Robert Burns: A Life

This book is Ian McIntyre's seminal biography of the Bard of Ayrshire, the one and only Rabbie Burns, arguably the most celebrated poet in history and an indisputably unique character. I won't give a potted summary here because if you're interested in Burns's life (which is a sparklingly glorious mess) you can read about it on Wikipedia, although I would much more recommend reading this book, as it is deeply scholarly, eminently readable, and thoroughly entertainingly insightful. It's taken me a while to finish reading this - for the past three years I've picked it up every January with the intention of using it as material to construct a properly-informed toast to the Bard's Immortal Memory on Burns Night, but either Covid lockdown prevented me from throwing a Burns Night or I simply didn't read it fast enough; but now finally I have finished it and used it to sketch a toast* that I think does justice to the legacy of this truly singular man. I highly recommend this book: it is a passionate but unbiased portrait of the artist, well placed into his historical context, and sheds a great deal of light upon the eternal qualities of the poetic life.

* I was going to use the sketch of my toast as the basis for this post, but then reflected that it would be a betrayal of the intimate event that Burns Night is; if you would have wanted to hear it you simply should have been there. Burns's character and legacy is so diverse that if this annoys you I implore that you should read this biography along with as many of the Bard's songs, poems, and letters as you can, and write and share your own for the same occasion, as at least then it will truly be your own toast.

Luther's Large Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the fuller version* of Luther's catechism (i.e. the basic text for introducing the tenets of a faith), and as such is probably one of the most influential key texts in the history of Protestant thought and practice. Lutheran** readers will likely be intimately familiar with it already but anyone with an interest in Christian history would find a lot to gain by reading it, and Christians of other denominations will discover in it a rich orthodox statement of how we are called, nay, privileged, to live by faith in the clear simple light of truth. I have no substantive theological or ethical bones to pick here - it is, from my perspective, a faithful and trustworthy testament and valuable for introductory teaching. It is consistently scripturally-grounded and remarkably well-written; Luther was not one to mince words and lays out these reflections on the Christian life and basic theological support for them in direct, accessible language.

   Luther kicks the document off with a walk through the Ten Commandments, and here we come to our first quibble - he messes with them a bit for reasons that elude me. He has condensed the first and second commandments into one, so that we end up with it being a total statement of non-idolatrous monotheism, but with no discussion of the "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" portion of these lines in the actual Bible (check it out); he has then kept the list counting to ten by separating the tenth commandment into two. Quite what he was doing in this I cannot say... I mean, so much for sola scriptura, right? But his actual reflections on the Ten are thoroughly helpful. A few minor quibbles - in the section on respecting one's mother and father he extends this commandment to political authority, which rankles me as an anarchist. Further on that point in the section on "thou shalt not kill" he seems to make the point that state authority is exempt from this particular moral absolute, which rankled my anarchism-senses even more. He does in this same section say that enabling death by privilege and neglect is just as condemnable as outright murder though, which is a take Peter Unger would heartily approve. In the section on adultery, we have this fascinating and disturbing quote when he is talking about the problematic outcome of Catholic insistence on clerical celibacy: "For no one has so little love and inclination to chastity as just those who because of great sanctity avoid marriage, and either indulge in open and shameless prostitution, or secretly do even worse, so that one dare not speak of it, as has, alas! been learned too fully." [italics mine.] We all know too well the Catholic Church's historical struggles with abusive paedophilia - part of me wonders whether this was already rearing its head five centuries ago to the point that it was unspoken but common knowledge. The section on theft is wonderfully expansive - a full Marxist analysis of this bit would yield some truly spectacular insights, I feel. The section on lying is morally robust but could be made a great deal stronger with the inclusion of some generally-considered epistemology and psychology. And the section[s] on envy take an unexpectedly objective, active view of this particular sin, which I was raised to think was more the mere subjective passive condition of indulging jealousy, but that Luther seems to say is when one makes actual decisive effort to acquire the property of another.

   The sections walking through the Creed I have very little to say about - this is just hardcore solid uplifting theology communicated with a depth and a deftness I have seldom found elsewhere. His linguistic nuances when talking about "churchness" in the bit about the Holy Spirit are helpful, though I found his maintenance of institutional borders in those same paragraphs less so.

