Talking about Jesus without Sounding Religious

This book by Rebecca Manley Pippert is a fantastic pocket-size readable-in-an-hour kind of sort of a book - if you're an evangelist who struggles to "evangelize" in, on the fences around, or outside of your own Comfort Zone - this book may really help you to seize the joy of Christian living by the throat and gargle your own bloody song along to its tune; you will be challenged and exhorted by this book & all to your blessing by the empowerments as Gospel Truth undermines all that is crooked around us.

Daredevils and Desperadoes

This book, by seemingly esteemedly myth-renderingly prolific children's author Geraldine McCaughrean; is simple enough. If your presumption from the title is that this is but one more expansion from D&D - think again; this is a collection of well-kept buried much-ken but-morely-mistold in recall - twenty tidbits of the true history of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - though focusing on England, as you would. Spanning a 300 year or so wash of events and change, McCaughrean revels in her ability to dive into the darkest, strangest corners of our own national mythology to bonk or debunk or misun-bodge or something and just tell the story straight in language that wouldn't offend anyone with pleasant sensibilities nor scare the children. Too much.

   I can hardly claim to do justice to the tales regaled here, but I will list them, and in the true saken apprehension likeness of a knight-errant in diligent digitude, will append each story with a Wikipedia link so you can chase down the funny connections yourselves.

1. My running best bet on the Hokey Cokey's Origin as bourgeois burlesque, in 1348.
2. How being a cat-breeder can make you the Mayor of London.
3. The backstory of the first Tyler Durden style Revolt - and how it was quashed.
4. Henry the 5th's morale-boosting all-nighter - which G.R.R. Martin totally ripped off.
5. An inter-village love story involving bells so Niche I can't find a Wikipage for it.
6. Richard the 3rd's child prince prisoners; and/or their disposals.
7. How an anti-English plot to replace the King achieved a new kind of cake.
8. The clan MacLeod Faery Flag, which is probably actually tartan magic.
9. William Tyndale's much-punished quest to translate the Bible into English.
10. Some contextual notes on Anne Boleyn. And her ghost[s].
11. Jack Horner in 1537 saving illuminated monastic deeds and manuscripts from Henry VIII; if it's a true story, some Monastic Scripts were saved but he is remembered only in nursery rhymes. With a pie, for some reason.
12. More sordid context-notes for our best-known least-loved monarch's spouse[s].
13. How it's likely, or at least speculatively possible, that the wife of Elizabeth the 1st's stablesman killed herself for Queen & Country.
14. Using your velvet cloak as a carpet for a Queen when she would otherwise have to tread in mud is a great way of getting off to a Toady Start.
15. El Draco could of course defeat the Spanish Armada - but finished his game of bowls first. Just cos he's the kind of man who would, and purportedly did.
16. A cousin, losing her head to another. Heavy is the crown, indeed.
17. First settlements and whatnot. Raleigh wanted a city, but kept flitting off.
18. Where in 1588 a long-blown-off Spanish vessel was decimated by locals.
19. One of Shakespeare's greatest tricks - the silent business of upping sticks.
20. A bit more contextual insight into the Fall Guy for big Catholic plots - foiled, 1605.

   Anyway, that's it.
   Yes, I already know I live in a crazy country, but I love it here. Each chapter - as well as telling the fuller stories much more satisfyingly than I have here sketch'd, include short afternote detailing exactly how apocryphal most historiographers tend to agree upon.

Enjoy your Prayer Life

This book by Michael Reeves (same great author as this) does what it says on the tin: it is a hearty and helpful guide to diagnosing whether and why one's life of relational prayer with God may, or may not, be flourishing at any particular time in your life. Readers of this blog will not be surprised that maintaining a strong lifestyle element of prayerfulness is, I think - fundamental to my personal flourishing and joy.

