mostly reading

superpowers

2008-12-30T20:08:00.002Z

david j. schwartz

a sort of 'what if' story, being a superhero is fun, until it stops being fun. this was very quick and easy read, but still enjoyable, at the end i wanted to know how things worked out for people which must be a good sign.

the meaning is in the waiting

2008-12-30T07:20:00.002Z

paula gooder

my advent book, good she knows her stuff and relates the bible stories well to real life. worth reading her again.

possibly the last book of 2008, but still a chance of finishing one more...

black static seven

2008-12-29T07:19:00.000Z

last magazine of 2008

postscipts 16

2008-12-21T08:40:00.000Z

some good stories, as ever

maneater - a werewolf's tale

2008-12-12T12:38:00.001Z

thomas emson

the bible the biography

2008-12-08T21:23:00.000Z

karen armstrong

darkmans

2008-12-07T07:36:00.000Z

nicola barker

the fidelity of betrayal - towards a church beyond belief

2008-11-29T07:56:00.000Z

peter rollins

discovering girard

2008-11-20T22:33:00.000Z

michael kirwan

postscipts 15

2008-11-15T13:34:00.001Z

just posting to get a complete year - moving to private blog with more than just reading in it.

dead to the world

2008-11-07T08:22:00.003Z

charlaine harris

another sookie stackhouse book - but this time without bill the vampire, but with eric the vampire. she also begins to introduce lots more "supes", including witches (who may not count as such being basically human). anyway another quick read where you want to know what happens next. the sub plot with her brother going missing was a red herring which i spotted (yeah me).

good fun.

the glass books of the dream eaters

2008-10-30T20:04:00.003Z

g. w. dahlquist

a long, but speedy read, this was originally published in 10 installments with a cliff hanger at the end of each (and a few in between) - a steampunk novel with just a dash of Victorian fetish :-) ... but only a dash ;-( but still a gripping/ripping yarn with some resourceful and resilient heroes - also good strong female lead. all good (cleanish) fun!

oh, main sfnal idea is that people's experiences can be downloaded into special books and cards which other people can read to experience the other person's experience from their point of view - mostly of an erotic nature it seems :-)

rewired. the post-cyberpunk anthology

2008-10-20T18:23:00.003Z

i can't review every story in this book, but there are a lot of good ones. i pick out a few:

yeyuka - greg egan. very good even if i did see the end coming - good science too.

the wedding album - david marusek. nice riff on AI's.

the calorie man - paolo bacigalupi. good picture of usa after we have run out of oil and life is dominated by big agri companies selling patented and sterile seed.

search engine - mary rosenblum. great vision of the world were everything is know about us.

when sysadmins ruled the earth - very funny and still touching at times.

all in all a very well chosen and presented bunch of stories.

being zen - bringing meditation to life

2008-10-10T20:01:00.002Z

this book is by a pupil of joko beck - but a more structured book - not just a series of talks. however i didn't find it as engaging or down to earth, some good bits, but it didn't grab me like every day zen did.

some thoughts etc. he reminded me about labeling thoughts and how useful this is. when talking about thoughts when sitting he mention different kinds including re-working and/or imagining conversations (something i do!) which he called getting caught up on our own drama, very perceptive.

when beginning to sit we can touch in with:

the physical - what do we experience int he body? comfortable? pain?
the emotional - how do we feel? happy? cross? anxious?
the environment - what can we see, hear, smell?

when talking about work he suggests we ask ourselves "what can i offer?" as a kind of koan.

chapter on hard and soft - the problem of finding a way between these extremes - not trying too hard (and being judgemental when we fail) and being so laid back that we do nothing. it might be that we need to be "hard" about actually sitting and "soft" about how "well" we do it! because at the end of the day we sit and work with whatever comes up in the sitting - if that is endless distractions then that is what we work with.

a core concept is the that what happens to us in our life is "our path" - not in the sense of destiny but in the sense that if things happen (eg. illness etc) we cannot run from it and so we take the path and work with (not against) it. this can seem like fatalism, but that is not what it is - we have to see that it is our path even if we then work to change it (get better, look for new job if made redundant etc.).

interzone 218

2008-10-06T05:50:00.002Z

Poppyfields, by Chris Becket
story set in same "world" as the welfare man - with people able to jump between worlds using seeds. a young girls jumps and completely changes one young man's life. very good.

Greenland, by Chris Becket
after global warming - a picture of a sub tropical england where those with money move to greenland and what people without money will do to be able to escape - also a story about asylum and immigration. good.

Rat Island, by Chris Becket
global warming again - seen through the eyes of a child and his growing understanding of what his father knows and tells him. good.

If by Daniel Akselrod & Lenny Royter
an epidemic of imaginary friends, who don't go away! fun.

His Master’s Voice by Hannu Rajaniemi
all about cloning and identify - ok, like the cat.

The Corner of the Circle by Tim Lees
kind of weird - partly about child abuse, but set in a new york that has aliens popping in to visit on a regular basis - yet feels more like its set in 1950? good.

velvet elvis

2008-10-03T09:07:00.004Z

rob bell

this is a fun quick read - made quicker by prolific use of arty white space :-)

if i had to sum it up in a word it would be "enthusiastic" - having heard him talk on the breath dvd i can imagine him reading this...

so what's about? this and that, but mostly that faith is not static and we can and should look to develop/change etc. just as jesus did, just as his disciples did. the other thing that came over strongly was just how jewish jesus was.

he quotes someone as saying they have studied an issue and what different people have said, theologians etc. but "decided to get back to the Bible and just take it for what it really says" - he calls this "warped and toxic". p53

he talks about the idea of the "superpaster" that he was, unconsciously, trying to live up to - and asks - what are the "superpasters" in our lives that are governing how we act and how we see and judge ourselves? he says we must kill them...

"the most powerful things happen when the church surrenders the desire to convert people and convince them to join... the church must stop thinking about everybody primarily in the categories of in or out, saved or not saved, believer or nonbeliever... Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor, and our neighbor can be anybody. We are all created in the image of God... to treat people differently based on who believes what is to fail to respect the image of God in everyone". p167

writing poems

2008-09-29T05:21:00.002Z

peter sansom

this is a good little introduction to writing poetry, at times quite funny & opinionated. don't think it will turn me into a poet overnight (or ever) but has helped me understand the ideas, even the difficult stuff.

he also has a suggested reading list which includes anthologies i have already ID, eg. "being alive" and "emergency kit" poems. i have the former and will probably put later on christmas list.

also some great poems quoted in the text.

how to read the Qur'an

2008-09-24T06:34:00.003Z

mona siddiqui

this is a short book looking at how the qur'an is read and perhaps how it could be read. at times felt like i was reading a book about the bible and how we (christians) read it. it was an interesting read and i have learnt a fair bit, i think, about the importance of the qur'an to muslim and the complexity of how they approach, read and understand it.

the qur'an is very self referential, it talks about itself (if it were a spreadsheet you would be for ever getting circular reference errors!).