   His opening reflections on the Lord's Prayer are just beautiful in style and empowering in substance. The discussion on the request for "our daily bread" furthermore is intriguingly and helpfully ecological and sociological in its scope.

   The final section, dealing with the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper, are also highly moving in their depictions of the spiritual realities contained within these ritual practices, and as a Quaker I found these parts rather convicting (Quakers in general do not formally practice either of these sacraments, as we take a more holistic symbolic view of their intent), in ways that bear further consideration on my part.

   Overall this is an incredibly powerful statement of some of the basic tenets of a good Christian life, written by one of the most reputable sources thereupon. Definitely worth a read if that sounds like the kind of thing you'd benefit from. And who wouldn't? God's goodness shines through clearly on every page of this thing; it leaves one hungry for grace.

* Compare with the Small Catechism that I read yesterday. I gave minimal reflections on that as it made more sense to do that here when reading the principal longer document.

** I consider Lutheranism to be the burning bridge between the Catholic and Protestant communions - and this comes across in Luther's own doctrine, attitude and style.

Luther's Small Catechism

This book (available online for free from that link) is the short version of the Lutheran catechism,* specifically designed to be used by a father for the instruction of his children. As such this is a very short and theologically-minimal text** that I was able to breeze through in under half an hour.

   Luther deals with the Ten Commandments (and I really like how his explanatory givens for all of these ground them in our love for God), followed by the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and finally the sacraments of both baptism and the altar. He writes very simply and directly, with a clear strong rooting in the essentials of biblical literacy applied in accessible and helpful terms. If you're a Lutheran you're probably already highly familiar with this text - if you're not and you're curious about Protestant life and teaching, this could be an interesting read.

* Fancy word for the procedural texts by which young and new believers are to be introduced to the teachings of the faith in question; the Didache is a good example of this from early church history.

** It piqued further curiosity though, so I plan to read the Large Catechism next to dive deeper.

Compelling Reason

This book is a collection of essays by C. S. Lewis, author of the Narnia series and perhaps the most famous 20th-century British Christian apologist. The essays range in subject matter from ethics, theology, aesthetics, cultural concerns, and vaguer trains of thought. I will give each essay a brief outline critique before offering my thoughts on the collection as a whole.

