Success

I am very much enjoying Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: The Story of Success (UK editionL London, Penguin, 2009). Interesting, stimulating, unusual.

Gladwell argues that success is of course due to talent, but we often underestimate the importance of hard work and opportunity. More important still are culture and community. This isn't great news for us, but its fantastic news for our great grandchildren if we can manage to stay put and keep in touch.

Home

Amazon have kindly informed me that Marryline Robinson's Home (Virago Press) has won the Orange Prize for Fiction (by a woman published in the UK). Since I very much enjoyed Gilead I've ordered a copy. Here's a bit of blurb:

Reviews from Amazon.Co.Uk website:
'Her fiction attends with rapt attention to the "dear ordinary" breathing fresh air into the long-standing debates of American Protestantism' Kasia Boddy, DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A quietly moving novel of faith and forgiveness.' Amber Pearson, DAILY MAIL 'So finely wrought as to make the work of her more productive contemporaries seem tawdry by comparison ... The cadences of her prose have a resonant authority more like that of a great music rather than language. The effect is utterly haunting. The bad news is that is makes all other writing seem jejune for ages afterwards' Jane Shilling, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH 'This is certainly a novel about faith and love. However, it is also a meditation on doubt and fear ... There is both a subtlety and a simplicity about her most powerful themes. She asserts the elusiveness of perfection, the foolishness of sever self-judgement and the unavoidable necessity of having to suffer in order to love ...The beauty of HOME is that it does not offer the counterfeit currency of certainty but proffers the under-valued coin of hope. That is its glory, too' HERALD 'Compelling' OBSERVER 'One of the saddest books I have ever loved' Sarah Churchwell, GUARDIAN

Back from Planet Narnia

Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward (OUP , New York, 2008) was wonderful, fascinating and persuasive.

Anyone interested in the world, Christianity, God, Lewis, literature or pretty much anything else besides should read this book. Its beautifully written, eloquent and playful. I often found myself marking passages on most pages. Perhaps some Narnia inspired blog posts in days to come.

It was expensive a bit hard to get hold of. My copy seems to be missing the promised picture gallery after p. 126. And I wondered if the index could have been a bit fuller (perhaps with entries for baptism 138, 161, 172, 249; language 145; martyrdom 97; sacraments 30, 49, 163), but I shouldn't quibble.

Reading log

What I’m reading:

Peter Leithart, A Great Mystery – slowly! - 14 sermons from weddings – surprising stuff – short homolies, more philosophical / theological than from a biblical text, interesting ideas and good stuff, not very plagerisable

For fun:

C. S. Forester’s Adniral Horblower omnibus – good fun, undemanding, heroic. I devoured all (20 odd is it?) the Patrick O’Brian Aubrey novels in a couple of years – I think they’re better literature. I don’t know why I seem to have liking for seafaring yarns. I’ve never sailed properly. I cant always tell what’s going on, but its often very exciting.

I’ve nearly finished these so I’d be gratfeul for suggestions for what next: no more sea for a while - something not too too trashy but not too much like doing your homework. Maybe some Morse or Cadfeal? Or some not too worthy 99p Penguin Classic?

Wodehouse, Jeeves and Wooster omnibus has sat by my bed for a while – fun enough and mildly diverting but I’m not compellingly gripped. Can I be bothered with more, what oh?

Academic:

Still speech act stuff, mainly Vanhoozer. Time to move on!

What I might read next:

Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready: directions for defending the faith – theory and practice of presuppositional apologetics and a few chapters on specific issues such as the problem of evil

I’ve just ordered:

Robert Alter, The Pleasures of Reading in an ideological age – a plea for reading great literature – highly recommended by Ros Clark who’s been arguing that Bible teachers need to be better readers

David Allen, Getting Things Done: the art of stress-free productivity – I’m a sucker for self-help / management books – I guess I’m lazy and hoping for a magical quick fix – this one seems to be much esteemed by computer geeks

Academic (though not till Monday, of course):

Those few "good" (i.e. significant) books (on language and literary theory)

Stuff on semiotics, words as signs and the Bible

* * *

Cataloguing some of my books on Library Thing has reminded me that I’m better at buying books than I am at reading them. But I don’t think I’m very good at buying them either: I can’t resist a “bargin” which turns out to be cheap because its junk.