Zeno's Conscience by Italo Svevo
The novel is framed as a memoir written by a man undergoing psychiatric treatment. His psychiatrist sees it as a way to help the process. It starts with him talking about his failures to quit smoking. He later delves into his family life as well as other love experiences. He has challenges with his life and doing what is best. The novel was good at first, but I gradually got lost as he rambled more.
St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton
This biography of St. Francis portrays him as both an eccentric human and a deeply devout follower of Christ. There are both the human and the mystical parts of his activities. He misbehaved and served during his lifetime. He helped out Claire and led to the founding of the woman's order. (It seems fitting that today that the San Francisco football team plays in Santa Clara.) We think of him as living a long time ago, yet the Christian church was already a millennia old. There were a multitude of conflicts, both in the church and society. It was a complex time that he lived. The biography is a short and to the point. The author has a great respect for St. Francis, yet still humanizes him.
There were some interesting parts of this work. However, wading through the text to get to them was a challenge. The audiobook started with plenty of commentary before getting to the actual work. Then there is the matter of it being a philosophical work originally written in German. This was not intended to be easy for the average English speaker to read. The commentary even admits that some may be lost in translation. The work has some religious undertones, but is more philosophy than religious. He posits that relationships, especially to God are very important, yet he doesn't care what type of relationship. There also seemed to be a good deal about the meaningless material "you" vs. the more important eternal "thou". I imagine this may have been clearer with the grammatical constructs of Germany. Alas, in English, it is very muddled. 
