EFJ Summer Reading List

In its continuing quest to provide suggestions for summer reading that contains Catholic Social Teaching (CST) themes, Education for Justice (EFJ) suggests The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The sanctity of human life and nonviolent resistance play a role in this work of literary fiction.

Book Description by EFJ: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a novel of cruelty, poverty, and hope. Liesel Meminger is a young girl who has been placed in foster care by her mother. Liesel's brother dies en route to their new home and this leaves Liesel traumatized, causing her to have terrible nightmares in the middle of the night. Liesel's foster father begins teaching her to read on these nights to distract her from her pain. Liesel learns to turn to books for comfort. When the war begins, comfort becomes a rare state of mind, so Liesel finds ways to seek it out. Liesel begins to steal books in her efforts to deal with the cruelty of the world around her. The Book Thief is a complicated story of survival that will encourage its readers to think.

EFJ Summer Reading List

The third recommendation from Education for Justice (EFJ) is one that is quite familiar to our blog readers, but one that bears mentioning again and again -- Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea. The themes of solidarity and commitment, peace-building, the rights of the girl, and education are prominent in this work of non-fiction.

Book description from EFJ: The war-torn mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan appear in the news as the breeding grounds of terrorist training camps, Al Qaeda hide-outs, and fierce religious extremism. In Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson and Relin take readers behind the headlines to reveal the true heart and soul of this explosive region and to show how one man's promise might be enough to change the world.

EFJ Summer Reading

You'll recall that two weeks ago, this blog recommended a summer reading list from Education for Justice (EFJ). Today, we give you the second book (now a major motion picture) from the EFJ list, The Soloist, by Steve Lopez, covering the themes of dignity of the human person, homelessness, and mental illness.

Description from EFJ: When Steve Lopez saw Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles' skid row, he found it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years earlier, Ayers had been a promising classical bass student at Juilliard -- ambitious, charming, and also one of the few African-Americans -- until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless, paranoid, and deeply troubled, but glimmers of that brilliance are still there.

In the process of trying to save Ayers, Lopez finds that his own life is changing, and his sense of what one man can accomplish in the lives of others begins to expand him in new ways.

EFJ Summer Reading List

Education for Justice (EFJ) has suggested several different books for your reading pleasure this summer. Each book deals with the theme of Global Solidarity in some way. This blog will be featuring these books throughout the summer months. First is the novel, Right of Thirst, by Frank Huyler. According to EFJ, this book presents the sub-themes of wealth and poverty, the ethics of intervention, and human bonds and responsibilities.

Book description: Shattered by his wife's death, and by his own role in it,
successful cardiologist Charles Anderson volunteers to assist with earthquake relief in an impoverished Islamic country in a constant state of conflict with its neighbor. But when the refugees he's come to help do not appear and artillery begins to fall in the distance along the border, the story takes an unexpected turn.
This haunting, resonant tour de force about one man's desire to live a moral life offers a moving exploration of the tensions between poverty and wealth, the ethics of intervention, the deep cultural differences that divide the world, and the essential human similarities that unite it.