More Books to Buy

Father Anonymous isn't the only one whose creative juices have been flowing lately. We have recently been apprised of some other self-publishing endeavors that may interest our readers.

Let us say, for the sake of the argument, that you aren't eager to own your own Latin-English prayerbook, complete with a difficult-to-use psalter. Hard to imagine, but there's no accounting for taste. Or perhaps your copy is already on order, but now you're in an indy-book-buying frenzy and must have more.

Then by all means consider Campfire Christmas Songs. Here's how the author, Our Beloved Godfather, describes it:

When my son asked me to join him for a weekend retreat during the Christmas season, I happily agreed and headed down to the local music store to buy a Christmas collection. To my dismay, the collections that I found either included obscure chords (F#mSus4), or too many chords to play at a reasonable tempo, or melody lines that seemed to be written only for high sopranos or countertenors!

The failure at the music store sent me to an online search that also turned up nothing useful. Since then I have gathered a collection that would be both playable by the campfire guitarist and in a voice range comfortable for the back-pew alto.

While we wouldn't know what F#mSus4 was if it jumped us in a back alley, we are very much afraid of contracting a case, and imagine that a book like this may provide some immunity. For five bucks, you can't go wrong.

Or perhaps you'd like to celebrate Christmas by looking at beautiful pictures of beautiful churches. Good news -- we know a guy for that, too. Only a week or two after we expressed our admiration for Mark Christianson's photos from the south German town of Bad Wimpfen, with its historic cloister, he announced their publication in book form. While it seems entirely unlikely that he got the idea from the Egg, we intend to take full credit anyway. Or not. Either way, the book looks beautiful, and we sincerely hope that Mother A. buys us a copy for our birthday.