Like a subscription to a sweetshop

So. I just discovered Perlego.com and it is like having a subscription to a sweetshop, or an all-you-can-eat buffet, or a pizza restaurant. I think it was originally for students. It stores a million textbooks and for a simple monthly fee, you can download and read them all. (Note that it is perlego and not perlogo. The alternate spelling in my experience is a site that has been taken over by cybersquatters who intend you harm.)

Here’s my usage over the past two months.

  • Our church has a teaching series on the biblical book of Nehemiah, which I’m speaking on in August. Want a commentary on Nehemiah? Perlego offers 94 of them across the range of Biblical scholarship. I tucked into Derek Kidner’s 2015 Tyndale commentary for starters.
  • I helped myself to Tom Wright’s biography of Paul, which I just read in hardback and wanted to review.
  • I was able to hunt down all John Walton’s books, which are revolutionizing studies of Genesis and read in detail The Lost World of the Flood, very much enjoying his blend of Biblical scholarship, from a conservative perspective no less, and his receptivity to God’s other book, the book of nature as opened and read by modern science. His secret sauce that blends these two ingredients is a renewed study of the ancient literature and an awareness of the cultural flow of the times. If we know what they meant then, today’s science isn’t a problem.
  • I chewed without finishing Joshua Swamidass’ book The Genealogical Adam and Eve, which I have blogged about in a previous year. It claims that you can have a historic literal Adam and Eve and they can be ancestors of everyone, provided they weren’t the only humans on earth at the time. I haven’t eaten my crusts so far as this book is concerned because (a) it’s quite dense and my eyes glazed over and (b) I’m not wedded to a literal Adam and Eve,especially after reading Walton. But still.
  • Fancying something a little more spiritually improving, I looked to see what the scholar-archbishop (and Cambridge resident) Rowan Williams had on offer and dug out probably the most difficult of the alternatives, his book Passions of the Soul which is, broadly, a study of what the Greek-speaking Desert Fathers did all day in terms of scrutinizing the human psyche’s response to God. One wonders if the Desert Fathers rather pushed to the background the Second Great Commandment, love your neighbour, but it’s nevertheless interesting.
  • Then I’ve been listening to Justin Brierley’s excellent podcast series The Surprising Rebirth of Faith in God which is also a book and isn’t yet available on the sainted Perlego, but his previous title Why I’m Still a Christian is. The podcast had an episode on a woman called Louise Perry, who, starting with impeccable feminist credentials, has come to conclude that the best way for most people and for societies as a whole to thrive is to aim at a life not incompatible with many of the Christian values. (I don’t think she herself is at the moment a Christian believer, saying she stumbles on the metaphysics.) She was so eloquent, gracious, honest and deeply, deeply smart in the interview that I put her in Perlego and lo! There her book appeared, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, and I can read that too. I can read them all. For my £12 or so monthly subscription.

Cue the rumble of the earth moving around me. I have written about how sad it is that thousands of pieces of excellent writing (in my particular world, Christian academic writing) are hidden inaccessible behind mighty paywalls. Woe to you if you are Nigerian youth leader or a Filipina pastor or, frankly, an ordinary Joe in the West whose budget doesn’t stretch to this literary feasting. The seven titles I’ve mentioned here would empty your wallet of the best part of £100 to buy, even assuming you could find them.

The Internet was always supposed to give us access to every film ever made, every piece of music ever recorded, and every book ever written. Big tech has muscled in mostly, so the films are divided between different streamers, and the music is being buried under a weight of AI generated elevator sound. Amateur films, books and music are everywhere, creators far outstripping the capacity of consumers.

But Perlego is, I think, where publishers’ backlists go, a far superior place to the literary Hades which is the nether end of the Amazon bestseller lists, where books crowd in semi-darkness, waiting usually in vain to be called up higher by an Order. (This is where my books reside, incidentally, at least until I get my move to Substack sorted out, of which more sometime.)

