The Beautiful Poetry of Donald Trump

This book by Rob Sears is an absolute gem. Extracts from those endlessly articulate, baffling and mental-gymnastical goldmines of the mind of its 'author', be these speeches, tweets, or just things he's said on TV or in interviews or whatever - are lovingly chopped up and reconstituted into really quite tremendous poetic formats. The net result is fucken hilarious - made moreso by the diligent referencing of each quote-snippet so we can fact-check each and every word, phrase & ramble just in case one wanted to make sure Sears wasn't crafting all these himself and we, the readers, could truly trust that what we read here are indeed very much the words of the man himself - and while he maybe didn't put those particular bits of words into those particular orders, the resultant poems are deeply and beautifully emulative of Trump's truest and biggest public persona, with all its nuance & complexity, all its humbly-acknowledged flaws & profound reflective wisdom. Seriously - a book worth engrossment for any who perhaps have not seen the quieter meditative side to our current Excellent President, as this book will enlighten as much as entertain.

the Incredible Book Eating Boy

This book by Oliver Jeffers was presented to me recently by my dad recently, with the accompanying snide remark "it's about you". Keen to disprove him, I read it in a short sitting this evening, only finding before I wrote this I had to text him to confirm his initial comment. You don't care about such biographical rambling, I'm sure.

   Anyway, it's a story (with chunky cool stylised illustrations, and the version I've got has a range of innovative pop-up sections, which no doubt younger readers might find even more exciting than I did) about a boy called Henry who starts eating books, develops a taste for them, tries to eat as many books as he can because he wants to be the smartest boy ever, gets sick, slows down his eating habits, and discovers he enjoys reading rather than eating the books.

   So back to the abstruse bio-commentary - it's not really about me, because I've never eaten a book. Nor do I (any longer - though for a period in my late teens and early student days this was certainly a fair cop) feel there is much point trying to read as much as possible to try to be a particular kind of cleverer or better. I read to broaden my horizons bit by bit in all manner of ways, generally quite a lot slower than followers of this blog might expect. I think maybe then it is about me anyway, only I'm at a stage of life where I've already learnt the lesson Henry concludes this plot with; reading is great, don't go mad. A good one for the budding bibliomaniac kids.

Holy Listening

This book by Margaret Guenther dives into the mystique and fuzziness around the term 'spiritual direction' to draw out clear guidelines as to what it is, where it can happen and how it can happen well in these contexts, and what people should be sensitive to when being given or attempting to give spiritual direction. It has the feel of a book which packs an intellectual punch (as, it does) but is eminently readable, practical, and resists obtuse theorizing, always coming back to the relationality of the people involved and God above. While this will not be discussed at length in my summary/commentary below (as to those who see the linkages it will be obvious enough and for those who don't I can't justify elongating this blogpost into yet another feminist-theology polemic which probably won't convince anyone of owt anyway, or even, wouldn't if people read this), there is a final chapter exploring some of the particular strengths of women in giving spiritual direction to both genders.

   First - what is spiritual direction? Guenther talks about it in a very nuanced and person-centred way, so it is almost certainly an oversimplification for me to say this, but it is basically the process of helping another person, whatever stage of faith they are at, best discern ways in which God is calling them to do or be particular things, whether that is to become a Christian at all or pursue particular ministries. Needless to say this process will involve deep committed listening, both to God through scripture and the promptings of the Holy Spirit alongside the person themselves in their own complexities and context.
   This process (described in the book's subtitle as an 'art', which resonates) is then discussed in three distinct but complementary and in places overlapping roles or forms;

• Hospitality - through showing it, unconditionally and inclusively, we help create real spaces and times in which people can be themselves authentically, and so draw out underlying aspects of character or need which can then be responded to. Also in the doing of this we model the love of God for all peoples.
• Teacher - in developing questions and gently leading conversations to the suggested answers given by God, we help inform and direct people's thoughts, and thus actions and so journeys, more into line with an overall narrative from Heaven which is fully transcendent over all earthly knowledge. Theology here takes a backseat to will.
• Midwife - as elements of people's character and life-journey lead them closer to the core of questions they are wrestling with, closer to God, closer to particular kinds of ministry, etc, through the combined processes of deep listening, open conversation and nurturing mutual exploration, a spiritual director can help a person 'birth' their own realisations of certain things and so empower them toward new paths.