"If God is mine, he is also yours, for he transcends any particular understanding we impose on him as individuals" 87

"God's omniscience and majesty remains untouched by what we do, say or write; we can never exhaust his words, but we can reflect God's overriding mercy in more generous readings of our scripture. If we want to draw closer to God, we must respectfully draw closer to each other" 105 (last page)

black static six

2008-09-22T18:47:00.002Z

The Better Part Of You by Simon Avery
a study in mental illness - moody and good.

Back on the Road by Melanie Fazi
fairly obvious, i guessed most stuff before the reveal, but good atmo.

Special Needs by Peter Tennant
ok, not that special.

En Saga by Nina Allan
ok, but does anything actually happen?

All Mouth by Paul Meloy
has the dark atmos. but again what is actually happening here?

Viva Las Vegas by Ray Cluley
fun, but that's all.

overall a good selection, strong on atmo. if not plot!

christ of the celts - the healing of creation

2008-09-18T05:51:00.002Z

j. philip newell

this is a deeply personal book in which his family life, pain and joy, are shared. he is looking at what a celtic understanding of christ would be like. hard to summarise, but here goes... the celtic christ is not over/other than creation, christ does not takes us away from this world/creation but back to it. so he rejects the idea of original sin and prefers to see us as at the core of our nature in tune with god - we have to recover this nature not find a new nature. not surprisingly he has no time for the usual understanding of the atonement. creation, as the title suggests, is very significant and his talk about the celtic cross with the globe (=creation) superimposed on it has, to some extent, redeemed the cross for me? if that makes sense? (i might even wear one again, a celtic one).

traitor to the blood

2008-09-16T20:25:00.003Z

barb & j. c. hendee

fourth book following the adventures of magiere and leesil and companions. the darkest so far, will be interesting to see how this develops. leesil has far too much to live with. it would be good to see more of wynn. a good fast paced read.

in this story we begin the search for leesil's parents which means leesil facing up to the things he did before he meet magiere when he was assassin to the king. the search continues with the next book.

everyday zen

2008-09-11T14:57:00.002Z

charlotte joko beck

had this on my months, possibly years. wish i'd bought it earlier, but then i might not have been ready for it then. absolutely brilliant book. basically edited transcripts of her dharma talks, like short sermons. i've been reading one chapter a day for the last few months, a good way to slowly take it in. lots and lots of echoes of other writers, esp. de mello, but she is also echoes much christian teaching.

i've underlined so much that i can't possibly note each bit here. she practices "ordinary mind zen" and is intensely practical and mostly jargon free, very down to earth and western enough to be accessible and feel relevant to "ordinary life". can't praise this book enough. i've bought another by one of her pupils and will get her other book after i have read his.

the god delusion

2008-09-07T06:56:00.003Z

richard dawkins

well this was quite annoying at times, he over writes, it could be much more to the point. he is unnecessarily rude, in particular the names/labels he uses. as to the arguments, less to fault him here, most of his arguments against "proofs" of god are fine, it's just i've heard them all before from christian theologians, also his arguments about the church are also fine but again wink, wallis, mclaren et al have been there before him.

where i would take issues is a selective rating of the bible (we all do this!) he talks about the awfulness of the "ot god" but this is not news (to me) he says jesus is a little better (if he exists at all!) but that ultimately the ot and nt are exclusive, they are about the jews only. he quites some verses to back this up, but ignores? all the passages from the prophets that speak of caring for the alien and stranger, he misses jesus on loving our neighbour and then defining the neighbour as "the other". he misses so much in the gospel that point to this messages being for all people. it is annoying as if this is deliberate it undermines his argument and if it is a mistake then he really hasn't done his research.

his arguments about how natural selection could have caused the rise of religion, ie. mems etc. was, for me, not very convincing. also his explanation for why we are good still leaves morality as some kind of accident of evolution? not that i have a better explanation. atheism

overall, not as annoying as i thought it would be.

everything must change - jesus, global crises, and a revolution of hope

2008-09-05T12:57:00.003Z

brian d. mclaren

this is a long a detailed book trying to get a handle on the crises that faces the world and what our understanding of jesus' teaching/message might be able to say about that. it very clearly gets the issues that face us and in particular looks at things in terms of "framing stories" - the idea that our current framing story is leading to the suicide of our world. mclaren offers an alternative framing story which is a particular reading/understanding of jesus' message/kingdom. he is very critical both of the existing story and also the existing understanding of christianity. all good stuff. part of the existing story is about growth (for its own sake) and consumption, without reference to what the world can produce (raw materials) and cope with (waste). also the underlying myth that power and violence solve anything. also that at the heart of some understanding of christianity is a powerful myth of redemptive violence, ie. god needed jesus to die for our sins.

to finish he calls for action in four areas:

personal: everything from how we pray to how we spend our money etc.
community: new kinds of community, eg. emerging church etc.
public: social movements that to educate and demand change.
global:

against gravity

2008-08-29T09:42:00.002Z

gary gibson

this was a fast and fairly fun read, having heard gwyneth jones speaking the other night i'm i suspect it might count as the reading equivalent of "junk food" ;-)

it had a good story, but at times the prose could have been better, bit plodding... good for the bus anyway.

main idea people have been augmented, against their will, and said augments are going rogue and killing people, this combined with the idea that some AI's might have found god...

all fun and games until somebody loses an eye

2008-08-14T06:26:00.003Z

christopher brookmyre

"fun and games" sums this book up, i got it 2nd hand from a charity shop 'cause i liked central idea of 46 year old scottish granny becoming a kind of secret agent - it was fun, but can't see me reading him again, no real depth to plot or characters....

half the blood of brooklyn

2008-08-10T21:48:00.003Z

charlie huston

the third joe pitt novel. and again a fast & violent trip with the mafia/vamps of nyc. things are moving on, two more books in the series (apparently) by the end of this one joe is rouge again.

the new weird

2008-08-04T19:47:00.002Z

ann & jeff vandermeer (eds)

this is a collection of new weird or possibly new weird if it actually exists :-) and an interesting mix, some as ever better than others. also includes a fair bit of non-fiction material about the idea of and history off new weird. very interesting. has some of my favourite writers eg swainston & bishop. also liked jeffrey thomas who i haf not read before.

interzone 217

2008-07-20T13:10:00.004Z

Africa by Karen Fishler
this was ok, earth is quarantined by aliens to stop coming back and messing it up again. thought at one point we might be in adam and eve territory, but thankfully not.

The Two-headed Girl by Paul G. Tremblay
girl with a second head who can be any woman, even fictional, good.

