The Friend invited a selection of Friends to pick three books that they have particularly enjoyed in the past twelve months. Photo: Raoul Lucas / flickr CC.
Good reads
The Friend invited a selection of Friends to pick three books that they have particularly enjoyed in the past twelve months.
Marcus Tullius Cicero said: ‘A room without books is like a body without a soul.’ Friends may or may not agree with this opinion. However, they certainly enjoy reading them and 2015 has been a productive year for many Quakers involved, in different ways, in the written and printed word.
Author and broadcaster Geoffrey Durham, author of Being a Quaker: A Guide for Newcomers, was captivated by three recent volumes of poetry.
He says: ‘They share themes of love, ageing and mortality. Love Songs of Carbon by Philip Gross is a superb collection – vigorous, high-spirited and tender. Its most enthralling love poem, “A Walk Across a Field”, remains bright in my mind six weeks after reading it.
‘Waiting for the Past, by the extraordinarily inventive Australian poet Les Murray, uses startling imagery (“I bled like a tumbril dandy”) to express the sacredness of life with a rugged, impetuous grace.
‘And finally, despite every page of Clive James’s Sentenced to Life being haunted by the prospect of his imminent death, I have been enchanted by the wit of his writing and the glint in his eye as he contemplates the guilty blessing of finding himself still alive.’
Spiritual discoveries
Novelist Alison Leonard was prompted to re-read a modern classic by Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth. She says: ‘And what a read it is – what a writer she is.’
Alison’s second recommendation – Staying True by Lynn Waddington – was dug up for her by the devoted librarian of her Meeting at Hebdon Bridge. She explains: ‘Lynn describes herself as “an odd-duck Quaker lesbian”, and she wrote/compiled this memoir as she approached her death. It is a complex and rather glorious jigsaw of a story. Raised a conservative Quaker beside the Delaware River in a remote part of New Jersey, with no electricity, great childhood freedom and tensions within her family, she went on to become a creative arts lecturer. Her explorations of Jungian psychology and paleolithic art are intertwined with spiritual discoveries in a most delicate and engaging way.’
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh is Alison’s third choice: ‘It describes in detail the work of a brain surgeon from, as it were, the inside: the inside of the brains, and the inside of the surgeon’s mind and heart. The word that jumps out of all the reviews is “unflinching”, and unflinching it is. But it’s also informative, deeply compassionate and occasionally hilarious.’
Poet Stevie Krayer, co-editor of the outstanding anthology A Speaking Silence: Quaker Poets of Today, selected three books by Quakers: ‘All deal with quite sombre subject matter – yet each one is a life-affirming celebration of the human spirit in adversity. I didn’t think at first I was going to enjoy Jennifer Kavanagh’s novel The Emancipation of B, with its Eeyorish square peg who becomes a recluse after a disabling accident. But, magically, I was won over – even changed – by it.
‘Although Anthony Gimpel’s Alfred reads like a thriller, it is based on the experiences of his grandfather, a Berlin Jew who went “on the lam” and survived the Holocaust, thanks to his quick wits and a series of almost incredible strokes of luck.’
Stevie also chooses the new collection from Philip Gross, Love Songs of Carbon, which she writes: ‘addresses the entropy and death which await us all with characteristic honesty, tempered with tenderness and playful wit.’
Inspiring hope
Sheffield & Balby Friend Craig Barnett admits to having re-read several of his favourite books in 2015, including Shikasta by Doris Lessing. He says: ‘This is an extraordinary mythicised version of the world’s religious and political history and near future, cast as science fiction. It is told mostly from the perspective of a benevolent alien civilisation, as they patiently labour to awaken the people of earth from greed and intolerance over several millenia.
‘Another all-time favourite is Incognito by the Romanian author Petru Dumitriu. It is an epic novel of spiritual search and awakening through the events of the second world war, communist revolution and totalitarianism.
‘One new book I have enjoyed is A Place of Refuge by Tobias Jones. This tells the moving story of how the author and his family turned their home into a house of hospitality for people in crisis. There are extraordinary stories of the many eccentric and sometimes infuriating people who have lived with them, told with humour and a complete absence of self-righteousness. This is a book that inspires hope in people’s capacity for generosity and kindness.’
Lily Moss-Norbury works for Quaker Life as bookshop manager in the Quaker Centre Bookshop at Friends House. She says: ‘It’s been a busy year in the bookshop, so finding the time to relax and actually enjoy our books has been important.
‘The Staying Alive poetry anthology has been constantly to hand throughout the year; it features writing from around the globe and always seems to have something that will ring true for any situation.
‘As someone newly exploring vegetarianism and more sustainable living, Mildreds: The Vegetarian Cookbook by Daniel Acevedo and Sarah Wasserman has been invaluable, and to stay engaged with the counter narrative to traditional US politics, Noam Chomsky’s Because We Say So has been excellent reading recently.’
The green revolution
The idea behind The Green Bible is to highlight those verses that teach us that we are part of God’s creation and need to take good care of it. The verses that speak out on this message are marked in green!
