Things I’ve Seen

In the comments, brainsnorkel suggests another blog meme. I like this one…

Total number of books owned:

A quick count suggests that in our house we have between 900 and 1000 books. Of those 100 or so are Jeyanth’s books, and the rest are ‘grown up’.

Last book bought:

“Difficult Gospel” by Mike Higton. I read a draft of this book, and even score a mention in the acknowledgments as someone who “tried to make me write less like a constipated academic, and more like someone who had met ordinary English”. Difficult Gospel is a very approachable introduction to the theology of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Mike opens it with a superb description of William’s ‘one simple question’:

what difference would it have made if I let myself believe that … I was held in a wholly loving gaze? … And what difference would it have made if I had seen each face around me … as individually held in the same overwhelming, loving gaze?

Last book read:

Last book read for the first time: “Seven types of Ambiguity”, by Elliot Perlman. I don’t know if this book is well known outside Australia, but it should be; it’s brilliantly constructed around seven different perspectives moving through the same sequence of events, and manages to be tragedy, social comment, love story and introduction to criticism all in one.

Last book actually read: “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”. For the who-knows-how-many-th time. We went to see the movie the other week (which was excellent, at least in part because it didn’t follow the book) and I was inspired to return, as it were, to the source.

Five books that mean a lot to you:

• The Bible.
• Lord of the Rings. I have no idea how many times I’ve read this.
• The New Testament and the People of God, by N.T. Wright.
• Opportunity Knocks, by Ray Farley and Carol Stigger. A collection of twelve stories of people whose lives have been changed by Opportunity International, a microcredit development charity of which I am a huge fan.
• Just Java (I was snowed in one night at Keele University, and picked this up at the bookshop. Learning Java led me into my second, highly enjoyable, career, in software development).

Tag five people to continue this meme:

OK, I need to do six…

• Sureka
• Chris of Brainsnorkel, since he did it to me (done)
• Alan of Cardboard Nu (done)
• Alastair of girtby.net (done)
• Ross of Less Travelled (done but then removed?)
• Mike Higton (done)

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