The Ships Like Clouds, Risen By Their Rain by Jason Sanford
strange almost primitive planet that is anything but - very well written even if at heart not sure if it makes sense.

Concession Girl by Suzanne Palmer
kind of quaint sf - aliens and fast food, fun.

Little Lost Robot by Paul McAuley
very good, what would it be like if you were the robot that was destroying all life in the universe? how would you think? very good/clever. probably inaccessible to non sf reading public - one for fans.

Comus of Central Park by M.K. Hobson
fun little morality tale.

cherishing the earth - how to care for god's creation

2008-07-15T06:48:00.004Z

martin j. hodson & margot r. hodson

this was ok, it gives a good overview of the issues i understand peak oil now! has some theologically reflection, but this was not particularly deep or original. also i found the (apparent) naive acceptance of the biblical stories distracting. i'm sure we have a lot to learn from noah, but they (seemed ) to believe it had actually happened which makes little sense if they believe god loves creation. a few quotes:

"In other words, the way to keep a clear sight of our faith and the purpose of our lives is not to become too cluttered with the goods of this world.... Living simply does not mean despising this world, it means appreciating it more fully and adjusting our lifestyle so we can be more focused on the really important things of this life." 114-5

"The goal we look towards is of a life that is simpler but of far greater quality." 156

Liked the last quote for the idea that a simpler life can be a good life.

black static five

2008-07-14T19:08:00.002Z

How Deep Is His Loneliness
Kathleen Winter
hmmm...

The Second Death of Johan Kluge
Tim Casson
ok riff on vampires.

Night Game
Tony Richards
bit weird, but no real conclusion.

The Rising River
Daniel Kaysen
who's a ghost and who isn't - who's hot mental health problems and who hasn't - not bad.

Winter Journey
Joel Lane
bit of a riff. on werewolves! ok.

Slap
Gary McMahon
happy slappers and haunting by tech. - obvious

Less A Dream Than This We Know
Christopher M. Cevasco
hp lovecraft is dying and has some (probably) hallucinations, hmmm....

starfish

2008-07-09T07:15:00.003Z

peter watts

first book in the fifters series of (3 or 4) books. absolutely brilliant, again like blindsight full off interesting ideas handled very well. basically people are needed to maintain underwater generators but the only people who seem able to cope with the environment are people who are already psychologically damaged - so the stations are staffed by the abused and the abusers. the people are fascinating and so is the science.

centering prayer and inner awakening

2008-06-30T19:26:00.000Z

cynthia bourgeault

i enjoyed this book to start with, but it kind of lost me later on - got too complicated and made too many claims. it had echoes of other books i've read, eg. de mello and his shout of "wake up". i liked that the intention to pray is the most important thing - not "how well you do it".

idea: we don't meditate so as to find god who has gone away - we mediate as we need to stop the buiness and slef talk that drowns out god - god is aways there/within we need to stop hiding from god (157)

the powers that be - theology for a new millennium

2008-06-28T12:10:00.004Z

walter wink

first off i loved this book - wish i'd read it when it came out in the last century! at heart it is about non-violence and a way of seeing that this comes from god who is a god of love. it completely rejects the current evangelical view of god as an angry god who must have [his] anger assuaged by blood sacrifice.

notes etc. from the book (and lots of quotes)

the whole first section about world views and how heaven & earth are seen in them is good.

ancient - heaven & earth are linked - war in heaven = war on earth.
spiritualist - creation is the fall, a split/no connection as matter = evil
materialist - enlightenment, kind of opposite of above, matter is all there is, heaven either does not exist.
theological - heaven does exist but there is no connection between earth & heaven so it's not particularly relevant.
integral - heaven and earth are seen as inner and outer aspects of a single reality.

the powers are:

good
fallen
redeemable

"The gospel, then, is not a message about salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures". 36

on the cross "But if god's wrath does not need to be placated by blood, if god is a loving parent who forgives us even before we repent, then the entire sacrificial enterprise - the largest single industry in all Palestine... - was rendered null and void". 80.

"Violent revolution fails because it is not revolutionary enough. It changes the rulers but not the rules, the ends but not the means." 81. his point is that violent uprisings become violent regimes, you become what you oppose unless you can find a different way of opposing it - as jesus did.

Girard "The sacrificial system is like a vaccination, in which a smaller amount of violence is perpetrated against a single victim in order to prevent a greater amount of evil from engulfing a society." 84

The Christus Victor theology [of the cross] fell out of favor, not because of intrinsic inadequacies, but because it was subversive to the church's role as state religion" 90

he has a completely different take on forgiveness - as we see in jesus' life he forgave before people repented - see foe example the woman who washed his feet at simon's house, jesus says of her that she has done this because her many sins have been forgiven, it is a response. "... you are forgiven: now you can repent" 163.

prayer in the integrated world view makes sense as "The spiritual is at the core of everything and is therefore infinitely permeable to prayer. In this view, the whole universe is a spirit-matter event." 184.

the prestige

2008-06-18T18:55:00.003Z

chistopher priest

this was very good, the story of two victorian magicians and their long standing rivalry and the two tricks they both did in different ways - told mostly in the form of diaries and although much is not hidden there are still surprises all the way through. again like the glamour the narrators are inherently unreliable. i saw the film so thought i knew what happened - but it was very different. lots of stuff here about identity and what people will suffer to meet their ambitions.

farell horizontal

2008-06-07T06:33:00.002Z

k.w. jeter

got this cheap @oxfam :-)

a very fast read, i got this as the main idea of living on the side of a very large building was intriguingly and it was well done - quite a few interesting ideas and the pace was good, possibly a tendency to introduce too much new stuff too often though and perhaps it might have been better to treat some ideas / characters in more depth.

interzone 216

2008-06-01T13:51:00.002Z

how to make paper airplanes - lavie tidhar
ok, not very sf though

from memory - chelsea quinn yarbro
ok, a romance set against the backdrop of post climate change catastrophe.

the hour is getting late - billie aul
another romance? set in the multimedia world of music where public opinion is everything an updated in real time - to the extent that our protagonists have to respond to it and also try to manipulate it. clever.

remote control - r.r. angell
very good, the public are allowed to log on to control border cameras and guns - national security paid for by the public for the opportunity of shooting illegal immigrants. an interesting story both for its sf and for its politics.

the invisibles - elisabeth vonarburg
another post climate change world - people live in dooms, but there may be more dooms than the general population are aware of. ok.

into the night - anil menon
the future through the eyes of an 80 year old indian man going to stay with his daughters - this is mostly about culture clash, very well done.

talk is cheap - geoff ryman
in the future information is everything - yet someone still needs to actually go places and see the real world to get information for everyone to process - another romance. good.

the prophetic imagination

2008-05-29T14:20:00.002Z

walter brueggemann

this was a hard read - to the extent that i understood it i like it :-)

he looks a lot at the way the monarchy, esp. Solomon moved away from the vision of Moses, something that Jeremiah and second Isaiah responded to. in the NT it is jesus that makes the break from the past/present to imagine a new, unforeseen / unforeseeable future.

