Some notes on current reading

My Goodreads 'currently reading' page has eleven items on it - there were ten until I realised one was missing. I'm not actually reading them all simultaneously. In fact I've (temporarily) given up on some of them.

Those on the back burner: 
Saint Francis of Assisi, by G K Chesterton. I started to read this after finishing Chesterton's book on Thomas Aquinas, which was great. For some reason, Francis just isn't cutting the mustard in the same way, and I only got about halfway through.

Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship. One of those books I feel I should read. I haven't managed to get very far into it. Whether it's the translation, or Bonhoeffer's style, it's just not getting across to me.

Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss. I've started this twice, and did get further the second time. But currently it's circling the airport waiting for instructions to land again.

Coming to Peace with Science, by Darrel Falk. I began this after reading Tim Stafford's The Adam Quest, in which Falk's book is mentioned. Sorry, Mr Falk, I think you're trying to do a good job, but I couldn't hold onto both sides of the argument the way you seem to be able to. Still to be finished...

Those making progress (albeit slowly)
Hatred: Islam's war on Christianity, by Michael Coren. I'd like to keep on with this one, but the part I've read seemed mostly to consist of long lists of deaths of Christians at the hands of Muslims. Grisly details. Time will tell whether this one stays on this part of the list.

Did God Really Command Genocide? by Paul Copan and Matt Flanagan. I've read a good deal of this, but it's hard work for my kind of brain, and it seems at times as though there's a lot of semantic nit-picking which has its points, but doesn't help me keep up.

ISIS: Inside the army of terror, by Michael Weiss. This is worth pursuing, but has just got side-swiped at the moment.

Climate Change, by Alan Moran et al. This is good, sometimes too technical for me, but overall worth reading. However, it's temporarily come to a halt.

Books I am reading: 
The Intolerance of Tolerance, by D A Carson. This is very good, and I'm close to finishing it.

Thomas Aquinas: a Portrait, by Denys Turner. Again, very good, though at times I have to read very slowly to understand the arguments. But keeping on with this.

Sermons Preached at Brighton: Third Series, by F W Robertson. Robertson was a 19th century preacher, and these sermons (not actually recorded while he was speaking, but taken from his notes) are very helpful, and insightful. I've been reading these bit by bit in the evenings, and am nearly finished. (I've already read some of the sermons twice, so it's taken me longer than it might.)

The Four Books, by Yan Lianke. I'm reading this to review it, and it's hard work. Not hard to read, but just hard to keep focused. On one hand it's very grim, and Lianke's style, intentionally, is repetitive, so that what's said in one paragraph will be repeated further down the page in a slightly different way, or in one of the other 'books.' It's a satire, but very dour, and you have to wonder again and again why the Chinese seem to have so willingly allowed themselves to be led up the creek by Moa and his terrorists. Yes, perhaps it being terrified that was the problem. But so often in the book the people being 're-educated' are actually offered a way out...and they don't take it.

Alert readers will notice that there are actually 12 books here. I kept remembering other ones I hadn't included on Goodreads initially. So that was good. Updated!

Items of Interest

Two articles on the same page of yesterday's Otago Daily Times caught my attention.  One from the regular column giving some history on people buried in local cemeteries.   This week it featured Otago Harbour's first pilot, the aptly named Richard Driver.  He was one of the area's earliest European residents, although when he was a young man he almost didn't survive an attack by local Maori when he and several of his fellow crew-members stepped onto what is now known as Murdering Beach.  Fortunately he was saved by Motoitoi, the daughter of Kahutia: she threw her father's cloak over Driver and soon after married him.
This is where my interest in the story rose: he had three daughters by Motoitoi, and, after she died, a son by his Maori housekeeper.  That's four children.  In 1849 he married a 17-year-old called Elizabeth Robertson.  She bore him three more children, and then seven more who were all born dead.  That's fourteen children in effect, with Elizabeth being pregnant ten times up to that point.  Once they shifted from the area they lived in, she bore him eight more children.  Thus she was pregnant eighteen times.  He was the father, to all intents and purposes, of 22 children, beating J S Bach by one.  (Though far more of Bach's children actually survived.)

He produced 15 living children - it's not surprising that the writer notes: their descendants today number many hundreds. 


The second article begins: A baby's cries are tuned to trigger a uniquely fast response from adults, research has shown.  Scientists compared volunteers' reaction times while listening to babies crying, the sounds of adults in distress, and birdsong.   Right.  We all respond quickly to birdsong.   The study's leader noted that it is almost impossible to ignore crying babies on planes and the discomfort it arouses.   Well, well, there's a finding for you.

So far this would have been all right - it's basically yet another study that tells us what we already know, but that's hardly uncommon.   Innumerable studies are done to show us that what we know is what we know.  However, the sentence that niggled me (because of the sheer lack of any scientific basis) was this: Evolution has decided that it is a good thing for us to look after our young, and there is something in the acoustic properties of babies' cries that evokes a very basic response that appears to be hardwired in ancient parts of our brains. 


I don't think 'evolution' (which is a person or thing) has ever decided to do anything.  Nor, from my understanding, do we have 'more ancient parts' in our brains.  This is literary science, the kind that tells stories about research but doesn't actually base these stories on anything factual.   It's metaphor, not science. Science is based on experiments that can be replicated not just once, but over and over.   There is no experiment that can show evolution ever 'deciding' to do something.   This is typical of the idea that pervades science: that evolution can be regarded as being responsible for anything and everything, without anyone actually showing this to be the case.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Revival!

In a rather oddly titled article from the Telegraph online, Opera loosens its Corsets, (the article's a couple of years old), I was intrigued to discover that the Carl Rosa company was back in existence. Carl Rosa would have been delighted, I’m sure.
I have tenuous links with the Carl Rosa company – second or third-hand, some might say. When I was at the London Opera Centre, the director was James Robertson, and he’d had real links with the company; he’d conducted for them for some time. It had obviously been an enjoyable time of his life, and he would mention Carl Rosa (by which he meant the company rather than the person) with warmth and enthusiasm.
The revived Carl Rosa is the brainchild (lovechild, you might almost say) of Peter Molloy, who delights in operetta, and has offered excellent and fresh productions of some of the G & S repertoire (they’re just about to take The Mikado off to the States) as well as other light opera pieces.
The company, in its original form, was the first to produce England or in the English tongue the following list of top operatic works: Lohengrin, Aida, Carmen, La Boheme, Cavalleria Rusticana, Hansel and Gretel, Mignon, Manon, Tannhauser, Rienzi, Andrea Chenier, Othello and The Flying Dutchman. Quite an achievement.

One Man's Faith Journey

James Robertson, from our church, has been cycling through NZ from top to bottom (he’s in the middle of the South Island at present, I think), to raise awareness and funds for Tear Fund. Good on yer, James! James is a great guy, and even though he’s used to cycling long distances (a cycle ride from Dunedin city over the top road to the end of the Peninsula and back again is quite normal for him) this long trip is something out of the bag.
I have to have been wrong, but twice on the radio last night, when I was at work, I heard something in relation to Tear Fund which seemed rather odd. It sounded as though they had given a prize for a couple to go and see a work they were supporting in somewhere (I never managed to catch where) to check out the water project that was going on. And then…the couple were going onto Bali for a couple of days in a luxury hotel! Seemed a bit of irony going on here. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong – I can’t see anything about it on Tear Fund’s site. I hope so.