10 Works of Fiction That Sustained Young David Copperfield

Before being sent off to school David used to love to read these in a room next to his bedroom, books left by his father. I confess I have only read two or three of these.

1. Roderick Random (Tobias Smollet|)
2. Peregrine Pickle (Tobias Smollet|)
3. Humphrey Clinker (Tobias Smollett)
4. Tom Jones (Henry Fielding)
5. The Vicar of Wakefield (Oliver Goldsmith)
6. Don Quixote (Miguel Cervantes trans Tobias Smollett)
7. Gil Blas (Alain-René Lesage trans Tobias Smollett)
8. Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)
9. The Arabian Nights
10. The Tales of the Genii (James Ridley)

Five More Books Recently Read

I liked that idea of reviewing five books recently read, which I did last month. Here are another randoom five. I so enjoyed Alexander McCall Smith's collection of stories last time that I read another recently. Ths time the gifted story teller takes a series of old photographs and crafts his stories from these. It's a bit like Vivaldi perhaps - every piece well told but may be it's too easy. I also read for the first time Douglas Adams'  The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy., I bought a little box set years ago and have never looked at it so now I've made a start. A well written novel that is still quite funny. Secret Societies by Nick Harding simply goes through different ones informatvely and encyclopediacally. Filled a few gaps in my knowledge. I know Mack Tomlinson through my father-in-law and he recently gifted me a copy of his new hardback on the Brainerd brothers. It's a brilliant book - very informative. By looking at David alongside his brother John, a more realistic and nuanced picture emerges. This is really worth getting hold of. And then finally, Rev Samuel Davies Abroad is a book I've long known about for years. My recent studies on Samson Occom prompted me to look for it again and having found an old library copy online I have devoured it. Samuel Davies came to Britain in around 1754. His diary for the period os fascinating.

Two Days Off Week 38 2022

As we have I think mentioned, it is good to take two days off sometimes if you can in the ministry. That opportunity came last week as last Monday was the bank holiday. Like many others I spent much of the day watching the funeral. A lot of it was not to my liking but you hope some gospel broke through. The thing about it that struck me most was how just when you think this isn't a "Christian country" any more, it turns out it is - sort of. In the evening we watched some less demanding TV. The next day I read a chunk of Moby Dick which I'm not funding easy to get through, mostly because it's long rather than uninteresting. I also watched Catch me if you can a 2002 feature film I'd never seen for some reason. (I have a vague plan to record and watch films I happen never to have seen. I've watched recently High Noon, Twelve angry men and Vertigo).

Day Off Week 5 2022

The other day I was in a bookshop and spotted in the sale box the hardback edition of the novel Jack by Marilynne Robinson for ridiculously meagre £2. On my day off this week I decided to read the novel and was pleasantly surprised to see, on opening it, that it had a ribbon bookmark and, moreover, was a signed copy! I think the novel was published a t a bad time and sales have been lower than expected. Anyway I read about half of its 300 or so pages (I'm not a quick reader but it contains lots of dialogue). One review described it as a Calvinist romance and so far I've enjoyed it - more in fact than Gilead the best known of the four part trilogy (!). I also watched a little TV and a bit of word puzzling, as it's the current craze. It was nice to have our nephew here from Cardiff in the evening. Nice day.

Christmas Books 2021

Around this time of the year I like to mention the books that I have been given for Christmas. This varied bunch is from my sons, my wife and my father-in-law. The one on the Universe accompanied a beautiful gemstone collection representing the planets of the solar system. I have read that now and started on the Cromwell biography and the book of Paul McCartney. The one on the Heath is about nearby Hampstead Heath by Hunter Davies, while the other two (Christmas Carol and The Great Gatsby) are novels in the beautiful Chiltern series.

Day Off Week 36 2021

Last Tuesday was a lovely hot day and so I put on a flowery t shirt and shorts and made the most of it walking and reading in the garden. (Someone gave me the new Stephen King Billy Summers which one can't really recommend but that is well written and interesting all the way). I also found time for a bit of TV (an old police drama series on catch up The Commander).