"Jesus' concern was, finally, for the joy of the kingdom. That is what he promised and to that he invited people. But he was clear that the rejoicing in the future required a grieving about the present order. Jesus takes a quite dialectical two-age view of things. He will not be like one-world liberals who view the present world as the only one, nor will he be like the unworldly who yearn for the future with an unconcern about the present. There is work to be done in the present. There is grief work to be done in the present that the future may come. There is mourning to be done for those who do not know of the deathliness of their situation. There is mourning work to be done with those who know pain and suffering and lack power or freedom to bring it to speech. The saying is a harsh one, for it sets this grief work as the precondition of joy. It announces that those who have not cared enough to grieve will not know joy". (112).

postscipts 14

2008-05-29T07:28:00.003Z

blackbird - robert read
interstellar blogging! funny & good.

a little knowledge - guy immega
interesting look at what might be done with junk dna - has a flowers for alganon feel to it, good, but the characterization is a little flat.

the world without sleep - sarah monette
i wanted to like this more, but it was too dream like and so hard to care, some interesting ideas, angels, vampires, shadows, goblins, but no reason why things should be as they are.

something borrowed, something red - william alexander
well written and quite creepy - story about changelings and horror. good.

island tales - jeff vandermeer
four short "myth" like tales about fiji along the lines of 'how the sea got salty', good.

slave - robert weston
little story where maniplulating people's personality by drugs etc. is commonplace and acceptted and to not do it is considered both strange and possible wrong (child abuse not to drug your kid). best ideas in this issue, good.

Reading with God - Lectio Divina

2008-05-28T19:04:00.005Z

David Foster OSB

Some random notes, quotes from my reading through this book.

Appropriate translation: extra information is good, but try not to get distractted.

Slow reading: read out load? make notes? re-read?

Reflective reading: make connections with the rest of scripture, be ready to unpack, theologically responsible / not overly subjective.

Biblical literature: genres, read it all, read it critically.

Themes / perspectives: covenant/promise, life/law, prophecy, judgement.

Meditation. Trying to dwell on a word or a phrase in our reading that has some resonance with us, by repeating/ruminating we hope to move its meaning into our hearts.

How to get started:

Find a place/time
The context is prayer "turn your heart to god"
Read. What to read? Gospels or letter good place to start. Whole book is good.
Read. How to read? A short passage, slowly, prayerfully, repeat? aloud? dwell in the scripture, its ok to wonder.
Reading turns to / into prayer/meditation. Let a phrase resonate with your experience, making connections with your experience, making connections with our lives.
Finally with thanksgiving make a, perhaps, more explicit response to god. May be able to take a word or phrase away with you to return to during the day.

(59) We need also to "enter into our response to it (+/-) not only at the level of the head, but also (more importantly) at the level of the heart...

head >>>> heart

... a journey inwards.

When we read we should look out for the felt response that can echo with our word of life.

Praying is "putting us in god's merciful presence & keeping us there. Getting used to not running away, but to being seen by god, promotes transparency.

We must be ready to stop reading whenever we find ourselves talking to god.

Wonder/the need to be open, a readiness to be changed by the experience.

In lectio we try to see jesus - but we can also find that jesus is looking at us.

(110) "the resurrection stories flicker between fear and joy, disbelief and faith, surprise and recognition".

It is not much use trying to think of prayer and contemplation as getting out of ourselves, of rising above the changes and chances of this world of ours - there is no escape and this is where god saves us.

Sign of Jonah could be about preaching, as well as the fish thing.

In prayer we are, perhaps, confronted with the truth of god and more particularly with the truth about our selves.

do nothing to change your life

2008-05-17T14:37:00.003Z

stephen cottrell

bought this for H, don't think she has read it yet. Some thoughts & quotes:

"Humans instinctively believe there is something more to life than what they see around them. Human life adds up to more than the sum total of people's ability to explain themselves." (17)

He talks a lot about god being love (not loving; love) and about how god should be at the centre of our lives and not us, when god is at the centre then we are better able to appreciate other people as individuals like us who we are dependant with us rather than as other who are there for us. See above Heroes and Villains and talk about others and means and ends.

Jesus and the cross is "an invitation to live a new and abundant life" (38).

He talks of greeting people in the street and how all too often this is meet with fear & suspicion - reminds me of the woman i met on my walk to work who always greets me with a smile & a hallo - brightens my morning.

Talking about heaven... "you recall a beautiful moment of intimacy... perhaps those moments after you have made love, when physically elated you rest in the company of the one with whom you have conjured such delight, and just being with them, resting with them, is bliss and comfort - you are experiencing a foretaste of heaven... then we can't just talk about heaven as a place we go to when we die: heaven is now, a present reality as much as a future hope." (52).

He finishes with a plea to find/make time/space to just be - to sit in silence before god. He suggests also using moments in the day such as making tea or coffee the slow, ritualistic way to continue this practice of stepping back from the rush.

A very good little book that is very much in line with what I have been reading, I know this stuff and have been doing it as well, this reminds me that i should continue to do so. Also that i still have some 'work' to do re. my anxiety about not getting enough done (be it all the books, dvd's etc that i want to read/watch) or all the work that needs doing (here and at work!).

heroes & villains

2008-05-10T19:44:00.005Z

mike alsford

this book looks at what makes a person a hero or a villain, taking examples mostly from sf and comics. a lot of buffy, which must be a good thing :-)

he uses popular culture to explore his ideas, which to some extent are about the nature of being human. there is actually quite a lot of fairly deep theology and philosophy here but presented in an accessible and often humorous way. a good read.

in the end he concludes that it is how a person choices to act that makes them/or their actions heroic or villainous - the hero acts for and to some extent lives/dies for the "other" - the villain see the "other" as a resource, something that can be used.

