Chameleon or Tribe?

This book by Richard Keyes is one of the most insightful books about church I've read in a while. He takes the fundamental that we are to be "in the world but not of the world" - and yet recognisable to the world; so where does that leave us as a community of Christians? Do we distinguish our own culture and cut ourselves off from all outside contact? Or do we adopt as many of the surrounding customs as we can to try to make ourselves more amenable to contact so that evangelism can occur?

   Well, both, and neither.

   Though this is a very short book its arguments are dense and wiry, and I don't think I could do half as good a job at summarising them as you could at understanding them by reading this book. It's a genuine life-raft in a post-Christian culture where half the church seems to becoming secular clubs with praise sessions and the other half insular Puritanical communities hostile to outsiders. Keyes does a great job of integrating the biblical theology of what church is and is meant to be with the practicalities of Christian life, and also the apologetic factors of how we make these very elements appealing and coherent to those people outside the Church - those we are called to win for Christ.

   It's a relatively old book, this, so it might be hard to find - but if one pops up online for less than forty quid, or you stumble across a copy in a second-hand Christian bookstore - this is a must-buy! (and needless to say also then a must-read...)

the Infographic Bible

This book, compiled by Karen Sawrey - is, as it says on the tin, a series of exquisitely-executed infographics detailing various themes and components of the Bible and its contained stories. I've got this as a present for my brother-in-law for Christmas, and as regular readers will know I always like to test-read such things to make sure they're not rubbish... this definitely isn't.

   The infographics themselves are graphically sublime, well-ordered, legible, comprehensible and comprehensive both. The content going into the infographics is some of what you might expect and a lot of what you wouldn't have ever thought about. The net result is that you learn visually a lot more about the Bible story in a much denser package than you ever could with several months spent over a study-version of the ESV and its Hebrew translation.

   I'm pretty sure my bro-in-law doesn't even know I run this blog so I'm safe; anyhow I'm quite confident he'll like this.

the Divine Dance

This book by Richard Rohr (same author as this gem) is a deep, circular meditation on the Trinity and its mysteries. I honestly don't really know what to say. It's about God. His nature, his ineffable Being, his goodness and eternity and light and givingness-of-life. Rohr manages to blend a thoroughly ecumenical scholarship in simple language through a lens a pragmatic, humanly-livable concepts and frameworks, so that we can start to grasp how God moves and how we can try to join in once we accept the call. This is a marvellous, beautiful book. One thing I will say as a plausible downside is that it doesn't really have much of an apologetic bent - but that's fine, this is a book for believers who want to draw themselves further into the divine dance anyway. If you are looking for ways to share the glorious mysteries of the Trinity with non-Christians in your life, then this book will probably be of use anyway, as it may be so fruitful to your spirit that your come closer in your soul the the heart of the heavenly rhythms and find the things to say or do that will bear appropriate witness anyway. I am somewhat hesitant about marking this in the category of "Christian theology" even though I know it is - but it just feels so messy and casual, like the Holy Spirit has just charged through my lounge with muddy boots and tossed a fishing-rod onto my couch and said "got nothing! gonna check the raccoons have got out of the well, see you in a bit" and stomped straight back out through the back door - what do you even do with that? That's this kind of book. It shows you a glimpse of how big and active God is and invites you to be part of that. It's the kind of book that makes Trinitarian theology not some abstract philosophical exercise but an exhilarating spiritual ride that takes you from Yes Please to Eternity and wherever in-between. I would highly recommend this book to any and all Christian readers.

Jesus Feminist

This book by Sarah Bessey was a breath of truly fresh air. Although I have read several great sources on Christian feminism before, never before have I seen so many coherent and powerful arguments put together in one place, and not to say the least all tied together through the lived Gospel experiences of Christ himself in the women he interacted with. I'm saying very little about this book because I want you to go and read it yourself. If you are a Christian with concerns about feminism for whatever reason - I implore you to read this book and pray deeply about how Christ might be speaking to us about what gender is and is for. If you are not a Christian and may even hate the faith for ways in which it treats women - I also implore you to read this book so you can come closer to the heart of Christ who knows and loves all, and so that you can be better equipped to throw rebuttals at your Christian friends next time you have an argument about gender. A brilliant must-read.

