Tagged -the book meme

Chris Monroe tagged me for the book meme thingy. So here's my attempt to come up with something like coherant answers!

1. One book that changed your life: Actually that really ought to be the Gospels; that's not because it's the right 'Sunday school' answer; it's because it's true. There is no other book I can think of that really deserves the epithet 'changed my life'. There've been lots that have had a big effect but the Gospels are way ahead. However, if we took out biblical stuff, I guess I might plump for 'The Dust of Death' by Os Guinness. It opened my eyes to cultural analysis, issues of radical discipleship and laid the groundwork for me to understand postmodernity. In its way it set me up for a lifetime's interest in cultural dialogue with the gospel.

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: I really think I have to draw a line under scripture here and offer other books! So from here on in it's 'Desert Island Disks' rules; we assume the Bible and Shakespeare ... That means that probably I could mention Lord of the Rings here.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: I'd want something that could be read time and time again ... hmmm ... perhaps the Poetry of TS Eliot as long as I had a commentary! But, as linguist I'm quite attracted by the idea of something to learn another language by, I suspect that 'Teach Yourself Chinese' might be a good idea being as statistically its the most likely language of potential rescuers and I know the other two statistically likely languages...

4. One book that made you laugh: The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass. One of the few books that had me laughing out loud AND then I commended as a Lent book to a congregation I thought needed not to take religion so seriously.

5. One book that made you cry: "Matthew" by Bob Jackson. The story of the death of the son of the vicar I trained with and how their family coped with it. I guess the personal connection helps -my wife gets a mention.

6. One book you wish had been written: Christ the Fulfilment of the New Spiritualities of the West -a constructive engagement with the spiritual search of many who were labelled 'new age', should have been published in the early 80's and countered the scaremongery stuff which stopped Christians engaging missionally with the most significant spiritual movement in the west in the latter half of the 20th century.

7. One book you wish had never been written: This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti. The popularisation of unbiblical ideas of spiritual warfare has arguably and probably set back the cause of Christ. It's the Pentecostal equivalent of the Da Vinci Code: fiction purporting to offer a factual background and which is harmful to Christian apologetics.

8. One book you’re currently reading: Colossians Re:mixed and very good it is too.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read: Walter Brueggeman on Genesis.

10. One book you’d like to write: Culture Jamming Liturgy [as a matter of fact, I have a few bits and bobs towards this, about three part-chapters.]


Right, that's it. So the next question is, who do I tag in turn?