1. "Why I am not a pacifist" - an impassioned, largely balanced, pragmatic argumentation against pacifism, which I think just about succeeds on its own merits even though it barely delves deep enough into moral philosophy to make its point well. Certainly a filibusterous failure from my point of view.
2. "Bulverism" - a study into a plague of modern thinking, which is how people will oftentimes approach an argument by showing why their opponent must be wrong before demonstrating that they are wrong. An original and genuinely compellingly insightful essay.
3. "First and second things" - a pretty bland reflection on myth, cultural memory, and authenticity.
4. "Equality" - a rather kneejerk if you ask me take on egalitarianism, which wears its complete lack of engagement with political philosophy almost proudly on its sleeve.
5. "Three Kinds of Men" - a mercifully short and horribly shallow categorisation of all of humanity into the eponymous trio of camps. Not helpful.
6. "Horrid Red Things" - an intriguingly original reflection on assumption, truth, pragmatic value, and shared understanding: robustly common-sense & widely applicable.
7. "Democratic Education" - makes a couple of interesting-sounding points but overall falls at the same hurdle as [4]; largely comes across, especially to a 21st-century reader, as unsympathetic elitist huff.
8. "A Dream" - anecdotal recount of a dream about the Home Guard; I honestly struggled to see what point if any this one was trying to make.
9. "Is English Doomed?" - a despairing take on the decline of academic English studies which is largely, if not utterly, disproven by historical educational trends since.
10. "Meditation in a Toolshed" - an original and pleasurably-imaginative musing on how to best balance objectivity and subjectivity in one's perspective.
11. "Hedonics" - another highly original and entertaining reflection on the nature of pleasure, and the deplorable lacuna in intellectualism of studying it for its own sake so that it can be better propagated.
12. "Christian Apologetics" - originally read to an audience of Anglican priests and youth leaders in the Church of Wales, this is a robust and engaging and open sketch of the challenges and opportunities of its title matter.
13. "The Decline of Religion" - a level-headed take on the secularisation of British society that had started to rear its head in Lewis's lifetime to the shock of the religious establishment, even though it was merely, as he argues, the manifestation of trends that had been bubbling away for centuries.
14. "Religion Without Dogma" - for my money the best essay in the book: Lewis, with zero philosophical academic weight but a wealth of common sharp logic, strips the concept of religion of everything it can bear to lose while still being worthy of the name to discover if there is an acceptably universal minimal form of it. His rigour in this endeavour paired with actual scholarly study could fill an entire series of theology books, but ultimately for his conclusion that Christianity suffices the lowest-common-denominator middle-ground seems to me well made.
15. "Vivisection" - a fairly utilitarian anthropocentric reflection on the topic, that if you ask me bares the underdevelopment of Lewis's thinking on animal being and rights (not simply because I disagree with him - I don't, in places, but rather that he uses them as a springboard into human concerns with a clear lack of having landed on a satisfactory understanding of them in themselves.)
16. "Modern Translations of the Bible" - a sane and uncontroversial (nowadays at least, unless you're one of those KJV-only purist nutjobs) take on alternate English versions of scripture: all points in here are completely justified by the proliferation and worth of such translations in the years since this was written.
17. "On Living in an Atomic Age" - weirdly jovial in its Christian nihilism; Lewis here pays no attention to international relations or ecology and merely goes off on a sprawling tangent about the value of purposeful life over mere survival (as if the two were wholly disconnected concepts) and lands at a conclusion that I understand but think is morally entitled and politically bankrupt.
18. "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" - a two-parter in which first the essay and then a response to two critiques of aforesaid essay lay out Lewis's (oh, how shall I say) interesting perspective on the nature of crime and punishment. From a purely moral standpoint I understand his perspective but on a pragmatic level I think he completely fails to grapple with any serious philosophical notion of justice and on a social level he makes "logical" leaps into un-contextualised territories to make his points that left me simply scratching my head at his paranoia.
19. "The Pains of Animals" - this one opens with a letter by a Dr. Joad, critiquing the chapter in Lewis's book The Problem of Pain on this essay's topic, and then follows with Lewis's reply. We already know Lewis's grasp of animals [see 15] is weak to put it mildly, so even though respectably he does admit that his points here are "speculative", the fact that he would have devoted a chapter in one of his books to this subject is intellectually sloppy and from an apologetic standpoint even irresponsible (especially considering what he said in [12] about the responsibilities of apologetics).
20. "Is Theism Important?" - a brief but cogent dissection of the line between intellectual faith and spiritual or personal faith, and how these are or aren't bridged.
21. "Xmas and Christmas" - not even an essay, just a prolonged whinge about the secularisation of the holiday. Zero intellectual content but a fun[ish] read.
22. "Prudery and Philology" - the least consequential thing in the whole book; this is basically just a spiralling diatribe about how problematic it is or isn't that words for genitals are often rude.
23. "Is History Bunk?" - a fairly interesting look into the nature of historical study and where exactly judgement or critique comes into it; I struggle to see any meaningful application of these ideas anywhere they aren't already being wholeheartedly engaged with though.
24. "Willing Slaves of the Welfare State" - the half-baked political thinking Lewis proudly showed off in [4] and [7] is now applied on a global level, with zero economic understanding displayed and zero substantive philosophy utilised, to draw us into an alarmist sketch of global future dystopia under the guise of universal wellbeing.

   Overall I think this is a pretty hit-and-miss collection. Some, like [2], [11] and [14], are definitely worth a read and are original and robust. Many others just smack of rather bland conservative cynicism from a man whose position as a public intellectual privileges him to talk about anything he wants regardless of how much he actually understands the complexities or nuances or the topic (or fields of study entire) at hand. Readers looking for a whole book's-worth of biting, truly compelling argument as Lewis is known for in his Christian writings will only find perhaps 30-40% of such a books-worth here, but anyone interested in his way of thinking should still find this an interesting read.

Glossolalia - Manmade or God-given?

This book, which unfortunately I am unable to provide any link for as it remains an unpublished and thus publicly unavailable work, is the undergraduate dissertation of Andrew Stovell - my father. It's a dispassionate and rigorous study of the phenomenon of glossolalia, more commonly known as "speaking in tongues", from both a biblically-considered and linguistic pair of angles. I've just read the whole thing in one sitting as I stumbled upon a chapter in another book about this and my mum mentioned "oh, dad wrote his thesis on that!" so I gave it an appropriate detour.