The book was one of the choices made by Dutch Friend Kees Nieuwerth, who says: ‘It has a beautiful “green subjects index”: water, animal, land, creation… It starts off with the “Canticle of Creatures” by saint Francis of Assisi and a foreword by archbishop Desmond Tutu. At times there is a broadcast message by Desmond Tutu on the radio in the Netherlands inviting all of us to join him in a “green revolution”. In his foreword to The Green Bible he writes about this: “Jesus would wish us to enfold all that God has created, the entire universe, into unity.”’
Kees also selected The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, by Jan-Philipp Sendker: ‘A truly wonderful book about a young blind man in Myanmar (Burma) who developed his sense of hearing to such an extraordinary extent that he hears butterflies fly by (!) and recognizes people by their individual heartbeat… He becomes a monk, develops a deep relationship with a crippled young woman, is cured of his blindness, studies and emigrates to the United States. Eventually he returns to Burma. His American daughter follows his trail and discovers the fascinating world in which her father grew up. This exposes her not only to this entirely different cultural and religious world, but also to the political tensions in Myanmar.’ The real magic of this book, Kees explains, is ‘the beautiful lessons about true listening!’
His final choice is by Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: ‘If you really want to know what is at stake at the upcoming UN Summit on Climate Change in Paris, reading this book is a must! Klein explains it all in a very clear manner. In doing so she exposes the dominant political-economic system that tries to make us believe that “free market forces” and technological innovations will save us from climate change…
‘Instead we lack “transformative leadership” (as well as “transformative citizenship”!!) to really address the climate change crisis… We need to transform the global financial-economic architecture, as well as our individual lifestyles, the patterns of production and consumption radically.’
Moving insights
The editor of the Friend, Ian Kirk-Smith, enjoyed Alastair McIntosh’s Island Spirituality, a ‘fascinating account of the spiritual and religious history of the islands along the west coast of Scotland’, and he also recommends a book by a Quaker more associated with academic writing, [Ben] Pink Dandelion. Making our Connections: A spirituality of travel is an engaging and original travel book, he says: ‘It urges us to travel in a mindful way, embracing possibility, and contains some moving insights into his personal spiritual journey.’
Ian’s third book is a constant companion, The Collected Poems of W B Yeats, and he recommends it as a good friend to have around in all seasons.
Simon Best, of the Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, picked out a Quaker classic, A Testament of Devotion by Thomas R Kelly, as a book he enjoyed re-reading in 2015. It is a ‘moving and inspiring’ book, he says, that contains guidance, possibility and joy. It is about: ‘how we can live a life that is grounded and centred on responding to the leadings and callings that we discern from what Kelly calls the divine centre.’
Simon selected A little book about Believing by Cash Peters, which tells the story of his journey, both spiritual and physical, and that of others to the Casa de Dom Inácio in Brazil, home to a faith healer called John of God.
He also expressed the importance of finding different ways of sharing faith, as well as through the written word and speech, and recommended a weekly Youtube series that is being produced by Friends Journal in the USA: QuakerSpeak. It is a series of short videos in which individual Friends explore aspects of their faith.
Gathered discernment
Laurie Michaelis, environmental correspondent of the Friend, highlighted three books that dealt with climate change.
He says: ‘Eileen Flanagan, in Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope, tells her story from Peace Corps volunteer to living the consumer lifestyle, and then to climate activist as clerk of Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT). EQAT persuaded a large American bank with Quaker roots to stop financing mountaintop-removal coal mining.’
His second choice was Don’t Even Think About It: Why our brains are wired to ignore climate change by George Marshall. Laurie explains: ‘The book offers a wide-ranging and deep insight into the psychology of responding to climate change, and what works in engaging people. He is strictly non-religious but much of what he has to say will resonate with Friends. He has a wonderfully exuberant and somewhat chaotic speaking and writing style. The book is easy to dip into; each short chapter stands alone, but easily draws you into reading more’.
The Quaker novelist Gregory Norminton is the editor of Laurie’s third selection Beacons: Stories for our not so distant future. He says: ‘He convened a group of writers to reflect on the implications of climate change and write short stories. I find many of them sadly
dystopian – perhaps this is an indication of the difficulty people currently have in daring to hope, or speak openly about visions for a better world’.
Finally, an invitation was given to an individual in the Friends House Library, where the staff probably see more books than most avid readers each year, was met by a most Quakerly response: ‘I cannot give you a personal selection. We are a team. We will talk about this together and get back to you.’
After some gathered discernment and discussion, they did just that and selected A clerk’s progress – the daunting journeys and curious adventures of an Area Meeting by Heather Lister of Bristol Area Meeting. We, the drowned, an epic tale of adventure, ruthlessness and passion by the best-selling Danish writer Carsten Jenson, was a second recommendation.
Pogrom November 1938: Testimonies from ‘Kristallnacht’, edited by Ruth Levitt, was the final choice from the well-read librarians. It is a powerful compilation of more than 350 eyewitness accounts of the events of Kristallnacht (Night of the broken glass), published for the first time in English.
