Olga Lossky | Words And Peace

#NonficNov

Click on the logo to see the detailed schedule

Doing Dewey is organizing a fun month around nonfiction! I plan to participate a bit. Here is the topic for week 1:

Your Year in Nonfiction:

Take a look back at your year of nonfiction and reflect on the following questions:
What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?
What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?
What is one topic or type of nonfiction you haven’t read enough of yet?
What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November?

First of all, here is the recap of the nonfiction I have read (the links will send you to my review when it’s posted):

France/French authors:

La cache, by Christophe Boltanski – ebook
How to Talk About Places You’ve Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel, by Pierre Bayard
Thirsty Dragon: China’s Lust for Bordeaux and the Threat to the World’s Best Wines, by Suzanne Mustacich – audiobook
Marcel Proust’s Search for Lost Time: A Reader’s Guide to The Remembrance of Things Past, by Patrick Alexander
Pancakes in Paris, by Craig Carlson – ebook, for review. Review coming soon

Orthodoxy:

Toward the Endless Day: The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, by Olga Lossky
Orthodox Spirituality, by Dumitru Staniloae
Patristic Theology, by John Romanides
Saint Innocent, Apostle to America, by Paul D. Garrett
The Blessed Surgeon: The Life of Saint Luke Archbishop of Simferopol

Other:

In Other Words, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Complete Review Guide to Contemporary World Fiction, by M.A. Orthofer – ebook, for review. I ended up buying a print copy
James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner, by Alfonso Zapico
Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie, by Anne Martinetti

NB: I should be able to finish one more, it will also be a book on Orthodoxy

What was your favorite nonfiction read of the year?

Click on the cover to read my detailed review

What nonfiction book have you recommended the most?

Complete Review Guide

What is one topic or type of nonfiction
you haven’t read enough of yet?

As usual, current issues!
Next year, I also plan to go systematically through all the nonfiction on my TBR

What are you hoping to get out
of participating in Nonfiction November?

Get acquainted with more nonfiction readers and good titles unknown to me.

WHAT WAS YOUR FAVORITE NONFICTION THIS YEAR?

Toward the Endless Day:
The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel

Author: Olga Lossly
Translator: Jerry Ryan
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Release date: 2010
“Vers le jour sans déclin”
was first released in French in 2007
Pages: 344
ISBN: 978–0-268-03385-9
Genre: Nonfiction/Biography/Autobiography/Memoir
History – Byzantine & Orthodox
Religion & Theology – Christianity

Visit the publisher’s page for Table of Contents, Reviews, and Excerpt

Buy the book

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Until 1582, all Christians used to celebrate Easter on the same date. That year, a new calendar was adopted in Western countries, leading then Catholics and others to calculate the date of Easter in a different way from the Orthodox, who kept to the original calculation.
Henceforth, some years, in 2017 for instance, Easter is celebrated by all on the same date.
This year 2016, the Orthodox Pascha will be celebrated on May 1st! Therefore, as our Catholic brothers and sisters are almost done with Lent, today is actually the very first day of Lent for Eastern Orthodox Christians.
I’d like then to wish a Blessed Great Lent to all Eastern Orthodox Christians, on this “Clean Monday“.
This is another interesting difference: whereas the beginning of Lent is on Ash Wednesday for Catholics, when they receive on the forehead a dark mark made of ashes to remind them of death, the Great Orthodox Lent starts with Clean Monday (Καθαρά Δευτέρα): along with a service of mutual forgiveness the day before in Church (Forgiveness Sunday), they are invited today, through a strict fast, to start this blessed liturgical time with a “katharsis”, a cleansing of their conscience and renewed love.

I chose this day to present to you a unique person, in fact the most important woman Orthodox theologian of the 20th century. She happens to have lived most of her life in France. Unfortunately, she is not too well known in the United States, not even among Orthodox Christians, even though Towards The Endless Day, her biography, was already translated and published in English six years ago!
Click to continue reading