While I doubt our lists would cross paths very often, I thought that a good start to the new year would be to recommend these good reads for 2014:
Luke Paul and the Mosque
Luke Paul, a fictional Church of Scotland minister, first appeared at the height of the Kirk's Special Commission on Same Sex Relationships and the Ministry. Here, Luke returns ahead of this year's report on the Church's work with other faiths.
Luke finds himself on an interfaith pilgrimage to Israel/Palestine as Christians, Jews, Muslims and Baha'i shared with each other the places and the stories of their faith. Following this, and nudged by his local Guild, he engages his parish in dialogue with the local Mosque through a series of public meetings exploring Christianity and Islam.
Through a simple plot focussed on the relationships between the characters, Luke Paul and the Mosque explores all of the issues, joys and problems raised by the way the church relates to other faith communities. Finlay's gentle writing style combined with his own experience on the Scottish Interfaith Council makes this a very informative, thought provoking but easy to read book.
Easy Go
Michael Crichton (writing as John Lange), Open Road Media 2013
When I was 13, I read Crichton's The Andromeda Strain and instantly acquired an appetite for everything this man had ever written. Crichton's well researched, scientific, believable style of writing is right up my street, and he fast became my favourite author. (One of his books will feature in my '5 books that changed my life' if I ever get round to finishing in.)
The trouble is, I very quickly read all his books, and following his death in 2008, that meant I had run out of Crichton to read.
Imagine, then, my joy to discover that in his days as a medical student, he published a series of novels under the pseudonym John Lange, and that these have just been published as a series of ebooks called The Med School Years.
Easy Go is one of these books, following the tale of an Egyptologist who discovers a previously unknown tomb filled with treasures, and embarks on an attempt to steal these from under the nose of the Egyptian Antiquities Service. Action packed but very realistic, this is one of the best short reads I've ever come across, and right to the last page keeps turning up surprises.
Children's Ministry that Fits
David Csinos, Wipf and Stock Publishers 2011
One of the greatest encouragements in recent years has been the way in which the spirituality of children has begun to be taken seriously. Building on the work of academics like Rebecca Nye, David Csinos embarked on a study of the spiritual development of a group of children.
In this study, he found that a child's spirituality tends to one of four dominant styles: word, symbol, emotion or action. In Children's Ministry that Fits: Beyond One-Size-Fits-All Approaches to Nurturing Children's Spirituality, he explores what that means for those of us engaged in work with children.
Last September, I spent a day exploring the findings of this research with a group of fellow writers and practitioners and we are all extremely excited by the possibilities this book presents.
Csinos's second book Children's Ministry in the Way of Jesus was published on the 20th December 2013, and I'm sure will be one to add to this list in due course.
The Woman Who Died a Lot
Jasper Fforde, Hodder & Stoughton 2012
Okay, so by recommending this book I'm actually recommending you read seven books, as this is the latest in the series of seven "Thursday Next" books, which you must read in order or your head will explode with incomprehension.
Beginning with The Eyre Affair, these books follow the adventures of Special Operative Thursday Next, a literary detective from an other-worldly Swindon. Thursday finds herself able to enter the world of fiction, where characters act out the scenes that (via an imagino-transference device) we read as books. As the series progresses, Thursday's life in the real world and in the book world becomes more and more odd, and more and more of a must read. This seventh book features the attempts to kill off the many fictional clones of Thursday, hence The Woman Who Died a Lot.
This book sits very much on the edge of the Speculative Fantasy genre-village in the book world, so if you can get your head round fictional characters entering the real world, an apprenticeship guided by Miss Haversham and the Cheshire Cat (now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat) and the idea the someone could die by "being mirangued" then this series of books will delight, puzzle and entertain you, and leave you laughing out loud while the rest of the train stare.
The eighth in the series, Dark Reading Matter is due to be published in 2015, so that gives you around a year to get up to speed.
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