MY 2021 READING

Those in bold are my top 10: 

January 

1. Elizabeth Strout, Olive, Again 
2. Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God
3. Bryan Washington, Lot 
4. Dr Lisa Oakley & Justin Humphreys, Escaping the Maze of Spiritual Abuse: Creating healthy Christian cultures

February 

1. Chuck DeGroat, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing your community from emotional and spiritual abuse 
2. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)
3. Katherine May, Wintering: The power of rest and retreat in difficult times 
4. Mark D Thompson, A Clear and Present Word: The clarity of Scripture 
5. Bryan Washington, Memorial
6. Diane Langberg, Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church 
7. Tana French, The Wych Elm

March 

1. Wade Mullen, Something's Not Right: Decoding the tactics of abuse and freeing yourself from its power 
2. Stephen McAlpine, Being the Bad Guys: How to live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn't 
3. Suzanne Heywood, What Does Jeremy Think? Jeremy Heywood and the Making of Modern Britain
4. Simon P Walker, Leading out of Who You Are: Discovering the Secret of Undefended Leadership 

April 

1. Fleming Rutledge, Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday
2. Andy Friend, Ravilious & Co.: The Pattern of Friendship
3. Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
4. Tim Pears, In the Place of Fallen Leaves
5. Greg Johnson, Still Time to Care: What we can learn from the church's failed attempt to cure homosexuality

May 

1. Alan Don, Faithful Witness: The confidential diaries of Alan Don, Chaplain to the King, the Archbishop and the Speaker, 1931-1946 (Edited by Robert Beaken) 
2. Scott McKnight & Laura Barringer, A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture  That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing 
3. Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing 
4. Fiona Stafford, The Brief Life of Flowers
5. Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God
6. David Nicholls, Sweet Sorrow
7. Fiona Robertson, Rules of Belonging: Change your organisational culture, delight your people and turbo-charge your results  
8. Susan Howatch, Scandalous Risks

June 

1. Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the grace of lament
2. Cathy Rentzenbrink, Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books 
3. Peggy Orenstein, Boys & Sex: Young men on hookups, love, porn, consent, and navigating the new masculinity 

July 

1. Susan Howatch, Absolute Truths 
2. Catherine Lacey, Pew 
3. William Trevor, The Old Boys 
4. Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man 
5. Samantha Harvey, The Western Wind 
6. Adam Sisman, John le Carré: The Biography 
7. RC Sheriff, The Fortnight in September 
8. Katherine Langrish, From Spare Oom to War Drobe: Travels in Narnia with my Nine Year-Old Self   
9. Francis S Schaeffer, The Church Before the Watching World
10. Matthew Mullins, Enjoying the Bible: Literary Approaches to Loving the Scriptures
11. Rachel Gardner, The Sex Thing: Reimagining conversations with young people about sex

August

1. Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove
2. Andrew Wilson, God of All Things: Rediscovering the sacred in an everyday world 
3. Jan Morris, Thinking Again
4. Brad House & Gregg Allison, MultiChurch: Exploring the Future of Multisite 
5. John le Carré, Absolute Friends

September 

1. Brandon Taylor, Filthy Animals 
2. An Yu, Braised Pork

October 

1. David James Poissant, Lake Life 
2. Natalia Ginzburg, The Dry Heart
3. Stewart O'Nan, The Odds: A Love Story
4. Natalia Ginzberg, The Little Virtues
5. John Stott, But I Say To You....Christ the Controversialist 
6. Darrin W Snyder Belousek, Marriage, Scripture, and the Church 
7. Susan Howatch, Mystical Paths 
8. Christos Tsiolkas, Loaded 
9. Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex 

November

1.  Michael Jenkins, A House in Flanders 
2. Henry "Chips" Channon, Diaries (Volume 1) 1918-38 (Edited by Simon Heffer) 
3. Gregg A Ten Elshof, I told me so: self-deception and the Christian life

December

1. Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You
2. Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth 
3. Margaret Bullard, Endangered Species: Diplomacy from the Passenger Seat
4. Karen Soole, Liberated: How the Bible exalts and dignifies women 
5. Peter Davidson, The Lighted Window: Evening Walks Remembered
6. Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession 
7. Jenny Offill, Weather 
8. Toby Faber, Faber & Faber: The Untold Story
9. Alistair Macleod, No Great Mischief

HOW SEXUAL LIBERATION HAS FAILED TO LIBERATE

'According to its claims, sexual liberation ought logically to have brought in a time of "naturalness," ease, and candor between men and women. It has, on the contrary, filled the country with sexual self-consciousness, uncertainty, and fear.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.141.

