- Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (Translated by Constance Garnett; Heinemann, 1914)
- Flannery O’Connor, Complete Stories (Faber and Faber, 2009)
- Andrew Byers, Faith Without Illusions: Following Jesus as a Cynic-Saint (IVP, 2011)
- James Mumford, Vexed: Ethics Beyond Political Tribes (Bloomsbury, 2020)
- Tom Holland, Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind (Little, Brown: 2019).
I’m still working my way through most of the books from December’s list (this includes Dominion which I recently had signed by the author at the Cambridge Union, where he was delivering a speech in favour of Sparta over Athens. He apologised for signing the book in red pen, but what could be more appropriate for a book on the cross-shaped mind of the West?). I did manage to finish a couple of books though. Among these was JKA Smith’s On the Road With Augustine which, among many things, serves as a thought-provoking, moving and inspiring primer to the Christian life for the interested, cynical and sceptical.
I’m not yet disciplined enough to only buy and starting reading a book after I’ve finished another. On the plus side, I’m happy with my resolution to adopt more fiction into my literary diet. My selections on this count have, admittedly, been on the darker side. I recently completed Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and have now selected two masterpieces which are highly appropriate for the Lenten season—O’Connor’s collection of short stories and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I was introduced to O’Connor through an episode of the Onscript podcast in Lent last year with Michael Bruner. Immediately attracted by what Bruner describes as O’Connor’s fascination with the piercing beauty and unyielding grotesqueness of human existence, I picked up a copy of the shockingly brilliant A Good Man Is Hard to Find before selecting her volume of short stories.
In the world of non-fiction, I’ve been enjoying the bridge-building nature of Mumford’s Vexed so far which speaks to some of my Red Tory/Blue Labour instincts. On the theological side of things, I can’t wait to make some time for Byers’ Faith Without Illusions, not least because he speaks about hopeful realism in a way that resonates with my desires when starting this blog (more on that here and hopefully more anon). His take on disillusionment in the opening chapter reminds of Jonathan Merrit’s wonderful piece on the Gift of Disillusionment, which directly inspired my Palm Sunday sermon last year. I’m finding Byers’ book a generous, orthodox and thoughtful read so far and a healing balm for the cynicism (read: “contemptuous distrust”) which I find so easy entangles.