Enjoy it while it lasts.

My challenge now is to find le temps juste when I can moot to my wife the idea of an annual Perlego subscription (£100 or so, so a saving really) and perhaps a compact little Android e-reader like this to read it on.

Faith and patience.

If it’s not ‘all in the mind’ quite a lot is.

Gavin Francis’ book Recovery — GP’s take on the neglected art of convalescence –:

has a brilliant example of what good, or harm, our minds can do as part of our well-being; worth quoting. Francis talks about two middle-aged men who ‘a few weeks apart both suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed, ostensibly dead, but who were successfully resuscitated with electric shocks. Both were then fitted with portable electronic defibrillators …[that were] about the shape and size of a matchbox’. If either man collapsed again, ‘the portable defibrillator would sense the change and shock the heart back into a healthy rhythm.’

‘For one of the men, the intimate experience of the proximity of death, the fragility of life and his new reliance on the implanted defibrillator was utterly traumatic. He began to suffer panic attacks and fiddled ceaselessly with the swelling beneath his collarbone. He couldn’t find a way to stop fretting that it might fail. At the time of his cardiac arrest he had been working as an administrator but he found himself unable to go on working. He was afraid to be alone, and his nights became a torment of insomnia.

‘For the other man, the almost identical experience of collapse and then resurrection became an epiphany of gratitude. His new life was a gift, he said, for by rights he should now be dead, and all the tedious, niggling irritations that once troubled him seemed to dissolve. It was enough to be able to breathe this air, walk on this earth, see his grandchildren. He had always lived modestly, but now began to emjoy sumptuous meals, fine wine, and booked holidays to places he would never before have considered visiting.

‘He had died, but then he lived again, and that new life into which he was born seemed one of richness, tenderness and gratitude.’

Bananas for free!

Hello you,

Your book is wonderful! I do hope that it is very widely read.

|Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys CBE FRS, Cambridge University

A slightly out-0f-time blog entry with the happy news that my book More than Bananas is now free again on Amazon. So you can read it on your Kindle, or (as I do) on your phone with a Kindle app.

The joy of free books is that people can sample my stuff and then if they wish, part with coinage for the next titles in the series. It was free on Kindle a while ago, and became a worldwide theology bestseller, which helped me feel good if nothing else. So I’m so glad it’s back, with the great joy of anyone being able to help themselves to it for nothing.

Audio fans can listen to my reading of the book as a set of podcasts.

Please enjoy and tell your friends.

A Christmas present for you. Well, sort of.

I finally got my book Bread up on the main internet bookshops for pre-order, before its publication on February 19 2022. That’s so I can c0llect orders and reviews.

I can also offer both of you faithful and patient blog readers a free copy. Let me say that again in upper case with two exclamation marks:

A FREE COPY!!

Publishers call these things ARCs or Advanced Review Copies. I’d love you to have one and then if at all possible leave an honest review somewhere (like on the sites where it is offered for pre-publication). Reviews, as you know, are a currency of the Internet.

Even if you don’t feel up to reviewing it, please help yourself anyway. I’m very fond of this book and would love you to see more than the brief extracts I’ve already shared.

I will also very much welcome any comments and criticisms you may have. My wife was the first reader of the ARC and has already pointed out one or two risqué jokes that I will take out of the edition that finally appears on Feb 19, as well as other mistakes and inappropriateness. So if you want the version with risqué jokes and inappropriateness included, now’s your only chance.

Do share this with anyone you think would like it. I’ve set a download limit of 500 on the number of ARCs that can be issued and the offer all ends on Feb 18.

A refreshing refresher

Get it while you can

The regular readers of this blog, both of you, will know I’ve been exerpting chapters from my new book over the past weeks. Well, it’s finally finished and I’m really pleased with it. Here is the cover art:

It is, I hope, a fun refresher on some of the big themes of discipleship. A refreshing refresher, perhaps.