   It's a very short book, in fourteen bitesize chapters: I finished it over a single coffee. Any normal reader could likely do the same, were they not taking the time-outs to think over what they've read - as I didn't feel much need to, as it rather just revivified in affirmation of my actual IRL views on prayer anyway, grounded well in Scriptural theology as you'd expect. Helpful reminders from this book include:

• Prayer is not a magical formulaic means of "getting summat" from God
• It is merely asking God for help with that which we cannot resolve
• Our prayers to the Father are conducted through and by Jesus
• Intentionality of resting in Christ's name gives our prayers a "pleasing fragrance" when the words reach the heavens; and all prayers are answered, though we might not always recognize these when they come as God's wisdom exceeds our own understanding of right and Need
• Ideally, prayer should be done constantly - that is, in that it becomes an added layer of consciousness to those practicing it, in all things; not just ritual verbiage
• Total dependence on God through Jesus's accomplished work is the best method for achieving constancy of prayerful mindfulness; it is the antithesis of "independence"
• Obviously, the Holy Spirit guides much of all the inner workings herein
• So be honest - for God sees you as you truly are
• And trust in Christ's promises - that as we pray in and with Him we will be brought ever deeper into God's bosom; in joy, understanding and obedient love

   And so on.

   Hardly the kind of book that would be necessarily enticing to someone who doesn't think God is real or good or whatever - but as a Christian pilgrim, this is worth a read. If you're able to afford it - it's probably worth buying a few dozen copies and handing them out to all your Christian mates/acquaintances. In any case, I have left my (somewhat dog-eared, soz) copy in the Trewan Hall bookswap library.

Edge of Glass

This novel by Catherine Gaskin is a pretty mediocre but satisfying for what it says on the tin romance romp through antique shop clerk Maura's enticing dalliance with an enigmatic Irishman, who shows up suspiciously close to the disappearance from the D'Arcy shop of an almost priceless glassware item; the Cullodan Cup, the last in known existence as t'other is inconveniently smashed near the novel's kickoff.
   Not really my cup of tea, but it was fun to try a genre I usually steer clear of. If it sounds like your kind of book though, there is alongside the Cheap-as-Freebook a well-brown'd copy of it in the Trewan Hall library. To be perfectly honest it was a pretty tough one to speed-read, but I pushed on as it had a vaguely Seymourish smell to the prose.

Jeremiah Jellyfish Flies High

This book written and illustrated fantastically by John Fardell is a very close second, or almost joint first, to my favourite children's books I've read this year. The illustrations are detailed but not distracting from the story - full of characterful detail and gorgeous depth of attention to colour - plus speech bubbles, which add a comicky layer on top of the text narration! Anyway, it's about a jellyfish called Jeremiah who gets curious as to what it's like doing anything but drifting along with the rest of his family-shoal; he evades a small range of supposed dangers (the picture of the jellyfishermen & their evil contraption-boat is one of my fave pages in any kids' book), and eventually meets a man who works in the industry of rocket science. SPOILER ALERT the pair swap roles for a bit, with J.J. taking on the test-pilot entrepreneurial side of running the rocket-plane business while the CEO of actual company takes some time out to just drift, wetsuited up so the jellyfish-fam don't sting him. Eventually they both realise their original placements in the world were of a better long-term run than their freshly realized acted roles; and they switch back, but both are forever changed by their Freaky Friday style career swap. A genuinely great little children's book - with excellent morals about work, and a healthy respect for uglier smaller corners of marine biology.

Max the Brave

This book by Ed Vere is a close to perfect kids' book. Plotwise it's very much the same kind of general gist as The Gruffalo, but the protagonist is a cat looking for mice to hunt instead of a mouse seeking to not be hunted; both lead to monstrous conclusions that are neatly amusing. Though if I'm honest the style of illustrations in this one - being scribblier and black blobby inkspot style rather than Overly Detailed; I don't have the real excuse anymore of having to read to Small Isaac so I did read this purely for my own entertainment, and I very much enjoyed it. Another front on which it's better than the other more famous story I compared it with here is that only one lie is told throughout the whole book - still the mouse saving his own skin, obviously - but it just resolves itself as a moral quandary much more neatly than The Gruffalo, in my honest opinion. But hey, what do I know, I'm just a 26-year-old non-binary Children's Books Nerdstalgia Meta-Guardian.