PRACTICING LOVE WHEN WE DON'T FEEL IT

'The proper question, perhaps, is not why we have so much divorce, but why we are so unforgiving. The answer, perhaps, is that, though we still recognize the feeling of love, we have forgotten how to practice love when we don't feel it.'
Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.140.

THE PRACTICE OF LOVE

'...marriage, family life, friendship, neighborhood, and other personal connections do not depend exclusively or even primarily on justice - though, of course, they all must try for it. They depend also on trust, patience, respect, mutual help, forgiveness - in other words, the practice of love, as opposed to the mere feeling of love.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.139.

THE INDUSTRIALSATION OF SEX

'The triumph of the industrial economy is the fall of community. But the fall of community revels how precious and how necessary community is. For when community falls, so must fall all the things that only community life can engender and protect: the care of the old, the care and education of children, family life, neighborly work, the handing down of memory, the care of the earth, respect for nature and the lives of wild creatures. All of these things have been damaged by the rule of industrialism, but of all the damaged things probably the most precious and the most damaged is sexual love. For sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.133.

CHOOSING COMMUNITY OVER TECHNOLOGY

'To this day, if you say you would be willing to forbid, restrict, or reduce the use of technological devices in order to protect the community - or to protect the good health of nature on which the community depends - you will be called a Luddite, and it will not be a compliment. To say that the community is more important than machines is certainly Christian and certainly democratic, but it is also Luddism and therefore not to be tolerated.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.131.

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU DESTROY

'If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration towards women and children, you have prepare the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between these two people but as a bond between these two people and their forbears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.125.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

'It's everything that matters against everything that mustn't be allowed to matter.'

Geoffrey Faber in Toby Faber, Faber & Faber: The Untold Story, p.158.

AGE-BASED WORRY

'Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?
Old person worry: What if everything I do does?'
Jenny Offill, Weather, p.21

BOOKS AS PORTABLE ISLANDS

'...often in adult life I've considered books as portable islands, in the way they grant isolation from one's surroundings, offering relief from immediate demands and space for contemplation.'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams, p.80.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GROWN-UP PERSON

'André Malraux, the French novelist, adventurer and Resistance fighter, relates in his Anti-Memoirs what a priest felt a lifetime of hearing confessions has taught him (an assessment that could just as easily have been uttered by a physician as a priest).

"First of all people are much more unhappy than one thinks...and then..." He raised his brawny lumberman's arms in the starlit night; "And then, the fundamental fact is that there is not such thing as a grown-up person."'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams, p.28. 

THE HEALING POWER OF ISLANDS

'...through adolescence, medical school, and working as a doctor in specialty training, it began to dawn on me that I sought out islands to recalibrate my sense of what matters. Their absence of connection, their isolation, was therapeutic in a way I found difficult to articulate.'

Gavin Francis, Island Dreams: Mapping an Obsession, p.18.

THE POLICING OF SEXUALITY

'...not long ago conservatives policed discourse concerning human sexuality, today liberal voices have replaced them. The only thing that has remained constant is the presence of policing.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: the transformation of men, marriage, and monogamy, p.19.

THE CHALLENGE OF FORGIVENESS

'At the moment, the cycle of insincere public apologies is probably making everyone suspicious of forgiveness. But what should people who have done terrible things in the past actually do? Spontaneously advertise their own sins in order to pre-empt public exposure? Just try never to accomplish anything that might bring them increased scrutiny of any kind? Maybe I'm wrong, but I do believe the number of people who have done seriously bad things is not insignificant. I mean honestly, I think that if every man who has ever behaved somewhat poorly in a sexual context dropped dead tomorrow, there would be like eleven men left alive. And it's not only men! It's women too, and children, everyone. I suppose what I mean is, what if it's not only a small number of evil people who are out there, waiting for their bad deeds to be exposed? What if it's all of us?'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.135.

THE PUZZLING POWER OF SEXUALITY

'It seems to me we walk around all the time feeling these absurdly strong impulses and desires, strong enough to make us want to ruin our lives and sabotage our marriage and careers, but nobody is really trying to explain what the desires are, or where they come from. Our ways of thinking and speaking about sexuality seem so limited, compared to the exhausting and debilitating power of sexuality itself as we experience it in our real lives.'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.92.

SEXUALITY IS ABOUT MORE THAN SEX

'I wish there was a good theory of sexuality out for me to read. All the existing theories seem to be mostly about gender - but what about sex itself? I mean, what even is it? To me it's normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them - or, more to the point, without even imagining sex with them, without even thinking about imagining it. This suggests that sexuality has some "other" content, which is not about the act of sex. And maybe even a majority of our sexual experiences are mostly this "other". So what is the other?'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.91.