   It's a really interesting read. The first part lays out a groundwork for what glossolalia is, how it is portrayed and discussed in the Bible to start with, then briefly looking at how it has manifested throughout history, leading up to contemporary practices in charismatic churches. The second part is a literature review of other linguists' studies into the phenomenon, which deftly summarises the scant but deep insights of other academic perspectives, most of which this thesis's author largely supports in his argumentation. The third and final part comprises an in-depth phonetical and phonological analysis of ten recorded (and meticulously transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet in the lengthy appendix) examples of actual purported glossolalia, with some reflections as to the nature of these and what that implies as to whether they can be understood as language at all.

   Ultimately my dad concludes that the biblical accounts of "speaking in tongues" are quite clearly talking about "xenoglossia" (speaking a different real language) rather than "glossolalia" (speaking incomprehensible *possibly angelic* languages) and all scholarly analysis of modern such speakers drives to the point where we cannot confirm these instances to be of any real human language; indeed he goes further to point out that examples of glossolalia are very often characterised by frequent repetition of simple phonemes with no clear syntactical or grammatical logics at play, and thus even if we are to understand these utterances as divinely-inspired language of some form, it is odd to note that those divine languages must be overwhelmingly composed of the sounds babbling toddlers are wont to make. Which is to say, the actual spiritual gift of speaking in tongues is biblically historical and useful, whereas given the evidence we probably have to admit that the modern phenomenon of it is conversely essentially gobbledegook.

   If your curiosity is so piqued by this post that you actually want to read this, and if you do have a linguistic interest in the veracity of speaking in tongues I would recommend this as a resource certainly, but as I mentioned it's not published anywhere so if you find yourself desperate drop me a comment and I'll ask my dad whether we can scan it into a more easily distributable .pdf or something.

On Fairy-Stories

This book (available free online from that link) is a long essay, well - originally lecture, by J.R.R. Tolkien, regarding the fairy story and fantastical fiction in general. It is widely known as a key touchstone for thinkers in and around the genre on how to do it well, and as I am currently working on my own series of fantasy novels (as well as being generally interested in how the father of the modern genre approached it) I thought it would be well worth a read* - and I was not disappointed. Tolkien begins with a broad attempt to define the fairy story, before delving into the historical and cultural origins of the genre; he then considers the stereotypical association of the fairy story as being intended for and only enjoyable by children (a proposition he roundly rejects) and then goes on to develop a definitional theory of what precisely "fantasy" is - this is the meatiest part of the whole essay - as being a genre that should ideally provide recovery, escape, and consolation (it is in this part that he coins the term "eucatastrophe" to describe the inexplicable, unpredictable, yet inevitable happy ending of all true fairy stories***), and finally concluding with a statement about art's essential nature to human flourishing under God in consideration of our relationship to truth and imagination. This is a deeply stimulating essay, and whether you're active in writing fantasy yourself or you're simply an enjoyer of the genre who wants to take a thorough stare at the nuts and bolts of what makes it so vibrant and long-enduring as a form of human expression, you will find a great deal of food for thought here. Well worth a read - especially if you're a fan of Tolkien's fictional works, as this essentially provides the manifesto statement of how he approached all of his writings of the fantastical ilk.

* Although if you're interested in the ideas talked about in this post but don't have the attention span to read a forty-page essay,** assuming you still have the attention span to watch a forty-minute video essay, Jess of the Shire has you covered.

** In which case, what the heck are you doing on this blog?

*** Key example in point - at the culmination of The Lord of the Rings (spoiler alert), the ring is destroyed not by intent but by accident: Frodo caves to its power at the very last step of his journey, and Middle-earth is saved only by Gollum slipping into the lava having bitten off poor Mr. Baggins's finger to reclaim his precious. Textbook eucatastrophe.