   As I've said, there is a final chapter on the speciality of women in this kind of activity which, while I will not discuss here, I think says a great deal of potent common-sense on the ways in which listening and mutuality are life-givingly important, yet which because of patriarchal sociocultural structures and norms men (who still dominate the clergy) are generally less well-equipped to do.

   In any case, if you are a spiritual leader who is to any degree responsible for the souls of people under your care, then I would wholeheartedly recommend this book, as it contains many highly insightful stories as examples of how it can be done well, badly, in-betweenly, how God uses both people to sharpen each other, how the very process itself can be wholesome in the practice of discernment over dogma.

It's a Book!

This book by Lane Smith is a brilliant exercise in getting kids who can read to get even more excited about the mere activity of reading. It revolves around a series of anthropomorphic animals who don't recognize what a book is, though by the end, surprise surprise, they do. Not particularly gripping or innovative despite its promising premise, and still I'd reckon worth a punt as a gift for kids under 7 you know who like books.

Inspector Smart & the Case of the Empty Tomb

This book, by Michael Tinker (and, outrageously, illustrated by me) is an exploration of the probably-well-known-enough-that-a-summary-here-isn't-necessary story of Jesus of Nazareth, in particular his rising from the dead, despite the fact that Roman centurions were notoriously good at making sure people who were meant to die died. It takes the shape of a mystery - with Inspector Smart, the lead detective, interviewing witnesses in the Judea region to build a better picture of what went on.

   I can't sing the praises of this book's illustrations too wholeheartedly because I did them* and they're not brilliant but they get the story told. Writing-wise this is I think a clear and innovative retelling of the classic core christian story, that makes it compelling to younger audiences. That said I think this book would probably function best as an apologetics primer for small Christian children - but it could still prove an entertaining read for non-believers' families who enjoy mystery and intrigue.

* I'm still waiting for my royalty payments for the Inspector Smart branded mug which was released at some point over the last few years that says on it "He-brew", which is a great pun as well as probably the best tea in Israel... I know they exist, I haven't said anything, I don't really mind or care. It's cool to have some part of my work succeed enough to make it onto a mug, so there's that.

the Snail and the Whale

This book by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler (yes, the very same duo who were behind the Gruffalo) unexpectedly hit me right in the feels. I read it to a child from church,* and it seemed to go down well, which I can only partly attest to its quality as a children's book because I'm an incredible read-out-louder. That said - the text is rhythmic and flows aloud perfectly, and is even occasionally a bit funny, the plot is genuinely quite compelling, the illustrations are beautiful, the friendship between the two main characters thoroughly heartwarming. A classic.

* For those of you who suspect this is just another excuse for the fact that for an intellectual 24-year-old I read a lot of children's books, yes, you, shut up.

the Imitation of Christ

This book is well-known as claiming to be the second most widely-read/translated book in our history after the Bible itself - I can't speak as to the veracity of this claim, but the pragmatic spiritual density of Jesuit monk Thomas á Kempis's text herein may merit such a reality were it so. It's broken down into short, digestible but highly potent chapters - and I've been reading it extremely slowly, giving each chunk time to permeate through reflection, prayer and other reading; there is so much in here that I found of immense help on my walk with God, and I would hopefully expect that it would likely be so for others too. A big thing I think I've learnt through the book and surrounding experience is that of the nature of Christian catholicity - that of course being the innately-designed one-ness of the Church established by Christ and maintained through the Holy Spirit's movement among his apostles ever since... it's not been entirely comfortable, you know? I've realised elements of the christian culture I've grown up in, and whether this is things deliberate or not but certainly latent to enough of an extent in the Protestant evangelical normativity I'd taken for granted as the "right" kind of Christianity - this just doesn't hold up to its own desire for hegemony of truth when properly and humbly compared to the realities of value found running deep through the "other" churches. Especially now having to have had to reconcile my upbringing with working at an Anglican charity, having met and learned from Anglicans, Catholics, and other kinds of christian that until recent times I'd kind of just presumed to be lost causes, or at least misled. I feel extremely convicted that a prolonged period of decolonization needs to be undertaken - this is already to real degrees something I've been trying to do with regards to racist & chauvinist attitudes, but I think the over-segregation of small ideological shades within Christian traditions is likely just as harmful and deep-set a prejudice of such kinds - perhaps not one directly linked to as many obvious social repressions or structures, but certainly things that less than fully glorify the God who calls us into his body, and so it is something of which I am trying, bit by bit - to repent. Even if that means venturing into territories whence my brothers and sisters might start considering me the same kind of heretic I'm trying to stop "seeing": I'm not sure where this path leads. But I know Jesus walks it with me; so I will try to step well and without anxiety.

