I received The Catholic Hipster Handbook as a Christmas gift in the year of our Lord 2017. After quickly reading it and feeling very passionate about the contents, I decided to share my thoughts and passion in the form of an extended review.
The book title pretty much explains what it's all about. It's focused on Catholic subjects, written by various practicing Catholics with a Catholic audience in mind. It emphasized the Hipster attitude and mentality, the desire to be outside of trends, to be highly attracted to vintage things, and to dig deeper into stuff that is obscure in mainstream pop culture contexts. And it was a Handbook in the sense that it covered a variety of ways on how to be a Catholic hipster and provides the reader with various prayers and activities to push them to become an even greater Catholic hipster than before.
Each chapter was written in this specific format:
1) Article on chapter topic
2) A Cool Saint (or Blessed) that connects to the topic
3) A Forgotten Prayer that connects to the Cool Saint (or Blessed)
4) An Activity that connects back to the topic
It's hard to say that each topic is divided up into "chapters". Each chapter felt more like a short article or a blog post written by the individual contributors. Even the occasional footnotes sometimes made it feel more like a research paper from college than an actual book.
With that being said though, each article is engaging, intriguing, and fun to read. The uniform format with which each article is written also gives the book more of a professional touch rather than just a potpourri of friends writing whatever they feel like contributing to a blog. And there was still enough individual approaches to that uniform style that allowed each contributor to stand out in their specific way and provide various amounts of information depending on the topic at hand.
It helped me to be familiar with some of the contributors beforehand through other forms of media, including Youtube (Steven Lewis), podcasts (Sarah Vabulas), radio (Anna Mitchell), and Twitter (Tommy Tighe). This foreknowledge provided me with a better understanding of the voice that the writers were using, allowing me to detect the humor and wit with which they wrote their articles. This understanding also clued me in to how I was supposed to receive the writings of the other contributors, taking them seriously overall while also understanding that there is humor and joy at work in the writing as well.
This book is a very quick read. Even after reading a couple bits at a time, putting it down to do something else, and then picking it up again, it only really took me a couple of days to finish the whole thing and it really could've taken one single day if I was less distracted. Majority of the articles are only about four pages long or so, and each article offers something intriguing to keep the reader interested.
If there was one downside to how fast of a read the book is, it's that I felt like I always rushed through the Forgotten Prayers too quickly, especially when it came to the longer prayers. Whether it was my own desire to bust through each topic as quickly as possible, the overall pace/flow of each article, or my inability to read the book in a prayerful manner, I just always felt like I did not pace myself correctly when it came to the Forgotten Prayers. The good news is that, being a book that I own, I have the ability to go back and re-read each prayer and personally take my time with any of them that I choose to.
The Activities portions of each article provided the most fun and simultaneously the most challenging elements of the book. Sometimes it was simple stuff like take a quiz or look up certain people and websites online. Sometimes they would spiritually dare the reader to begin doing something like go to Daily Mass or begin praying the Liturgy of the Hours.
Then there were surprises like recommending a pilgrimage to local shrines without driving there, reconnecting with people you disagree with to grow in mercy towards them, and practicing minor mortification and Ignatian prayer. There was never any activity that I objected to, just sometimes I would get caught off guard by things that I thought would be hard for me to do initially. Aside from the challenges, there's other fun recommendations for events and games to try with friends. I'm making it a goal to do each activity at some point during 2018.
This book has some potential to appeal to non-Catholic readers as well as the intended Catholic audience. I think non-Catholics can learn some truths about the Catholic faith/ culture from people who seriously practice it and live it out. I'm not saying a lot of non-Catholics are gonna understand or appreciate this book, but I don't think it's so narrow that it doesn't invite non-Catholics to the party. The witty writing and hipster sensibilities are the main elements that will engage non-Catholic readers.
Catholic readers, meanwhile, are given a book that is a step up from the usual How-to-Catholic books that cover the initial basics. This handbook not only reinforces good daily spiritual practices, but also challenges those of us who already strive every day to grow closer to God. That challenge comes through unique activities and events as well as further daily practices. I think this is one of the main reasons why I like this book so much. It mainly addresses those of us Catholics who are daily practicing the faith and looking for something to help us make further improvements as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Since this book not a beginner's level guide to reversion or conversion, it is able to assume that the intended audience already knows a lot of Catholic buzzwords and is probably already doing something for daily prayer and spiritual growth. Sure, it's not a deeply mystical tome heavy on theology and high falutin' scholarly language, but it doesn't have to be because there's other books for that. I find it refreshing to have a book that's in between the intro level and monastic level of understanding Catholicism that can also provide me with insights and challenges that are related to my current way of living and applicable to how and why I want to grow in my relationship with God.
Here's how much I recommend this book: I would give this handbook to every young adult Catholic I know and interact with. I wanna get a book club going on this thing! I wanna hear a talk or give a talk about this book! I wanna hear or do a podcast episode solely about this book! It provides a lot of good conversation material and spiritual things to reflect upon. It's definitely worth having in your personal library at home.
No comments:
Post a Comment