10 Poisons used in Agatha Christie Novels

This was prompted by a question on last Monday's University Challenge

1. Cyanide (The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side, And Then There Were None, A Pocketful of Rye, Sparkling Cyanide). A rapidly acting, potentially deadly chemical that can exist in various forms. Cyanide can be a colourless gas, such as hydrogen cyanide (HCN) or cyanogen chloride (CNCl), or a crystal form such as sodium cyanide (NaCN) or potassium cyanide (KCN)..
2. Arsenic (4.50 From Paddington). A chemical element with the symbol As and atomic number 33.
3. Strychnine (The Mysterious Affair at Styles). A white, odourless, bitter crystalline powder that can be taken by mouth, inhaled (breathed in), or mixed in a solution and given intravenously (injected directly into a vein). It is a strong poison.
4. Digitalis (Appointment with Death). Poison derived form the foxglove.
5. Morphine (Sad Cypress). An opiate painkiller that can kill in the right dosage.
6. Thallium (The Pale Horse). A chemical element with the symbol Tl and atomic number 81.
7. Coniine (Five Little Pigs) an alkaloid extracted from hemlock, it works peripherally as a neurotoxin, causing death by respiratory paralysis. Less than 200 micrograms is fatal.
8. Bacillus anthracis (Cards On The Table). Gram-positive and rod-shaped bacterium that causes anthrax, a deadly disease to livestock and, occasionally, to humans.
9. Phosphorus (Dumb Witness). A chemical element with the symbol P and atomic number 15.
10. Belladonna also known as Deadly Nightshade (The Caribbean Mystery, The Big Four). Poisonous plant.

(Sleeping tablets feature in Lord Edgware Dies).

Day Off Week 26 2021

This week's day off, of course included plenty of football - England finally living up to their potential against Germany and Ukraine beating Sweden. That was the evening. Before that I had been out for a good walk and had had a coffee and done the crossword, etc. The rest of the time was mainly reading, making an overdue phone call and some blog and article work. On the reading front I started to tackle Bavinck on a Christian Worldview. It was given me free at the Catalyst conference. It is well translated but I found it hard going beyond the introductory matter. I also went back to my unfinished copy of Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. I have mentioned a pile of ten unread or part read novels that I am hoping to get on with at some point. I got quite a way through Gilead last time but got distracted so I have started again and am enjoying. Reading has such a providential element, it is important to read the right book at the right time. I should probably abandon the Bavinck. I am coming to it too late in life - or may be not.

Day Off Week 21 2021

Last Tuesday there was time for some TV and a coffee out but most of the time went on reading. I had several books for my birthday and made a big dent in several of them. I have now finished the book onf Focus which is full of interest for fans. As so often with this sort of book the proof reading (if any was done at all) is appalling. Mr Lambe if there is going to be a second edition, please please let me proof read it. I'm happy to do it for free. I enjoyed the Gavin Peacock in the main. It is a football book really but with a few twists. As I read, I realised I had seen Gavin play for QPR back in 2001. I'd taken the older boys there on some sort of cheap tickets deal in connection with the local school. The Richard Osman is lovely and undemanding. So that is

Decades – Focus in the 1970s Stephen Lambe

A Greater Glory: My Journey from the Pitch to the Pulpit Gavin Peacock h/b

The Thursday Murder Club Richard Osman

John and Betty Stam: Missionary Martyrs Vance Christie

Captive to the Word of God: A Particular Baptist Perspective Stuart Brogden

10 Works of fiction Penelope Fitzgerald

1. The Golden Child (1977)
2. The Bookshop (1978)
3. Offshore (1979)
4. Human Voices (1980)
5. At Freddie's (1982)
6. Innocence (1986)
7. The Beginning of Spring (1988)
8. The Gate of Angels (1990)
9. The Blue Flower (1995)
10. The Means of Escape (2000)*

*Short stories the others are all novels. I've read most of them.