Ten Days in a Mad-House

This book, a reprint of an 1887 work compiled by Ian Munro from the reports and news-clippings from intrepid journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran, a.k.a. Nellie Bly - or for the sake of her narration in here, N. Brown. I won't say much about it because Wikipedia can give you a better-sourced summation than I can be bothered to - but basically she feigned dementia/insanity for a while to see how hard it would be to get committed to an asylum, in which pursuit she could then report first-hand on the conditions of such places. She spent ten days in Blackwell's Island Asylum, having been processed through the bulk of an inept bureaucratic system up to that point. It is gross and shocking reading that makes me so grateful to God for the NHS; and to the sheer ballsiness of people like Liz Cochran / Nellie Bly for diving headlong into the messes of our world to tell the truth, and their stories amidships. Grimly fascinating, and I will be digging out more books by Nellie to see how she managed to circumnavigate the world in eight days less than Jules Verne thought probable. Following her exposé of the terrible conditions, the state of New York committed an extra $1,000,000 to the cause of properly caring for the "insane". What a woman. 

Mary Wilson: Selected Poems

This book is, as it says on the tin, a collection of poems by one Mary Wilson, best known for being the spouse of one of my great country's past prime ministers. They aren't very good poems, I hate to say, in my opinion. They come across as heartfelt but immature; with an attempted grasp at profundity but almost completely lacking the linguistic toolkit to craft anything of much artistic worth.

   Certain poems, like her closer The Lunarnaut and the penultimate When in the night remorse returns did though strike a chord with my reading; and while her leftist-leaning views are far too politely and patronizingly masked in my opinion (as per The Durham Miners' Gala and its contrast to the little-Englandness of Oxford and Cambridgeshire, both of which are given a far more in-depth poetic scouring examination than the celebrancy of working class norms), there's a strong Christian ethic and metaphysical undercurrent to several which meant the pair If I could end my life on such a day and You have turned your back on Eden both hit home hard; but it feels she is emulating Dickinson or Whitman (see also The Lifeboat and St Mary's Church) too hard rather than striking out at any means of finding her own voice. I guess it's hard to do that too individualistically when you're married to someone who gets elected to lead the United Kingdom twice. After the Bomb makes some interesting thought-trains about nuclear warfare and its ongoing standoff - while the poem about a smelly homeless person I probably enjoyed the most for its authenticity. While not wanting to end on a scathing note for a post that's maybe been more critical than I usually am with poetry - I reiterate I don't think this is a fantastic volume, but it has some nice, decent poems in it, and the best one is its opener which I will transcribe here verbatim:

If I can write, before I die

One line of purest poetry;

Or crystallize, for all to share

A thought unique, a moment rare

Within one sentence, clear and plain

Then I shall not have lived in vain.

   Beautiful, no?

   Worthy of other current poetic leaders. And a full vindication of Mrs Wilson as poet, in my eyes - see the post on Rupi Kaur's milk and honey for more in-depth considerations regarding what makes poets good or poets at all. If you're a poetry fan with centrist sort of political leanings, and are interested in what makes for being a good power couple; this is the sort of collection I'd recommend you pick up if you run across it in a charity shop.

The Secret Boat

This book is one of the many, many, many works of Patricia St John that blend Quality Kids' Writing with depth-charged rocket-fuelled evangelically Christian propaganda. I say this not to be derisive - its doctrine is sound, and its storytelling far slicker than other similar efforts - but to a non-Christian reader whose experience of the faith has been less than 100% A-Okay I'm pretty sure it would just come off as disingenuous and twee.
   What St John does do very well is literary diveable portraiture of life as a "third culture kid" and it being an unpredictable impact on these youths; and while much of the decolonization of the Western Christendom mindset that I think is essential to the ongoing successes of a western missionality, the characters draw up workable examples from the story itself - of the Gnosis of Christ, of the beauty of salvation through faith and the humanized power of raw, friendly forgiveness: on these fronts, St John's book makes fantastic uses of living metaphorical touchstones that root the story heavily in Christian ethics and thought, and while it in places does certainly come off as "twee" - it never bonks the reader over the head with strict dogma, and its subtext is as generous as I could have hoped to expect from Christian literature.
   One for the bookshelves if you're a Christian family with children who Read Stuff - especially the secret stuff. Whose boat are you in? Do you own it or is it a rental, borrowing, theft kind of boat? And most importantly do you know how to handle the rudder and mainsails when the waves get choppy?

