1. A Time to Keep Silence, Patrick Leigh Fermor (1957)
Patrick Leigh Fermor lived for a time in the French Abbey of St Wandrille de Fontanelle, visited the Priory of St Peter of Solesmes, stayed with monks of the Trappist order at La Grande Trappe - a monastery in Orn, France - and then describes the Rock Monasteries of Cappodocia. Not a believer, initially repelled by the austerity of the monastic life, he becomes enchanted by the rhythms of work and worship, by the warm hospitality of the monks, and by the simplicity of his own daily routines as a guest. He writes in the assured style of his era, with a consummate command of English and a sympathy for the place of the monastic movement in Western Europe and in Turkey. It's a slim volume - 95pp - and worth reading for anyone who has an interest in the monastic life from the view of an outsider. I think it's a gem. It's amazing that this was the same man, a man of action, who took part in the abduction of German General Kreipe in 1944 on Crete during World War II, and who, as a very young man, walked from Holland to Constantinople, a walk he wrote about much later in life in the acclaimed works - A Time of Gifts (1977) and Between the Woods and the Water (1986).
2. Straw Dogs - Thoughts on Humans and Animals, John Gray (2002)
English philosopher, John Grey, argues against the idea of human progress. He cuts through sentiment and through our hopes for the improvement of human society. He disagrees with the notion that the Enlightenment brought lasting benefits for the majority of people in 'developed' countries. He argues against the kinds of thinking proposed by Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of our Nature: a history of violence and humanity (2011). An article written by Gray in 2015 is explicit about this:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining
In reading these two authors, one thinks of Augustine and Pelagius.
'As science and technology have advanced, so has proficiency in killing. As the hope for a better world has grown, so has mass murder.' (p.96)
3. The Great Soul of Siberia, Sooyong Park (2015)
The Korean documentary film maker, Sooyong Park, tells the story of his patient observation of the Amur tiger in the Ussuri forests of eastern Siberia. Park lay in his tiny dug-out, submerged in the snow, observing the natural world through a narrow aperture. For months in extreme cold he would see nothing, only to catch a glimpse of a tiger and then nothing more for days or weeks. He eventually came to marvel at the tigers he observed most - Bloody Mary - and her two cubs, White Snow and White Sky. There are a number of Park's photos of these magnificent animals. By the end, Bloody Mary has died and her children are mature tigers with cubs of their own. As much as you marvel at the endangered tigers, you also admire the compassion, dedication and knowledge of the author.
From an interview with the author:
You studied literature for 17 years, and you write like a poet. How did you end up studying Siberian tigers? What is it about these tigers that draws the muse out of you?
For a long time I have been drawn to the beauty of living things and while literature is useful for explaining humanity, it is not enough for explaining nature. Science is more useful, but science is very dry. So I always wanted to fuse science and literature. To do that, I had to immerse myself in nature and observe living things with my own eyes and become one of nature’s species.
I focused on Siberian tigers, which are endangered and elusive. It was a challenge, and the difficulty in finding them led me deep into nature. After many years of study, I could identify individual tigers and recognize their family members. Understanding tiger families allowed me to peer more deeply into their lives: how they love, how they are born, how they live and die. They are not so different from human beings. Knowing that inspired compassion.
You spent six to seven months alone in a bunker during the long Siberian winters in hopes of filming Siberian tigers. Describe your bunker and how you survived the isolation and cold.
We called our bunkers ‘hotels’ to make them seem more comfortable. But in reality they were cramped, underground spaces measuring six feet by six feet by five. I had to stoop when standing up, but I spent most of my time sitting: waiting and watching for tigers with my camera. Outside it was -20F and snowy. I was unable to shower or turn a light on, and had to remain very quiet so as not to scare off the tigers, even though sometimes I wanted to shout. I felt as though I were in solitary confinement. I would read the labels of food containers for entertainment.
4. Beyond the Outsider, Colin Wilson (1965)
This is
a good introduction to the work of the English writer, Colin Wilson. Although his earlier work,
The Outsider, is much better known, I found this second book a more coherent introduction to his positive existentialist philosophy.
Another Wilson book I liked, which I referred to in pastoral theology classes, was his New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the post-Freudian Revolution. I didn't follow his books so closely when he ventured into study of the occult and criminality, but I always found his writing and thought invigorating.
I received a personal letter from Colin Wilson in 1977, after I had read his book on beer and wine, A Book of Booze. I had written to him asking if he had tried New Zealand wine: he replied in large handwriting, saying that coincidentally he had tried a New Zealand white wine just a few days before my letter arrived and liked it a lot.
Although I enjoyed his earlier works, later in his writing career he ventured further into investigations of the occult and of criminality and in many ways, although readable, I found him too credulous and lost interest in his work. However, I still go back to those earlier works on existentialism.