88 an echo with awareness - he quotes joseph campbell who is talking about the buddha and enlightenment - "Enlightenment, cannot be communicated, but only the way to Enlightenment... Whereas the truths of science are communicable, being demonstrable hypotheses rationally founded on observable facts, ritual, mythology, and metaphysics are but guides to the brink of a transcendent illumination, the final step to which mist be taken by each in his own silent experience".

the new conspirators

2008-05-09T19:52:00.002Z

tom sine

this is a good and challenging book - where is the church and our world heading in the next 5-10 years? and who can we look to for ideas about how we can be church? he looks primarily at:

emerging
mosaic/multi-cultural
missional
new monastic

he also majors on how we should live, this is the challenging bit! a few name checks for people i know (have seen, anyway) like brewin & rollins.

my main problem with the book is that it is too american focused - all be it that he is deeply critical of the us of a. where are the uk people looking at these issues? appart from the people he mentions that i have read anyway :-)

black static four

2008-05-05T08:43:00.002Z

cleaning the western kittiwake - tyler keevil
nautical ghost story - ok

atwater - cody goodfellow
dream/reality crossover - guessed the ending - some nice images

zombie - conrad williams
someone who thought they knew when they would die and so never lived

salt - nicholas royle
creative writing course - bit of a joke perhaps as this is what he does for a living

ye shall eat in haste - steve nagy
continues story after dracula, but i am not convinced about the characterization here.

this much i remember - barry fisher
two people try to understand the actions of another, wife/mother, this is two different stories as the people/event are mutually exclusive.

not the best issue so far, certainly no stand out stories - best is probably keevil.

the carhullan amy

2008-04-30T06:33:00.004Z

sarah hall

bought this in the lake district as it's set there and i got a signed copy . not the most cheerful read in the world, but very good picture of britain in the, all to near, future. it tells the story of 'sister' who who escapes from the drab decaying, drowning world of the post disaster uk. she goes to carhullan, a women only collectivte in the hills. grim and at times brutal, with a strange kind of hope. perhaps its the post crucifiction kind of hope?

second choice: embracing life as it is

2008-04-19T10:54:00.002Z

viv thomas

picked this up in oxfam in the lakes. finished on train ride back to london. good little book that fitted well with awareness (above). we don't live in a perfect world where everything goes well and the temptation/encouragement to think that as "good" christians we will be given a perfect life by god is both wrong and dangerous. we do need to look for the good in the life that we have been dealt, but if we spend our energy kicking against a reality we cannot change and hoping for one we cannot have we will do ourselves no good.

awareness

2008-04-19T10:40:00.004Z

anthony de mello

second time i have read this and it makes much more sense this time round, read during lent/easter a chapter a day, mostly. reading slowly helps to as he is (deliberately) very repetitive. on first reading it seemed harsh, ie. don't love, don't feel attachment to things and/or people, but really he means don't hold onto/use things/ideas/people for your own needs, also don't blame external reality for how you feel, don't mistake how you feel for what your are, eg. not "i am depressed" but rather "i am having feelings of depression" this sounds silly written down but does makes sense (honest).

in the end there is only the present moment and we need to live in this moment and not in some idealized past or fantasized future or alternate present. there is only now and the extent that we can live in and embrace it is the extent to which we can be alive/aware/mindfull call it what you like. and this is not something we can do by effort of will - it is something we need to approach obliquely and gently.

dead men's boots

2008-04-19T10:36:00.002Z

mike carey

3rd book in the felix castor series. another good and quick read, and this time we get some hints of why the dead have suddenly stopped staying dead. good to see more of juliet and her lover too.

the execution channel

2008-03-30T07:09:00.003Z

ken macleod

set just a few years (kinda) in the future of an all too recognizable world where we are watched by everyone and the world is about to fall apart with tensions between countries and wars and terrorism. also, what would have happened if gore had won? nothing good it seems :-/

anyway very very good, thrilling but still (esp. at the end) recognizably sf.

from the cover "the war on terror is over ... terror won".

interzone 215

2008-03-26T08:11:00.003Z

the endling - jamie barras
very confusing and and too long.

dragonfly summer - patrick samphire
gritty & seedy story, you really can't go back, especially if it was never there in the first place.

crystal nights - greg egan
clever story about playing god and just how much more difficult that it than one might think!

holding pattern - joy marchand
fun story about plan trapped in time loop.

street hero - will mcintosh
another soft apocalypse story - our street hero finds some meaning for his life and the bamboo keeps on growing...

the imitation game - rudy rucker
little story about alan turing which finds a way for him not to die but escape to new life by faking his death, fits very well with what i have read about turing's personality.

the night watch

2008-03-19T18:44:00.002Z

sergei lukyaneko

this is 3 novellas rather than 1 long novel (and then ends suddenly with a nearly 30 pages to go and has extract from next book, took me by surprise).

i did like this book, but not as much as i had hoped/expected. it had some very interesting ideas and i enjoyed moscow. it may have been the translation but it was a little engaging and ultimately too much destiny/fate for me. it's compare to harry potter, and like potter the films improve the books...

black static three

2008-03-15T07:45:00.003Z

very few stand out stories this time - actually only one.

the runner up was 'the morning after' by carole johnstone. a meditation on being hung over and late for work.

the best by far was 'the fantasy jumper' by will mcintosh, a funny, clever & brutal little story about a fair were, among other things, it is possible to create short lived artificail life forms. very good indeed. that said would not have looked out of place in interzone.

let the right one in

2008-03-06T21:51:00.003Z

john ajvide lindqvist

a swedish writer, so reading in translation, this is a very different take on the vampire myth than butler, (see above). in some ways more traditional, although he does try and have his cake and eat it, so it's an infection and parasite but you still need an invite to come in. still i think i prefer this darker, bloodier take, not sure if vampires should be the good guys.

a very quick read and i really did not know 4 sure how it was going to end.

the image of the perpetual child/vampire will stay with me, and the relationship at the heart of the book between eli and oskar is very good.

fledgling

2008-02-28T17:38:00.003Z

octavia e. butler

another take on the vampire myth - most of these vampires are quite ethical and not prone to much killing - a good story well told with some likable characters, especially shori who comes across very well as a very self confident "child" (she is only 53). had the feel, in some ways, of the first in a series, but is the only as far as i know. read this very quickly, always a good sign.

vampires are not supernatural, a different race, even possibly aliens. racism is at the heart of this story.

i am legend

2008-02-17T15:16:00.004Z

richard matheson

this is a bit of a classic that i have been meaning to read for ages - very good moody piece about being the last person alive and what it means to became a minority. also a good look at the vampire mythology. has been filmed twice, neither of which i have seen (yet).

the red men

2008-02-08T20:27:00.001Z

matthew de abaitua

new writer bought on a whim as i had £5 waterstones voucher from secret snata...

this was fun, some good characters and some interesting ideas - AI and copying personalities into computers - not new but done originally, poss. bit too much going on, but hay first novel. quite mystical/religious in its ideas and symbolism. also much is set in east london which was fun.

silence and honey cakes

2008-02-06T18:18:00.000Z

rowan williams

the wisdom of the desert fathers (and mothers). this is a brilliant little book, full of distiled wisdom. williams has a way of writing prose that that reminds one of poetry - not surprisingly. at the benedict day i went to recently it was suggested that you could use this book for lectio. one quote that i have written out..

in an answer to a question on akedia ((a kind of restlessness that prompt one to imagine that leaving/fleeing will help) so a spontaneous answer!)