Dewsbury as it was

This book is a very straightforward exploration of my hometown* through the ages, with text and pictures dug up and expertly compiled by Christopher Scargill and Richard Lee; the selected photos do a grand service to the surprisingly eminent and regionally impactful town, which is far from deserving of its current if-heard-of-at-all it'll be because of either inter-racial tensions or other chavvy plots.
   But nay, Dewsbury was once the beating heart of gluey gooey sociocultural virality in the centre of Yorkshire - playing important central roles in both medieval church-planting efforts and the post-Reformation Wesleyan renewal movement, as well as various secular reforms to democratic and women's/workers rights - especially around the cotton-spinning industry,** and it had a crest of coalmines surrounding it to boot. Then the industrial revolution entrenched an unequal power balance*** in the textile industries surround it, then the mines started becoming less and less profitable, then Thatcher happened - so, there you have Dewsbury today. But if you are curious about its past, which reveals a lot about how stuff changed - and so damn quickly! - in the Victorian era - then this would be a decent little primer. Its photos aren't the most interesting in the world but then it is basically just socioeconomic history rather than theatrically artistesh - so who cares. Very decent book for its given purpose.****



* Plus all surrounding mini-towns, Batley, Soothill, Thornhill Lees, Mirfield, Ravensthorpe, etc. We're an old town; listed in the Domesday book itself as "Ettone" [which evolved by the by into several distinct Eatons, these all being mini-towns well absorbed within Dewsbury's range as it became the centre of local socioeconomic gravity at its late-18th early-19th century peak];  translates as "wasteland".

** Pretty much all the blankets used by all the soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War were made in Dewsbury, which I think is a pretty cool factoid. Although my fave new factoid from this book is that a stone-carved dog, that sits atop the 13th century-old Moot Hall, would purportedly leap down into the church square at 11AM every Shrove Tuesday when the Pancake Bell was rung. I need to do more research into this, I know. An extra cool factual add-on to this is that Dewsbury-spun garments could be made considerably cheaper than importing foreign cotton while their makers still got relatively fair pay - cos they properly and attentively recycled fabric/material for 'scrap'-wear.

*** Oh yeah - while being a completely apolitical book, this book has some pretty hefty and recurrent themes of unrest, revolt, state and civilian violence; radical shit happened in our mad little country's backstory, don't you know.

**** The prime purpose of course being taking the York out of any sense of Capitality in its own micro-climate, Yorkshire - as York City lost 72-0 against Dewsbury in November 1915 playoffs in - boxing? Football? Rugby? I can't tell from the picture but we thrashed ya. Also in terms of generic town planning - standard terraced-housing with decent living space & a garden per house were drawn up in 1914 for Dewsbury, however the war took over as the fund priority - but these plans were pretty much coped en masse when construction of new housing for the urban masses began in the 1920's-30's. Obviously I'm only mostly joking with all this talk of motive for the post - I am genuinely interested in the character and colour and textures of the places that have shaped me through my time on this Earth.

Rhyme Stew

This book is a masterful, short but jam-packed collection of poems by Roald Dahl, that most pre-eminent of Englishly encouraging kids' writers. Children and adults alike will find much of delightingly subcultural echo herein; it builds on a foundation that is folkloric and immaterial to look at - but which undergirds a heroic span of shared subconscious poetic or notherwise elements in the British-European consciousness.
   A marvellous key of a book to my own head's journey, the perfect soundtrack to my heartsong as I read it - Quentin Blake's illustrations are just the icing on the cake. Hilarious at times, heartbreakingly real or rawkily rude in others - this would probably be in my top seven or eight poetry books of all time that I've read, Full-Authorship Compendiums notwithstanding.

KEEP THE FLAG FLYING

This book is a very patriotic collection of what makes the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island so damn special. Which is nothing, really, we're just used to our own weirdness - if deeply, blithely ignorant of ways in which our own prideful hubris has spread to infect World Kultur.

   In any case, I found this book particularly rousing to my sense of English (and Yorkshire) pride; and found myself making a number of annotations in this book in the hope that it may be craftable into an apologetic present for the Conservative friends in my life whom I fear I have alienated somewhat with my own failures to live graciously since 2016 - I can only hope they find it, plus my scribblings, inspiring as I did - and we may come to see a new reimaginable Britain emerge with vim & vigour into the 2020's.
   Small prayers.