Day Off Week 29 2020

Things are beginning to get back to normal. Following a reconnoitring trip the day before I found that at our nearby O2 shopping centre a branch of the Soho Coffee Company is not only letting you sit down there but is serving the coffee in China. So I took a copy of a recently purchased novel Human voices by Penelope Fitzgerald and had a good read. In fact the book is such an easy read I had it finished before the day was over. It is the one most like her first Golden Child and features the BBC during the war. it is full of gentle humour and a silvery undertone of sadness punctuated by brilliant turns of phrase from time to time.the novel.

Day Off Week 24 2020

The main thing I like to do on my day off is some reading. Today I read a big chunk of For whom the bell tolls by Ernest Hemingway. My edition is the one in the Great Writers part series I collected years back. (This is one of a number of unread novels that I feel I should have got round to by now. Earlier in the year I finally read Catcher in the Rye and am part way through Catch 22). I was prompted to read Hemingway as The New Yorker has just published a lost story of his. See here. Once into it, it is a fairly easy read though a strange one in that the dialogue purports to be translated from Spanish and he deals with bad language in an odd way (which I am happy with). I managed to get my 10,000 steps in too and one or two other things as well as watching some Netflix. We are watching a dubbed Italian crime drama.

How to preach in a plague

... Neither can I acquit those ministers that in their sermons rather sank than lifted up the hearts of their hearers. Many of them no doubt did it for the strengthening the resolution of the people, and especially for quickening them to repentance, but it certainly answered not their end, at least not in proportion to the injury it did another way; and indeed, as God Himself through the whole Scriptures rather draws to Him by invitations and calls to turn to Him and live, than drives us by terror and amazement, so I must confess I thought the ministers should have done also, imitating our blessed Lord and Master in this, that His whole Gospel is full of declarations from heaven of God’s mercy, and His readiness to receive penitents and forgive them, complaining, ‘Ye will not come unto Me that ye may have life’, and that therefore His Gospel is called the Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of Grace.
But we had some good men, and that of all persuasions and opinions, whose discourses were full of terror, who spoke nothing but dismal things; and as they brought the people together with a kind of horror, sent them away in tears, prophesying nothing but evil tidings, terrifying the people with the apprehensions of being utterly destroyed, not guiding them, at least not enough, to cry to heaven for mercy.

Daniel Defoe A Journal of the Plague Year 

Some recent films

Unusually, I've been out to the cinema three times in as many weeks. I enjoyed all three films.

1. A beautiful day in the neighbourhood with Tom Hanks is a lovely quiet film (it even includes a period of silence at one point - rare in films). It is based on the true story of Fred Rogers and the journalist Tom Junod (called Eric Vogel.in the film).  It was particularly good to have someone who prayed and read his Bible as a central character in a film and not to see him mocked. Rogers was  a PCUSA minister I don't know how sound he was or was not. Anyway I was glad I caught the film. Worth checking out on any size screen.

2. Emma was the only one I manged to see with someone - it was Valentine's Day and this was just the film for the day. The film went for every laugh it could muster (having Bill Nighy and Miranda Hart in the cast really helps) but still stuck pretty much to Austen as far as I could see. All the comedy meant that the cringing point when Emma is mean to Miss Bates is very powerful. Great stuff. 

3. Little women is also of literary stamp and this new version I found delectable. I loved every bit of it (themes, actors, costumes, scenery, etc, etc). Of course, it's been presented as a feminist piece but most of the points made in that direction I thought were pretty fair. Louisa May Alcott was of Transcendentalist Unitarian stock so there is a lot missing but on its own terms the book is wonderful and this version just beautiful.

I notice that two of the three films were directed by women (Marielle Heller and Greta Gerwig; I thought Autumn de Wild might be a woman but it is a man).
PS As I initially thought, all three are women. Apologies for the confusion.

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.

