My five star books

Since 2002 I have been noting the books I read and giving them a review of between one and five stars. A bit sad, I know, but it’s helpful when I can’t remember whether a book was any good or not.

Anyway, here’s a list of the books I’ve given five stars to. I was a bit surprised at some of the ones on this list. Obviously I really liked them at the time. I’m not sure I’d rate them all so highly if I read them now. That shows how subjective this is. I’m also interested by what is not on there – no J.D. Salinger, for example.

God’s Debris – Scott Adams
Stupid White Men – Michael Moore
The Silmarillion – J.R.R. Tolkien
The River of Time – David Brin
The Incarnation – St Athanasius
Sabriel – Garth Nix
Becoming Fully Human – Patrick Whitworth
Lirael – Garth Nix
How to Read the Bible for all it’s Worth – Gordon Fee
Paul, the Spirit and the People of God – Gordon Fee
Abhorsen – Garth Nix
A New Kind of Christian – Brian D. McLaren
A Theology of the Dark Side – Nigel G. Wright
Possession – A.S. Byatt
Velvet Elvis – Rob Bell
Use of Weapons – Iain M. Banks
Nineteen Eighty-four – George Orwell
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
The Eyre Affair – Jasper Fforde
The Road to Wigan Pier – George Orwell
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Surface Detail – Iain M. Banks
Wonder – R.J. Palacio
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
Ragnarok – A.S. Byatt
Generation X – Douglas Coupland
Wise Children – Angela Carter

I’ve noticed that as time has progressed I’ve stopped rating Christian books so highly. I’ve also started reading more well-known authors, which is probably the influence of my book group. But I’ve awarded fewer five star ratings as time has gone on, so I’ve given F. Scott Fitzgerald, Salinger, Solzhenitsyn and others four or four and a half star ratings, where a few years earlier they would probably have got a five. (This also explains why Stupid White Men is in this list. I don’t think I’d give that a five now.)

Threatened worldviews threaten other worldviews

I've been reading 'The Last Word and the Word After That' by Brian McLaren, that covers a lot of the same ground as 'Love Wins'. This struck me as a relatively good explanation for the criticisms levelled at Rob Bell during the recent "controversy".

"...faith must engage with the culture in which is finds itself but... can become so excesively enmeshed with that culture that its power is neutralized - actually, neutered... If a faith becomes enmeshed, not just engaged with a culture... people hardly notice - until a wave of cultural change hits. Then, when people want to move on from that fading culture, when they want to be part of that new wave, they feel they must leave their faith behind as well. Their only alternative is to try to disengage their faith from the fading culture, but this is one of the most painful things a person can do - mentally painful, spiritually painful...

"In times of profound cultural change... such as our current transition from a modern colonial culture, with its emphasis on rational certainty and conquest and control, to a postmodern and postcolonial culture, which distrausts rational certainty because of the violence that confident people have inflicted on others in their striving to conquer and control them. In times like these, people, thousands at the same time, face this agonizing task of disengaging their faith from the culture it has grown with, like two trees whose roots are intertwined." [page 15, bold text mine]

It's no accident that the last colonial superpower left is the battleground between the modern and postmodern elements within Christianity. It's no surprise that those with the most to lose - the theocrats whose worldview is bound up in a scientific narrative that insists on one form of truth as supreme - are so vocal in their criticism of reformulation (and potential reformation).

IMO.