Hamlet

Okay it's cheating I know but I read all the subtitles so it kind of counts, even though it's in screen video/sound format - but it's worth it for one of the greatest plays in Western Literary history. My revisitation of the Great Danish play was undertaken for personal reasons, but it has helped me navigate the wider world in doing so since; also, for Yorick, Horatio and the others who, having dispensed such Excellent Catholic wisdoms - were thus also themselves confounded to the dust of memory, in time, in blood, and sometimes ink? A story so timelessly human that nearly five centuries later lions reenacting its basic gist remains one of the strongest unchallenged franchise boons in Disney's cupboards.

Five Minute's Peace

This book, another by Jill Murphy of the Large family series (see also); its focus is more on the desperate multitasking goddesslike Organisational Efforts of Mrs Large to keep all her children satisfied and safe while keeping the House in Order - all before Mr Large gets back from work! I was fairly critical of the series as a whole last post but on reflection I think it's a great way of drip-feeding small children the ideas of respecting their parents' authoritative needs and commands as Elder Beings; that is what parenthood is for is it not and children learn the ropes from the bottom up!
   And this series about elephants is likely a good one for building strong early-childhood reading foundations if you want them to not be whiny needy little trunk-nosed shits when they hit puberty.

"My Book about Me"

This book - if you haven't heard of Roger Hargreaves's maddeningly-long & samey series of children's books by this point then Google help you; is, quite simply put, an absolute masterwork of metacommentary-breaking genre-bending Fourth Wall Throat Grabbage, as Roger - wearing Mr Silly's hat* - writes a very circularly silly book about Mr Silly trying to get his friends to be included in his book, as without them he is nothing.
   A quite delicate and juicy bud-nipper for childhood solipsisms as readers; without which adolescent trains of readership can turn nihilistic corners - or so has been my experience, at least.



* It is formally subtitled, "by Mr Silly".

Husbands: Don't you just love 'em?

This book, that to my shame, I have been unable to find a link for purchasing or viewing anywhere on the whole internet - but it's from an Oxfordian Past Times Trading Corp, so it'll probably be reprinted or whatever when the Time Traveller's Wife shows up. Publishing joke, sorry.

   Anyway - it's a veritable treasure trove of old wives' wisdoms regarding their partners, warty, gentle or not and all; and rather than react to the book in any Christological depth as I have done this essentially here and here already - I'm just going to drop a few choice para-edited quotes from it. Pretty even split on gender for source quotation'd figures.