Lots of us read books that we kind of have to, or ought to. I’ve written a few of these myself.

This is not that book. Nor are the others I’ve been writing in the past few years, More than Bananas, Bread and the comedy trilogy Paradise, The Wheels of the World and The Sump of Lost Dreams.

The way to read this book is in a comfy chair, perhaps with some chocolate nearby, with the squalls of the world shut out, and with your own worries laid aside.

Here are few sample chapters that I put in the blog:

It’s available in its various formats at Amazon, Eden and the like and orderable from any other bookshop worthy of the name.

{Smiles}

The minds of small children

And what we can learn

Another article dredged from my archives, lest I am ever guilty of deliberately harbouring an unpublished thought. It is due to appear in my forthcoming book ‘The Sandwich‘ and was written for the Singaporean magazine for which I used to work. I am pleased to report that the children described in the article both ended up with Master’s degrees from Cambridge University, and that we all survived their childhood. Somehow.

Luckylife11 on Pixabay – many thanks

(1997)

Anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it (Mark 10:15)

Christ said we must become as little children to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Dear God, this is too much. Have we got to become such idiots? (Protestant reformer Martin Luther, c. 1538)

Talking bananas

Our children normally have a banana for breakfast and I have got into the habit of ringing it up before we eat it.

‘do-dee-der-dee-der-der-der

‘-Ring-

‘Hello, are you a banana?

‘Yes

‘Would you like to be eaten today?

‘Oh, alright then.

‘OK Thanks! Bye’

Presumably this little game will one day cease to be entertaining for the kids in the morning. (I hope quite soon.)

However, I was doing this one morning recently when my five-year-old daughter suddenly spoke up.

‘It’s not the banana talking at all! It’s you!’

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, Has she only just realized this? I thought. Has she thought all these months and years that you can ring bananas up? And that they talk back? I wondered what else was going on, unsuspected by me, between her ears.

‘You’re right’ I admitted. ‘It’s me.’

Wet and wild

I work from home, in an upstairs room overlooking our garden, so I sometimes get to watch our three-year-old playing on his own: tramping about in his red wellies (rubber boots), watering the plants, digging in the sandpit. He shovels out sand and heaps it into his tractor. He collects stones in a bucket. He stirs the sand round and round with a stick, all the time talking. ‘Mum, I’m a collector. I’m collecting things.’ ‘Mum, I’m baking a cake. It’s a chocolate cake. With lemons.’ His mind, I observe, seems like a home you’ve just moved into: all the furniture’s there, but it hasn’t been straightened out quite yet.

In his book Queen of Angels, science fiction writer Greg Bear writes about an age when psychotherapy and computer modelling are so advanced that therapists will be able to take computer-aided journeys round the landscape of people’s minds, investigating the country and solving deep traumas.

Brilliant and daring though he is, he never speculates on the insides of a child’s mind. I can imagine why: it’s too wild. Certainly my kids’ minds are like that, mad, happy tea-parties where disconnected ideas and talking bananas jostle together.

It can’t be true

A child’s mindset is interesting in the same way the roller-coaster ride called Space Mountain in Euro-Disney outside Paris is interesting: riding it you’re completely in the dark and you don’t know where you’re going to be thrown next.

But it’s also interesting because, as we know, a child’s mind is a holy thing, a thing we must emulate if we are to get in on the kingdom of God. A child’s mind is nearer to the kingdom of God than a grownup’s. How can this be? Here are two ideas:

Wonder. Children know about wonder; grownups have to relearn it. Remember the answer Jesus gave to John the Baptist’s question, ‘Are you the one that was sent?’: the Lord Jesus told the questioners ‘The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.’ (Luke 7:22). ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him,’ says the apostle Paul (1 Cor 2:9). ‘Dear friends, now we are children of God,’ adds John, ‘and what we will be has not yet been made known.’ (1 John 3:2).

