Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops

This book by Jen Campbell is very much what it says on the tin: a humourous compilation of zany things that customers have said in the small handful of bookshops whose owners collaborated in the making of this humourous gift-book. I got given this for Christmas (only yesterday) and so hate to be nit-picking so soon, but the majority of these weren't funny. The majority of entries attest, at best, to customers either having a range of toxic views (a handful of racists, a bagful each of xenophobes and homophobes, and a whole lotta sexists) or simply being outright ignorant of what a bookshop actually is or is for (dozens of entries of people who seem to think that a bookshop constitutes the same roles as a library, cafe, creche, general store, or almost infinitely variable helpline services); the more I read, the more I felt that the occasional genuinely amusing entries weren't worth the ever-mounting sense of despair I felt at a society so losing its grasp on literate culture that requests like the ones contained in this book were possible at all. Basically, it entertained me far less than it fuelled my incumbent misanthropy, which at least has a kind of value in that I have always been somewhat put off independent bookshops by their tendency to have very grumpy misanthropes as owners/staff - but now I see why, and if one of the main points of reading is to develop empathy, then I have developed such with a small group of people who I have given lots of money to over the years but struggle to like or understand, but if bookshops truly are plagued by customers coming in and asking things that are bafflingly dim or gobsmackingly rude or both and everything inbetween, then... ugh. Neil Gaiman's commendation on the front calls this book "so funny... so sad" - ditto. I do not recommend this book except as a present to anyone who works in a bookshop themselves, as to read of ludicrous customers whom they themselves have not had to deal with may be vaguely cathartic.

This Is Water

This book is the text of a commencement address given by author (of Infinite Jest, which I will probably get round to reading at some poi- oh, who am I kidding) David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College in 2005. It also belongs to my flatmate Jack, who has gone home for Christmas, so I figured I could read it, blog about it, and return it all without his noticing in the interim few days of otherwise-festivities. The general thrust of his speech is about the complexity, difficulty, and ultimately the absolute necessity of trying to live a compassionate life. He's talking to a bunch of liberal arts graduates, so he hopes that something of the proactive and critical use of ideas which their education purportedly challenged them to grow in their capacities for might pay off here - that they may enter the world, twisted and nonsensical though it may be, and hold firmly able to interact with it as independent rational agents who are deeply and warmly aware that they are also very much interdependent beings, and they will need others' help just as others will need theirs, and to close themselves off from being able to ask for or offer this is to render themselves less than fully human for the sake of pursuing some insidious constructed lie. I found it interesting that David, though by no means a man of faith, talks at some length in this about the need for finding a coherent centre to one's worldview to help one retain the keenness of their grasp on this truth: "everyone worships... the question is what?" and goes on to include what is probably the most cogent and universal meditation on the nature of idolatry that I've ever read in a secular text. Overall he's very clear that the whole point of this conversation is not one in which anyone really learns anything new, but in which we are constantly having to remind ourselves and each other of the deep old fundamental truths that pervade our cultures and consciences just as thoroughly as they are regularly and easily forgotten. That's where the title's from: he wants us to be so fully aware of the network of moral obligations that hold society together that we become constantly cognizant of it surrounding us, like fish, patiently reminding each other as they swim along, 'this is water,' even though they cannot see it and could very easily forget it was there altogether, swimming about their own business and looking straight through it. This is water. This is water. This is water. David Foster Wallace was an outrageously clever man, and this transcripted speech veritably swells with a perspective rich with clarity and blunt wise truths.

I Believe in Evangelism

This book by David Watson was one I've been reading as part of an ongoing literature review on discipleship in my new job with Church Army's research unit. While perhaps not as practical as other books on evangelism, Watson gives a deeply biblical and thoroughly encouraging exploration of what constitutes the subjective life of the individual Christian - i.e. continual response to the gospel. This should manifest itself in calls to love one another truly and fully, both inside church communities and from within those to outside: and bringing the gospel to people who have not been properly presented with it before is among the greatest acts of love a Christian can perform. Watson's view is a holistic one - effective evangelism emerges from rightly-motivated communities of grace-led people boldly diving into dark and marginal contexts to demonstrate the power of the Holy Spirit and God's word against the sinfulness prevalent in attitudes and cultures among the lost. This is not easy work. But ultimately, Watson reminds us, it is not work we do alone: it is God's work in which we share as instruments, and by stepping out in faith and with joy proclaiming the gospel's truth as we love all, particularly in difficult circumstances, the church can be expectant in God's part in this work. Tying up lofty quantified expectations of 'harvests' from cleverly-planned outreach schemes or making-the-church-cool-again events - well, these things can and often do yield fruit, but it is God's work. David Watson in this book gives a deep and potent series of chapters about the true nature of what we are doing in the work of discipleship, church life, evangelism, and all the parts of life in Word-centred Christian witness in which these all-too-frequently-compartmentalised things overlap in gloriously messy simplicity, rest on sustenance of faith and are powered by the Holy Spirit.