5. The Man Who Loved China, Simon Winchester (2008)
This is the story of Noel Joseph Terence Montgomery Needham (1900-1995) - Joseph Needham. Needham, a true English eccentric, was a Cambridge scientist who developed a passion for China and all things Chinese. A man of some contradictions - high church Anglican and 'honorary Taoist', a passionate sinophile who never overcame his Eurocentrism, he comes across in Winchester's book mainly as a man of extraordinary energy and curiosity. The 'Needham' question is that of asking how it was that the Chinese, who made so many of the world's inventions (the abacus, axial rudder, ball bearings, blast furnace, chain drive, compass and many more) were overtaken technologically by Western nations. China may have the last laugh! As well as being a biography of Needham, the book is also a description of China and the Chinese. I found it stimulating, especially in relation to Chengdu and other places I've visited.
6. Begat - the King James Bible and the English Language, David Crystal (2010).
Crystal begins this book by pointing out that, though the King James Bible has had a considerable influence on the English language, we need to be careful about qualifying what that
is and how it came about. He points out that many of the sayings we attribute to the King James Bible were already in earlier versions of the Bible, such as in the later version (1388) of Wycliffe's Bible; Tyndale's translations of the New Testament and the first six books of the Old Testament, 1526-1530; Coverdale's Psalter (1535), the Geneva Bible (1560) - widely quoted by Elizabethan authors, including Shakespeare; the Bishop's Bible (1568) and the Roman Catholic translation of the New Testament at Douai then Rheims (1582) (Crystal, p.8). Crystal cites 196 idioms in modern English that come through the King James version from earlier sources and 47 cases where an idiom (e.g. a fly in the ointment) has roots in the King James and earlier versions of the Bible but without the direct wording of the modern saying. He explains in the epilogue that there are just 18 instances where a saying directly from the King James Bible is found in modern English, e.g. a thorn in the flesh. The whole book is an erudite and entertaining exploration of the ways biblical sayings have found their way into modern English. While he qualifies the nature and extent of the King James Bible on modern English, Crystal readily affirms that in the sheer number of sayings the KJB has had a greater impact on modern idiomatic English language more than any other single source, including Shakespeare. This work is 'a shining light' in this area of scholarship.
David Crystal was a keynote speaker at the CLESOL conference in Napier, 2006. He's a prolific writer on the English language.
7. The Diary of a Nose - a Year in the Life of a Parfumeur, Jean-Claude Ellena (2011)
Jean-Claude Ellena is the parfeumeur who created, amongst other scents, Terre d'Hermes - an orangy-earthy men's fragrance I like - and Un Jardin en Méditerranée. There are some memorable lines. On learning a new language, for example -
"Over the last few months, I have started studying Italian again, not with a view to using it professionally, but for the pleasure. The pleasure of putting myself in a position of ignorance and learning; learning a language, or any other thing, means opening yourself up to the world once more; it is a return to humility." p.84
8. The Daylight Gate, Jeanette Winterson (2012)
Beginning with Oranges are not the only fruit (1985), I've enjoyed reading a number of Winterson's novels. The Daylight Gate is a novella based on the 1612 Pendle Witch Trials in England in the reign of James 1, with a memorable main character - Alice Nutter. At the centre of the story is a group of destitute people in 17th century England, with vivid descriptions of deprivation, superstition and supernatural happenings. The atmosphere is heavy with religiosity, disease and desperation. The ending, with a character at the gallows and a falcon in the sky, is wonderfully gripping. But then, the whole book is gripping.
9. The Soul of the Night - An Astronomical Pilgrimage, Chet Raymo (1985)
This is exquisite writing. It revived my boyhood interest in astronomy and sent me along to the planetarium in Wellington on Sunday afternoons. On dark winter mornings before and after a run, I gaze up at the constellations.
"...occasionally, if we are lucky, the quest is rewarded with a special transcendent moment when the grandeur that abides in the night flares out (in the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins) 'like shining from shook foil'."
"In other times, the brightest star in a constellation was called its lucida. Betelgeuse, in the shoulder of the giant, is the lucida of Orion. Blood red, like a blinded eye, it is a red supergiant star, a star bloated with fatigue. If Betelgeuse were where our sun is, the Earth and its orbit would be inside it. Mars, too, would be inside it. Betelgeuse is an old star that has puffed up to swallow its planets."
10. All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (2014)
This novel has received terrific reviews internationally, being describe as 'dazzling' and 'magnificent'. Set in World War II, The story centres on a girl who has been blind since the age of six - Marie-Laure, a miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, a German orphan - Werner, who is a genius with electronics, and a diamond. There are purple passages and memorable scenes: the plot is satisfying. In the end, however, for me the book is too much on the surface to be great. I finished it but long before the end I had a sense that it was altogether too clever and in parts too sentimental for me.
