Finishing things

Having had an active Easter weekend with many moments to reflect on the stupendous marvel of God's love in the life of Jesus, as well as enjoy family gatherings and long hours in the sunshine on the patio -

I notice I have finished reading three books simultaneously, and each one is worthy of a recommendation.
1. Brighton Rock - an old favourite - Catholic noir of noir, with those wonderful images scattered as allegory: of the sea shifting under the piles of the pier in the thunderstorm, "hell lay about him in his infancy", and the darkest of endings - truly a parable of religious despair in Greeneland.

2. A Visit from the Good Squad (Jennifer Egan) - newly published and ( can I also recommend this) borrowed via Kent Libraries brilliant computer system. Follows my continuing love affair with the American novel that Richard Ford reignited a couple of years ago - dark, touching, funny: I'd buy it if I had the shelf-space and I probably will buy it and reread it some time.

3. Love Wins by Rob Bell - lent to me by a new colleague - riveting, refreshing, controversial, skating on some thin ice about universalism but I was happy to be caught in the slipstream - says some necessary things, I guess even more necessary in the US context - in the end I think he does maintain a case for the essential need to make a response of trust to Christ, but many will be uncomfortable with it.

And did those feet...

Sometimes you finish a book, having been careful to read it thoroughly, and immediately know you could start again and find something fresh on every page. So it is with Simon Sebag Montefiore's "Jerusalem". Immense research, judicious wit, thought-provoking: a hugely enjoyable history. In some ways partial, in others trying a little too hard to lean to the other side, but in every way worth reading. I saw a middle-eastern businessman reading a copy on the Tube, we chanced to walk together to the escalator, and I said 'it's a good book'. 'A tremendous book', he replied. I wish I knew who he was.