My Favourite Books

1.    All Things are Yours	Geoffrey Bingham	A book on authority? You betcha. We all need to read this one. When you assent to its conclusions, then all things really are yours.
2.    Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	One of the most powerful books ever written. The Russian exposes with  excruciating depth the effect guilt can have on a person.
3.    Recollections of a Bleeding Heart	Don Watson	Paul Keating’s speechwriter inscribes an exposé of the former PM, warts and all. This is the real Keating.
4.    Genesis 1–15	Gordon Wenham	This opus on Genesis is the commentary par excellence on the foundations of our faith.
5.    Tess of the D’Urbervilles	Thomas Hardy	Hardy’s novels ooze with passion. Forget, however, his twisted theology. Tess is the most famous of his novels. One of these days I must view the film, starring the beautiful Julie Harris.
6.    The Chicago Manual of Style	University of Chicago	‘He must be mad’, I can hear you say. But hey, my vocation is proofreading. Of course, I haven’t  read all 950 pp., but this is the editor’s Bible: it has all the information laid out nicely.
7.    Romeo & Juliet	William Shakespeare	Everybody’s favourite yarn of the master playwright. I’m still puzzled how he manages to instil humour in this classic tragedy. I must say that I couldn’t stomach the 1994 celluloid take of the play: it seemed grotesque for the players to be speaking in the original 16th century tongue while propelling around in US convertibles and bearing submachine guns.
8.    Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy	John Le Carré	In a huge field, Le Carré stands as the prince of spy thrillers. You have to read every paragraph carefully to imbibe who is on whose side. This is the first of the Smiley trilogy. Sir Alec Guinness’s portrait of Smiley in the excellent TV adaptation is a masterpiece.
9.    Jude the Obscure	Thomas Hardy	Andrew & Liz think I loony to like this book. But there must be noone who can match Hardy’s portrayal of his two protagonists as so emaciated of mind and eking out such deplorable lives. The dominant theme of Jude is suffering—in fact it’s probably the only theme. With each step the couple make, when things can’t possibly get any worse, they do! Love it!
10.  America’s Greatest Theologian	Robert Jenson	Jonathan Edwards has been celebrated as both America’s greatest theologian and philosopher. I’ve read his Freedom of the Will: man that’s a hard read. The story goes that Jenson, one of the leading Lutheran lights in the US, managed to get hold of the then recently discovered Miscellanies of Edwards. The outcome—this book—firstly presents Jenson as a fine exponent of the English language, plus an outstanding researcher (the Miscellanies are published as tomes: Edwards was a typical Puritan—verbose). But it’s the book’s content that makes riveting reading for any interested in trinitarian theology. Jenson structures his book such that his final chapter provides the answers the writer was intensely searching for.