According to the New Testament, we are seeing the first, outriding snowballs of goodness tumbling down heaven’s mountainside into our lives; an avalanche will follow. As Christians we have every reason to develop a childlike capacity for wonder. Outrageous, lovely things really do happen. The future will be rich with them.

Relationship. Children have the enviable ability to have their problems solved with a hug. As grownup Christians we think a hug is not enough. But it is enough. ‘Peace I leave with you,’ says the Lord Jesus, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid’ (John 14:27).  ‘Do not be anxious about anything,’ says Paul, shockingly; instead, ‘present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus’ (Phil 4: 6-7).

It is characteristic of Jesus that in the toughest times he does not explain things. Instead, he showers us with love and peace. It isn’t (rational, modern) explanation or (shrugging, post-modern) escapism we need; it is enough to be loved. Children know it; adults forget it.

At the heart of the Universe — we need to remember– is not a series of laws, nor something blind and chaotic, but a Good Person whom we do well to know (as children easily accept).  His normal speech is what we call the laws of universe; his special words of love are what we call signs and wonders; fail to see him and we miss everything.

Maybe we should not be so committed to edifices of adult thought. Maybe the foolish playfulness of God, the God of talking bananas, is a surer foundation. We need the playful mind of a child to keep up with the rampant gaiety of a good God. Try this song as a quick summary of all we need to know (though in our case sung to Jesus rather than to a lover):

‘I don’t believe in many things, but in You, I do, I do.’

My new book

And a free copy for you

My other site (glennmyers.info) is mostly about my comic fiction. Here’s where I try to do what slowmission.com only talks about: writing books about big stuff using a genre I love.

Red letter day for me, then: a new title coming out on May 10th.

Here’s the announcement:

After many metal-bashing months in the factory

It’s done

The Sump of Lost Dreams 

is the third book in my comic fiction series that began with
Paradise
and continued with
The Wheels of the World

each uses comedy, fantasy and storytelling to say things about Life, the Universe and Everything
  • Published on May 10th, price £1.99 as a download or £8.99 for the paperback
  • There’s even a helpful prologue for those who may have slightly forgotten what is going on

I’d like to offer slowmission.com readers a free download of this title.  Just go here:

[otw_shortcode_button href=”https://dl.bookfunnel.com/jstkowmiek” size=”medium” icon_position=”right” shape=”round” color_class=”otw-greenish” target=”_blank”]The Sump of Lost Dreams[/otw_shortcode_button]

  • If you can review the book on Amazon or similar — wonderful
  • Offer ends May 10th — when the book is published
  • The first book in the series is permanently free on Amazon and iBooks and all good internet bookstores.

The (second) greatest story ever told

A Christmas CarolI only re-read one book every year (apart from the Bible). I have an audio version of A Christmas Carol and I listen to it every Christmas season without fail. It’s huge fun and it’s about repentance.  What more could you want?

It’s also interesting for two other reasons:

  1. It’s nearly perfect. For me A Christmas Carol is the textbook for popular storytelling. Everything opened up at the beginning is resolved at the end. Everything is vivid and passionate. The dramatic tension never stops, building like a symphony through scene after perfect scene to the final explosion and the shattering and remaking of Scrooge.
  2. It shows how a novelist can change culture. All of us in the West draw on this text when we think about Christmas. Dickens edited the world by scribbling stories. He’s a reminder of why people should write; in a story-dominated world, culture is jerked and pulled across the stage by the story-tellers. If you want Christmas to be about something other than snow and the wretched jingle of sleighbells-something like a gleeful, subversive transformation of an old sinner–write a book.

My novel Paradise isn’t about Christmas. But it is subversive and is supposed to be funny.  A recent Amazon review from someone who described herself as an “extremely liberal atheist” was kind enough to say “Truly excellent! … I can’t wait to read his next work.” Which was nice. Courtesy of internet bookshops, I’ve been able to make Paradise a free download. Happy Christmas.