Politics and the English Language

This book - well, rather a long essay - by George Orwell, has become something of a talking-point across the political spectrum in recent years, for interesting reasons. The right seem to think that it upholds their stance against "politically correct" speech policing, while the left seem to feel it upholds their idea that all too often vague populistic and non-committal speech is supplanting public honesty. Exactly where Orwell himself would have lain in this argument we will never know, as he's been dead for seventy years, but still people on all sides of all political spectrums love to claim this man who fought for an anarchist army against Spanish fascists is on their side.

   I'll quit rambling. This is an essay about vagueness; the ways in which the English language can be made flimsy, indeterminate, in order to couch the political ambitions and goals of the speaker - regardless of their ideology. Some of the most insidious ways in which this happens are dying metaphors, operators or verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, and meaningless words. If these terms mean nothing to you then I suggest you click on the link at the very start of this post and read the free-online .pdf of this very essay so that Orwell himself can elucidate you. After explicating the ways in which these linguistic tactics can be used to obfuscate and befuddle, Orwell goes on to retranslate a passage he had quoted "in political language" earlier into normal, honest English - and the differences are quite startling. Even as someone who was a keen student of linguistics at college, I was startled at how much of a difference can be made pragmatically to the same semantic statement through a handful of minor tweaks. But all of this is moot. The world has moved on a great deal since Orwell passed on; we have been living in the "post-truth" era for about eight years now, and I dread to think what George would make of the political-linguistic landscape if he could see it today.

   Read this if you want for historical curiosity. It's a somewhat interesting insight into the past evolution of populist propaganda-speech. But it won't help you all that much in navigating the shitshow that is how politicians use language today. Unless, that is, you trust them, in which case, God help you.

That Hideous Strength: How the West was Lost

This book by Melvin Tinker I am going to deal with incredibly briefly. I know that its author is the father of someone I consider a friend so this may come back to bite me in the arse but I have to be frank. This book was written by an incognizant coward who was more concerned about farting out a book about "how to be a distinctive Christian in today's complex landscape" than they were about actually finding a fucking map or compass - and as such steams headlong into the culture wars in a critically uninformed manner. There is virtually no theological content to this book that you couldn't get from (a very conservative) Sunday school, and there is virtually no intellectual content to this book that you wouldn't find on PragerU (which is to say, not very much). It's 25% paranoid anti-intellectualism, 30% anti-LGBT rehash with zero context or point, and 45% zombified hand-wringing about "cultural Marxism"; for a book purporting to be about "how the West was lost" it is remarkably ignorant of history, geopolitics, economics, philosophy, etc. I genuinely feel that C.S. Lewis would be slightly sick in his mouth to know that a book so base & reactionary was written in the name of one of the novels he was proudest of. If you're not a Christian I guess you might read this for straw-man entertainment. If you are a Christian, I implore you to be better than to read shit like this.

The Erstwhile

This book is Brian Catling's sequel to the incredible fantasy novel The Vorrh, which I raved about. The reason it's taken me several months to finish a book I was extremely excited about is something you may have picked up on in the post about its prior instalment - this is a very hard series of books to follow. Not to swallow - as with its predecessor Catling's prose herein is of the utmost calibre in imaginative flights of darkness, beauty, horror and bizarreness. So as with the first book in the trilogy I can't, and even if I could wouldn't for want of spoiling such a fresh experience, tell you exactly what is going on in these books yet.

