FRIENDSHIP PERFECTIONISM

'We friendship fans have an obvious vice, which is to set the bar too high, unwittingly laying a trap for those who are much more casual about what friendship involves. Falling out is much my fault as theirs, because those poor friends flunked an exam they didn't even know they were sitting.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.56.

DEATH & FRIENDSHIP

'Death doesn't really end a friendship, it sanctifies it. It makes a closeness permanent. The fact that you won't see the friend again is a bitter loss, but at another level their vital presence may be guaranteed, a friendship that is now safe from the vagaries of human nature and changeable weather. Death is a disaster but also a fixity, I suppose, which traps in aspic every brilliant relationship it touches. There will be no more to add, just a perpetual reflection on the living value of what has been.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.43.

FRIENDSHIP VS. ROMANCE

'Ironically a friend is someone whom you repay for not wanting to possess you, and it may count among the nuances of love that we cannot extend that same consideration to those we fancy.'

Andrew O'Hagan, On Friendship, p.12.

MY 2025 READING/ LISTENING

Those in bold are, I think, my top ten:  

January

1. Nigel Townson, The Penguin History of Spain: 1898 to the Present 
2. Curtis Garner, Isaac 
3. Sam Leith, The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading 
4. Craig Brown, A Voyage around the Queen [Audiobook]
5. Matthew Porter, The Act of Giving: Becoming a more generous person 
6. JA Medders and Douglas Logan Jr., The Soul-Winning Church: Six Keys to Fostering a Genuine Evangelistic Culture 

February 

1. Samantha Harvey, Orbital 
2. Pete Grieg, God on Mute: Engaging the silence of unanswered prayer 
3. John le Carré, A Legacy of Spies 
4. Craig Willse, Providence: A Novel [Audiobook] 
5. Erik Varden, Chastity: Reconciliation of the senses 
6. Gavin Ortlund, The Art of Disagreeing;How to Keep Calm and Stay Friends in Hard Conversations

March 

1. Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons [Audiobook]
2. Danielle Treweek, Single Ever After: A Biblical Vision for the Significance of Singleness 
3. Iain MacGregor, Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall and the most dangerous place on earth
4. Julian Barnes, Changing My Mind 
5. Tony Reinke, Newton on the Christian Life: To Live is Christ 
6. Nancy Guthrie, What Grieving People Wish You Knew about What Really Helps (and What Really Hurts) 

April 

1. Hans-Hermann Hertle, The Berlin Wall Story: Biography of a Monument 
2. Hans Fallada, Alone in Berlin 
3. Édouard Louis, Change 
4. Wesley Hill, Easter: The Season of the Resurrection of Jesus
5. Chukwuebuka Ibeh, Blessings 
6. Peter Riddell, 15 Minutes of Power: The uncertain life of British ministers
7. Ste Casey, I prayed and nothing changed: What God is up to in the silence 
8. William Maxwell, The Writer as Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work

May 

1. Jeramie Rinne, Church Elders: How to shepherd God's people like Jesus
2. Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall [Audiobook] 
3. Dana Gioia, Studying with Miss Bishop: Memoirs from a young writer's life 
4. Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection
5. Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf 
6. Stewart O'Nan, City of Secrets
7. Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound 
8. Laird Hunt, Zorrie 
9. Adam Haslett, Imagine Me Gone
10. Alec Wilkinson, My Mentor: A Young Writer's Friendship with William Maxwell 
11. Larry McMurty, Streets of Laredo 
12. Jonathan Eig, King:The Life of Martin Luther King 
13. Paul Harding, This Other Eden 
14. Dorothy Canfield Fisher, The Deepening Stream 
15. Erik Varden, The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance 
16. Sally Rooney, Intermezzo 

June

1. Min Jin Lee, Pachinko [Audiobook]
2. Frédéric Gros, A Philosophy of Walking
3. Marsh Moyle, Rumours of a Better Country: Searching for trust and community in a time of moral outrage

July 

1. Jake Tapper & Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again [Audiobook] 
2. Mavis Gallant, The Latehomecomer: Essential Stories 
3. Carys Davies, Clear