A Philosophy of Walking

This book by Fréderic Gros is, as the title suggests, a philosophical stroll through the nature and psycho-biosocial mechanics of, and historically-significant figures associated with that simplest human means of locomotion. Or should I say perambulation? Probably. It deals in utter magnificently eloquent terms with the silences, solitudes, slownesses and strangely metaphysically inspiring spaces found when one walks: Nietzsche, Nerval, Rousseau, Kant, Rimbaud, Thoreau and Gandhi get their own chapters examining the purposes and uses of the "art" of pedestrian travel; I'm fairly sure the book was written as such that this shines through the text but it may be a facet of just my own over-egged poetic reading, that the book works even more fantastically than it presumably still does otherwise should one take the whole notional field of "walking" as the metaphor for the dogged, day-by-day, step-by-step human travel through their own life - I certainly found it yielded many insights personally that were not necessarily there in the text itself with a grasp of such in the halfway-back of my mind. I loved this book and you can very probably expect to see a second post on here about it in the years to come, on the inevitable re-read.

Markings

This book is compiled from the private spiritual journal of Dag Hammarskjöld, who was a devout disciple of Christ & the UN's general secretary from 1953 until his untimely* death in 1963. It became an instant classic, having been translated masterfully from the Swedish into English by Leif Sjöberg and poetically refined by W. H. Auden; indeed, the edition I've got boasts a foreword by Jimmy Carter (and if you don't think he's the greatest of all living ex-US-presidents what the hell are you doing on this blog!?).

   My lighthearted tone notwithstanding I am under no allusions that this is a potently holy and worthy book.** Dag writes of struggle, of joy, loss, hope, grief, God, Christ, the world and its fullnesses & emptinesses, justice, equality in the deepest sense, truth, peace - all mediated through a poetic but totally honest presentation of his own soul, bared in lonely prayerful discourses as he bears the gigantic blessings & burdens of his humanitarian role and seeks to undertake it in action as perfectly informed by his Christian contemplation as he can possibly manage, by the grace of God. I defy anyone to read this book and come away unchanged. It's been an incredibly humbling, emboldening, fortuitous vägmärk on my own road of think-reading my hazy way across a life of faith, and I will be returning to it for nourishment and encouragement many times more throughout my journey, I'm sure.

* And actually really quite suspicious, but that's a story for another whole documentary.

** It went onto my 'to-read' list some eleven or twelve years ago, my dad having been lent it by a man with whom he had had a long conversation about faith and life and stuff & on asking what book if any was indisputably the most powerful to change one's views on such my dad came home with this, and reading the blurb I remember thinking "wow this is too much for me but I'll flag it for when I really need the spiritual fuel" and I'm Glad I did.

Jesus' People: What the Church Should Do Next

This book, by ex-Bishop-of-Sheffield Steven Croft, is a punchy, well-put, highly accessible and relevantly practical reflection on the nature of church and how it can or should be rising to meet the challenges currently facing it in this country.*

   At risk of overly simplifying what is an edifying and biblically deft read, his answer to the titular question - what the church should do next is exactly what it always has been meant to be doing, only with renewed unity, zeal, and diligent service. So - helping people from all over the place encounter personally the God of love by a variety of means, and building meaningful communities of these people around discipleship, which (because I know it's churchish jargon but I'm about to define it okay) essentially means encouraging and holding each other accountable to making Jesus the model of our lives and beings.

