My Life in Seventeen Books

Jon M. Sweeney is an award-winning author who has been interviewed in the Dallas Morning News and The Irish Catholic, and on television at CBS Saturday Morning. His book, The Pope Who Quit, (Doubleday/Image) was optioned by HBO. He is also author of forty other books on spirituality, mysticism, and religion, including Meister Eckhart’s Book of the Heart, with Mark S. Burrows (Hampton Roads), the biography Nicholas Black Elk: Medicine Man, Catechist, Saint (Liturgical Press), and Thomas Merton: An Introduction to His Life and Practices (St. Martin’s Essentials and Penguin Random House Audio, 2021).

His bookish reputation is nothing new. In 2014, Publishers Weekly featured Jon in an interview titled, “A Life in Books and On the Move.” He began the 1990s as a theological bookseller in Cambridge, and ended the decade founding a multifaith publishing house, SkyLight Paths Publishing, in Vermont. He’s worked in books and publishing ever since. Today he writes, reviews, edits, and recommends books, speaks regularly at literary and religious conferences, is a Catholic married to a rabbi, and is active on social media (Twitter @jonmsweeney; Facebook jonmsweeney). Sweeney lives in the Riverwest neighborhood of Milwaukee.

“I love this book. The addictive experience of reading, which guides and charts our inner journey, is glancingly but vividly caught. Everyone will have their own list of books which they carry in their pockets and reread constantly. For some readers, this will instantly become such a book.” —A.N. Wilson, author of Confessions: A Life of Failed Promises

“Here is a poetic account of a long journey among books whose power over the author’s mind and heart was such that they became companions on the way. It fits in no category and is magnificent.” —Richard Greene, professor of English and director of the graduate program in creative writing, University of Toronto; author of An Unquiet Englishman: A Life of Graham Greene

“This is a small gem of a book, tender, humble, loving, needed now as ever before when so many of us fear that reading—and the books that we read--are endangered species.” —Mary Gordon, novelist, critic, and memoirist, author of The Company of Women, Joan of Arc: A Life, and many other books

“Sweeney makes a charming companion, telling stories in joyful reflection from the books he’s carried and the contemplative, quiet, searching—and most certainly bookish!—life he’s lived.” —Jeff Deutsch, director of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores; author of In Praise of Good Bookstores

“Sweeney braids together the seeker and bibliophile threads of his personality in a richly satisfying volume.” —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“In its pages one can savor the felicity of bookstore browsing (especially in a crowded used books shop), the importance of ‘bookhood’ (that elusive quality of the individual, physical book, created by weight, smell, texture of the page, and more), the way books converse with and inform each other in the reader’s mind, the wonder of stumbling upon a book that becomes part of one’s being. My Life… offers plenty of opportunities for one of the greatest joys of reading: staring off into space, pondering some train of thought sparked by what you’ve read.” —Lucy S.R. Austen, Current

“Sweeney’s affinity for books is apparent in every sentence of his lush prose.” —Kirkus

“Laced with humor and philosophy throughout, My Life in Seventeen Books may be intensely personal, but its spirit will speak to any bibliophile.” —Daniel Goldin, owner, Boswell Book Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

“Sweeney’s considerable intellect and generous spirituality shines through. He is a former bookseller, a longtime publisher, and prolific author and he’s not messing around here.” —Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Books, Dallastown, PA

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