June 2024 BOTM - Voting

[John]

It is time to vote for our June 2024 BOTM. You may vote for up to 2 of the books listed below. You should vote by adding a comment here. If you vote in any other way, your votes may not be counted.

The book(s) with the most votes will be our BOTM. If there is a tie, the moderator uses a random list generator to determine the order and they are all read over however many months. Books that receive fewer than 2 votes will be removed from the Voting List, with those that receive 1 vote being placed at the end of the Nominations List.

Voting will end at approximately 6:00 PM Eastern Time on Saturday, May 18.

The Voting List for June is:
Beheading Hydra: A Radical Plan for Christians in an Atheistic Age, by Dwight Longenecker, nominated by John
Never before has humanity existed in a culture that rejects belief in a transcendent power. Previous cultures ― even when rent by bitter disagreements ― shared a common belief that a greater force stood above the material realm. But when one side acknowledges an ultimate source of truth while the other side denies it, debate is dead, and mutual understanding is impossible. So claims Fr. Dwight Longenecker in his most captivating book yet,
Voting History: December 2023: 2; January 2024: 2; February 2024: 6; March 2024: 4; March 2024: 5

The Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle (5 vols.), by Manuel Alfonseca, nominated by Fonch
Inspired by the Narnia Chronicles, these five fantasy books show how redemption could have been in a different world. The books are:
1. The Journey of Tivo the Dauntless: Book One in the Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle
2. The Mystery of the Black Lake
3. The Silver Swan
4. The Secret of the Ice Field
5. The Lost Continent
Voting History: August 2023 - 2; September 2023 - 2; November 2023 - 5; December 2023 - 5; January 2024: 6; February 2024: 7; March 2024: 5; March 2024: 3

Could You Not Watch with Me One Hour?: How to Cultivate a Deeper Relationship with the Lord through Eucharistic Adoration by Florian Racine, nominated by Mariangel
Fr. Florian Racine offers us a beautiful formation guide on Eucharistic adoration that will help us to practice it in all its depth, and with a missionary perspective. God has made himself particularly close to mankind in Jesus his Son. The redemptive Incarnation of his Son is how God reconciles mankind with himself. The memorial of the Passover of Christ is therefore at the heart of our relationship with God. In the Blessed Sacrament, the resurrected Jesus is really present and acting; he draws all mankind into his filial relationship with the Father, through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Voting History: March 2024: 4; March 2024: 3

Elfling by Corinna Turner, nominated by Fonch
Alone on the streets of London, young Serapia Ravena seeks her father, her only hope of survival. When the elusive Duke suddenly returns to the city, Serapia finds a loving father, who quickly thwarts her uncle’s murderous plans. But it soon becomes clear that he hides a dark secret, one that threatens his very life, and his very soul. The search for his salvation will carry Serapia hundreds of leagues, to the heart of the wild places, and to the fort of the elfin, bringing her face to face with her own mysterious heritage.
Voting History: ; December 2023 - 2; January 2024: 3; February 2024: 2; March 2024: 2; March 2024: 4

The Eternal Woman: The Timeless Meaning of the Feminine by Gertrud von le Fort, nominated by Stef
Mary's fiat to God is the pathway to our salvation, as it is inextricably linked with the obedience unto death of Jesus her son. Like the Son's acceptance of the Cross, Mary's acceptance of her maternity symbolizes for all mankind the self-surrender to the Creator required of every human soul. Since any woman's acceptance of motherhood is likewise a yes to God, when womanhood and motherhood are properly understood and appreciated, the nature of the soul's relationship to God is revealed.
Voting History: August 2023 - 4; September 2023 - 4; November 2023 - 6; December 2023 - 6; January 2024: 3; February 2024: 5; March 2024: 3; March 2024: 2