[amazon template=multinational&asin=B004M8S9FY]

 

12 rules for giving to charity

It’s an art, and a science, and a gift.

Feeding birds

  1. Give. It’s just good.  Even if you haven’t much money. Even if you’re not sure it’s being spent well. It’s a way of saying ‘thanks, I’m alive’. It’s about being human — not just a recipient, not just a barely-manager, a giver. One tenth of our income is a principle that many have found life-giving, not as a rule, but as an opportunity or an aspiration, even if we are very poor or on benefits.
  2. Don’t be stupid. There is a bit of a line here. It’s not automatically stupid to give most or all of your possessions away sometimes. But I don’t think giving should be pushing you into debt, and shouldn’t make you dependent on others, and you need to look after your loved ones. Wise advice might help here, clear your head.
  3. Even in debt, you can give something. Giving away money, even just your 10%, might not be wise in those circumstances. But you can still give something–practical help maybe, a smile, a meal, whatever-and your generous heart will help heal both your struggles and the other person’s.
  4. Get organizations to give. Your company; your sports club; your church; your nation. You have a voice here, however small. Argue for generosity and humanity. It isn’t all about us.
  5. Plan most of your giving. Find some causes you like and believe in, and give to them steadily, year after year. It doesn’t have to be much, or showy. Just get stuck in. Do it at the beginning of the month or the end of the week, before the cash drains from you.
  6. Index-link your giving. If your income goes up, so can your giving. If it goes down, so can your giving.
  7. Get good value. It isn’t enough for a charity to have a heart-rending appeal. How efficient are they? What do they spend their money on? How much do they pay their chief executive? Do they mention that in their publicity? Charities range from fine to terrible. Orphanages, for example, aren’t brilliant. They are easy to set up in some countries, can be unaccountable, aren’t necessarily full of orphans and at the worst can be places of abuse. Our responsibility doesn’t end if we give to a charity just because it’s a charity. We have to think about value, or give to things we trust.
  8. Keep some money aside for spontaneous, one-off, gifts. Some kid you know wants sponsoring. Somebody’s rattling a tin in your face for some good cause.  Not your cause, not really your kid. Still, you’d be pretty hard-hearted if you didn’t set aside something for this kind of thing.
  9. Review every so often. Maybe other causes have caught your eye. Maybe your interests have changed. Maybe one of your current recipients doesn’t seem to be spending its money so well any more. Move on. Keep it fresh.
  10. Beware creating dependency in the people the charity is for. Are your gifts helping people grow, making them more like you, or are they dooming them always to be the needy person while you are the generous benefactor? None of this is easy and many charities struggle with it internally. But we have to try. (This is also why I don’t give money to homeless people on the streets in the UK.)
  11. Beware of creating dependency in the charities themselves. Don’t respond to charity appeals. Honestly. Or hardly ever. It just encourages charities to make more appeals. They become dependent on sending out ever more gruesome descriptions of need, a race to the bottom. Don’t let them do it to you. Give steadily, regularly, whether or not there’s been an earthquake. There’ll be another one tomorrow.
  12. Be a bit light-hearted. Giving is beautiful, as beautiful as great art or great science. Unlike art and science, however, it’s within the reach of all of us. It’s a kind of gift.

Free offer on my book ‘More than Bananas’

I’m delighted to have got my book  ‘More than Bananas: How the Christian faith works for me and the Universe’ listed as free on the Amazon kindle store and the iBookstore.

This enables loads of people to download it. If they like it, to sign up for my non-fiction mailing list.

Prof Sir Colin Humphreys FRS of Cambridge Uni, someone to whom I sent a copy, said, ‘Your book is wonderful! I do hope that it is very widely read

I think it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done, coming out of a lot of thinking — science, faith, meaning– some of it while in hospital coming out of a coma. Please help yourself, and give to your friends. And/or any enemies.

Get from Amazon

Get from iBooks