   Again, fantastical elements of this biblically-overgrown alternate version of Earth history are blended together with real historical bits, like William Blake or the Bedlam insane asylum. There is at least one thing I can tell you of what happens in this instalment with certainty. As the colonial settlers of Essenwald continue to plunge deeper into the Vorrh, they are beginning to disturb long-dormant strange creatures: these are the erstwhile, the angels who were given by God the task of guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden when humanity had been yeeted from it. However over the millennia, with the growth and thickening of the forest, they have lost their purpose, and in many cases their minds; most burying themselves in the ground and going to sleep. But now, as the Europeans disturb ever closer to the heart of the forest, they are waking up. And doing, to put it mildly, weird shit. One of these erstwhile has ended up in Bedlam, and makes friends with a German doctor who is visiting to investigate a tangential matter. Honestly, that's about all I can say with much surety. It certainly feels like things are drawing together loosely - plot elements overlapping increasingly and variably other characters from differing strands of the prior story crossing paths or conflicting unseen; but as with the first book this is an enigmatic novel and a half. Still beautifully-written though. Catling has a knack for describing actions and expressions or inheritances with a turn of phrase barely three or four words long that punches you in the brain's language centre so hard you wonder how you had never heard that combination of components used before, now it seems so obviously apt.

   As with the first book, a strong recommendation to any and all readers willing to get a bit lost. But be warned. If you spend too long in the Vorrh, it starts to affect your mind...

Guerrilla Warfare

This book - well, closer to a textbook really - by Ernesto Che Guevara, is the book about how to do guerrilla warfare. I mean, it's in the title. And its credentials are borne out by the reputation of its author, I would hope. Unlike the last book I read about how to do war well, this one is less full of mystical apothegms and more full of profoundly practical advice - stuff along the lines of:

• How to build a windproof bivouac shield for a campfire: here's a diagram
• Ideal places to take cover in an open bushy field
• Ideal places to take cover in a wooded hillside
• Ideal places for fireteams to cover each other moving through town streets
• Make sure you're kind to the local peasants; never steal from them, always pay them back for food and shelter when you can - and obviously never sexually abuse them or we will execute you as a traitor to the revolution
• Ensure you are familiar with revolutionary dogma in simple language so you can share it with any disenchanted locals we might befriend
• Steal every single bit of ammo from every single enemy that we kill, they have more of it than us
• Don't try and fight that tank you moron
• See that dug-in bunker? This (see diagram) is the angle you need to throw a grenade
• Develop simplistic hand-signals for silent communications when on covert action
• If you're a sniper move after every shot - obviously
• A disarmed and disoriented enemy is better for us than a dead enemy if we're behind their lines
• Get used to sleeping in mad, horrible places
• Keep moving
• Keep believing
• Keep your shoes empty, there are spiders
• Etc

   All sounds rather helpful if you're a minority force trying to overthrow an incumbent government, doesn't it? I will admit I currently have no violent revolutionary intentions - I was reading this to see if I could metaphorically derive any sociocultural tactics for making my spoken-word night (which is literally called Guerrilla) more impactful and authentic. Which is probably one of the faffiest reasons for reading this book anyone's ever had. But I still enjoyed it and learned a lot, and feel a tad more prepared if I ever do need to take up arms against the Tories some day. Which, you never know. But seriously - my list above may have taken a bit of a light-hearted slant towards the end, but I can't summate all the practical wisdom contained in this book in one blogpost - even though it's a short book, Che packs a lot in. As you would expect, from someone who took over Cuba with nothing but two notepads and an AK47.

the Prehistory of the Far Side

This book by Gary Larson is a highly interesting account of how he came to be one of the most highly-respectly and widely-syndicated comic artists of the late 20th-century (see for proof, the books of respective galleries one, two, three and four - as example).

   The first third of the book is a fairly sketchy but endearing autobiography of how Gary grew up with a fascination for nature, all its oddness and darkness; while also having a fairly odd and dark sense of humour - and naturally these things came together. He includes a few scans of drawings he did as a kid, several of which are fairly horrifyingly graphic - but you can see where the roots of the comic he become famous for came from. It's illuminating to say the least.

