Categories
Do Not Use

Books I’ve Read: The Life of Pi

You know what? I probably wouldn’t bother with this. I know it’s a famous book and has been made into a movie and all, but I just didn’t get it. The book broadly breaks down into three sections. The first is a rather crude advert for a certain wishy-washy variety of Hinduism. Yes, I know […]

Categories
Africa Reviews

Books I have Read: Adventures in Music and Culture

I have to start with a disclaimer. Not only was I given a free copy of this book to read and review, it was also signed by the author and I even get a mention on the acknowledgements page. I’ve known the author, Rob Baker, since he was a short term missionary in Ivory Coast, […]

Categories
Reviews

Books I’ve Read: Watching the Dark

I write about mission and theology and I muse about Bible translation, but when push comes to shove, my real field of expertise is detective novels. I’ve read lots of Agatha Christie (clever mysteries, dreadful characterization) a fair bit of Simenon (amazing characters, boring mysteries – and in French), all of the Morse books, the whole […]

Categories
Reviews

Books I’ve Read: The Funniest book of the Year

Just take my word for it; The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is wonderful. Jonas Jonasson has rewritten the Good Soldier Schweik, made it funnier more surreal and (mercifully) shorter. The hero of the book has had a full life and was present at most of the major events of the second […]

Categories
Reviews

Books I Have Read: Winter in Madrid

A few years ago, I found myself spending a few days in a hospital in Northern-Thailand. I wasn’t ill, but there was some concern that I was and it took three days to work it all out. While I was there, some kind friends loaned me some copies of the Shardlake books by C.J. Samson. […]

Categories
Bible & Mission Reviews

Books I’ve Read: Not So Secret

IVP recently asked me to write a commendation for Graham Orr’s excellent new book Not so secret. I was more than happy to do so, and this is what I came up with. If you buy the book, you will discover that the publishers only used one fragment of a sentence from my carefully crafted prose […]

Categories
Reviews

Books I’ve Read: Raven Black

Raven Black (Shetland Quartet 1) by Ann Cleeves is a thoroughly enjoyable murder mystery with an excellent couple of twists right at the end. If you like a good whodunnit, you won’t be disappointed (especially at the current low price that they Kindle edition is selling for). The book is set on the Shetland Isles (as […]

Categories
Africa Reviews

Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

At the moment, the BBC is showing the remarkable David Attenborough series “Africa”; all beautiful scenes and amazing animals. However, as is often the case, the Africa of the nature documentary seems more or less devoid of people. If you would like to know more about the human side of the continent, you could do […]

Categories
Reviews

To the Last Round

I’m no expert, but I have a passing interest in military history. I’ve read more books on the Napoleonic wars than I would care to remember and our shelves are liberally stacked with histories of the second world war and books about the British army. However, I have to admit that my only exposure to […]

Categories
Observations Reviews

Unapologetic

This is almost a very good book! Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense by Francis Spufford is wonderfully written, amusing, humane and very original. There are many books which seek to demonstrate that Christianity is objectively true and trustworthy. Spufford sets out to show that Christianity also makes sense of the […]