The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life

Written by James Martin

Narrated by James Martin

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 

“User-friendly...The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything…helpfully unpacks core precepts like ‘finding God in all things.’” —Time

The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by Father James Martin, SJ (bestselling author of Jesus and Learning to Pray) is a practical spiritual guidebook that shows you how to manage relationships, money, work, prayer, and decision-making, all while keeping a sense of humor.

Inspired by the life and teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, this book will help you realize the Ignatian goal of “finding God in all things.” Filled with relatable examples, humorous stories, and anecdotes from the heroic and inspiring lives of Jesuit saints and average priests and brothers, this book will enrich your everyday life with spiritual guidance and history.

Martin explores answers to commonly asked questions such as:

• How do I know what I’m supposed to do in life?
• How can I be happy?
• How can I find God
• How do I love?
• How do I know who I’m supposed to be?

Booklist said, “Martin has a way of popularizing serious religious issues without trivializing their impact and significance.”

The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything is sure to appeal to fans of Kathleen Norris, Richard Rohr, Anne Lamott, and other Christian Spiritual writers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jul 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062109996

James Martin

Patrick Robinson is the co-author of the international bestseller, A Colossal Failure of Common Sense – the inside story of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Before that, he co-authored Lone Survivor with Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, which was a number one New York Times non-fiction bestseller. Patrick is also the author of eleven international bestselling suspense thrillers, including To the Death, Nimitz Class, Hunter Killer and Diamondhead. He lives in Ireland and spends his summers in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Reviews for The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything

[xieouyang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's a romantic humorous novel, set in Italy, Hollywood, Edinburgh, Idaho, Idaho?, and a couple of other cities. The actor Richard Burton plays a role, a drunken one as expected, but Elizabeth is only mentioned by name. The story starts with a minor actress who's been impregnated by Richard (you don't say!) but has been convinced that she is dying of cancer. Burton and the movie director Michael Deane, who are filming the movie Cleopatra in Rome, found this small impoverished port village that nobody cares to visit, and send the actress there telling her that Richard will be coming soon, so she will be sent to a cancer specialist in Switzerland. She stays at the only hotel in the village, curiously named Hotel Adequate View, run by the young Italian Pasquale Tursi. A young American with dreams of being a writer also stays in the hotel, Alvin Bender is his name. He visits once a year for a couple of weeks to write his novel. From there, the story develops in several directions following key events in the lives of the main characters. The novel jumps back and forth in time between April 1962 and the present, that is 40-50 years later. It has a number of funny scenes throughout that keep the reader motivated to continue reading. Such as the one about Pasquale building a tennis court up in the craggy mountain behind the village. He's been clearing the rocks and trying to get the surface flat so it can be used to play tennis. The view from there is gorgeous but the court will extend to the precipice- Pasquale had visions of two players fielding the ball back and forth in sheer joy. However, he never thought that every time one of them missed, the ball would plunge into the ocean. Adding a screen to prevent balls from being lost would destroy the view. The characters, however, are pretty stereotypical. The Italian family with many children, autocratic father. The self-absorbed movie actors and actresses. The temperamental young Italians. Etc. etc. Nonetheless, I think it's worth reading for the pure enjoyment of it.

[rhondavanae · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When you open this book and delve inside you lose yourself into another time, another place! Beautiful Ruins is just that- Beautiful. I was captivated by the whole story. It flowed so well together. I loved the descriptions and felt like I was there in a little quaint hidden spot of Italy. I could vividly picture the sights and smells from this secret hideaway with hidden treasures. I also loved how a cinema couple from the past was an important part of this story. I enjoyed how the story ended and how we got to know what happened in the lives of each couple. This book is one of my most treasured gems of the year!

