"Oh, blessed quality of books, that makes them a refuge from living! For in a book everything can be made to fit in, all tedium can be skipped over, and the intense moments can be made timeless and eternal. The art of writing can fix the high elusive hour and stand in things divine." - Hilaire Belloc
Books I am reading now
A witty and observant record of his long walk, attempting to go straight as the arrow flies, using no transport, from France to Rome in 1903. He met a different and now lost world.
A return to the French Vietnam war. A 'quiet American' dies, but who was he, why are the US authorities so interested, and what was he doing there in Saigon. Prescient of Western involvement in world affairs, albeit set in miniature.
Books I have read recently
'Behind every great man is a woman', the old saw goes. In this case behind the great travelog writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, was his equally remarkable wife, Joan. Very much a person in her own right, embedded in the elites of the day. I admit these people were (and are) at times mildly repulsive, but these were the notable and deeply influential 'young things' of their day.
Although I am reading through a 1940 volume, this tome is widely available as a reprint and an e-book. An example of the results of older academic studies, and in this case into a field rarely written about any more. An in-depth (523pp) analysis of the decline of the Roman Republic, through the Empire and Contantinism, into the rise of Augustinian thought in the West. A book to be read slowly and digested carefully
The driest of dry wit from the owner of Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop, in the wee country's only book-town. Shaun paints the people of Wigtown, his customers and the behemoth Amazon, in johnsonian prose. He presents to the reader: our world, in a bookshop.
A strong case for the pre-18th century chronological supremacy of St Matthew's Gospel. Dr Black bases his conclusion on two evidences: historical, and narrative. Matthew was written for the 1st church (Jerusalem), Luke for the 2nd (Paul's) and Mark for the 3rd (Rome). Also, fascinatingly, new reading of Mark reveals it *must* have been compiled from the pre-existent works of Matthew and Luke.
A biography of one of Ireland/Scotland's greatest, and most enigmatic, warrior-evangelists. The central person to the bringing of the Gospel to West Scotland and, through his legacy in the Celtic Church, to the English, French, Germans and beyond. An astonishingly fertile time in the second half of the first millenium.
A deliciously ripe modern English translation of this 18th century novel of noble and peasant life in Russia long before the fall of the the Czars. The narrative is presented as beautiful stories, without any 19th or 20th century angst filtering. These are people who aspired, loved and lost in a simple society where order was tangible.
A deeply challenging read, especially for those of a Calvinist faith. Bradley asks us: is your God the Jesus of the New Testament or the (apparent) YHWH of the Old? Seriously, is the perfect image of the living God the man in whom the fullness of God dwelt, the totally God and totally man, Jesus - is he the great I AM, or is he not? If Jesus is who trinitarians believe him to be, then we probably have got our practical theology wrong. I get it, but I am still working out the implications of the leap Jersak invites us to make.
Better known as the radical textile pattern designer whose work is still printed and in great demand, William Morris wrote this, the granddaddy of all fantasy novels. Written in a cod-mediæval style, in truth a bit dry, we see the roots of the works of such as Tolkien and CS Lewis' bold and imaginative epics. Perhaps to be read hand-in-hand with Tolkein's history of fairy tales, Tree and Leaf (see below).
Books I have found to be inspiring reading