Introduction to the Devout Life, St. Francis de Sales

I had someone recommend this book to me because it would be "more applicable" to my life than the religious book that I was currently reading. Within the first few pages I understood what he meant - I felt like St. Francis de Sales was writing this book just for me. The book is definitely written for lay people and describes how to be holy in your life and current occupation. I think of this book as a sort of "handbook for spiritual engineers."

While not all of the advice was directly relevant to me, I found most of it incredibly useful and inspiring. In the first section of the book, St. Francis explains what true devotion is and the detachment from sin necessary to devotion, as well as giving some meditations. In the second part he discusses prayer, especially meditation. The third part focuses on practicing certain virtues in daily lives, including humility, obedience, purity, and poverty. He also discusses friendships, conversation, and recreation. The fourth part is about temptations, and the final part discusses how to renew your resolutions to live a devout life.

As I mentioned above, my favorite part about this book was that it is clearly written for lay people. St. Francis de Sales recognizes that we live in the world, have occupations, and interact with others and gives advice accordingly.

Father Brown Mysteries, G. K. Chesterton

The Father Brown Mysteries are possibly my favorite short stories. I first became familiar with them when my former roommate found some at a used bookstore and began reading them to me as bedtime stories. The main character, Fr. Brown, is a humble priest with a shabby umbrella and a knack for solving mysteries and understanding people. His intuitive understanding of people allows him to see each crime from a new point of view, and therefore find the secret (and the criminal) behind it. I recommend them for anybody looking for a short and enjoyable read.

Note: There are a lot of different editions to these stories, but they were originally published in 5 books. For the most part, jumping around in order is perfectly fine, but it's best to read the first five stories in order to witness the development in the character of Flambeau.