[whitreidtan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I know they say you can't judge a book by its cover but we all do. If we didn't, the entire art department at publishers would be out of work. So when I saw the gorgeous cover of this book with an Italian village oceanside and perched in the cliffs, I knew the book was calling to me. When I saw that it was written by Jess Walter, whose The Financial Lives of the Poets I read several years ago, I knew I needed to read it. And when I saw that it combined a story of 1960s Italy and modern day Hollywood, I knew I had to own it. So I bought it and it sat on my shelf unread. But then a blog tour happened and it was the perfect excuse to read this book about two different times and places converging into one complete if tangled storyline. Opening in 1962 as a beautiful, rising young actress, a member of the cast of the still under production Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton movie Cleopatra, boats into the tiny, forgotten town of Porto Vergogna, sent there because she's been told she's dying of stomach cancer. Dee Moray is to wait there in this blip on the map for the man who will take her onward to Switzerland where a doctor will treat her condition. Pasquale Tursi, a young Italian man newly returned home after the death of his father, stands deep in the port's waters when the boat carrying the beautiful actress arrives. He's trying to shift rocks in order to be able to build a tennis court cantilevered out over the ocean for the enjoyment of the American tourists his father, who owned the only hotel in town, and now he believed would soon discover and flock to the little hamlet. And lo and behold, just as in his beliefs, an American actress to stay in his tiny hotel. During the short tenure of her stay in Porto Vergogna, Dee and Pasquale, despite having trouble communicating (she has no Italian and his English is rudimentary) make an unexpectedly deep connection with each other. Pasquale is kind and loyal and he does his best to help Dee see the beauty around them in life. And Dee responds to the bone-deep honor and goodness of this young man as she learns the truth of her situation. And then the novel flips to modern day Hollywood where once legendary producer Michael Deane, botoxed and cosmetically enhanced into a caricature and a cliche, lives and works on the fringes of a studio no longer making epic movies, instead making the worst sort of reality tv: on-screen train wrecks. His assistant Claire Silver is facing a career crisis as she looks forward with trepidation to another of Deane's Wild Pitch Fridays, a day where anyone and everyone who ever came into contact with the great Michael Deane, the crazy, the misguided, and the terminally untalented, is given the opportunity to come in and have a face to face pitch meeting over which Claire will have to preside. And this Friday is no exception. But at the tail end of the day, something different happens. Shane Wheeler, a screenwriter who lives in his parents' basement after a failed marriage, arrives late to give his pitch: a different, gritty, and deeply depressing take on the Donner Party focused not on the cannibalism but on the devastation and grief of the members of that ill-fated party. He arrives at the studio at the same time as an old Italian man searching for Dee Moray, whose only clue to her whereabouts is an ancient Michael Deane business card. And because of Shane's time brief time abroad in Italy, he becomes the de facto translator for Pasquale Tursi as he meets Michael Deane and they all set out on a quest fifty years in the making to find out whatever happened to Dee Moray. The novel is not told in any sort of linear fashion, with the plot jumping backwards and forwards in time willy nilly and from character to character. This literary whiplash is hard to adjust to in the beginning but as the novel moves on, it becomes easier and easier to make the leaps with it. Not only is it told non-linearly, the novel also uses more than just straight traditional narration to tell the stories of the myriad of characters in its pages. Among the narrative devices are an unpublished screenplay, an autobiographical play performance, an unfinished World War II novel which starts at the end and never does have a beginning, and the expunged, sleazy, and legally indefensible version of a memoir subsequently sanitized and published for wider consumption. All of these different narrative devices mirror the themes of the novel as a whole and enrich the stories of the characters to whom they belong. But the sheer number of characters, the amount of stories and backstories, the epic scope of this cinematic, quintessential Hollywood story, and the careening roller coaster ride of the multiple plotlines handicap the novel a bit. Walter does pull everything together and make it all pertinent in the end but getting to that point is sometimes too much. He has written an interesting look at integrity, goodness, and living an honorable life versus self-serving greed, despair, and failure. Some of his people and places are in fact the beautiful ruins of the title while others are instead ugly ravaged remains of a lifetime of poor choices. Walter is definitely a talented writer so although this novel proved to be missing just that slightest bit of heart that would have had me raving over it instead of concentrating on the complexity of the plot and the fantastic gymnastics of the writing itself, it is worth a read.

[librarygeek33 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Some books I would never read, but make a pretty good listen. This was good enough to keep my interest while riding in my car but that is about the extent of it.

[elsyd_19 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A really remarkable book. I don't know that I have ever read a novel that included real people, so recently dead, as characters. Every character was fully developed and each had an interesting and wonderful story to tell!

[eenerd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mostly gorgeous, evocative writing -- lots of metastories, stories within the story, which for the most part work really well. They are used to fill in the gaps, elaborate on the backstories, but near the end it got a little heavy. The last chapter had SO much going on, where it was wrapping up most everything, it was somewhat heavy handed but at the same time I was satisfied by it.

