Monday, October 08, 2007

The Great Reading Challenge of ... Last Week

...was to get through Fabiola by Cardinal Wiseman as a read-aloud in time for our discussion on Friday night. Gus has a hard time getting through entire books on his own anyway, but the language in this one made it particularly challenging. Happily we finished it - all 615 pages - and enjoyed it very much. For those unfamiliar with the title, it's a novelization (dating from the 1850s) of the stories of a number of Christian martyrs in Rome around the year 300. Very engrossing and complex in a good way. Gus loved it and so did the others in our lit discussion group.

Though Ria read this twice before this week, it was my first time to read the book. It moved very nicely as a read-aloud and provided an excellent first-glimpse into the time-period for those who weren't very familiar with it.

I was rather surprised to stumble across a Wikipedia page about the book where I learned that Cardinal Newman wrote a prequel to Fabiola called Callista.

3 comments:

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

I think I was unduly influenced by this book a few years ago... now we have a "Sebastian" in our family LOL.
Didn't know there was a prequel! I'll have to look for it.

love2learnmom said...

Too funny! I was thinking Sebastian would make a great name too. :)

Milehimama @ Mama Says said...

His name is Sebastian Thomas, and our last name has an 'st' combination in it, so I was praying the poor boy wouldn't have a lisp! So far, so good... but he's not old enough to lose his front teeth yet, so we shall see.