   The second third of the book is a dryer and more methodical walkthrough of his efforts to get published, then syndicated, then bigger - and so on. This sheds a great deal of insight into what exactly late-20th-century comic publishers were expecting from their artistic contributors and what they weren't, and it does largely seem that whatever Gary Larson was, they weren't expecting and didn't really want.* It took him a while to find his feet in the industry, and even when he did, the people managing his strips for the syndicates often didn't even understand the comics he was sending them - to the point that, if he sent in a batch of comics for a weeks' worth of newspapers, sometimes they would even mix-match captions between one or the other strip without even noticing, and often with no reader complaints that they "didn't get it" either. Gary Larson's style was simply that weird that people just took it as a given if it made close to zero sense. Though the dryest part of the book, I enjoyed this bit the most. It gives a great light into the inner and outer struggles of a cartoonist trying to get recognised and then successful; and with an honesty and humour throughout, never a bitterness.

   The final third is a compilation of Gary's favourite strips from his tenure, though most of these have already been featured in the galleries linked in the first paragraph. Anyway, if you not only have decided that you like The Far Side as a comic but are interested in the artistic, personal, and economic processes by which one becomes as weird a cartoonist as he, then this is definitely worth a read.

* I'll tell you what they wanted. They wanted Marmaduke: a dog who never made a noise or a mess or a fuss, only a vaguely sardonic thought-bubble in response to a borderline completely normal situation. They wanted Garfield: a cat with a big personality comprising of a whole four jokes under his belt that could be recycled ad nauseum at the expense of his obviously manic-depressive owner Jon Arbuckle... what they DID NOT want was a completely off-the-wall unhinged rumination on anthropology or natural history or fuck-knows-what every week with a completely different joke every time that most days even the editors wouldn't understand. But still, The Far Side remains a classic. How many people do you know that own a collection of Marmaduke strips? Exactly.

the Far Side Gallery 4

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery 3

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery 2

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

the Far Side Gallery

This book is a collection of 'The Far Side' comic strips by Gary Larson... if you're not familiar, then I admonish you to google the name of the comic and read a few, then once you're convinced buy a big fat book of them. They are some of the strangest, funniest, most imaginative cartoons ever to have blessed the flaps of a syndicated newspaper's cartoon page. My parents had the full collection of galleries and were having a clear-out, so naturally I ended up with the lot, and have read all four in the last few days. They just are that funny.

Tramp for the Lord

This book by Corrie ten Boom is an unexpected delight. I grew up on occasional stories about Corrie ten Boom; how she and her Christian Dutch family sheltered Jewish families throughout the Holocaust for years, right up until the end where they were captured and she and her sister Betsy were taken to a concentration camp, where Betsy died, but Corrie survived just long enough to see the camp's liberation at the end of the war. They were inspiring stories, and form the backbone of her more famous work The Hiding Place - but I'd never read that myself. But somehow I found myself drawn to what she found herself doing with her life after so much trauma. And man, is it remarkable.

   The autobiographical chapters in this book span decades, recounting historical events as she grows up through and past them, all with an unshakeable faith in Christ that carries her through everything as she persists in a singular quest to share the joy and hope she has in Jesus with as many people in as many place as she can. It's truly inspiring. And not just the task of it - the bulk of these chapters is comprised of a variety of hindrances, from lost airline tickets to localised epidemics to terrorist attacks to you-name-it - but Corrie's immediate instinct is always to retreat and to pray, and to continue doing so, while blessing those around her however she can, until something rights itself. And in these chapters, it always seems to. A cynic may easily say these are the miraculous wishings of a senile woman with nothing in her head but the dregs of a meaningless faith. But I do not think a woman of her calibre could have been what she had without developing a hard shell of robustness and fortitude in telling what is mere coincidence or genuine miracle or both; and more often than not, both IS both - that's the point. Her faith and her prayer and her patience sees her through so many strange and stressful situations in this book that she not only makes her global tour appointments as a speaker to congregations more or less on time, but she touches and brightens the lives of many random folks around the world as she does so. I found this a genuinely inspiring book - if not necessarily for how I think my life could ever go, then insofar as I may have faith, patience and prayerfulness. Lord give me the strength to be the kind of tramp Corrie was.