Garden of Madness

This book is a collection of poetry by Pete Bearder (author of this book about spoken word generally). I picked it up on the solstice when I saw him live at The Shakespeares doing very cool things with a loop pedal, and have just finished reading it in one sitting. It's difficult to give justice to these poems in a coherent summary - they are largely consistent in style and tone, all somewhat existential, dealing with humans as conscious embodied creatures and the myriad confusions and convictions that come with that. Bearder delves into dark depths of psychology and glimmering heights of spirituality that all seem to knit together into the same, single tapestry of - well, the title. Knowing his gifts as a performer I know full well that I would have enjoyed this collection immeasurably more had I heard Pete himself performing all of them live, but even on the page these poems jostle indignantly and thump their way from page to brain before once more evaporating into nowhere, but leaving you with a distinct moistness that knows the fog that had been just then settled upon your mind. Big ideas but not distractingly philosophical or overly verbose; grand humanity but never obsequiously sentimental. Any enjoyer of poetry will get a lot out of this, I think.

Mechanicum

This book by Graham McNeill is the ninth book in the Horus Heresy series, which I am doggedly working my way through, and oh boy this one is a doozy. Here we have a completely new angle on the events unfolding across the nascent Imperium, as we follow developments among the technology-deifying civilisation on Mars once the ripples from Horus's heresy make themselves felt across the stars. So yeh - other than a very brief glimpse of Rogal Dorn there are no primarchs in this one (we do get a fairly decent lore-dump about the doings and sayings of the Emperor himself though - and a fleeting appearance in a historical prologue), and no Adeptus Astartes at all; instead we have a diverse cast of tech-priests, Titan Legions, officials high and low, corrupt and loyal. The main character though is an ordinary human - the first, and if you ask me realistically probably last, female protagonist in the series so far - one Dalia Cynthera, a scribe with an abnormally good memory and a knack for being able to figure out how things work. Dalia is summoned to Mars by Adept Koriel Zeth, who has some hardcore secret experiments underway while simultaneously navigating tentatively through the ongoing religious schism between the Mechanicum and the Imperium. Of course, once the heresy takes root on Mars everything falls apart very quickly, and long-forgotten esoterica, blasphemous machineries and good old turf wars all play their part in driving humanity's oldest forge-world to the brink of absolute promise and utter doom. I'll be honest, this was probably my favourite one of the whole series so far - I kind of just love the Mechanicum, they're so weirdly not-quite-human but with such distinctive foibles; also Dalia was a much more compelling protagonist than the stoic, distant Space Marines who have stood at the gravitational centre of most of the books prior to this one.

American Fascists

This book by Chris Hedges seemed topical for some reason.*

    If you are even halfway familiar with the actual biblical ethic of Jesus Christ and the actual political ethic of modern-day American 'Christianity', you do not need me to tell you how grossly divergent these things are. The roots of this go pretty far into the past but since the latter decades of the 20th century have metastasized into something truly dangerous and that I can only imagine how much God grieves over. Hedges, who studied at Harvard Divinity School before becoming a foreign correspondent, goes into great and granular detail about how the intricacies of personal faith are distorted and manipulated by the nationalist right-wing of American political actors, and just how far so-called 'Christian' leaders have either been complacent or wholeheartedly capitulated to this scheme of outright power-grabbing.

    This is not an easy read for a Christian as it so depressingly and thoroughly shows how the fabric of our faith can be manipulated for truly hateful ends. The lengthy anecdotal passages in this book are just as harrowing as the insightful theoretical explanations of what exactly is going on. I know I am too young and thus too late for a blogpost about this book to have any meaningful impact on future politics, as we have already swung far enough that I genuinely fear there may be no coming back for American democracy. The only way in which I would thus recommend this book is if you want to salve your confusion by knowing a bit more about how exactly the religion of the world's superpower became so co-opted by capitalism, racism, anti-intellectualism and so forth, that we now face ANOTHER FOUR FUCKING YEARS with the "leader of the free world" being a draft-dodging, tax-evading, bigoted rapist who prior to his entry into politics was most famous for telling people on reality TV that they were fired - ugh, but yeh, if you want a fragment more insight into how American Christianity became so horribly un-Christlike, this book would be a good place to start. If only my blog had a large-ish readership and I'd read this when it came out nearly twenty years ago - then at least this post would have maybe had some kind of impact. Now it just feels like a whinge.**

* I actually meant to read it the first time Orange Fraudster Man was running for president, but never quite got round to it. This time however I beasted the whole book in a day out of desperation to understand a bit more about how a country could be so utterly dumb.