The Year of Reading Dangerously

One of my presents this year was the book The year of reading dangerously. Andy Miller, an English Lit graduate (snap) and a writer tells us something i=of his life story and how, after having gotten out of the habit of reading, he set himself the task of reading fifty books in a year. This could be potentially boring even for us eng lit types but he uses variety and is very honest about how he gets on with the different books. He also includes fan letters on two favourites Michel Houellebecq and Douglas Adams. He has interesting sections on high brow and low brow culture and is helpful in reminding us that if we want to do anything it takes a bit of determination and that not all of us will enjoy all that is considered to be great literature. There is a tendency to be seeking salvation through reading, which is a form of idolatry.

Day Off Week 46 2019

A fairly typical day off this week. I read the new Private Eye and the newspaper over coffee. There was some transferring of files from one computer to another and some blog work. I also finished two books I might have mentioned, Michael Messenger on Elgar and Laurence Binet's novel come reportage - very interesting style (a bit of a pain in places) - on Reinhard Heydrich and his assassins. Also some TV later.

The Bookshop

We enjoyed watching this slowly paced film harking back to 1959 and one woman's efforts to establish a bookshop. I have stated before that I am not fully signed up to the view that believes reading well written books is some cure all but we enjoyed the film on its own level. I read Penelope Fitzgerald's 1978 book a while ago and it was interesting to see how the characters were handled in the film. It was a good idea to include the modern book in the shot of a modern bookshop in the closing sequence.

The film is narrated by someone other than the book I think and the film has a dramatic ending I don't recall from the book. Silly things like including a book by Philip Larkin ten years too soon is done just to annoy pedants like me I guess. I'm not sure about the hints at romance between the two main characters either. Why the cowman becimes  aferryman and where th ghost goes I ahve no idea.

The villagers are presented in a pretty negative light. I would like to see more balance which may be the book has.

"Day off" Week 39

The luxury of a day off is not always possible and so it has proved this week. What I did was to stagger it across Monday Tuesday - not ideal but better than nothing. I had hospital visits (just tests) on both days and those took up a chunk of time as did a visit to Kensington to pick up a visa for a forthcoming trip. One good thing was that the fitbit 1000 steps were easily achieved and more on both days. Otherwise, I did some reading (Nobel winner J M Coetzee's 1999 Booker prize winning novel Disgraced is a bit tawdry in its subject matter but well written and thought provoking with regards to South Africa and the wider world) and put together a Billy bookcase over in my study and watched the latest episodes of Vanity Fair (excellent) and Strangers (not so hot) as well as doing some blogging. Interleaved with all this was the beginnings of sermon preparation and a basic Bible study on the Tuesday night (only one person extra made it). Coffee and crossword puzzles also had their place as ever.

The Golden Child by Penelope Fitzgerald

I recently read another Penelope Fitzgerald novel, her first (of nine). The Golden Child came out in 1977 and it has been said that it "offers a satirical version of the King Tut exhibition at the British Museum" (of 1972). It also pokes fun at museum politics, academic scholars and Cold War spying. it has 11 main characters and without visual clues I got some of them mixed up a bit adn the denouement which is of the detective genre was not that gripping but it is otherwise good stuff with some very funny lines. I wished I'd marked the funny lines. I read that the original draft was 75, 000 word but the publishers got her to cut it too 50,000. Good thing.

Some examples I found

In order to continue living in a very small terraced house in Claphain South, [ ... ] he had to repay to the Whitstable and Protective Building Society the sum of f 118 a month. This figure loomed so large in Waring's daily thoughts, was so punctually waiting for him during any idle moment, that it sometimes seemed to him that his identity was changing and that there was no connection with the human being of five years ago who had scorned concentration on material things.

'[t1he true international solidarity was not between workers, but between queuers'.

The courtyard was entirely filled with people. A restrained noise rose from them, like the grinding of the sea at slack water. They made slight surges forward, then back, but always gaining an inch.