Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary: According to the Use of the Carmelite Order

Excellent book great price, great print of the Latin/English side by side! Love the format and print size! Highly recommend for any religious or lay Carmelite

Has Latin with English. Old language. Complicated to use for those unfamiliar with old prayer practices and liturgical language. Nice presentation.

Pros:- This is a wonderful, traditional, pre-Vatican 2 Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As such, there's nothing to worry about in terms of the solemnity and orthodoxy of the content. Actually, it's even pre-Pius X reforms, although it does contain a note about which of the Psalms St. Pius X made optional.- If you are attracted to Carmelite spirituality, you will love this Little Office since it was made specifically for Carmelite tertiaries. The last third of so of the book has a list of antiphons for the feast days of Carmelite saints.- It is a sturdy, hardcover book with good binding - not too flimsy but also not too hard to keep open. This book will last for decades if you take care of it. It is also simple and unadorned, with a solid blue cover. To beautify it a little bit, I recommend getting red or gold archival ink and gilding the page ends. You could also add a ribbon marker to the binding.Cons:- This is a photographic/scanned reprint of a book published in the 1800s. As such, the print quality and clearness of the words is, by modern standards, extremely poor. It is certainly readable, but if you are someone who prefers very clear, clean print - you might not like this book.- The copy that I received had about 20 pages stuck together at the ends by glue (that was apparently meant for the binding? I'm not sure). I had to separate the pages carefully, but even still some ripping occurred. HOWEVER, I will give the publishers the benefit of the doubt and say this was probably a fluke and not the norm. Since I'm overall very satisfied with the product, I have not tried to get a refund. I did purchase another one, so if that defect is present again, I will update this review to make note of it.- Maybe this is just being picky, but I don't like how the product barcode is printed onto the back cover. It makes an otherwise very attractive volume less attractive. I don't see why it's necessary, and I think they could have simply put the barcode on a removable sticker.

Not very well edited.