Against the Flow

This book by John Lennox is an examination of the core themes of the biblical prophetic book of Daniel, and extrapolating ideas from this to apply to how we as God's people might continue to live faithfully in a world that is increasingly secular and idolatrous. I bought this book as a gift for my dad's birthday, so I'm actually quite late in vetting it (which usual readers will know I do for all books I intend to give people, to make sure they're up to scratch) - but I've not seen him since the actual occasion so it's probably alright.

   Anyway, sorry, the book, yes. It's okay, I guess. The scholarship is rigorous - both in biblical and historical terms; Lennox demonstrates having done a great deal of thinking into the text of Daniel and the ancient context of 1200ish BCE Babylon, which makes for a great deal of well-footnoted and illuminating insight into exactly why certain points in the text work well. He also spends a fair amount of effort explicating why and how certain themes in the original prophet's writings apply to trends in modern society - I think his heart is in the right place here, but in my opinion most of these arguments come across as a bit heavy-handedly out-of-touch with the pulse of secular culture. Almost as if this were a book written to aid people in apologetics by someone who hadn't actually needed to apologise for over a decade because everyone else he knows is a devout and well-read biblical scholar. I mean, I don't know you, John Lennox, so forgive me if that seems like a harsh reading, but that's how it came across to me. I can't really imagine any non-Christian perusing this text to have a mind-blowing revelation of "wow that's what I'm missing from God", nor any juvenile believer studying your book to pick up anything from it that makes them think "wow now I can really convert all my apostate friends". It's deep yes, but it's scholarly more than anything; and while that is far from worthless - especially with a book as prophetic and rich as Daniel - Christians, study that all you can - I don't think this would be the top of my list of recommendations for people of any or no faiths.

   At least my dad doesn't read this blog. He's still getting it (albeit late) for his birthday.

Project Öcalan

This isn't really a book, it was my Masters dissertation. But it's as long as some books! And more scholarly, if I may say so myself, than many others! And I've reread it, so it gets a post! Not a long one though as I've already done one (see previous link).

If you'd be interested in reading an examination of whether & how post-nationalist ideologies are reshaping the Kurdish question in the contemporary Middle-East, then I've left a .pdf of it open to all on my Google Docs folder. So click here. By the way, the reason it's called Project Öcalan on here is that the founder of the PKK and key thinker behind the recent ideological shifts I talk about is that very same Abdullah.

Jesus: A Biography from a Believer

This book by Christian and biographical historian Paul Johnson is an interesting little creature. I've just speed-read it because I'm giving it to my mum for her birthday and I wanted to check it was the kind of thing she'd find interesting and edifying.

   Honestly I'm not really sure who this book is for. Pretty much all of the biographical details are lifted directly from the Gospels,* which is fine and all considering it was written by a Christian, but it makes the book of little apologetic value for non-believer readers who may well doubt the veracity of the New Testament texts at face value; and for Christian readers adds nothing that was not already present in those same texts except maybe a sprinkling of vaguely-insightful commentary here and there. There are several fairly helpful passages explicating historical bits of contextual culture or politics or norms, but none of these are things the average Christian reader couldn't find in a halfway-decent study Bible, and none of it really goes far enough to be again of much apologetic value to non-Christian readers.

   All that said, it is nice to have the life of the Messiah straightened out without having to dive chapter-and-verse between four different books trying to assemble a chronology; instead Jesus's life story is organised more by thematic blocks; early life, miracles, teaching, conflict with religious leaders, crucifixion, and afterwards. I don't know who I'd recommend this book to honestly, which is a shame because Paul Johnson's biography of Socrates was incredibly illuminating. Sorry mum, I hope you like it anyway.

* He does make good mention of the fact that Jesus is included in the official non-Christian histories by both Tacitus and Josephus, but doesn't dig into this a whole lot and it's more just an off-the-cuff reference.