Here I am; this is what I am; this is what I do next; here is God... Who knows what serves God? Do what's there. God meets me in this moment and nowhere else (112).

interzone 214

2008-01-29T20:32:00.000Z

far horizon - jason stoddard
a long short story this one, or is it two stories? one about the creation of life by gene manipulation and if said creations have rights like human beings and one about a world increasingly dominated by one corporation, microsoft or winfinity as called here. anyway good story well told but mistake to join these two strands i think.

the trace of him - christopher priest
moody little story of someone remembering a lost love.

these the two best in this issue - not the strongest in recent times.

----
just about on target for one a week

postscripts - 13

2008-01-25T20:45:00.000Z

the end of the great continuity - paul di filippo
kind of fun.

directional drift - richard parks
this i real liked
a kind sinister groundhog day, a computer keeps re-starting a man's as she fancies him and is pretending to be his girlfriend - he begins to susspect eventually but can't think about it too much or she will re-boot him again!

snakeskin - robert t. jeschonek
eve as the first detective at the first murder - clever and fun.

the free winter chapbook
the saved - joe hill
liked this sad story of failed relationships and encounters - not genre that could see.

black static two

2008-01-19T07:26:00.001Z

very good design as ever - also some good stories of which my favs are:

the serpent & the hatchet gang - f. brett cox
this had a fairly tale feel to it - a story about the women of a fishing village

in the shape of a dragon - melanie fazi (trans from french)
beautifully written and not a little weird, music and art and inspiration?

ash-mouth - lynda e. rucker
again, very well written, a ghost story i guess, but not too closely defined.

twilight of the superheroes

2008-01-09T22:44:00.000Z

deborah eisenberg

book of short stories, mostly about fairly middle/upper middle class american's. in fact the only weak story is the one about the underclass which was a bit obvious. she kind of drops into people's lives and tells us a bit about them and what's going on and she leaves them to get on with it. good quite poetic writing, often a sense that people are not at peace, that they have a sense of unease, anomie?

my first bus book of 2008.

hoping to read a book or magazine a week in 2007 so will only blog whole books ad mags to make counting easier! so one in 9 days - not a sufficient run rate yet :-)
may not make and not worried if i don't - so not a 'smart' goal, which is good. i am also trying to work on the back log, in particular comics which will effect my average.

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Now playing: The Cardigans - Nil
via FoxyTunes

interzone 213

2007-12-31T18:05:00.000Z

Chris Roberson's 'Metal Dragon Year'
[a story in his Celestial Empire sequence]
ok, but slow and kind of obvious.

Aliette de Bodard's 'The Lost Xuyan Bride'
sf detective story, short and (bitter) sweet, good - best story in this issue.

[These two stories share, coincidentally, a similar background: a world where China and the Aztecs are the dominant powers, and where the Spanish either didn’t discover America or were defeated by the Aztecs]

'Molly and the Red Hat' by Benjamin Rosenbaum
quite fun.

'Odin's Spear' by Steve Bein
mountain climbing on a moon... no more interesting for being set of earth.

'The Men in the Attic' by John Phillip Olsen
very clever - liked this, hiding people's minds in virtual realities in another persons mind - good way to go crazy. second best this issue.

'The Best of Your Life' by Jason Stoddard
also ok, people can buy tunned lives - not virtual reality but real world but some of the people, eg. lovers, would be tuned to love, like you etc. it all goes horribly wrong, of course...

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Now playing: Patti Smith - About A Boy
via FoxyTunes

fangland

2007-12-30T19:15:00.000Z

john marks

came across a review of this, possibly in black static, so bought immediately, i was not disappointed - takes the dracula story and makes it even more horrific - clever and well written and at times very dark indeed. he tells the story as stoker did in letters and journals (mostly) and it works very well. a good read to finish off 2007.

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Now playing: Patti Smith - About A Boy
via FoxyTunes

postscripts - 12

2007-12-10T19:04:00.000Z

# Scott Edelman - 'Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man'
kind of fun zombie story

# Robert Jeschonek - 'The Greatest Serial Killer in the Universe'
ok, but bit obvious

# Paul Jessup - 'Ghost Technology From the Sun'
bit weird

# Rosanne Rabinowitz - '96 Tears'
fractuals as a way of understanding the world?

# Iain Rowan - 'Here Comes the New Way'
fantasy about impoverished people seeking a new way, even if they have to burn to get there.

# Will McIntosh - 'Three Unlikely Futures'
fun and anti-French, for no particular reason.

# Robert Weston - 'Hummingbirds and Pie'
alone & lonely bloke trying to find copy writable sounds.

# Patrick O'Leary - 'The Cane'
where writers get their ideas from, sometimes it's best not to know.

# Brian Aldiss - 'Life, Learning, Lepizig and a Librarian'
fun story about someone who has much of his brain replaced and needs to learn stuff that any 15 year old boy could teach him, in hi case with the help of an willing librarian :-)

# Darren Speegle - 'Elephant Speak'
best story of this issue, what if in the future no white children were born except occasional throwbacks who are feral?

# B.B. Roo - 'Rap-Tap-Tap'
is it a ghost story? no it's not.

not as good as some issues, but ok.

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Now playing: Blondie - Hanging On The Telephone
via FoxyTunes

black static one

2007-12-02T20:54:00.001Z

Decided to blog magazines all in one go...

Bury the Carnival by Simon Avery
kind of a riff on pinocchio, set in a strange dark land, where night lasts for years - lots of atmosphere, most of it kind of dark - an appropriate

Pale Saints and Dark Madonnas by Jamie Barras
black magic?

Acton Undream by Danile Bennett
clever, if dreams could change reality.

Votary by M.K. Hobson
bit weird, but i guess that's the point - very fat man in cellar fed/looked after by female members of family.

My Stone Desire by Joel Lane
sad lonely man can't make connection with people, works for missing person's dept.

Lady of the Crows by Tim Casson
failed actor finds some resolution in meeting with ex. kind of heart warming, which is a little strange for this mag...

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Now playing: Patti Smith - Gloria
via FoxyTunes

sister of the dead

2007-11-24T17:58:00.000Z

barb & j. c. hendee

third book in series, magiere searches for info. re. her birth/creation - most of what she finds is not good. this is quite a bleak book, even when they win there is little to celebrate, they come through with their lives though. setup for forth book looks like being leesil's story. the sage wynn becomes part of the gang in this book and looks to be in for the long run.

the lovely bones

2007-11-14T08:01:00.000Z

alice sebold

this was a gb07 recommendation which i picked up second hand for helen - 14 year old sussie is raped and murdered and from her heaven she looks down on earth and those she loves - this is an amazing book, sussie can enter a life at anytime - she can go back in people's lives and experience things again. this is an incredible moving book, hard to read in public sometimes, and yet manages not to be too sentimental or too sad either. hard to describe, but very good.

