John Herreid

John Herreid

John Herreid is catalog manager at Ignatius Press. In addition to catalogs and ads, he has also worked on the cover design for many Ignatius Press books and DVDs. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four children.

Novel Thoughts blog

Posts from this author at the Novel Thoughts blog.

  1. John Herreid

    Fairy Tales in Space

    December 22, 2015 12:00 pm Leave a Comment

    Note: this review is spoiler-free. Comments on it, though, may contain spoilers. On Sunday we went to see Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The theater was jam-packed with families; lots of kids dressed up as their favorite characters—including one kid dressed as Wolverine. I have a feeling he was simpatico… Read more »

    Tags: movie reviews Star Wars The Force Awakens

  2. John Herreid

    Giving Nothing for Christmas

    December 18, 2015 5:28 pm 7 Comments

    Fiction is full of stories of those who, having nothing themselves, give the smallest thing as gifts, only to have it shown that their gift was actually a thing of great value. These stories draw upon various sources, one being the Gospel passage where Jesus draws the attention of his… Read more »

    Tags: Advent Christmas Mother Teresa spirituality

  3. A few days ago that powerhouse of an actor Kirk Douglas turned 99. I might not have noticed it if it weren’t for the fact that a week before, when my three kids were picking out a DVD for family movie night, they settled on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea…. Read more »

    Tags: great films for kids James Mason Jules Verne Kirk Douglas

  4. John Herreid

    Killing the Dragon

    November 20, 2015 1:19 pm 2 Comments

    After it was posted several times on social media, I finally watched a short video of a French father comforting his child who was asking about the terror attacks in Paris. His answer was that we would fight the bad men with guns with flowers and love. The child looks… Read more »

    Tags: children G.K. Chesterton terrorism

  5. John Herreid

    There are two very powerful myths most of us at some level buy into, given that they are myths that permeate the modern world. The first is that we can always reinvent ourselves; that we are the sole authors of our destinies, and can remake ourselves into whoever we want… Read more »

    Tags: book review Fiorella de Maria We'll Never Tell Them

  6. Petrichor

    November 6, 2015 1:18 pm 4 Comments

    This week it rained. This may not seem like an occurrence worth recording to many of you, but to those of us in this parched region of California, it was momentous. Our puppy, Snowy, had never encountered this before and had to be physically brought out into the yard to… Read more »

    Tags: art appreciation film Ida Elisabeth literature Manalive music The Spirit of the Liturgy

  7. John Herreid

    Spooky Links at a Distance

    October 30, 2015 4:53 pm Leave a Comment

    It’s Halloween weekend, so time for some varied spooky links! First up, “Kill the Moon”, one of the scarier episodes of Doctor Who in the past year (featuring moon spiders!) gets reviewed at First Things, exploring the pro-life implications of the episode. Alexi Sargeant says “The episode proposes something like… Read more »

    Tags: Doctor Who dracula frankenstein Halloween horror links monsters

  8. During the Prohibition the English writer G.K. Chesterton came and toured the United States, expecting to be in every way repulsed by the government suppression of alcohol. But what he found ended up delighting him—in a way. The efforts to quash drinking had driven many to the craft of homebrewing… Read more »

    Tags: beer G.K. Chesterton hobbies homebrew making

  9. John Herreid

    Encouragement

    October 16, 2015 9:14 am 4 Comments

    An envelope arrived in the mail a month or so ago. I didn’t recognize the name on the return address, M. Kunin. Opening it, I realized who it was from: my father had jokingly written the name of the former governor of Vermont on the return address. Inside was a… Read more »

    Tags: art children comic books writing

  10. Saints and Superheroes

    October 9, 2015 1:20 pm Leave a Comment

    Why do we tell stories about superheroes? Maybe it’s the same reason we tell stories about saints. Stories of the saints, some based in fact and some shrouded in mystery, give us vivid examples of how virtue can overcome evil. St. George valiantly battling a dragon, St. Zita and the… Read more »

    Tags: hagiography reading lists saints superheroes

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