![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Elise_Ureneck_bookcase-scaled.jpg\")
A selection from the author\u2019s bookcase. (Submitted photo)<\/p>\nLike many millennial women, I spent my teenage years wanting to be Rory Gilmore, the daughter on the popular dramedy \u201cGilmore Girls\u201d from the early Aughts. Rory was the first intellectual, literate teen character that popular culture served up to us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In her valedictorian speech from her fictional preparatory school, Chilton, Rory describes how the characters in the catalog of great books were steady companions and mentors, such as those in William Faulkner\u2019s \u201cAs I Lay Dying,\u201d Marcel Proust\u2019s \u201cSwann\u2019s Way,\u201d and Herman Melville\u2019s \u201cMoby Dick.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now that I am a mother, I think a bit more about Lorelai Gilmore, Rory\u2019s mother, whose academic career was disrupted by her teenage pregnancy. In one episode, she expressed to one of her beaus that she, too, hoped to read more of the greats:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never read Proust. I\u2019ve always wanted to. Every now and then I\u2019m seized with the overwhelming urge to say something like \u2018As Marcel Proust would say,\u2019 but of course I have no idea what Marcel Proust would say, so I don\u2019t even go there. I could do, \u201cAs Michael Crichton would say,\u2019 but it\u2019s not exactly the same, you know?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lorelai never gets around to cracking open the greats, mostly because her life is always a bit chaotic. She\u2019s often depicted flipping through women\u2019s magazines and engaged in constant cordless phone chatter (the source of dopamine hits before the iPhone was created).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Preoccupied with work deadlines, caring for young children, and managing our home, in the early years of my married life, I set aside hopes to read the great books that I had collected while single. They seemed to taunt me from my bookshelves. I understand Lorelai\u2019s plight as a working mother.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If I did find time to read, I prioritized nonfiction books about timely cultural topics or the news. Both paid dividends for work. Everything in those years was aimed at efficiency and productivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While that type of reading kept me abreast of cultural trends, the constant barrage of news and commentary, even in long form, was draining. I needed to find time to read fiction, books that served no practical purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I also knew that it would be hard to hold myself accountable. Stay-at-home moms continually see their homes in disarray. There is always something to be picked up or wiped down.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To make things worse, turning a blind eye to check phone notifications and resisting the urge to periodically check Twitter (X) would require outside incentives.<\/p>\n
It was providential, then, that at that time I was invited to a book club with women from my parish who were going to be exploring some of the great Catholic writers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Joining was one of the best decisions I\u2019ve made. Three years in, I\u2019ve explored sin and the human condition with Graham Greene, in the \u201cEnd of the Affair\u201d and \u201cThe Power and the Glory\u201d; examined what makes for a troubled marriage with Francois Mauriac\u2019s \u201cTh\u00e9r\u00e8se,\u201d and peeked inside the convent with Rumer Godden\u2019s \u201cIn This House of Brede,\u201d and \u201cFive for Sorrow, Ten for Joy,\u201d among others.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A selection from the author\u2019s bookcase. (Submitted photo)<\/p>\n
The practice of reading fiction, traveling to faraway places, and meeting characters well outside of my day-to-day encounters made me think of St. Th\u00e9r\u00e8se of Lisieux. Though the Little Flower was confined to her cell as a Carmelite, she saw herself as a missionary, able to bring the Gospel to the ends of the earth through her prayer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I began to realize that as a mother, reading fiction was a way to be transported beyond the laundry room and nursery, if only I set aside just a few minutes a day. Far from an escape, it has changed the way I look at my tasks, considering more closely the people I\u2019m serving, just as I closely examine the characters in these fictional worlds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The experience was so enriching that I joined a second book club this year \u2014 a local chapter of the Well Read Mom<\/a> group. Founded by Marcie Stokman who \u201clearned that she was a happier, more whole woman, wife, and mother when she was reading good books,\u201d the program asks participants to commit to one book a month<\/a> and offers guides for discussion and supplemental reading material, all based on a theme.\u00a0<\/p>\n To date I\u2019ve discussed the theme of fatherhood illustrated in such works as \u201cCry the Beloved Country\u201d by Alan Paton, \u201cPeace Like a River\u201d by Leif Enger, and the 1,000-page tome \u201cA Father\u2019s Tale\u201d by Michael O\u2019Brien. It has given me rich material to reflect on my gratitude for my relationship with my own father, the many priests in my life, and my husband\u2019s love for our sons.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meeting book club deadlines has taken some creativity. I bring the book to physicians\u2019 waiting rooms and pull it out of my diaper bag in the line at the grocery store. I\u2019ve also been so far behind schedule that I\u2019ve woken up at 5 a.m. for a whole week just to get in reading before my kids get up. My husband jokes that I look like an undergrad cramming for a final.\u00a0<\/p>\n My reading has benefited my family, first in the conversations that I have with my husband, who is also committed to reading fiction, but also because my sons see me read. This is a tried-and-true way of helping pre-readers get interested in books.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s also enhanced my empathy. As I encounter different characters, I think about how my sons might turn out, or what challenges might be ahead for me or my loved ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n This was the insight of another leading lady, not on television but on the front lines of revolutionizing care for the poor.\u00a0<\/p>\n Dorothy Day was a huge fan of fiction. In the introduction to \u201cThe Long Loneliness,\u201d Day\u2019s autobiography, Robert Coles, a former Harvard professor, recounts bringing students to meet her in the mid-1970s.\u00a0<\/p>\n When asked what she wanted to be remembered for, she included that she loves books and recommended the greats, like Tolstoy and Orwell, to others. \u201cThat\u2019s the meaning of my life \u2014 to live up to the moral vision of the Church, and of some of my favorite writers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I die, I hope people will say that I tried to be mindful of what Jesus told us \u2026 and that I tried to take those artists and novelists to heart, and live up to their wisdom (a lot of it came from Jesus, as you probably know, because Dickens and Dostoevsky and Tolstoy kept thinking of Jesus themselves all through their lives).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This is what I have found \u2014 good fiction is an examination of the human condition. And since mothers are in the business of forming humans, what better teachers are there than the greats?<\/p>\n To every mother, I urge you: read novels, even for 15 minutes a day. You\u2019ll also feel like a human again.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t Elise Ureneck is a regular Angelus contributor writing from Rhode Island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Like many millennial women, I spent my teenage years wanting to be Rory Gilmore, the daughter on the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-50834","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114822143555373118","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n