The Execution of Justice, Elisabetta Sala, nominated by Susan
When Jack Digby’s father is executed for high treason, the boy’s dream life turns into the worst of nightmares; and when he is forced into the murky, ruthless world of double agents and cowardly betrayals, his fate would seem to be already written. As he grows up, however, he discovers that something is wrong with the official narrative concerning his father’s tragic end. It will take time and suffering for him to discover that things are rarely as they seem, that the King’s Men – the greatest playing company of all time – are not just simple entertainers; that our most bitter enemies may turn into our best friends; that, at times, Fair is Foul and Foul is Fair.
Voting History: NONE

Invasion '14, by Maxence Van der Meersch, nominated by John
A novel about the effects of the War on the French families behind the German lines.
Voting History: NONE

The Light: Who Do You Become When the World Falls Away?, by Jacqueline Brown, nominated by Madeleine
A blinding flash … then darkness. Bria Ford and her three closest friends are stranded on a country highway in the middle of a November night. No phones. No car. No lights. Helpless and hundreds of miles from home, they put their lives in the hands of handsome Jonah Page and his flinty sister, East, strangers who somehow know Bria better than she knows herself. As the group bonds to adapt to a new, yet old, way of life, the secrets of Bria’s past provide them with the means to survive the extremes of Mother Nature, and the even more frightening extremes of human nature.
Voting History: NONE

Our Lady of the Artilects, by Andrew Gillsmith, nominated by Andrew
World leaders are on edge when reports start coming in of next generation androids having strange, apocalyptic visions of a lady in white. But when an Artilect belonging to the wealthiest man in Africa shows up at Our Lady of Nigeria basilica claiming to be possessed, the stakes are raised.
Voting History: March 2024: 2

Paradoxes of Catholicism, by Robert Hugh Benson, nominated by Sergio
The mysteries of the Church, a materialistic scientist once announced to an astonished world, are child’s play compared with the mysteries of nature. He was completely wrong, of course, yet there was every excuse for his mistake. For, as he himself tells us in effect, he found everywhere in that created nature which he knew so well, anomaly piled on anomaly and paradox on paradox, and he knew no more of theology than its simpler and more explicit statements.
Voting History: December 2023 - 2; January 2024: 6; February 2024: 3; March 2024: 5; March 2024: 2

Poor Banished Children: A Novel, by Fiorella De Maria, nominated by Fonch
An explosion is heard off the coast of sixteenth-century England, and a woman washes up on the shore. She is barely alive and does not speak English, but she asks for a priest... in Latin. She has a confession to make and a story to tell, but who is she and where has she come from?
Voting History: March 2024: 4

Prison Journal, Volume 1 The Cardinal Makes His Appeal, by George Cardinal Pell, nominated by John
Innocent! That final verdict came after George Cardinal Pell endured a grueling eight years of accusations, investigations, trials, public humiliations, and more than a year of imprisonment after being convicted by an Australian court of a crime he did not commit. Led off to jail in handcuffs, following his sentencing on March 13, 2019, the 78-year-old Australian prelate began what was meant to be six years in jail for "historical sexual assault offenses”. Cardinal Pell endured more than thirteen months in solitary confinement, before the Australian High Court voted 7-0 to overturn his original convictions. His victory over injustice was not just personal, but one for the entire Catholic Church.
Voting History: February 2024: 5; March 2024: 5; March 2024: 4

The Quiet Light: A Novel About Thomas Aquinas by Louis de Wohl, Fonch
The famous novelist de Wohl presents a stimulating historical novel about the great St. Thomas Aquinas, set against the violent background of the Italy of the Crusades. He tells the intriguing story of St. Thomas who defied his illustrious, prominent family's ambition for him to have great power in the Church by taking a vow of poverty and joining the Dominicans. The battles and Crusades of the 13th century and the ruthlessness of the excommunicated Emperor Frederick II play a big part of the story, but it is Thomas of Aquino who dominates this book. De Wohl succeeds notably in portraying the exceptional quality of this man, a fusion of mighty intellect and childlike simplicity.
Voting History: March 2024: 5; March 2024: 3