[pife43-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved everything about this book. From the moment i saw it sitting on the shelf in my favorite library, even the cover itself drew me in like a fly to honey. I read the inside jacket and then about the author, but this was incidental as I had already made my mind up to check the book out. The book offered a few things that make my antennaes go up immediately. The novel is set in the 1960s, its set in a small European town, it includes American actors on vacation, so with these 3 things, I hoped that the authors writing did not disappoint and he certainly did not. This is a charming story about an otherwise forgetable character falling in love with a not so forgetable movie star. A man of humble means, living a life out with a family and a business which had already lived its better years. The main character overcomes in his own unique and charming way. The book read far to quickly and I have found myself seeking similar stories ever since. Jess Walter proved to me just how fun reading can and should be. I give it highest marks with a bit of disappointment that somewhere, some others have offered lower marks.

[etxgardener · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1962 a young movie starlet arrives at an isolated Italian seaside village and captivates the young local innkeeper. Fifty years later we find this same Italian in Hollywood in search of the woman who disappeared out of his life In-between these tow bookends we find a rollicking story - part send-up of Hollywood and part the story of fragile characters in search of themselves and their dreams. Jess Walter tells his story in the form of a literary jigsaw puzzle and keeps the reader turning the pages until all is revealed.

[rglossne · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the best novels I've read in a long time. Engaging characters, a plot that moves back and forth across time and space, dazzling good writing.

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story flips between 1962 Italy and present-day L.A.; between an Italian man named Pasquale who runs a quiet hotel near Cinque Terre and a young woman yearning to make a great film in reality TV-driven market in Hollywood. There are so many crucial threads holding the story together. There’s Alvis Bender, an aspiring writer and struggling alcoholic; Michael, a washed up producer with a plastic surgery obsession and finally Dee, an American actress whose life draws them all together. Each person is stuck, unable to make the decisions needed to move on with their lives. For me, this book is even better after it marinates for awhile. I actually like it so much more a month later than I did the moment I finished it. I needed time to think about each of the characters and the way they worked in the story. Each one plays a significant role, though that role isn’t obvious until the end. Any single character’s life on its own doesn’t make for a very compelling read, but it is the combination of them all that creates something superb. It’s all about the balance between the past and the future, regrets and missed chances, etc. The way each person’s life and their choices affects everyone around them is a powerful thing and this book captures that.BOTTOM LINE: A well-crafted novel full of nostalgic what ifs. Curl up with it and imagine you’re in Italy.  

[ginger.hewitt · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I really wanted to like this book. I was disappointed.

[honkcronk · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I read this book quickly as it held me captive. The plot was very unusual, Italy and Los Angeles (mostly) and a span of 50 years. I enjoyed it and I will be happy to read and discuss at my book club. There is alot to talk about in this book.Jess Walter infuses some humor into the story. I will go back and read some of the things said in Italian or muttered out of hearing.I enjoyed how he described the ending for every character -- even minor ones. It was satisfying to read what 50 years did to each and every one.I want to go back and watch some Richard Burton, but no thanks to viewing Cleopatra. That movie was a true bomb and the love affair may have saved it financially, but that is all.And how phony was (and is) the entire Hollywood scene. Will this book make it to the movies?-- say NO, Jess!

[terribooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this novel are multiple layers -- of time, character and plot. At first I was a little irritated at its jumping around, not sure where it was going or what I should be paying attention to. As I got a few chapters in, I started to see how storylines were beginning to fit together. As can probably be expected with such complexity, there were stronger and weaker characters, stronger and weaker stories. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and it moved around enough that I kept interest. On the other hand, it was a little disappointing not to have more time with favorite characters, as their stories came and went. Everything was all tied up neatly -- maybe a little too neatly -- at the end. Enjoyable, especially if you're of the era that remembers Burton, Taylor and when Italy was the height of romantic destinations.

