I hesitate to even attempt it. I also have a collection of his essays; those I might read as I do enjoy essays. Not yet, however.
Instead, I'll just end this with a clerihew I wrote about Belloc a number of years ago:
Hilaire Belloc
walked off the end of a dock,
but being in the midst of a debate
he was unaware of his fate.
As for my current reads, I'm juggling a book about haiku poet Santoka Taneda, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, and Father Kevin McKenna's A Concise Guide to Catholic Social Teaching.
And enjoying them all.
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