A Glass of Chianti

Friday, June 16, 2006

My kingdom for a book spine label

I love the Pauline Sisters. Really. I also love the small format paperbacks they put out of the papal encyclical letters. Whenever I go into Stella Maris, I walk by the big wall display of them and have a really hard time with not picking one up. So far, I've been pretty successful in this money-saving endeavor for two reasons:
  1. I remind myself that I have this bookmarked at home and it is free. (Making an appeal to my cheap nature)
  2. I remind myself that they don't label the spines of these encyclicals so there's no way to store them practically on the bookshelf for reference. (Making an appeal to my somewhat obsessive organizational nature in all things household.)
I also console myself by saying that these are English translations, and it would be more awesome just to hold out for the inevitable Latin revival where all will be well with the world and I'll have a bookshelf full of encyclicals right under my shelf of Ovidian glory. Plus, when the kids ask (as all eventually do) what Pope Leo XIII really said in Rerum Novarum on the subject of ownership, I will not have to rely on my decade (or, shudder, more) old reading but simply pull it off the shelf and begin to teach the awesomeness that is contained right from the hard copy itself... and in Latin.