MY 2022 READING

Those in bold are my top ten: 

 January 

1. Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush 
2. Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: The transformation of men, marriage, and monogamy
3. Elizabeth Strout, Oh William!

February 

1. Henry "Chips" Channon, Diaries (Volume 2) 1938-43 (Edited by Simon Heffer)

March 

1. Jane Ridley, George V: Never a Dull Moment 
2. Leon Kass & Hannah Mandelbaum, Reading Ruth: Birth, Redemption and the Way of Israel
3. Kelly M Kapic, You're Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God's Design and Why That's Good News 
4. Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves 
5. Carys Davies, The Mission House 
6. Mia Levitin, The Future of Seduction 
7. Patrick Keifert and Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, How Change Comes to your Your Church: A Guidebook for Church Innovations 
8. Nancy Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality

April 

1. Adrian Bell, Men and the Fields 
2. Ros Clarke, Forty Women: Unseen women of the Bible from Eden to Easter 
3. Derek Jarman, Modern Nature

May

1. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A Baker III
2. Jonathan Walker, The Angels of L19 
3. Adrian Bell, Corduroy
4. Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet
5. Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men 
6. Paula Byrne, The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym 
7. Frederick Buechner, Brendan 
8. Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys 
9. Larry McMurty, Dead Man's Walk 
10. Tara Westover, Educated
11. Douglas Stuart, Shuggie Bain 
12. Amy Liptrot, The Outrun
13. Margaret Laurence, The Fire-Dwellers
14. Richard Ford, Between Them: Remembering My Parents
15. John Berger and Jean Mohr, A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor
16. Andy Friend, John Nash: The Landscape of Love and Solace 
17. Rachel Jones, A Brief Theology of Periods (Yes, Really) 

June 

1. John Dickson, Hearing Her Voice: Women Preaching Sermons 
2. HFM Prescott, Son of Dust 
3. Timothy Keller, On Death

July

1. Eugene H Peterson, Eat This Book: a conversation in the art of spiritual reading 
2. Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads 
3. Eric Jourdan, Wicked Angels 
4. Alan Bennett, House Arrest: Pandemic Diaries 
5. Polly Morland, A Fortunate Woman: A Country Doctor's Story 
6. John Meade Falkner, The Nebuly Coat 
7. Max Hastings, Operation Pedestal: The fleet that battled to Malta 1942
8. Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; A New Guide to Sex in 21st Century
9. Anne Glenconner, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown 
10. Pablo Martinez, Take Care of Yourself: Survive and thrive in Christian ministry

August

1. Clare Sestanovich, Objects of Desire
2. Dane C Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners 
3. Barbara Pym, Some Tame Gazelle 
4. Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders 
5. Jane Gardam, The Hollow Land 
6. Emma John, Self Contained: Scenes from a Single Life 
7. Ellis Potter, 3 Theories of Everything 
8. Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls
9. Katherine Angel, Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and desire in the age of consent 

September 

1. Andy Crouch, The Life We're Looking For: Reclaiming relationship in a technological world 
2. Mary Renault, The Charioteer 
3. Mary Renault, Fire from Heaven 
4. John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle Earth
5. Wendell Berry, A World Lost

October 

1. Adrian Bell, Silver Ley 
2. Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Building an intimate relationship with the creator
3. Salley Vickers, Miss Garnet's Angel 
4. Preston Sprinkle, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the church & what the bible has to say 
5. John Stott, The Living Church: The convictions of a lifelong pastor 
6. Mary Renault, The Persian Boy 
7. Mary Renault, Funeral Games 

November 

1. Andrew Davison, Blessing 
2. Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence
3. FM Mayor, The Rector's Daughter 

December 

1. Aaron Damiani, Earth Filled with Heaven: Finding life in liturgy, sacraments and other ancient practices of the church
2. Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin: the church and the gay controversy 
3. Andrea Wulf, Magnificent Rebels: the first Romantics and their invention of the self

DESIRES NOT A MATTER FOR BLAME

'It is perfectly possible to think of desires as no matter for blame, and yet be persuaded that their literal enactment cannot be their true fulfillment.'

Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin, p.113.

INTERPRETING DESIRE

'Sexual desire in particular is notoriously difficult to interpret; the biblical story of Ammon and Tamar (cf. 1 Sam 13) is just one of many ancient warnings of how obscure its tendency might be. It is characteristically surrounded by fantasy, and fantasies are never literal indicators of what the desire is really all about, but are symbolic revealer-concealers of an otherwise inarticulate sense of need. But the point holds also for many kinds of desire - let us say, the desire for a quiet retirement to a cottage in the countryside, or the desire to own a faster racecar. We cannot take any of them at their face value. "It wasn't what I really wanted!" is the familiar complaint of a disappointed literalism. To all desire its appropriate self-questioning: what what wider, broader good does this desire serve? How does it spring out of our strengths, and how does it spring out of our weaknesses? Where in relation to this desire does true fulfillment lie?'

Oliver O'Donovan, A Conversation Waiting to Begin: the churches and the gay controversy, p.112.

THE DANGERS OF LITURGICAL ACCESSIBILITY

'Accessibility is often prized above all else in the contemporary Church, but we might question whether even those who are unfamiliar with the Church but come to it for blessing, dedication and consolation really want it to proceed with language that aspires to the semantic and lexicographical smoothness of an episode of a soap opera.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.181.

ENVY IS BEST TREATED BY GRACE

'The best way to train our eyes to see without envy is to take the grace of God as our interpretative key in all that we see or consider: others' existence is a gift, as is mine; their life and all that is needed for life is a gift, and so is mine - and their life and their flourishing is a gift also to me.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.76.

GOD'S JUSTICE

'When God punishes sinners, He does not inflict His evil on them, but leaves them to their own evil. 'Behold', saith the Psalmist, 'he hath been in labour with injustice, he hath conceived toil; brought forth iniquity. He hath opened a pit and dug it; and he is fallen into the hole he made. His sorrow shall come down upon his crown.' [Psalm 7:154-16] When therefore God punishes, He punishes as a judge those that transgress the law, not by bringing evil upon them from Himself, but driving them on to that which they have chosen, to fill up the sum of their misery.'

Augustine of Hippo in Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.61.

THE PERFECT HUMANITY OF JESUS

'When Pilate displayed Christ to the people with the words 'Here is the man!' (John 19:4 - 'Behold the man' in the AV), he did not appreciate how profoundly true his words were: there indeed, before them, was the full, perfect, axiomatic, emblematic human being, the one who teaches us what it means to be human.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.50. 

WHAT BLESSING MEANS

'Blessing concerns life and abundance of life, and the affirmation or even intensification of the proper goodness of a thing, situation or person.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.50.

ANTISEMITISM

'What vitiates nearly all that is written about antisemitism is the assumption in the writer's mind that he himself is immune to it. 'Since I know that antisemitism is irrational,' he argues, 'it follows that I do not share it.' He thus fails to start his investigation in the one place where he could get hold of some reliable evidence - that is, in his own mind.'

George Orwell, 'Antisemitism in Britain' in Essays, p.286.

WE BLESS WHAT IS GOOD

'...blessing is intrinsically orientated to the recognition of goodness. We have a sense of what can not be blessed because blessing is about goodness.'

Andrew Davison, Blessing, p.20.