[rbeffa_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is more an impression than a review. Beautiful Ruins is not the sort of book I would normally read or have any interest in. I first saw it several months ago on the new releases shelf at my library. I was seduced by the cover, a lovely old postcard-like picture of Cinque Terre, Italy. I was further intrigued when I opened the book and read the opening pages which include this quote in the epigraph:Dick Cavett's four great interviews with Richard Burton were done in 1980....Burton, fifty-four at the time, and already a beautiful ruin, was mesmerizing.-"Talk Story" by Louis Menand, The New Yorker, November 22, 2010So the intro sucked me in and now finally I picked it up again to read. I was charmed at the start as we meet Pasquale, a young Italian who is a big dreamer who becomes smitten. As we proceed we end up with a growing cast of characters, many of whom are dreamers too, most quite flawed. We move back and forth in time and place, from 1962 Italy where we start, to the present day in Hollywood, and bounce around even more. The appearance of Richard Burton as an actual character in the story was fun. There are characters and settings I really liked and some that I didn't so much. Overall though, I really liked this book. At the end I was wanting more, a very good sign. This book is a blend of a lot of things and it really touched me. It may be a bit too sentimental, but that is OK sometimes.

[jphamilton-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jess Walter has always shown himself to be a clever and talented author in his previous works. But with Beautiful Ruins he has taken a leap onto a higher level (let's say shelf) and shows himself as being a much better writer, one capable of impressing me enough to rate this book as something to CROW about—even when I was only half way through the book. It's plot that involves many characters moving in and out of the limelight over quite a span of time. There is the wonderfully slow pace and innocence of a tiny, almost forgotten, town lodged on the rock cliffs of Italy. The sweet owner of the town's only hotel is captivated by a beautiful (but no ruin) blonde American actress that steps off a boat in the harbor. Then, there's a story that revolves around Dick and Liz (and others) making the uncontrollably-expensive film Cleopatra. Walter aptly describes the back-stabbing world of Hollywood, a world were fortunes come and go and come again, and people are immortalized on film...seemingly forever. As a reader I got to spend some time up close and personal with Richard Burton as he drank and charmed his way through this epic time of his life. A scene that has stuck in my mind, is one where the "simple" hotel owner sits beside Burton and watches him as he excessively drinks, smokes, and speeds a sports car down the curving Italian roads. Watching this life force roar down the narrow roads both scared and captivated him at the same time. The range of happenings and feelings of the book's events — modern and half a century old — exposes a sweetness, a selfishness, a dishonesty, and a loveliness that was all described just right and so very cleverly written that the book is extremely touching, funny and lovely. This is a book that I'm sure to read again some day.

[cyderry · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dee Moray, a starlet from the Cleopatra filming, arrives Porto Vergogna being hidden away by the studio because of an unanticipated pregnancy resulting from a fling with the film's star. The hotel's owner, a starry-eyed young man, befriends Dee and tries to help her.The story splits into a chronicle of Pasquale's troubles - his mother's death, his romance and finally his search for Dee - and the life that Dee finally made for herself and her son. I have to admit that I was somewhat disappointed because I had heard so many good things about this book and it didn't live up to my expectations. It was okay, but not great.

[198therese · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Timeline between 1960s and 2000s

[dele2451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Lovely. I bet you can't read it without sighing.

[missjomarch · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story begins in 1962 in a tiny coastline village of Porta Vergogna when actress, Dee Moray arrives by boat for a holiday. The hotel's owner is Pasquale a shy young man in awe of this beauty that has come to stay with them. Pasquale's widow mother and crazy aunt make for some lively banter as they do not hold back on what they think of their visitor. Pasquale and Dee form a close friendship that gets interrupted by a Hollywood scandal. Michael Deane, a movie producer in his effort to save his film Cleopatra doesn't realize he rotates fate in a different direction that might have been until years later his help is sought to find lost love.This was a lovely book, the fact that it takes place in Italy is just icing on the cake. A perfect choice for a vacation, beach read.

[abbylibrarian_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked following the story of characters over the span of 50 years and seeing how they scattered and then tried to find each other again. The fully-voiced narration of the audiobook definitely elevated the story for me.

[mojomomma_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Moving back and forth between the 1960 's and the filming of Cleopatra in Italy and present day California and Idaho, we trace the history of Dee Moray, a minor actress in the film, but a major interest of Richard Burton. When Dee becomes pregnant, but is told by the staff doctor that her symptoms are consistant with stomach cancer, she hides away at Pacquale's Adequate View Hotel, in a remote coast village of Italy. She eventually figures out she is pregnant, not dying and leaves Italy and returns to the United States, but Pasquale is in love with her. Fifty years later he tracks her down in Northern Idaho.

