in which I wrap up August

Things I have read

The Bellwether Revivals - Benjamin Wood. This has been on my shelf for ages, and I enjoyed it, but not as much as I had hoped. It’s sort of a Cambridge cousin to A Secret History, with organs and classical music, all of which I should enjoy, but it didn’t really take off for me. In some ways I would have liked it more if it were a bit more crackers and melodramatic.

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf. Since I’m spending the summer across the water from the lighthouse in question, I thought I’d finally read this. Mark it as number two in ‘Virginia Woolf and I don’t really get along, but we might’ve 20 years ago.’ I can absolutely see why it’s a classic, and I didn’t really enjoy reading it at all. It’s also very surreal to me that the book is set on Skye when the landscape being described is Very Very Clearly St Ives bay. Like, why was the change needed?

To Calais in Ordinary Time - James Meek. I’d been wanting to read this since I read the first reviews, but I managed to hold out for the paperback to be published - and it was worth it. You’ve got to roll with it a bit to get into the dialect, but I found I really enjoyed that. I partiularly enjoyed the characters of Berna and Hab/Madlen and Will and the various relationships between them, and the strands of the story dealing with romance and love, and nobility and class. Novels about late mediaeval England are not irrelevant, it turns out, even if they weren’t also about the plague.

Gilead - Marilynne Robinson. I wanted to re-read Gilead before Jack comes out in September, as it has been a while since I read this and I wanted to refresh my memory of it. It’s still beautiful and rich, and also has a particular interest at the moment in the way Rev. John Ames reflects on his grandfather’s abolitionism and the teaching and action of the church in relation to both slavery and war, given how the church is struggling to engage with Black Lives Matter.

The Book of Trespass - Nick Hayes. I actually finished this in September, but before I wrote this, so it’s going in August. I massively enjoyed it: it’s a beautiful book and a wonderful mix of personal story, history, economics, politics, community and society, and it took me twice as long to read as the length merited because it made me think about so many things, especially about theologies of place and locality and how they could be a part of the church getting more into environmentalism and tackling nationalism. COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT THESE THINGS.

In my reviving cricket fandom, I read Jimmy Anderson’s book Bowl. Sleep. Repeat, which was just a lot of fun, and also Morgan's Men: The Inside Story of England's Rise from Cricket World Cup Humiliation to Glory, because I’m interested in leadership and I find leadership in sports really interesting and Eoin Morgan is clearly really good at it. I’ve been to mayyyyybe one Christian leadership conference, and there always seems to be a lot of interviewing church leaders and business leaders, and honesty - interview more captains and coaches from sport because that would be WAY more interesting in terms of how to manage a bunch of high-performing experts/obsessives to a very specific goal without them all going crazy or falling out.

In theology reading, I went for Awaiting the King by James KA Smith and Love Means Love: Same-sex relationships and the bible by David Runcorn. Love… was super helpful for me, as this is an area of theology and life I find difficult, as I find my way between my upbringing and church background and the people I know and love and world I live in and way I’ve experienced God. The stuff on approach - in terms of talking about interpretation and the kind of place we want the church to be was really great. Smith has been massively formative for me in terms of thinking about discipleship and worship, and also in helping me shift stuff I was working with as a historian into theology, which I love, and this was a great finale to the Cultural Liturgies series, in adding some new things in and getting a bit practical.

Things I watched

I’m not back in the cinema until Tenet - and not till September, so wait on that one. I watched The Old Guard on Netflix, which I enjoyed hugely because I hugely enjoy Charlize Theron doing action and it was generally quite a lot of fun.

A recommendation of some kind

My love for cricket has been reinvigorated this summer, and you still have time to listen to / watch some in September. BBC Test Match Special is clearly the most special radio show in history, and I adore listening to it, but you can also actually watch the England Men’s T20 on Sunday 6 September and the Women’s T20 on Saturday 26 September. Get in there.

A photo from my month gone by

I was so excited that a friend came to visit that I did a little dance on a bridge in the rain.

Dancing on a clapper bridge in the rain on Dartmoor