Here’s a roundup of links for your Friday!

First up, Dorothy Cummings McLean reviews Rumer Godden’s classic, In This House of Brede:

Novels are what we read when we should be reading something else—or are they? Currently I should be reading Henri Nouwen’s “modern spiritual classic,” The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, but in fact I have just finished Rumer Godden’s novel, In This House of Brede. And I feel no embarrassment in saying that the laywoman’s novel taught me far more about the way of the heart than the priest’s meditations. After decades of preaching the virtues of a low fat diet, nutritionists now tell us our dietary culprit isn’t fat. Apparently we have always needed good fat in our diet. Godden’s novel runs with rich oils; Nouwen’s book strikes me as sugary… Read more

Also at Catholic World Report, T.M. Doran says that we are all time travelers:

The perception of time is affected by historical and cultural settings. Consider a medieval farmer, for whom time was linked to the flow of seasons and capricious weather; or to a street urchin in 18^th century Paris, living from moment to moment without the luxury of pondering the past or the future; or modern man, whose day consists of connecting to one “cloud” or another. How different these perceptions of time were, and are…. Read more

Over at First Things, there’s a piece by Albert Shepherd V marking the 150th anniversary of George MacDonald’s The Light Princess:

One-hundred and fifty years later, The Light Princess remains one of MacDonald’s most beloved works. In it, a young, unnamed princess is cursed by a witch, with the result that the princess has no gravity. The effect is both physical and spiritual. If not tethered to the ground or leashed to her royal attendants, the princess is at risk of simply floating away into the air, never to be seen again. At the same time, she is unable to take her peril (or anything for that matter) seriously. Even the distress of her parents over her plight provokes her laughter… Read more

Lastly, if you haven’t seen it before, Deep Down Things, a blog from the literary journal Dappled Things, is well worth visiting. Check it out!

And don’t forget the two pieces published here this week, “How to Get Published” (full of invaluable advice from Dorothy Cummings McLean) and “Books and Grounded Transcendence”: will printed books ever disappear in favor of eBooks?