The Queue

I was making progress through The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection even more slowly than anticipated; so, I decided to stop alternating that book with Reclaiming Vatican II & focused on finishing Reclaiming Vatican II, which I did at the end of last week. I highly recommend Reclaiming Vatican II to one & all.

I've begun Across the Airless Wilds in anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 17, the sixth & final Moon landing (7-19 December). The book is off to a very bad start, the author writing on page seventeen:

No other explorer has been in circumstances so remote, or so extreme in their hazards. No expedition had before, or has since, pushed adventure farther or further. Cernan and Schmitt were out at the edge of man's travels as a species. By comparison, Roald Amundsen's trek to the South Pole was a run to the corner grocery.

Long time readers of The Secret Base are no strangers to my enthusiasm for human spaceflight & my own penchant for hyperbole. I'm on board with the first three sentences, but I reject utterly the attempt to build up the heroes of Apollo by denigrating the giants on whose shoulders they stood, such as Amundsen. (The "corner grocery"? If the author had taken such an unnecessary cheap shot at Ernest Shackleton, I would have stopped reading the book immediately & put it in the paper recycling bin.) I'm still reading Across the Airless Wilds, which means I still hold out hope it will prove worthwhile.

Recently
Tim Gray & Jeff Cavins, Walking with God: A Journey through the Bible
Robert Barron, Eucharist
Father Blake Britton, Reclaiming Vatican II: What It (Really) Says, What It Means, and How It Calls Us to Renew the Church

Currently
Earl Swift, Across the Airless Wilds: The Lunar Rover and the Triumph of the Final Moon Landings

Presently
Second Vatican Council, The Word on Fire Vatican II Collection
Christopher Carstens, A Devotional Journey into the Easter Mystery (Lent 2023)
Heather Augustyn, Ska: An Oral History (SKApril 2023)
Xavier Rynne, Vatican Council II
John W. O'Malley, What Happened at Vatican II