About This Blog

To make interacting with this blog easier, I'm going to do my best to provide a couple different ways of classifying the books that I post about. Hopefully, these will help you understand not only what the book is about, but also find books on similar topics, or written in similar styles, or of a similar difficulty. I want this blog to be as user-friendly as I can make it, and responses are always welcome. Below are some key things to note about this blog:

The lack of a "goodness" scale
All books are worth reading - even if it is to find out that some books really aren't. Seriously though, whether or not you enjoy a book is as much based on the context in which it's read (where you are at in your life, what the previous book you read was, whether you could discuss it with someone along the way, etc). Books are just too different to compare side by side, and each reader will come out with something different. I would probably say that all the books that will make it into this blog are worth reading, even if I didn't particularly like some of them.

The Difficulty Rating
Difficulty is a little less subjective than whether or not a book is good, so I'm going to attempt to rate them on a simple scale of how difficult I think it is to read them. However, this will depend not only on the subject matter, but also on style, the culture it was written in, etc. I've come up with a 5 point scale to describe the difficulty:

1. Really Easy - Simple style, limited vocabulary, requires no outside knowledge of the book. Stuff like children's books and simple fiction. (Examples: The Little Prince, James and the Giant Peach, A Series of Unfortunate Events)
   
2. Easy - Relaxed style, common vocabulary, little interpretation needed. This would be reflective non-fiction, and adult fiction. (Examples: The Life of Pi, Becoming Human, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time)
3. Moderate - Consistent style, larger vocabulary, contains themes/subject matter/cultural elements that may be unfamiliar or hard to understand. (Examples: The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe, The Screwtape Letters, In Praise of Folly)
   
4. More Difficult - Serious style, significant vocabulary, contains subject matter that may require research or other reading, or present ideas that require serious reflection (Examples: Moby Dick, The Silmarillion, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Shakespeare)
   
5. Very Difficult - Impenetrable style, extensive vocabulary, and dense subject matter; will likely require more than a single reading to make any sense of it (Examples: James Joyce's Ulysses, Aquinas' Summa Theologiae, The Brothers Karamazov).

Of course, there is a large degree of subjectivity to this, as well. If you find all non-fiction difficult to read, it may not matter if I rate it as a 2 or a 4. Still, I hope this helps you get a sense of what you may be getting yourself into. And I would encourage you to try to read a book that you think might be beyond your comfort level - you might surprise yourself!

Labels and Tags
I'm going to try and consistently group books into categories that will allow you to easily locate books of a similar genre or difficulty. Stuff like "spirituality" or "biography" or "fiction" or "fantasy". I don't have all the labels made up, because I'll likely just do it as I go. However, there will be a couple other tags that will appear from time to time:

• "Book Club" - This describes a book that I've used in a book club before, and you might want to consider using it in a book club of your own. Many of the books with this tag resulted in great discussion; some didn't. But they're worth talking about.
• "Blackfriar Favorite" - Because this is my blog, I get to note the books that are personal favorites of mine, and ones that I would highly recommend. You'll find that these come from a wide variety of genres and difficulties, covering everything from children's literature to russian literature to academic theology.
  
• "Author (living)" and "Author (dead)" - I once had a professor who suggested that for every living author I read, I should read two books by a dead author. The idea was, of course, that books written a long time ago had stood the test of time and proved their worthiness of being read. While I haven't kept to that rule, I do meet a great many people who really only read living authors. I'm hoping this will encourage someone to read a dead one.

Now you are fully equipped to take on the blog! Let the reading begin!