Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Of the making of books

Having just had a birthday, I have even more things on my growing pile of books to read.

I'm currently reading Reggie Kidd's Wealth and Beneficence in the Pastoral Epistles as part of my preparation for my MA (I have an interview about that on Thursday, so here's hoping...)

I am also reading Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk's The Missional Leader: Equipping your church to reach a changing world. Roxburgh's slim volume on mission and liminality is a key text in my understanding of my ministry, so this beefier tome is proving to be pretty stimulating.

I'm also reading CJ Sansom's Winter in Madrid - not as compelling as his Matthew Shardlake novels but good all the same.

I'm also dipping into Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses from time to time (in those quiet moments I have so many of!)

Now onto my pile has come Eamon Duffy's Marking the Hours: English People and their prayers 1240-1570. Duffy is the author of the wonderful Voices of Morebeth, one of the best studies of the Reformation in England published over the past 25 years. So I'm looking forward to this new one. He has a great eye for detail and is able to show how those details fit the broad sweep of a historical narrative.

And I also got Toby Jones' Utopian Dreams, his story of travels among various intentional communities in search of the good life. I heard him talking about it on Start the Week on radio 4 and he strongly suggested that it was the Christian communities that seemed to offer most to troubled people in a confusing world. So I'm looking forward to that as well.

Ah, i just need six weeks with my feet up by a pool, a waiter bringing long cooling drinks and the sun setting over a palm fringed beach.....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

As someone who reads one book at a time I'm fascinated that you (and other bloggers) read so many simultaneously - how do you do it? Do you ever get the content mixed up? How can I gain what would seem to be an incredibly useful skill? Oh, and happy belated birthday! Margaret