What we are reading

How satisfying it is to be able to find a comfy spot, howling wind outside, and read an interesting book-or four! This is what we are reading. (I wonder if you can guess who is tackling what?) However, we are soon to finish and need some new titles to get stuck into. Suggestions VERY welcome!


Small Island by Andrea Levy
"I was christened Victoria Buxton. My mother had wanted me to be christened Queenie but the vicar had said, "No, Mrs Buxton, I'm afraid Queenie is a common name."
"Common!" my mother had replied. "How can it be common? It's a queen's name." The vicar had then given an impromptu sermon which my mother, father and their gathered guests had to listen to as they stood round the stone font in our bleak local church. The vicar went on at length about monarchs having proper names like Edward, George, Elizabeth while everyone, dressed in their pinching church-best shoes began to shift from foot to foot and stifle yawns behind their scrubbed hands. "Take our late queen," the vicar finally explained, "her name, Mrs Buxton, was not queen but Victoria."
So that was how - one thundery August day in a church near Mansfield, dressed in a handed down white-starched christening gown that wouldn't do up at the neck - I, the first born child of Wilfred and Lillie Buxton, came to be christened Victoria yet called forever Queenie."

Watching the English by Kate Fox
"I don't see why anthropologists feel they have to travel to remote corners of the world and get dysentery in order to study strange tribal cultures with bizarre beliefs and mysterious customs, when the weirdest, most puzzling tribe of all is right here on our doorstep."

Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy
"The application of biblical theology to expository preaching-The aim of this book is to provide a handbook for preachers that will help them apply a consistently Christ-centered approach to their sermons."

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
This is a book about an almost universal anxiety that rarely gets mentioned directly: an anxiety about what others think of us; about whether we're judged a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. This is a book about status anxiety. With the help of philosophers, artists and writers, de Botton examines the origins of status anxiety (ranging from the consequences of the French Revolution to our secret dismay at the success of our friends), before revealing ingenious ways in which people have learnt to overcome their worries in their search for happiness.