Hay Harvest

I'm very aware that the books in my side bar have remained unchanged for months...In some cases this is a sad reflection on the fact that I've not actually read them even now (actually, looking at them, this seems to be the case with most of them, dammit). However, I'm proposing to pretend I have a clean slate and tell you about all the delights, work based and otherwise, that are now waiting for me. If I start having a panic attack half way through, you'll know that with the written word I have fallen prey to what my parents saw as a cardinal sin, the syndrome of "eyes bigger than tummy".
In last month's Third Way Martyn Joseph began a book review (of one of the titles I bought yesterday, as it happens) with the words
"When we buy a book, we think we are buying the time to read it too"
Sadly I am all too aware that this isn't the case...but at the moment the pile of books awaiting fills me with joy and not terror or guilt. I'm hoping this is because I know at some subliminal level that I really will read them all in the weeks ahead.
So...here we go (There are too many for me to feel that chasing links is a worthwhile exercise.When I finish them I'll try and blog and include links then - and no, I didn't buy them all yesterday - these are the accumulations of a good year of failure to resist temptation)
"Work" books
Church on the Edge - John B Thompson
Creative Communion - Margaret Withers & Tim Sledge
Sex God - Rob Bell
Tokens of Trust - Rowan Williams
The Kindness of God - Janet Martin Soskice
Space for Grace - Giles Goddard
Mission Shaped Spirituality - Susan Hope
Dostoevsky - Rowan Williams
The Contemplative Pastor - Eugene Peterson
The Bible Makes Sense - Walter Brueggemann
Mothers, Mystics & Merrymakers:Medieval Women Pilgrims - Sarah Hopper
The Unnecessary Pastor - Marva Dawn & Eugene Peterson
Why there is almost certainly a God - Keith Ward (currently reading this...more later)



Just for fun
Easter - Michael Arditti
Jasmine & Arnica - Nicola Naylor (feeding my craving for India)
Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts (India again)
Chasing the Monsoon - Alexander Frater (and again)
The Summer of the Danes - Ellis Peters (this must be the only Brother Cadfael novel that Hattie Gandhi and I don't remember reading)
A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
Gilead - Marilynne Robinson
A Sleep & a Forgetting - Gregory Hall
The Cure of Souls - Phil Rickman
The Wine of Angels - Phil Rickman
The Fabric of Sin - Phil Rickman
(If you enjoy Rickman's Merrily Watkins books I can also recommend
The Remains of an Altar (read it just before Advent hit!),- which combines the pleasures of a little light deliverance ministry on the Welsh borders with the pleasures of the Elgar trail as well...I suspect that part of the pleasure of these is their local as well as clerical associations...Not great literature, but definitely in the category of "a good read")
A Certain Justice - P.D. James (how did I miss this when it was first published?)
While on the subject of P D James, I read The Private Patient over Christmas - most excellent, if you enjoy thinking detective fiction, as I most emphatically do.
Having loved her Travelling Mercies, and Grace, Eventually I'm currently immersed in Ann Lamott's Crooked Little Heart (I know I'm light years behind my US friends here, but hadn't met Lamott at all till I started blogging...so allow me some latitude - amazon uk only lists Bird by Bird, so I'm not alone in being a slow starter here!)

So there you have it. An accurate and up-to-date account of my reading plans between now and Easter, or maybe even a little beyond. I'm tired of being imprisoned by towers of unread books, so in the same way that my knitting friends periodically announce that they are only allowed to use wool from their stash, I'm telling myself that I am not allowed to buy ANY new books for myself until more than half of these, from both lists, have actually been read.
There's a new book by Timothy Radcliffe on the Eucharist that I'm dying to get my mits on, so that might drive me forward if I show signs of flagging.
I'll try to say something about all of them on the blog too, but that may not work out (specially with those in the "amiable trash" category)...
No time to sit around here writing, though. There's lots of reading to be done. Here and now!