As you may have already guessed, I am a prayer book fanatic. Although at times this obsession has interfered with the amount of time actually using them (which one should I use?) having so many prayer books is very helpful when it comes to understanding the development of prayer rules in Orthodoxy. It also gives me a wealth of material to choose from. Just because you use one prayer book day to day doesn't mean you can't use material from the others, right?

My favorite prayer book of all time is the oft mentioned "Old Orthodox Prayer Book." It contains a ton of stuff you can't find elsewhere (how to do a reader's moleben, canons for the departed and sick, extensive instruction on piety) but the fact is that it is no longer the norm in Slavic-style Orthodoxy. I am not saying that it is "invalid" or that it isn't a legitimate part of our tradition, but unless you belong to an Old Rite parish, there are lots of little (but still important) differences that to me at least are distracting. Of course you can modify the rubrics to match those of the New Rite but I hate changing things written in books, it always seems like an insult to the compiler of the book.

The Jordanville book is considered the modern classic, but in my opinion it contains too much information that I simply never use. I don't really need selections from Matins or Vespers, and the translation of the liturgy is not the one I hear every Sunday. It also always seemed to me to be light on rubrics, poorly organized, and just not user friendly.

Some of the truly pious read services out of the Horologion for daily prayers which is about as traditional as you can get, but without several other liturgical books it is impossible to do the services correctly. And if we are being honest with ourselves, most of us will simply end up burning ourselves out if we try to read all the services at home, or even worse become prideful at the hours we spend in "prayer." I put prayer in parentheses because reading for hours does not always count as prayer, I know that personally I might as well read a novel at my analogion if I tried to do Matins or Vespers.

The best alternative that I have found are the two books pictured above, "Orthodox Daily Prayers" and "The Hours and the Typica," both published by St. Tikhon's Seminary Press and available at their site here for a very reasonable price. They are formatted and printed much like the Divine Liturgy book they also publish, and both are in "Revised Liturgical English" which I think is a triumph. It keeps the language dignified without sounding quasi- Shakespearean like the Jordanville book. The biggest downside is that they are paperback and feel like they will need to be replaced in a few years, but the material and format included make it well worth the low price.

"Daily Prayers" is comparable to the Jordanvaille but much easier to use and has fewer pages that you will never look at. It contains the standard morning and evening prayers, prayers during the day and at table, the complete prayers (including the canon) before and after communion, the complete service of Small Compline, and best of all the three canons (Canon of Repentance, Canon to the Theotokos, and a Canon to the Guardian Angel) arranged in the order to be read the night before receiving Holy Communion. In the Jordanville you have to either flip around and arrange the three canons yourself, or buy a separate pamphlet. What you will not find in "Daily Prayers" are prayers that you will not use daily. The Small Compline service has very good rubrics, and has Troparia and Kontakia of the Resurrection, as well as for each day of the week. If you use the Paschal Hours when appropriate, you will have to find that service elsewhere. A very small failing in an otherwise great book.

"The Hours," which was released as a companion to "Daily Prayers," contains complete and easy to understand renditions of the First through Ninth hours, as well as an order for Typica. The Lenten and Paschal additions and modifications are included. Also included are a nice selection of Troparia and Kontakia from the Octoechos and Menaion, although personally I download and print the Troparia and Kontakia for the week from the OCA website. The Troparia and Kontakia of the Resurrection and for each day of the week are not included and you have to look at "Daily Prayers" but that is the extent of annoying book or page flipping you will have to do when using either book.

Using these two books, the average Orthodox Christian should have more than enough material to keep his prayer life busy. Anything more seems to me just to be unnecessary and even potentially dangerous though of course that is between you and your spiritual father. And of course there is no requirement that you pray all of the options given. Even if you just pray the morning and evening prayers I think you should like this book. And who wouldn't benefit from occasionally praying one of the hours or Small Compline? You could even use them as alternatives to your normal daily rule. The hours book would also be a great supplement to any other Orthodox prayer book, and would give you a chance to check out the language they use. I hope that one day soon a complete Slavic-style Psalter will be released using that translation and containing all of the Kathisma prayers and instructional material, wouldn't that be awesome? As a last note, STS Press also publishes a liturgical rubrics book, day planner, and wall calendar. All three are very good quality and I recommend them to anyone on the New Calendar, the notes regarding Old Calendar dates are very sparse (I wish my parish was Old Calendar but I am not willing to go into schism over it. I will let the right people argue about that, I have enough on my plate.)