Vipers' Tangle by François Mauriac, nominated by Susan
Vipers’ Tangle tells the story of Monsieur Louis, an embittered aging lawyer who has spread his misery to his entire estranged family. Louis writes a journal to explain to them—and to himself—why his soul has been deformed, why his heart seems like a foul nest of twisted serpents. Mauriac’s novel masterfully explores the corruption caused by pride, avarice, and hatred, and its opposite—the divine grace that remains available to each of us until the very moment of our deaths.
Voting History: March 2024: 3; March 2024: 3

Voyage to Alpha Centauri, Michael D. O'Brien, nominated by Fonch
Set eighty years in the future, this novel by the best-selling author Michael O'Brien is about an expedition sent from the planet Earth to Alpha Centauri, the star closest to our solar system. The Kosmos, a great ship that the central character Neil de Hoyos describes as a "flying city," is immense in size and capable of more than half light-speed. Hoyos is a Nobel Prize winning physicist who has played a major role in designing the ship. Hoyos has signed on as a passenger because he desires to escape the seemingly benign totalitarian government that controls everything on his home planet. He is a skeptical and quirky misanthropic humanist with old tragedies, loves, and hatreds that are secreted in his memory. The surprises that await him on the voyage--and its destination--will shatter all of his assumptions and point him to a true new horizon.
Voting History: NONE

[Margaret]

Voyage to Alpha Centauri

[Richard]

Beheading Hydra
Viper’s nest

[Mary]

Vipers' Tangle

[Steven R.]

The Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle (5 vols.), by Manuel Alfonseca,
Voyage to Alpha Centauri, Michael D. O'Brien

[Sebastian]

The Quiet Light: A Novel About Thomas Aquinas

[Marlicia]

Wow! So many interesting titles to choose from. I've been super quiet for a very long time and am not sure if I'll be able participate, but I'd like to read either:

Prison Journal, Volume 1 The Cardinal Makes His Appeal, by George Cardinal Pell,
or
The Quiet Light: A Novel About Thomas Aquinas by Louis de Wohl,
God bless...

[Fiorella]

Poor banished children

[Jane]

Beheading hydra
magic jigsaw

[Jill]

The Eternal Woman
Poor Banished Children

[Lynn Ann]

Could You Not Watch Me One Hour…….

The Quiet Light:

Lynn Ann

[Vic]

Could You Not Watch with Me One Hour?

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs]

The Lost Continent

[S.]

1.Our Lady of the Artilects.

2.Beheading Hydra

[Sandralena]

The Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle
The Quiet Light

[Kristi]

Prison Journal

Quiet Light

[Manuel]

The Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle
Paradoxes of Catholicism

[Ashley]

Could You Not Watch with Me One Hour?
Beheading Hydra

[Maggie]

Could you not watch for one hour?

[Ann]

Could You Not Watch Me One Hour

The Quiet Light

[Madeleine]

The Quiet Light

Our Lady of the Artilects

[Larry]

Vipers Tangle

[Asunción]

Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle
The light by J.Brown

[Mariangel]

Invasion '14
Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle

[Stef]

Could You Not Watch With Me One Hour
The Eternal Woman

[Fonch]

I vote for "The Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle (5 vols.)", by Manuel Alfonseca and "Elfling" by Corinna Turner.

[Mike]

Could you not watch me for 1 hour

[John]

I will vote for :

Beheading Hydra

Quiet Light

[John]

Fergus, Quondam Happy Face wrote: "The Lost Continent"

Hi Fergus, the Lost Continent is part of the Chronicles of the Magic Jigsaw Puzzle - consisting of five short books. I will count your vote for that unless you let me know otherwise.

Cheers,

[CBC]

Voting is closed. Results soon.

[John]

My apologies for the delay - we lost power and internet yesterday afternoon and didn't get it back until early this morning.

Results will be posted momentarily.