[staffreads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Engaging plot with characters that interconnect through several decades. Very entertaining and well read. SRH

[teeth_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

this novel starts out in a small village in Italy where pasqaule Tursi falls in love with an American actress. the book then flashs back to 2012. A very interesting novel with great characters.

[bookappeal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Loved everything about this book - the setting, the characters, the humor, the storylines. The story jumps all over in time but Jess Walter keeps everything moving smoothly and ties it all together beautifully and cleverly.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Delightful. Beneath the frothy, steamed-milk, surface of this novel broods a dark Italian espresso of love and regret and more love. Of course love leads to complications, not least of which are the children of passion, excised, hidden, shunned, or, accepted, nurtured, and acknowledged. Between Florence, Rome, and an isolated port along the Italian Riviera, a complicated tangle of parallel plots develop in 1962 during the chaotic filming of the Richard Burton / Liz Taylor spectacular, Cleopatra. The choices made by each character in this fulcrum of decision – the naïve but fruitful neophyte actress, Dee Moray; the failed novelist, Alvis Bender; the sombre yet hopeful minor hotelier, Pasquale Tursi – create ripples spreading through the years, coming ashore again more than forty years later.Jess Walter is masterful in his delicately comic prose, which, even when bounding through a zany scene, holds deep veins of poignancy and honesty. Time after time, I found myself marvelling at Walter’s touch: entirely impressive, without calling attention to itself. Even when he undertakes chapters in alternate modes – there is a short story chapter, a movie pitch chapter, a self-important autobiography from an unsavoury Hollywood producer, a play (all of these ostensibly with different “authors”) – Walter perfectly integrates these modes into the story as a whole; this is never mere display and technical bravura. Moreover, Beautiful Ruins is as singular in its writing as Walter’s previous two novels, The Zero and The Financial Lives of the Poets. When each new work raises the bar of respect for an author, you can only hope his career flourishes long into the future.Perhaps our lives, and the stories of our lives, cannot hope to amount to more in the end than beautiful ruins. If so, then we could do worse than hope for a bit of Jess Walter’s humane insight into the wonderful process of our ruination. Highly recommended.

[annie.michelle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this is a love story that goes back and forth in time spanning continents and generations.the story unfolds in 1962 with Pasquale, a dreamer and inn keeper on a tiny crevice of landon the beautiful Italian coastline.A beautiful dying woman dressed in white and holding on to her sun hat is sailing on the Ligurian sea toward Pasquale In a tiny boat, forever changing his life.Cut to present day Hollywood we meet a man way past his prime, an addicted to plastic surgeryProducer Desperately seeking a hit. How this aging producer, his exasperated assistant Claire, the actor Richard Burton who setsthis whole story in motion, a wacky wanna be TV hit maker, A rock and roll singer, Pasqualethe Innkeeper along with his hilarious friends and family and the very beautiful dying starletall come together in a full of fun, Hollywood glamour, bittersweet family drama way is a bookmeant to be read and enjoyed.

[susanbevans · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This may be the most beautifully written book I've had the pleasure of reading all year! I don't have words enough to describe the wonderful way the author intertwines the lives of all of his characters.

My favorite passage: "Stories are people. I'm a story, you're a story... your father is a story. Our stories go in every direction, but sometimes, if we're lucky, our stories join into one, an for awhile, we're less alone."

[clstern-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Most excellent.

[anniemichelle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this is a love story that goes back and forth in time spanning continents and generations.the story unfolds in 1962 with Pasquale, a dreamer and inn keeper on a tiny crevice of landon the beautiful Italian coastline.A beautiful dying woman dressed in white and holding on to her sun hat is sailing on the Ligurian sea toward Pasquale In a tiny boat, forever changing his life.Cut to present day Hollywood we meet a man way past his prime, an addicted to plastic surgeryProducer Desperately seeking a hit. How this aging producer, his exasperated assistant Claire, the actor Richard Burton who setsthis whole story in motion, a wacky wanna be TV hit maker, A rock and roll singer, Pasqualethe Innkeeper along with his hilarious friends and family and the very beautiful dying starletall come together in a full of fun, Hollywood glamour, bittersweet family drama way is a bookmeant to be read and enjoyed.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A quick read. It starts off slow and not very likable, but it gets better, possibly because -- or inspite of -- the multiple storylines and non-chronological timeline. Themes of desire/duty, dreams, failure filter through all the characters and storylines. Nothing amazing, but escapism better than most.