Meryl Kaleida
Meryl Kaleida is Production Assistant and E-book Editor at Ignatius Press. She is also a guest writer for Catholic Word Report. She graduated from Ave Maria University with a Bachelors in Theology and Literature. Meryl is a wife, gardener, singer, author, chef, artist and lover of truth. Her short story "I Couldn't Help but Notice" is available as an eBook. You can also learn more about Meryl on her website Kaleida House.
Posts from this author at the Novel Thoughts blog.
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I Am Divergent
April 9, 2015 2:07 pm 4 Comments
I have made it a habit to read certain kinds of popular literature for one main reason: to be able to have intelligent dialogue with other readers for evangelization purposes. This has proven helpful in quite a few instances when arguing against such literary trash as Dan Brown’s The… Read more »
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A Warning: A Review of Kingsman: The Secret Service
February 24, 2015 12:05 pm 21 Comments
Move over Fifty Shades of Grey, because you’re not the only horrible movie in theatres right now. Kingsman: The Secret Service is not at all what its trailer portrays it to be—an action packed, fun-loving, spy film. No, no, and no. I cannot iterate enough how no one should watch… Read more »
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Truly Odd, but Truly Great
January 21, 2015 11:55 am 3 Comments
It is with great sadness that I review this last installment of the Odd Thomas series. I’m sad because Oddie became one of my best friends and now there are no more adventures with him… at least in this life. Koontz created one of the best literary characters and has… Read more »
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From Novels to Movies Part 2: The Battle of the Five Senses
January 5, 2015 1:06 pm 1 Comment
A few months ago I lamented over bad movie adaptations from books. I am always hopeful that some film director will suck me into their painfully accurate rendition of their favorite novel, but I am usually disappointed. I have had to train myself to view movies completely separate from their… Read more »
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A Review of Mockingjay Part 1
November 25, 2014 3:17 pm Leave a Comment
Mockingjay Part 1, the final installment of The Hunger Games series, opened this past weekend as the top selling movie in the box office. The adaptation of Suzanne Collin’s novel left something to be desired for both critics and fans alike. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a rating of… Read more »
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Fear: The Inspiration Killer
September 25, 2014 11:39 am 3 Comments
Criticism. We all hate it. For those of you who say you ‘love’ it…. well, you’re lying or you’re a weirdo. By ‘love’ it, you probably mean that it helps you improve/grow/better yourself etc. But no one enjoys hearing that their creative work has issues or is just plain bad. This is where pride and fear enter in. Fear is the devil’s ultimate inspiration killer. Read more »
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Busy Bees!
August 14, 2014 3:10 pm 9 Comments
Our readers may have noticed a sudden lag in our blog posting… The reason is that we have been working tirelessly to bring you great new books this fall! We have some new novels coming out like The Accidental Marriage by Roger Thomas, Iota by T.M. Doran, and some great… Read more »
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Take me to The City!
July 29, 2014 4:55 pm 3 Comments
As some of you may already know, I absolutely love Dean Koontz’ Odd Thomas series, but I tend to stay away from his other novels because of the gore/horror element. However, I was intrigued as I read a few reviews on Amazon about his latest novel The City. Some were saying “It is unlike any other Koontz novel” or “If you’re looking for horror, you’ll be disappointed.” So, I decided to spend the $12 on the Kindle version and give it a try… and I was not disappointed. I kid you not when I say that this book is one of the best novels I have ever read!The story is told from the perspective of Jonah Kirk at age 54, reflecting on his life as a child in the 60’s. Little Jonah lives in a walk-up apartment in The City with his young mother, who sings at Jazz clubs and waitresses at Woolworth’s, and his no-good father, who is an aspiring chef at a local restaurant. When Jonah’s father decides to leave Jonah and his mother, Jonah believes that his life has changed for the better. Now, he can learn to play the piano like he always wanted and he doesn’t have to listen to his dad’s nagging wife stories.
But after meeting a lady named Pearl, who claims to be The City incarnate, Jonah’s life becomes a tangle of prophetic dreams and dangerous people. With the help of his friend and neighbor, Mr. Yoshioka, he will embark on an adventure involving crime and conspiracy that will change his life forever.
I found the book to be a combination of A Boy’s Life by Robert McGammon and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I enjoyed reading about the adventures of a little boy and his great wonder over all things simple and beautiful. Jonah’s character is wonderfully loveable with his appreciation of good music, his innocence, and his sense of humor. And Koontz’ Catholicism is ingeniously interwoven within Jonah’s family and within The City herself. But it is definitely not a tale for the faint of heart. The story does take place during the turbulent 1960’s, after all. There is great suffering that many characters must endure, and Jonah learns that you can either let suffering eat you from the inside out or you can let it mold you into a greater person:
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Are E-books the Devil?
July 1, 2014 4:23 pm 5 Comments
My official title at Ignatius Press is ‘E-book Editor’, so I’ve had a few people ask me questions like: Can you compare e-books with paperbacks? What are the advantages and/or disadvantages of electronic books? Is this the end of libraries? Is this the beginning of the end of print books? Don’t you miss the smell of real books? Can you borrow/lend e-books? Are e-books the devil? The list goes on… To an avid reader, such as myself, these questions are important, and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.
I began my e-book editing/designing career back in 2009, when Fr. Fessio invited me and two other students from Ave Maria to come to San Francisco for the summer. I had no experience with writing HTML code or OCR text recognition or typesetting or editing (beyond my own school assignments), or publishing for that matter. I came into this field with a clean slate, so I have seen it develop, change, and grow quite a bit. Now, I can tell you exactly what happens to a book, from the time it’s an idea in an author’s head down to the finished, printed and beautifully bound print book and, of course, the e-book. Read more »
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It’s a Mad Mad World: Suffering and Inspiration Part II
June 13, 2014 2:42 pm Leave a Comment
Yesterday, we heard of the tragedy in the Diocese of Phoenix. There was a shooting at a high school in Portland, Oregon on Tuesday. There was another school shooting last week in Seattle, Washington. At the end of May, a man went on a shooting rampage on the campus of… Read more »