August 

1. Willa Cather, Sapphira and the Slave Girl 
2. Gilbert Meilaender, They Will Be Done: The Ten Commandments and the Christian Life 
3. Frances Spalding, The Real and the Romantic: English art between two world wars
4. Edward T Welch, Caring for One Another: 8 Ways to Cultivate Meaninful Relationships 
5. Helen Garner, The Children's Bach
6. Claire Dederer, Monsters: What Do We Do With Great Art By Bad People? 
7. Allen Bratton, Henry Henry [Audiobook] 

September

1. Victoria Mackenzie, For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain 
2. Sang Young Park, Love in the Big City
3. Nora Ephron, Heartburn
4. Niall Williams, John
5. Percival Everett, Wounded
6. Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional
7. Sarah Vine, How not to be a political wife: A memoir [Audiobook]
8. Jane Gardam, Old Filth

October 

1. Joe Brainard, I Remember 
2. Erin F Moniz, Knowing and Being Known: Hope for All Our Intimate Relationships  
3. Kim Hye-jin, Concerning My Daughter
4. Vincent D Cha & Ramon Pacheco Pardo, Korea: A New History of South & North
5. Mavis Gallant, Green Water, Green Sky
6. John Lanchester, Fragrant Harbour
7. Jane Gardam, The Man in the Wooden Hat 
8. Jane Gardam, Last Friends

November 

1. Mark Yarhouse and Julia Sadusky, Emerging Sexual Identities: Navigating the landscape and today's youth 
2. Cody Keenan, Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America
3. Han Kang, Greek Lessons 
4. Wendell Berry, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story
5. Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life
6. Seth Lewis, The Language of Rivers and Stars: How Nature Speaks of the Glories of God
7. Wendell Berry, The Wild Birds; Six Stories of the Port William Membership [Audiobook] 
8. Meg-John Barker & Jules Scheele, Queer: A Graphic History

December

1. Wendell Berry, A Place in Time: Twenty Stories of the Port William Membership [Audiobook] 
2. Jack Brown, No.10: The Geography of Power at Downing Street
3. Raymond Briggs, Ethel & Ernest 
4. Daniel R Patterson, Reforming a Theology of Gender: Constructive Reflections on Judith Butler & Queer Theory 
5. Laurie Colwin, Happy All the Time 
6. Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes: The wisdom of the desert 
7. Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic

OUR NEED OF STORIES

'We all need narratives to make sense of the world.'
Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey, p.290.

GOOD TEACHING

'...the best teacher is the one who wants you to find meaning in the things that have given him pleasure, too, so that the appreciation of their beauty will outlive him. In this way - because it arises from an acceptance of the inevitability of death - good teaching is like good parenting.'

Daniel Mendelsohn, An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic, p.215.

CHURCH RENEWAL

'The church is always renewed from the edges rather than the centre.'

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, p.109.

CHANGING CHURCHES

'If you leave a church community too quickly, you find it becomes a habit; more salt to drink. Sooner or later you will have to confront the challenge of being pledged to uncomfortable reality - and how to cope with the inner restlessness which constantly suggest what look like simpler solutions, avoiding the difficult route of changing myself.'

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, p.97.

OUR UNIQUE PATH TO HOLINESS

'I cannot become holy by copying another's path. Like the novice in the desert, I must watch the elders and learn the shape and rhythm of being Christian from those who have walked further and worked harder; but then I have to take my own steps, and create a life that has never beeen lived before. At the Day of Juidgment, as we are often reminded, the question will not be why we failed to be someone else; I shall not be asked why I wasn't Martin Luther King or Mother Teresa, but why I wasn't Rowan Williams. The journey is always one that leads into more not less uniqueness; all to do once agan with the call to be persons, not individuals.'

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, p.95.

THE BODY SAVES THE SOUL

'Only the body saves the soul. It sounds rather shocking put like that, but the point is that the soul (whatever exactly that is) left to itself, the inner life or whatever you want to call it, is not capable of transforming itself. It needs the gifts that only the external life can deliver: the actual events of God's action in history, heard by physical ears, the actual material fact of the meeting of believers where bread and wine are shared, the actual wondeful, disagreeable, impossible, unpredictable human beings we encounter daily, in and out of the church. Only in this setting do we become holy - in a way entirely unique to each one of us.'

Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, p.94.