** Assuming I have readers - which is a stretch in itself - but assuming any of you are American - if you have them, please take close care of your LGBTQ+ friends and family in the days to come. Their fears are by no means illegitimate. Remember even Hitler came for the trans community well before any concerted attack against the Jews.

Battle for the Abyss

This book by Ben Counter is the eighth Horus Heresy novel in the series, and the first to feature precisely zero primarchs! Outrageous! Where are our oh-so-flawed demigods? Trust me when I say this book proves you don't always need one around to have an adrenaline-fuelled violent romp through space. In this instalment, the recently (and essentially, secretly) heresy-aligned Word Bearers have received from the shipyards of Jupiter the largest spacecraft ever commissioned in the Imperium's history - a ridiculously big behemoth called The Furious Abyss - and, surprise surprise, they plan on using it to lead a sneak attack on the Ultramar system, a core of loyalist Imperial worlds under the protection of the Ultramarines Legion, so crippling a vital centre of Imperial control before news of the heresy has even reached Terra yet. Events conspire to draw the Abyss into conflict with a loyalist cluster fleet, and a chase through the warp ensues - with a small contingent of the loyalists managing to infiltrate the Word Bearers' ship but with little they can do to stop it from achieving its goal. A haphazard, uncoordinated but determined series of efforts between Ultramarines Captain Cestus, Space Wolves Captain Brynngar, World Eaters (apparently this book takes place before their legion goes full heretic) Captain Skraal and Thousand Sons psyker Mhotep is all that stands between the Abyss and Ultramar - the stakes may not be as high in scope as they have been in most of the previous novels; no allegiances are being traded here, everyone stays standing where they stand - but it's the first sign of the heresy metastasizing past the watersheds of Isstvan and becoming a full blown civil war spanning the Imperium.

Driving Short Distances

This book is a graphic novel by Joff Winterhart - it was a birthday present from my brother, and I've just read the whole thing in a single sitting. It made me profoundly sad, and hopeful, and a tad confused about the relationship between these two feelings.

    What's it about? So there's a 27-year-old called Sam who is failing at life and needs a job. The second cousin of his absent father, a man called Keith, offers him one in his delivery business - the work essentially entails driving about for brief periods of time, getting out of the car, then getting back in and repeating the procedure. Over the course of the several months that Sam works for Keith, the pair make the same several dozen stops several dozen times, eat the same pair of pasties for lunch every day, and allow us as the reader an insight into a dizzyingly well-realisedly mundane community of genuinely believable characters, from a diversity of receptionists to jocular compatriots of Keith's from the local business community to a particularly flirty bakery employee to acquaintances of questionable history.

    Mundanity is the key word in that last paragraph. Almost nothing of import happens in this story - it's essentially a twinned character study between Sam's aspirations and Keith's mystery. And this is exceptionally well-drawn.* One almost feels as if postgraduate dissertations in psychology could well be written about these people, so complex and yet on-the-surface their portrayals are. Ultimately I think it's a story about hope - what we have always wanted to be the possible case of things despite where we start our stories, where we compromise to accepting our place when these plans don't quite work out, and where we desperately long to be when all chance of achieving what we once wished for have long since evaporated - yet how if we're lucky, or simply of a certain mindset, there is always either a get-out clause or the option to just decide to be content with our lot.

    This is a delightfully human book. I love the illustrations and these are at least half the fabric that carries the vibe of the story. The dialogue is so natural it almost feels like reading a comic-ized documentary shooting at times, and it is chock-full of minute profoundly-human observations that resonate deeply with the kinds of things one has always noticed but almost never heard authors mention. It's a brilliant well-told pair of character studies that goes on no longer than it needs to and doesn't try to do anything beyond its own scope. Even if you're not a fan of graphic novels per se, if you're a fan of any kind of pure fiction that's good because of what it says and affirms about humanity rather than because it has Big Exciting Moments, you'll almost certainly like this.

