Day Off Week 4 2020

Last Tuesday was odd as I fully intended to be in Swansea for the Eccentrics Conference. As it turned out the car broke down on the M4 on Monday night and I had to be towed back home. So it was a more regular day off, although Eleri was home, which is unusual. Apart from sorting the car I watched University Challenge, did some blogging and read -  a bit of Catch 22 and a good chunk of Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath purchased the other day on the strength of the previous book. I also caught up on Bible reading.

Day Off Week 3 2020

I thought I would try and keep some sort of record of days off once again. I am doing this because I would guess a lot of ministers are not very good at this (I wasn't myself at one time). These days off are not ideal by any means but I find it a great help simply to try. This week was especially so as I had had a bad Monday, a minister's Monday. (Weeks one or two were holiday and conference weeks).

Having read the book of reading mentioned recently (by Andy Miller) I have written a list of novels I feel I should have read by now. So I have now finished J D Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and started on Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, which I have attempted before. So I know now why Salinger used the title he did and I can see why the book is given to young people. Personally, I am happier to have read it later in life. One passage stands out in the book, where the narrator says

I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. If you want to know the truth, the guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the Disciples, ....(p. 130)

I was also reading the book we are due to discuss next Monday at the Pastor's Academy Interpreting Scripture by Craig Carter which is proving to be both interesting and fairly easy to read, despite the sometimes arcane subject matter. I did most of my reading on the tube. As I now have free travel I thought I might just head west on the Metropolitan line. I left it a bit late and got only as far as Northwood (LST is just outside there). It was rather wet and boring. Back here in the evening we watched the documentary on Peter Kay shown over Christmas adn the news.

Book Buys September on

We had a nice little series going, which is complete until August, simply recording monthly book buys. It all went a bit quiet on that front and so I haven't reported for a while and am not entirely sure where we are. I did mention getting a copy of Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I had wanted it for a while but having started it I haven't really got into it. I also bought on impulse one day P D James interesting Talking about detective fiction which I have almost completed.

For another five weeks The Times were giving away Penguin paperbacks again on weekdays so I have another 20 or so of those. Some are titles I already had (eg Tlast of the Mohicans, The Moonstone, Frankenstein) but most I didn't. I read Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep which I had never tackled some of the science volumes.

That's all very secular. I have also purchased Malcom McLean's book on The Lord's Supper for the John Owen Centre reading group.

Book Buys July

Rather quiet on the book buying front this month in some ways. Almost no Christian books bought but two events piled up my supply of secular books.

First, The Times were giving away Penguin paperbacks free in certain places. By this means I picked up the following

1. Green (Adventure)
The 39 Steps by John Buchan
Treasure Island by R L Stevenson
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle
The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers
(I missed Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne)
I've read the first two but not the second two. It would be nice to get round to them.

2. Pink (Romance)
The Lady with the Little Dog and other stories by Chekov
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
Sons and Lovers by D H Lawrence
(I missed Madame Bovary by Faubert)
I don't think I've read any of these.

Then, second, I was on Oxford Street and they had a closing down sale in Borders (no surprise there, they never seemed to know quite what they were doing). For £1 each I got

Julia Pastrana: The Tragic Story of the Victorian Ape Woman/Gylseth and Toverud

Hans Christian Andersen/Jack Zipes
Will in the World: How Shakespeare became Shakepseare/Stephen Greenblatt
Text and Experience: Toward a Cultural Exegesis of the Bible/Ed Smith-Christopher

I also got in July for £1 each biographies of George Elliot and Chrisopher Wren in the very interesting people series from OUP (I have one on Ruskin already). The other buy was the very interesting

Why not Catch-21 by Gary Dexter