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Now playing: Kendall Payne - I Will Show You Love
via FoxyTunes

no dominion

2007-10-29T19:54:00.000Z

charlie huston

second in joe pitt series - a good follow-up. joe, as ever the rogue element in the world of the vyrus - this time being played by just about everyone of the varous groups - we see a little more of his rlatonship with evie which is good - a fast passed hard as nails vampre gangstar novel.

recursion

2007-10-24T07:38:00.000Z

tony ballantyne

first in a trilogy of books about our world as it develops under the influence of various powerful and possibly alien AI's - set in three time periods (~100 years apart) which kind of interconnect. it was good with some good ideas, but not as heavy as i expected (or hoped), also characterization could be better. given the nature of what he is doing your grasp on "reality" is always a bit shaky!

the merchant and the alchemist's gate

2007-10-19T17:52:00.000Z

ted chang

this was why i bought fsf and it doesn't disappoint, the story is told by the merchant to a caliph and is actually a number of interlocking stories over past, present & future. as ever brilliantly written and clever and also very human, the characters in this story are all muslims and this (it seems to me) is handled sensitively by chang who holds no religious belief of his own.

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Now playing on foobar2000: Radiohead - [In Rainbows #02] Bodysnatchers
via FoxyTunes

if we can save just one child...

2007-10-18T21:51:00.000Z

robert read

story about paranioa, in particualr re. the safety or otherwsie of our children - criticing (i think) current media "reporting" of pedophiles and stranger danger... funny and a little chilling at the same time, in this case mostly about illegal cloning of children - something that seems to be widely feared and at the same time very rare. sound familiar?

f&sf sep 2007

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Now playing on foobar2000: KT Tunstall - [Eye to the Telescope #09] Suddenly I See
via FoxyTunes

episode seven: last stand against the pack in the kingdom of the purple flowers

2007-10-17T05:54:00.000Z

john langan

best story so far in this issue, it drops you into the middle of post apocalypse us of a and also leaves you in the middle of it, but i guess the title says that so i shouldn't grumble, lots and lots of questions with no answers at all. but it's well written and fast paced, some things are a bit obvious and you expect the characters to get things that seem obvious to you. ok/good

f&sf sep 2007

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Now playing on foobar2000: Bruce Springsteen - [Magic #03] Livin' in the Future
via FoxyTunes

atlanta loses at the interpnateonic trivia bee

2007-10-17T05:52:00.000Z

heather lindsley

what if the gods went to a quiz night? that's it really... amusing.

f&sf sep 2007

envoy extraordinary

2007-10-17T05:49:00.000Z

albert e. cowdrey

intergalactic diplomacy - amusing(ish)

f&sf sep 2007

wrong number

2007-10-13T06:42:00.000Z

alexander jablokov

this is about a car mechanic who can fix your spiritual/relationship problems by fixing your car, also searching for his ex.

f&sf sep 2007

air

2007-10-12T06:17:00.000Z

geoff ryman

this has been hanging around waiting to be read for ages, should have read it sooner, it was excellent. he manages to create a novel that looks at a way of life that is dying, ie. rural life in a remote part of asia, tells a story of the people of this village and especially mae and at the same time tells a story of the web coming into peoples heads and what this might be like for "ignorant peasants", there is some quantum stuff floating about here, some big ideas about the nature of reality and also mixed in are myths & spirituality. he covers a lot of ground.

the algorithm

2007-10-06T06:55:00.000Z

tim akers

a group of people intercept small sealed boats that float down a river, open them and try and put the bits of machinery into 'the algorithm' in the hope of understanding god, they have a faith system built on the idea that these vessels come from the mountain of god and are for them. when one of the veseals has a small girl in it they are challenged as to what this means, is she a message from god? how should they react to her? this is a story about faith and what we do when our faith is challenged? very good. nb. 4th story set in 'veridon'.

dada jihad

2007-10-04T19:40:00.000Z

will mcintosh

this story set in same verse as soft apocalypse, which i think i remember liking, anyway this far and away best thing in this issue of interzone. world is going to hell and various groups are either trying to speed things up, soften the landing or hoping it wont happen (but it already is). viruses are being spread by

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Now playing on foobar2000: The Arcade Fire - [Arcade Fire #01] Old Flame
via FoxyTunes all and sundry along with random acts of violence. hard to describe, but well written, good characters and a story too.

a handful of pearls

2007-10-04T13:47:00.000Z

beth bernobich

this is only incidentally sf - really just the setting. we have an unreliable narrator who initially we feel a little sorry for, but ultimately realize he is dangerous and deluded. setting is a scientific mission to discover new drugs etc. on a string of islands, the pearls of the title, has an oriental feel with names and customs?

ack-ack macaque

2007-10-03T06:20:00.000Z

gareth lyn powell

mostly a love story, but in the background an AI story and the end of the world as we know it story. but why does he have a type writer in his room?

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Now playing on foobar2000: Patti Smith - [Twelve #01] Are you Experienced?
via FoxyTunes

feelings of the flesh

2007-10-02T19:51:00.000Z

douglas elliott cohen

an sf setting, hints of post apocalypse world - but a fantasy sensibility. but it felt contrived to me, human like monsters roomed the world stealing people's senses.

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Now playing on foobar2000: Blondie - [Parallel Lines #06] I Know But I Don't Know
via FoxyTunes

end of the world blues

2007-09-27T05:41:00.000Z

jon courtenay grimwood

one of his stand alone books, very good, partly set in japan (slightly in our future?) and later in england - but also (maybe) at the end of the world - main characters are kit, who is english ex-army ex-pat living in tokyo running a bar - the other is neko who is japanise 15 or possibly much much older and may be from the end of the world and has a talking cat (@least some of the time). a mystery plays out both in "our" time and the "end of the world" - but in the end a happy ending even for the less savory characters.

the practice of the presence of god

2007-09-24T19:35:00.000Z

brother lawrence

this is a good little book even if a little inaccessible at times, with the occasional dwelling on how good suffering is for you, not convinced about that personally... anyway some quotes might be in order.

On distraction in prayer
p21 That useless thoughts spoil all; that the mischief began there; but that we ought to reject them as soon as we perceive their impertinence to the matter in hand, or our salvation, and return to communion with God.

How there is no split between sacred & secular
p26 That it was a great delusion to think that the times of prayer ought to differ from other times; that we are as strictly obliged to adhere to God by action in the time of action as by prayer in the season of prayer.