* And I'm not there talking about the art style - though that too is exceptionally well-drawn, with a minimalistic blue-and-brown colour palette that fits the soul of the story perfectly, and a shabby but detailed habit of portrayal that lends every frame a depth of character that makes the goings-on, basic as they may be, viscerally relatable and recognisable.

the Prophetic Imagination

This book is one that I have read before since the start of this blog, hence the link above leading back to my prior post. I've been re-reading this in chunks with my dad, and frankly have to say I found this an incredibly edifying procedure, as not only was I re-treated to Brueggemann's incisive theological points but also the rich and often surprising conversations with my dad after each chapter or so. I said before in my original post that this book is challenging but well worth a dive, and off the back of this more recent experience I will add that I particularly recommend this book as something to go through as part of a small-group study, as it has plenty of practical provocative material from both Old and New testaments that should get a cluster of Christians thinking prophetically, and that can hardly be a bad thing.

the Didache

This book, by anonymous first-century Christian authors, is one of those key texts that were fundamental to the early church and it is thus often asked "why isn't it in the New Testament then?" and I can't answer that. If you're interested it's available as a free online .pdf at the link above and it's very short - I read the whole thing (appendix* included) in fifteen minutes.

    As to what this book is - it's essentially a practical guide for early Christians on how to do stuff. All manner of ecclesiastical practice as derived from the habits and insights of the apostles (the book is more widely known as "the teachings of the apostles") - from behavioural ethics, to church organisation, to appropriate liturgies and sacraments, with a final chapter dealing with how one is to think about eschatology (the end times). It's such a short and orthodox text that I don't think I have much to say about it that hasn't already been said many times on this blog in relation to Christianity and its history and practice. Though this is, I will say, a very interesting document if one is interested in delving deeper into the consistency and integrity of the early church.

* By appendix I mean a small collection of early Christian hymns and prayers.

Metanoia

This book by Alan Hirsch and Rob Kelly is, as its subtitle proclaims, a study of "how God radically transforms people, churches and organizations from the inside-out". The book is divided into two sections: why and how.

   The "why" section first deals with the potential problems that any church faces, and the grim apocalypse of failure in the face of such. We then dive into "metanoia" (a Greek word meaning roughly "to go into the Big Mind") as a practice of continually returning oneself to Godward sight and re-tuning our learned habits and ideas to better fit God's moulds. The next chapter looks deeper into the sinful, finite nature of human beings to explicate why this is such a necessary process. Then, a christological consideration of how only by decidedly and intuitively continuing to maintain our union with Christ is the kind of transformation metanoia brings possible. Finally a reflection on the human heart, and how only when in all its parts - mind, soul, and will - it is consciously and deliberatively united with Christ will we see the fruit we desire.

   The "how" section builds off of this seamlessly; after an introductory section emphasising the essentiality of being willing to unlearn and relearn things, we see how communities can be transformed by metanoia on three levels: at core a new paradigm (a fundamental kernel to "blow the collective mind"); built off which are new platforms (structural developments that help reshape and keep "the collective soul"); and lastly embodied in new practices (any practical habitual means of "engaging the collective will"). This section is littered with examples but insistent on its message that no single strategy can work conclusively in any context - our models of church must be Christ-centred and Christ-grounded, but beyond that everything we do that we think of as church must be open for question and evolution.

   I found this book eye-opening and liberating in many ways. Hirsch writes from experience as someone deeply involved in very innovative and effective church-planting/growing organisations - and that experience very much comes through in this text. Anyone involved in Christian leadership would benefit greatly from this profound little book.

Being Good

This book by Simon Blackburn (author of Think) is, as was his other book, a general introduction to some key philosophical issues and themes; it's also one that I had already read before I started this blog but I'm re-reading it now to see whether it's worth giving to my youngest brother who has just started studying philosophy for his A-levels.

   Anyway - Blackburn, in three large chunks, covers:

• Threats to ethics
• The death of God
• Egoism
• Evolutionary theory
• Determinism & futility
• Unreasonable demands
• False consciousness
• Some ethical ideas
• Birth
• Death
• Desire & the meaning of life
• Pleasure
• The greatest happiness of the greatest number
• Freedom from the bad
• Freedom & paternalism
• Rights & natural rights
• Foundations of ethics
• Reasons & foundations
• Being good & living well
• The categorical imperative
• Contracts & discourse
• The common point of view
• Confidence restored

   And that's the book.

