No need to lug volumes of spiritual readings around—God’s on your smartphone.

Embraced by God: Facing Chemotherapy with Faith by Steve Givens (Twenty-third Publications, 2010)

The Bible's Best Love Stories by Allan F. Wright (St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2010)

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See by Richard Rohr (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009)

The Gaslight Anthem (Side One Dummy, 2010) If your idea of rock and roll requires three-chord guitars, bass and drums, and a dead-earnest sense of commitment, the last couple of decades have provided pretty slim pickings.

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless CompassionBy Gregory Boyle, S.J. (Free Press, 2010) While reading the stories of the “homies” that Father Gregory Boyle, S.J. has worked with for the past 20 years at his Homeboy Industries ministry among gang members in Los Angeles, it is easy to forget that these young people probably strike fear in most Americans.

Olivia and the Little Way by Nancy Carabio Belanger (Harvey House Publishing, 2008)Olivia and the Little Way is a delightful children's novel about Olivia, a 10-year-old who moves with her family from Texas to Michigan. She is nervous about going to a new school so her grandmother gives her a St. Thérèse chaplet and tells her about the Little Way that St.

Directed by Lee Unkrich (Disney/Pixar, 2010) In the third chapter of Pixar's saga about a boy's toys, the plastic and wooden playthings that fill their owner's toybox face the sad reality that their child-owner has grown up and is heading to college, and they are about to be kicked to the curb like a pair of empty-nester parents.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years By Diarmaid MacCulloch (Viking, 2010)

Mary Gauthier (Razor and Tie, 2010) Singer-songwriter extraordinaire Mary Gauthier (“go-shay”) has a voice like a rusty string on a slide guitar. But that never held Bob Dylan back, and in Gauthier’s musical vision, pretty is hardly the point.That same jarring, unvarnished quality runs through her lyrics.