   Simple, right? You'd think so. Then why do Christians keep churning out endless books about problems in this process or ways to overcome them, when according to generally orthodox belief all the answers are in the Bible anyway? I don't want to say I can't answer this question but I can't be bothered to type it out, nor risk such a rabbithole of potential theological debate bursting out in my comment sections, because as we all know this blog gets millions of passionate readers.

   As a final comment - this book does also contain a really timely endnote on the current challenges of integrating 'fresh expressions of church' into the pre-existing and largely staler (sorry, everyone) economy of congregations, which is not in itself an overly useful or interesting bit of text but should go some way to pointing many churchfolk in useful and interesting directions.

* I won't discuss these in much particulars here, as I already put myself through far too much stress-inducing thought into such questions for my day-job.

Kobane Calling

This book is a graphic recount by Italian artist Zerocalcare and translated into English by "RB" - dealing with events surrounding what is happening in Northern Syria, or Western Kurdistan, at the moment - given the revolution that's going on there. If you don't know much about it then this short comic might be a good introduction, as it does take the whole situation seriously and goes some way toward being of educational value. However if you find yourself wanting to go deeper into knowing more about the Kurds & the things going on in Rojava, may I point you toward my Masters dissertation where you may well find what you're looking for in the bibliography. As a comic though this piece works in its format really well; I love the art style, and the visual atmosphere it maintains gives a real edge to the subject matter - the battle for Kobane itself, where YPG-YPJ forces held the city against Daesh - is dealt with appropriately respectfully and the story told in the pages of this slim volume does end on a hopeful note, as I'd like to think we can say of the story of the Kurds generally some day soon.

&

This book is the debut pamphlet of poetries by Jonathan Kinsman (who as well as being founding editor of the cracking journal Riggwelter Press runs the Gorilla Poetry spoken word events I've been frequenting), which is literally so good it won the Indigo Dreams prize for poetry pamphlets. I don't know how they judge these things or what & was up against but to me it seems like it probably deserved to win whatever the case.

   & is a collection in which poetic language use is pushed to its fullest, drawing out huge emotional sprawlings; where the connectivities of selfs, others, words, objects, feelings, actions, and the intangible moments of choice and uncertainty which peg all these components of reality together are pinpointed with a deftness of phrase that would be uncanny if you noticed it (which you do upon re-reading, such is the craftspersonship), which you might well not because the headspace these poems pull you into, with an at once intimate and yet detached immediacy, is deliberately kept fluid - you follow trains of thought and narrative which sometimes meander gently, sometimes twist sharp corners and skid off toward a previously-unseen horizon, always providing an exactly right space in which the poems unfold in their self-contained entireties. As such it's the longer ones which I would pick as favourites if I were in the habit of doing this (which regular readers will maybe know I'm not); iterations of self and it's like this are just superbly subtle and poignant as they go on, recursively exploring an amount of conceptual nooks and crannies to a poetic subject which you probably couldn't come up with yourself in a solid hour of coffee-fuelled brainstorming, and here Kinsman neatly encapsulates all these variegations and ruminations in (one would think) impossibly concise and breathtakingly potent nuggets of verse.

   It goes without saying I enjoyed this pamphlet a lot. If you want an introduction to perhaps one of Manchester's most interesting new up-and-coming poets, look no further.

Life Together

This book (available for free as online pdf in that link, you're welcome) by Dietrich Bonhoeffer* is probably among the most concise, helpful, practical, gracious, context-flexible and biblically-rooted explorations of Christian community I have ever read. In five short readable chapters exploring the nature of community, the typical or ideal day when with others or alone, ministry, and confession and communion, Boffers offers us a rich and life-affirming gospel tapestry of where our selves and relations may go wrong, and how we can try to help them go right by being truly grounded in Christ - individually and togetherly. A must-read for folks in church leadership & membership alike.