Freedom Movement: 500 Years of Reformation

This book by Michael Reeves is a very short discussion about the sheer historical potency of the Protestant Revolution, the first tinder-strike of which flew half a millennium ago. While this may be one of the most fascinating and powerfully-long-reaching threads in the whole of Western intellectual, social, political and moral history (and I do hope to read more on the subject, especially given [somewhat dangerously given my book addiction] that my new workplace is also home to South Yorkshire's largest library of Christian theological and historical texts - hence the relative shortness of this post), the book's aim is not to explore this in much depth. to remind us of the profoundness of the gospel truth which the Reformation was key in effectively democratising: before Wittenberg and Gutenberg the Roman Catholic Church was of unparalled power in controlling public understanding of the religion to which an entire continent was almost forcibly adhered; Luther's rediscovery of biblical grace was a radical return to the church's proclamation and effective witness of actual good news. Reeves plumbs the depths of the mysteries of the gospel for all people in all ages, and thereby shows the revolutionary brilliance of the Reformation in provoking and facilitating individual responses to biblical truth. It made me reflect with deep gratitude for the historical currents that birthed Protestantism (and more roundaboutly, dozens of gigantic and profoundly impactful ideas emergent from post-Catholic-hegemony European thought - the Reformation changed everything), as this heavily shaped our modern world and continues to do so - for better or worse, given the fractal-like nature of its spiralling influences and responses to these, but the fundamental change that sought to establish access to the gospel for all men and women and so helped rediscover the incredible paradigm-shattering truth that salvation is by faith alone: this is worth remembering with celebration. Martin Luther said, "I have done nothing by myself", and he's kind of right - God used him in history to challenge corruption in the church that had grown up to protect itself above proclaiming truth, and kickstart an immense process of rediscovery and reformation.

* Why should it? There's a very thorough wikipedia page, not to mention a pretty good documentary-drama on Netflix about Luther and his upstart protestance's impact. 

When the Game is Over It All Goes Back in the Box

This book by John Ortberg is a powerful and practical exploration of how to maintain our most meaningful perspectives in a Christian life - the eternal. He uses the metaphor of a board game, in which struggling too hard to win is rendered pointless as the game draws to a conclusion and (well, you know the title), and the whole book is structured around this metaphor - with concepts like main rules, being master of the board, getting on with other players, playing fairly, respecting chance, winning the 'inner' game, taking turns properly, understanding priorities, etc acting as springboards for each chapter to build on the same aggregate extended metaphor, and though it might sound like it gets irritating and repetitive Ortberg is a skilled enough writer to couch each reminder in the slowly-updating stream of ideas, and the whole book acts as a deep and powerful series of steps building an extremely well-developed and insightful collection of wise at the things we make life into games of and how such tendencies can be seen, mitigated, and resisted. It's a book that is enjoyable and accessible but, as any gospel-centred book on Christian life should be, is thoroughly uncomfortable at times, because it's written transparently and flexibly enough that readers will be bringing to mind their own struggles on game-boards as they work through each chapter, and confronting places in which we are failing to live our lives truly for the sake of Christ and are desperately still trying to win personal stakes in Monopoly or whatever is never a cosy process - but it does lead us to grace, and so even if we're losing a particular game we can look fondly to the orchestrator knowing that once all the pieces have been boxed away and all is forgotten, we haven't really lost anything, as they we are with them. I don't know, that was a very clumsy sentence, I feel like. It's late and I've had a long week. This book is highly recommended for Christian readers wanting to develop eternal perspectives; it's original, makes practical hints about mindset and attitude, and is biblically-grounded all the way through (although on surface level it may seem to hinge more upon the extended metaphor, this is always merely a springboard into proper discussion of scriptural truth).

Optimism over Despair

This book is a collation of interviews by C. J. Polychroniou with Noam Chomsky about the state of the world in 2017 - and boy, lemme tell you, it's bleak going. I got it chiefly because I hoped from the title that Noam was going to slice through the despair-inducing series of global events and trends dominating the headlines of this past year with a knife made of pure hope, but no, it's basically just a thorough, concise, and horrifyingly well-informed exploration of just how fucked we are, but of course resorting to despair will only make us get more fucked, and so the only morally or politically viable course for all those with progressive agendas to maintain as an attitude is a resigned, stoic, optimism.*

   Throughout, C. J. and Noam discuss:

• Collapsing American hegemony
• Unravelling European integration
• The new phase of the global 'war on terror'
• ISIS, NATO, Russia, and the shitstorm in the Middle-East
• Inequality and unsustainability in the plutocratic model of post-neoliberal 'really existing capitalism'
• Trump and the decline of American civil society
• Republicans (the most dangerous group of people on the planet) and global warming
• US meddling in other countries' elections/societies/etc
• Religion's dogged resistance to separating from politics
• Utter failures of US healthcare and education systems
• The potential of anarcho-socialist democratic change when all these trends/events are placed with optimistic consideration in their historical context

   It is very scary stuff. To be honest, with the level of detail and insight Noam brings to each of these broad fields of discussion, one is left with an overbearing sense of dread at the state of the world far moreso from reading this book than if one had read separate books on each issue or even a potent digest of leftist critique-responses to most of the actual news items comprising these larger problems over the past year. I'd recommend it as an oh-shit-inspirational text for progressive activists, but really most of those already know to a large degree just how fucked we are on all the fronts discussed herein, and so this book effectively just serves as an educational reinforcement from that raspy old prophet of contemporary western anarchism. You would probably learn a lot from this book, especially historical blips of detail that often elude mainstream narratives on these big issues - but overall I don't feel there is as much to be gained from reading this as there is by simply reading the news and maintaining one's dedication to taking action, if one is politically inclined similarly to Chomsky or myself, which if you're thinking of reading this you probably are. But yeh. It lives up to the title in prose conclusion only.

* That's not to say good things aren't happening, because they are. Just nowhere near big or fast enough to substantively offset some of the bigger and more pressing factors in why we're fucked.