   Though I have a lot of nits to pick with Blackburn in the minutiae, every philosopher has to come to their own conclusions, and he does to be fair present the things he discusses with a certain detachedness that enables the reader to continue their own explorations without being too bogged down with any of the biases found in what may well be their introductory text. A good book to kick off a habit of thinking about ethics with.

Think

This book by Simon Blackburn is a general, broad, accessible introduction of some of the key areas in philosophy. I had read it before, but shortly before I started my undergraduate in philosophy and therefore before I started this blog - but decided to re-read it because my youngest brother is currently studying philosophy for his A-levels and I want to give it him for his birthday but also make sure that it was an appropriate text for his level.

   Blackburn writes well, as eruditely as accessibly - he never introduces jargon terms without pre-empting them in common sense language, he never presumes that his readers are familiar with any particular thinkers or concepts, etc. Anyway, throughout the bitesize-enough-but-still-meaty eight chapters of the book he deals with: knowledge, mind, free will, the self, God, reasoning, the world, and 'what to do'. Across the brief sketches of philosophical history he outlines in these chapters he does manage to convey a largely helpful picture of some of the key themes that philosophers have been wrestling with for millennia, as well as diving somewhat deeper into particular thinkers who seem to shed further insight (though if you ask me, Blackburn has a bit too much of a hard-on for Hume).

   I'm confident that this book will be helpful to my brother - and in saying such, I'm saying I would probably recommend it as an introductory text for anyone of the age of fifteen or up starting to study philosophy from scratch. One small gripe I have is that this book barely deals with ethics, that being only around half of the final chapter - but Blackburn has written a whole other book similar to this one on that topic, my copy of which I am also re-reading to see if it's worth gifting to my brother, so watch this space.

Terry Pratchett: A Life with Footnotes

This book, composed by Rob Wilkins based on autobiographical notes made by the subject, Terry Pratchett, is a brilliant biography. I won't say too much about his life or character as portrayed herein as in an early (post-wise) recommendation I think everyone should read this book - it's a heartfelt and complicated and beautiful image of the man who probably has done the most anyone has done for fantasy fiction since Tolkien, and I do not say that lightly.

    Wilkins's prose is passable enough but it's the pictures carried therein that really move this book to something brilliant - one really gets to know Pratchett in an intimate sense, from his childhood as an under-achiever to his unwanted death to dementia.* Some of the earlier chapters are genuinely idyllic - his lifestyle throughout the 1970's read to me like some kind of fantasy it was so much so. One also gets a thorough picture of the blue-collar attitude he took to the business of writing novels - perhaps most perfectly displayed in the discussion of when Pratchett took six months of sabbatical to rest his mind, and then following this when Wilkins (as was at the time his personal assistant) asked him what he did with his time off, Terry grumpily replied "I wrote two books." Further from this though is an image of a man with an insatiable aptitude for practical learning - even though he'd never done particularly well at school, Terry would take an interest in something and learn the skills to master it. From his room full of old hardware that he never dared throw away in case it might still prove useful to the brilliant story of how when he recieved a knighthood he bought a small knob of metal from a meteor, found a local blacksmith and learned himself how to smith metal, personally mined a bunch of iron, forged a sword using this iron and the meteor-metal he'd obtained, and got knighted using exactly that sword.** Basically the man was a living legend, full of so much humour and wisdom that I sincerely believe the Discworld series will survive for centuries to come.

    As already said, I would recommend this book to anyone. It's a lovely read. But if you are already a fan of Pratchett's work, or at all interested in the kind of character who could produce such diverse and prolific literature - this is a must-do.

* I will say that this book, especially in the latter chapters dealing with Pratchett's struggle with early-onset Alzheimer's, is a hardcore manifesto for the right to self-dying. The tragedy of everything that you are, that you know yourself to be, degrading as your body decays, is an abhorrence, and though before reading this I had qualms about it, since, I am fully on Terry's side and think that one should be able to of sound mind & heart choose the time & method of their exit from this world should they, their family, and their medical authorities foresee nothing left for them but loss and pain. After all, if there's one thing Terry taught us overall, it's that Death is a friendly dude just doing his job.

** Tangential I know, but as a D&D dungeon master I've always had it in my head that were I to plan a campaign set in a magical post-apocalyptic England, then 'Terry Pratchett's Meteor Sword' would have to be a legendary item. I haven't worked out its stats yet.