* An incredibly inspiring man in 20th-century Christianity who was martyred by the Nazis for opposing their - being - well, Nazis, I guess. Also the person alongside whose name I was first ever introduced to the term theologian, because Tim Chester's cat was named after him and obviously this demanded an explanation, because "Boffy" is a weird name, and even weirder when you're told what it's short for.

Socrates: A Man for Our Times

This book is a biography of western philosophy's foundational figure by Paul Johnson - and my goodness, is it excellent. Dealing with his ideas deftly, and embedded in their original contexts, he brings the man to life that even Plato barely manages to fumble; the picture painted of ancient Athens, the raw challenges of Socrates's credo that one's life should be examined, directed with meaning and purpose, that it is open at all points to moral or intellectual challenge for not living up to its own purported standards; his monotheism, his reputation as a soldier and athlete, and statesman of the democratic society - or how these images of the man were skewed by philosophers and playwrights toward ulterior political or cultural ends after his willing submission to the death penalty for his "blasphemies"; even his amusingly-sketched relationship with his overbearing wife and their life of happy poverty - this is historical biography done to perfection, thoroughly entertaining to read but you can virtually smell the rigour of research on every page and I learnt more about Socrates through this one book than in that whole module of ancient Greek philosophy that - actually, now thinking about it I didn't take when I was an undergrad... OK maybe I'm thinking of Keanu's refs, but you get the point. Anyway, one last punt - the subtitle; Johnson does throughout pepper the text with considerations of how the life & thought of Socrates parallels those of numerous other thinkers across the history of western life & thought - and though in my view didn't expand this as fully as I'd have liked to see does draw some really interesting contemporary application points out of it all. Definitely worth a read for anyone who's a fan of philosophy, history, or both.

the Physics of Star Trek

This book by Lawrence Krauss is, as the title suggests, a hard-thunk scrutinizement of the biggest & best elements in science fiction, through the particular lens of Gene Roddenberry's creations, to see how well, if at all, such things square up to the realities of actual existing scientific reality as we understand it. As someone who's generally found it somewhat of a mind-mangle to get the general laws of physics into my head anyway, but loves science fiction, I actually found myself learning a great deal about actual real science from the derived applications of this book - Krauss writes extremely clearly and is a brilliant educator on his subject - which shouldn't be a surprise, the man's an eminent professor, not just your average Trekkie who's done a wikipedia trawl degree. Oh, did I mention there's a foreword by Steven Hawking?

   In terms of content it's split into three broad chunks: the first dealing with wormholes, relativity, "warp"-speed and all that quantum spacetime jazz; the second dealing with matter - thus by extension the implications of teleportation, holograms, and whatnot; and the third a more deep-speculative dive into theories around alien life-forms' possible, and probable, existence.*

   I really enjoyed this book - as mentioned I learnt a lot about physics from it, and all in rather practical ways, as my motivations for reading it was primarily research for my own science-fiction story that I'm working on. But I'll not toot that horn here - this book I'd give a hearty recommendation to anyone with a healthy skeptical approach to pop-culture and enjoyment of scientific learning, though I wouldn't necessarily recommend it all to closely to most Trekkies unless they're also intellectually humble enough to have numerous what might be sacred cows diligently and systematically sacrificially dissected before their very eyes...

* Though, with apologies to Roddenberry's ghost, Krauss does conclude much alongside my own personal gist that should we ever discover or encounter extraterrestrial life - it seems thoroughly unlikely that they will look & live Pretty Much Exactly Like Homo Sapiens but with Different [ears/skintones/foreheads/etc] and [x/y/z] Cultural Quirks.

Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity & Integrity

This book by Christine Korsgaard is quite possibly in my top three or four philosophical books I've read, period. I had read sections of it alongside this a few years ago when I was doing an undergraduate essay on conceptions of agency in practical reason, earmarking it as a book to revisit and properly digest later on - this time not for mere academicalism but to properly imbibe of and benefit from the potency of insights she makes herein.