• Marriage is like paying an endless visit in your worst cloths; but is popular by its very combination with the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.
• All women become like their mothers; that is their tragedy. No man does; that is his.
• Before marriage, a man will lie awake thinking all night about something you said; after marriage he will fall asleep before you have finished saying it.
• The road to success is paved with women pushing their husbands along. (although if we're taking the backseat driver metaphor - they give the co-passengers a bad name if it ever gets above first gear.)
• It's a funny thing that when a person hasn't got anything on Earth to worry about, they tend to go off and get married. It's the woman's job to do this ASAP - the man as late as possible.
• "Beware men wearing flowers" - as a bachelor never quite gets over the idea that he is a thing of beauty and a boy forever.
• Being a spouse is a full-time job. That is why so many husbands fail; they cannot, or do not give their full attention to it.
• "Having someone wonder where you are when you don't come home at night is a very human need." On these grounds, every woman should marry an archaeologist - since she'll grow increasingly attractive to him as she grows increasingly to resemble a ruin.
• "Married life's charm is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties" - and while open marriages are rare, Zsa Zsa Gabor knew a few that were "quite ajar".
• "Bigamy and monogamy are the same - having one husband too many." Oscar Wilde; going on to claim that "divorces are made in heaven."
• Marlene Dietrich says, "once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast." Helen Rowland cites this meal and its microcosmic fallout as the Patriarchal Savagery Litmus Test.
• A Mexican proverb: "it is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy." *
• "Even quarrels with one's husband are preferable to ennuis of solitary existence."
• "FATHERS SHOULD BE NEITHER SEEN NOR HEARD. That is the only proper basis for family life." - also O. Wilde. Boys will be boys, and so will a lot of middle-aged men. The purported success of a successful marriage compared to a mediocre one is that three or four things each day are left unsaid.
• Did you know that DIY stands for Do Yourself In?
• Victoria Wood: "He thinks I can't do anything. When he was in ceiling tiles, he used to look up to me, but now he's in contract carpeting he looks at me like I'm underlay."
• Stirling Moss: two things no man will admit to be bad at - driving & fucking.
• After a short discourse on technological interference in marital domestic economy, the next eye-catching quote was the great secret of all successful marriages; "treat all disasters as incidents, and none of the incidents as disasters."
• "Why does a woman work ten years to change a man's habits, the complain he's not the man she married?"
• Men are working to be as mediocre as possible, which is what women want. Dickens makes a reference here to uniforms, but I think algorithms have taken that place in the centuries since that quote flew out straight and true.
• "Suffer the little children to come to me" - Jesus of Nazareth.
• Mrs Patrick Campbell claims that God withheld the sense of humour from women, so that men may love them rather than laugh at them.
• Sydney Smith's quote I will not replicate as it smells too much like Tim Burton.
• Ruth Stafford Peale: "a man's job, basically, is to tame this world; a wife's job is to control herself - and thus indirectly her husband." As it was said by Ian Dury, "the natural thing [we blokes]'ve been born to do is grab someone and go wallop!"
• "Any hope of applying logic or common sense can be blown away with the Cupid arrows of a pretty face and a flattered male ego."
• Mary Lamb: "I have known many single men I should have liked in my life (if it had suited them)... but very few husbands have I ever wished were mine."
• "NO MAN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS FATHER.
• THAT IS ENTIRELY HIS MOTHER'S AFFAIR." - Margaret Turnbull
• "Kissing dun't last - cookery do!" and "when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work in the brewery."
• 3 kinds of kisses;
• fire extinguisher
• mummy
• vacuum cleaner
• Emma Bombeck, on noting the male post-marital appetite; stated "I am not a glutton; I am an explorer of food."
• If you hear BAD music, it's your job to drown it in conversation. And it's probably no mere chance that in legal textbooks the problems relating to married women are usually considered immediately after the pages devoted to idiots and lunatics.
• All unhappy marriages come from husbands having brains.
• "Always suspect any job men willingly vacate for women." - Jill Tweedie
• Liz Taylor - "a diamond in the only kind of ice that keeps a girl warm."
• Bachelors being those who enjoy the chase but don't eat the game; a man & woman may eventually marry because they do not know what else to do with themselves.
• "Marriage is a bribe to make a housekeeper think she's a householder." - T. Wilder - also, Herbert Spenser calling it "a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman."
• Leo J. Burke; "he who dun't tell his wife everything, probly reckons what she doesn't know won't hurt him."

I really enjoyed this - a great gift-book as a coffee table or bathroom shelf go-to LOLzer.

* Although, given the massive prevalence of civilian locals' being raped en masse by any invading armed forces - this one needs tweaking, Kurdishly - get on it, Spanish speakers.

Tadpole's Promise

This book, by Jeanne Willis and illustrated by Tony Ross, is a pretty run of the mill kids' book about tadpoles, their life cycle, and whatnot. It has a sad but funny dark ending - of which I shall not spoil here; but great visual storytelling and should be a fab entertaining read to anyone under 5 or 6.

Dogs Don't Climb Trees

This book is another from the fantastic Lynley Dodd series - though I do prefer her cat characters; in it, Schnitzel von Krum, the sausage dog, gets stuck trying to climb a tree. That's it. Excellent ring-rhyming text and full-bodied illustrations too, as ever.

the Smelly Sprout

This book by Allan Plenderleith, I must say, since it's American Independence Day and I've been wanting to go full-on old-Scots-dialect Burnsian roast on Donald J. Trump since his inception; but it's not about him, it's about the leftover traditional Christmas vegetable that nobody wants to eat. But I secretly love sprouts; roasted, with garlic, onion & chives; you've got the basis for a vegan meatballesque curry stew that'll leave you feeling just how much you missed out for passing on chargrilled sprout.