I just love this quote, sums the book up for me, but not an easy habit to acquire!
71 When we are busied, or meditating on spiritual things, even in our time of set devotion, whilst our voice is rising in prayer, we ought to cease for one brief moment, as often as we can, to worship God in the depth of our being, to taste Him though it be in passing, to touch Him as it were by stealth.

79 Make it your study, before taking up any task to look to God, be it only for a moment, as also when you are engaged thereon.

cobra trap

2007-09-18T18:24:00.000Z

peter o'donnell

last ever modesty blaise stories, especially seeing as he kills her and willie off in the titular story. not read any of his for ages, but it all comes back, probably best read when a little younger! still good though, as it says on he back, finest escapist thrillers ever.

the ladies of grace adieu and other stories

2007-09-14T18:23:00.000Z

susanna clarke

book of short stories set in same 'verse as jonathan strange & mr norrell. one story features jonathan strange. this collection goes someway to balancing her novel in that women are more often main characters. so basically stories and legends of humans & fairies, light, clever, witty and funny. hope she writes something else again soon.

cards of identity

2007-09-10T18:39:00.000Z

nigel dennis

quite a strange book about a group of people in an 'identity club' who muse on the subject of identity and how to get one and how to change other people's, a mixture of novel, play and lectures it defies definition. found it hard to get into & preferred the more novelist parts.

behnd the clouds: in front of the sun

2007-09-09T21:00:00.001Z

christopher harman

weird little story about a man who buys a globe of an alien planet? out of which something strange emerges, main character starts as someone who observes life and ends by being someone who is prepared to take action, we don't know if he mad though... not sure why, but didn't get into this story very well. not bad though.

state of grace

2007-09-09T20:57:00.000Z

david barnett

clever & sexy little story about the evolution of the iPod into a sentient digital personal assistant, and lover in this case... liked use of word imPaired to describe people without an implanted Pair.

the king's physician

2007-09-09T20:53:00.000Z

richard paul russo

this story had an incredible sense of doom & was very well written, you felt you knew the main character, and even the minor characters were well drawn, a story about loyalty & how horror can creep up on you until acting becomes very difficult. an sf setting, but in some ways reads like a fantasy.

i should check this guy out some more

loki

2007-09-05T19:35:00.000Z

matthew rossi

riff on various myths & legends focusing on loki the trickster, but it doesn't read like a story to me.

bossanova

2007-09-05T19:33:00.000Z

steve aylett

smart little story about AI not wanting to be 'human' but happy to be sentient!

servant of the stone

2007-09-05T19:29:00.000Z

dave hoing

getting old and loosing your mind, memory/life you want to hold on to, and memory that you might like to loose. in a fantasy setting with two different races of people. gets the atmosphere of loss and pain.

waiting for dawn

2007-09-05T19:27:00.000Z

mikal trimm

fantasy about getting another chance to live, or try to live, the life you might have of your wife hadn't 'beaten' the hope out of you.

cobwebs

2007-09-05T19:24:00.000Z

kealan patrick burke

sad little story about being old & forgotten... you only exist if people remember you.

what's expected of us. it's a tough choice...

2007-08-30T16:25:00.000Z

ted chiang

a short, short story that is available online, seems quite fun, but becomes kind of metaphysical/theological by the end!

printed out and left in back of the book i have.

published in nature july 2007

a poetry handbook

2007-08-30T16:18:00.000Z

mary oliver

got this more to understand poetry better than to write it, though i do want to do that too. she writes very well, at times even her prose seems poetic, that said i didn't really get the stuff that relies on phonetics which is a pain, not sure what i can do about that though. well drop back into this book again, it's not a read only once book.

stories of your life and others

2007-08-30T16:11:00.000Z

ted chiang

short story collection, hard to classify, lots of very different stories, but an interest in religion and science is evident, the other thing they have in common is that they are all brilliant; fantastic & intelligent ideas and very well written.

chiang only writes short fiction (so far)

scar night: volume one of the deepgate codex

2007-08-20T21:34:00.000Z

alan campbell

new writer/first novel, fantasy set in city of deepgate which is a city built over an abyss on massive chains - priests rule this city and blood is seen as the stuff of life, it contains the soul and some can take this soul by drinking blood (the "v" word is never mentioned, but i'll tag it anyway) - so in this world of sacrifice we have our main characters, dil and angel, the last angel, only 16 and no idea of what is going on, racheal a church assasin and devon, the official poisoner - dying/being killed by his work. plus carnival, a thousand of years old angel who must take on soul a month to live. it's very good - it has atmosphere and ideas and a plot chratactors you care about and it's pacey too. looking forward to the others in this series.

finding sanctuary - monastic steps foe everyday life

2007-08-13T20:51:00.000Z

abbot christopher jamison

some fairly random notes...
14 asking people why they have allowed themselves to become so busy - i like that as most people think it is something that is done to them. you are a free person and can choose how busy you want to be.
22 sanctuary = sanctus = holy, so sacred space
23 the sacred cannot be manufactured by a consumerist society
23 the foundation of the sanctuary is living with integrity - again!
26 he suggests saying rule 4.22-7 every day as a kind of affirmation/intention "i do not act in anger or nurse a grudge. i rid my heart of all deceit. i never give a hollow greeting of peace and i never turn away when somebody needs my love. i speak the truth with heart and tongue" a real challenge to live out, but worth the try.
27 virtue is the recognition of the sacred in daily life.

the need to put a break/pause between desire and action in order to allow other factors to enter the equation.

in summary he builds a sanctuary on the foundation of virtue with the folowoing:
silence
contemplation
obedience
humility
community
spirituality &
hope

he commends what he calls "classic religion" as the way to find/search for god/spirituality as it provides a structure and corrective to justing picking and choosing the bits that appeal, the bits that are easy - this pick & mix spirituality is too easy.

this was a very good book, he is practical and accessible, has great wisdom & yet is still humble.

a prayer for owen meany

2007-08-04T11:40:00.000Z

john irving

this was the book group book, i didn't finish it time & in the end we stopped the group for the summer. anyway i stopped reading it for a few months as i was not getting on with at all, returned to it a few weeks ago, made it my traveling book & so i have now finished it, it kind of gathers momentum after about 400 pages, but really a book needs to do this sooner than 2/3 of the way in. still in the end i did want to see what happens and began to enjoy the political comment on both vietnam & the iran contra affair & the usa in general.

ultimately it took too long to say what it said, don't really see why people rave about it so, definitely prefer his earlier stuff, more happens for a start, and they are sexier too :-)

what is it about? about a friendship between the story teller (first person) and owen meany an unearthly child who has visions, in particular of how he will die, so it is also about faith, owen's faith in his vision & hence god, and john finding a kind of faith because of the miracles that he sees in owen meany, something about predestination and/or fate as much of what happens for no apparent reason turns out to be significant, eg. practising "the shot".