   Synthesizing ideas from Plato, Aristotle and Kant, alongside her own formidable weight of intellectual reflective handling of such diverse themes of psychological behaviouralism, the questions of what makes a person effective at being a person, how we respond at all to things like goodness or rightness; the ground covered here is incredibly holistic in scope and yet holds together into a cohesive train of argument that never dithers on the fences of empty philosophizing but consistently returns to the fertile soil of pragmatic, day-to-day human lived application - which is what all true philosophy should be and do, imho. I'm not going to pretend a cogent synthetic summary of the ideas contained herein is at all within either the intentional or possible parameters of my writing this post, but to give a roughly hazarded breakdown of what I think she's getting at in this book - it is the very question of what it means to live well, how a human person can conceptualize themselves in practical ways in relation to ideas about goodness and reason in a world so often devoid of either in the immediate circumstances; and how constantly choosing to cultivate one's own identity in line with notions of goodness, rational truth and whatnot ultimately shape the meaningful essence of our identities - how well we do this developing what she refers to as our integrity. She does shine some excellently critical lights into the murkier what-if corners of our failures to do this as well - with such problematic elements of human being as ignorance, moral failure, and incoherent aspects of our constituted beings all being dealt with generously and in my opinion rather satisfactorily. One small gripe I would take with it is that she deals primarily with autonomy and agency in these senses with regard to the individual, and so much of the kind of organic intersubjectivity that shapes, for good or ill, our capacities and efficacies in the pursuits talked about in this book aren't given the scrutiny I would have been keen to hear her delve into - but this is a small trifle when one considers how much truly helpful ground she has otherwise covered - no doubt that side of things is something she has talked about elsewhere,* or may someday.

   As you'd probably guess from an Oxford University Press book, it is pretty dense reading and though Korsgaard writes excellently and this is much more accessible than a majority I think of typical books in this kind of ballpark, it would still be a bit of a hard go for those who haven't delved previously into the mindfields of psychological philosophy - but I'd say probably most people seriously willing to give their brains a bit of a workout could handle this book relatively easily, so long as you don't expect it to be the kind of thing you can just bash out in a few afternoons, and are happy to google the occasional word. And yes, I would very much recommend this book to basically anyone as the insights contained in it are so life-givingly pragmatic and reasonable that it would be an excellent book to anyone - so if you'd like to take the plunge and give your own grasp at being a coherent person a long hard thought-stare, I heartily recommend Christine Korsgaard's work as a springboard - and though I can't say I'm a scholar I'm confident enough this is a good starting point.

* I am speculating here - sadly, as I am no longer a student of any university, my access to philosophy books is now considerably more limited, as they're bloody expensive, and they won't let me in the student libraries with quite the same degree of welcome as I once had.

We Go to the Gallery

This book, from the Dung Beetle reading scheme,* perfectly encapsulates the roaring depths of alienation, ennui, spiralling existential dread and general sociocultural anxiety with which one's consciousness, upon introduction to their subjective-conceptual limits of artistic and philosophical meaning, becomes afloat with a taste of the transcendent, develops metaphysical and aesthetic and spiritual curiousity, only to be caught up in the westerly winds of modernist and postmodernist and all-the-other-too-manyisms-in-between airs of creative thinking blown across history and so left stranded in the vast stormclouds of the absurd which roll across our contemporary global attention span, shrinking as it is.

In it, Susan and John go to an art gallery with their Mummy, who explains the art to them.

* In the way that those Ladybird spoofs took off, this is the next level of spoof: the Dung Beetle learning books are "designed to make scary subjects approachable for the under 5s. Printed in bold colours and written in clear, simple English, each book will drag families into the dark recesses of the collective unconscious, for their broader cultural benefit," as their incover-page-blurbage attests, and even if this book is the only one they have thus far published it certainly more-or-less achieves this stoic promise. I can only apologise for the lack of accessibility employed in the verbiage of this post, it being a purely accidental side-product of my efforts to write quickly and concisely (which I then undo whatever relative efficiency that that may have allowed by farting off down pointless corners of discourse like this, but nevertheless -) but basically I think this book is as clever and funny as it is bleak and ridiculous, and could make a great present for the right person. Bearing in mind it is really not a children's book in the classical content sense.