T.'s Decent Readings, Vol. 1

Catholic authors and Star Wars comics!

Documenting every book or book series I’ve enjoyed since I decided to keep this blog generally positive, however many titles I want to list at a time.

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The Riddle of the Tongue-Stones (2025)
— Thomas Salerno (Author), Dillon Wheelock (Illustrator)

My online friend

Thomas Salerno

’s first published book!

While children are its main target audience, its telling of how Blessed Nicolas Steno founded geology educates me as an adult, even at such a short length!

As Thomas says in his interview from

Katelin Cummins

: “The message of The Riddle of the Tongue-Stones is this: science and religion can exist together in harmony, even support one another. I want young readers to know that.”

An endearing and informative debut!

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Theology of Style (2023)
— Lillian Fallon

Even before I started reading regularly again, I wanted to find a good book on dressing modestly I could recommend on a blog.

But while Fallon does touch upon the importance of modesty—or reverence as she prefers to call it due to the baggage modesty can carry—, her main focus is on how developing one’s personal clothing style can artistically express one’s soul, basing her points on Saint John Paul II’s Theology of the Body.

Of course, as a guy, not everything in this book is aimed at me, but there are insights into women that anyone could find eye-opening.

For example, the inherent beauty of women reflects their roles as God’s co-creators of human life, and allows for their personal styles to be more diverse and expressive than men’s typically practical styles, though Fallon also acknowledges that women’s styles can be more practical and men’s styles can be more expressive.

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Star Wars: Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith Vol. 1 - Imperial Machine (2017)
— Charles Soule (Author), Giuseppe Camuncoli (Illustrator)

Thanks to

Adam K Malinauskas

for the lending!

Picking up right from where Revenge of the Sith left off, these first six issues of Marvel's Darth Vader comic run shows once again that while George Lucas laid a compelling foundation for Vader’s character in the Prequels, the character is most compelling when the guy who created him isn’t the one telling his story.

Although we are being asked to empathize with Vader’s inner suffering, we are not being asked to sympathize with his actions; when he floods a whole settlement filled with innocent people, it’s as shocking as it should be!

I’ve felt that if the contrived and unfocused Disney+ Obi-Wan series really needed to have so much of the story dedicated to Imperial Inquisitor drama, it should have been the origin of how the Grand Inquisitor came to earn his rank; alas, I now know that that would have seriously contradicted this comic.

Of course, the more interestingly unfocused Book of Boba Fett would go on to contradict the fate of Yoda’s lightsaber from here, but that’s less consequential.

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo (1973)
— J.R.R. Tolkien (Translator), Christopher Tolkien (Editor)

The first time I,’d ever heard of this fable was through A24’s recent adaptation of it, which I have not seen, but it sounds like yet another modernist deconstruction of classic myth rather than sincere recapturing of it. As one of my favorite Patrick H. Willems video essays argues, modern filmmakers need to remind audiences why these stories are beloved in the first place before subverting them.

I blame it more on my personal sensibilities than I do on the qualities of the stories themselves when I say that reading this made me realize how much I struggle to follow poetry, especially in the latter two poems in this compilation. The Green Knight portion took me two times trying to follow before it finally clicked with me the third time, and even then, I had to reread the climax.

The middle portion of The Green Knight had me thinking, “Well, this is a pretty long detour,” so I wasn't expecting a twist revelation to tie the whole thing together, where integrity and virtue are ultimately rewarded.

While a struggle for me, I can see why this is one of the most beloved Arthurian fables, and why Tolkien himself believed it’s the greatest medieval fable period.

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