Phil White
@revdphilippa
Liturgy, church music, knitting, poetry, cool saints, hymn-writing, small children. Not in that order. Sometimes also sleep. She/her. God is love and mercy is greater than we can imagine.
25 July - my own audiobook over the last couple of months. A reread. Think I enjoyed it less than when I read it aged ~13. But some excellent moments. (And I love, in That Hideous Strength, how incredibly grumpy Merlin is.)
25 July - audiobook with said 9yo. He LOVED it. (As did I). Also listening to a lot of Holmes short stories which I won't list here.
25 July - catching up on a few weeks. Bought this in a charity shop for 9 yo... glad I read it before giving it to him. (Really good. But alcoholism, drug dealing, professional shoplifting, parental death, underage drinking - and then pretty sadistic training of 10 year olds to be spies.)
28 May - another one I've been meaning to read, recommended by someone at work. Made me cry. A midrash on the Jacob story which made it sadder in a lot of ways.
Sticking my head in the sand over All This, and very much enjoying the Colin Buchanan collection An Evangelical among the Anglican Liturgists. (You know he's an evangelical because Catholics would say 'amongst.')
9 April - catch-up over, reaching today with this, which has been on my list for ages and which I borrowed from my dad (it's possible I gave it to him). Very enjoyable, old-fashioned leftist fare (with a reminder of the bird site in its heyday, sic transit etc, and nice nods to Orwell).
And this week! 8 April - another work-adjacent (or future-further-study-adjacent) one. Perceptive about problems and interesting about solutions.
And finally for Lent - again, does it count if I read it to review it? My view might have been coloured by having to read it in a truly rubbish e-book platform, but I was unimpressed.
Lent - Lent book (my usual approach to Advent and Lent books these days being 'pull spiritual classic that I haven't read off the shelf where it has been since I bought it an embarrassing number of years ago, and read it as lectio)
Lent - bought on Kindle after seeing a thread of 'support queer writers' On Here. Classic YA fantasy tropes (entirely positively meant) - a small town with a dark secret, parental figures who are not what they seem, a teenage girl with a destiny - but unexpectedly developed. And queer. Enjoyed it.
Lent - sequel to The Amulet of Samarkand, above. Also good, very much more of the same. Started the third in the trilogy but apparently two and a half is enough for three months, and haven't yet got round to finishing it.
Catching up after a Lent largely off social media... Lent - as audiobook, with 9yo G. He LOVED it. Had hoped he was the right age for Buchan (Boys Own adventures so much a part of my mental landscape between the ages of 8 and 14) and he absolutely is.
16 February - a Christmas present. Semi-epistolatory novel w/ episodes of dialogue written as sketches; mildly irritating. Not entirely accurate about C of E process; you... can tell that the author writes for the Spectator. But I did really care about the characters. Not a hardship to finish it.
Some people collect icons of the patron saints of the churches they have served, I'm collecting tattoos... (a swan, for Hugh of Lincoln)
I don't think there is a more usable translation than the NRSV, taken all in all, but the first reading tonight really does show up its shortcomings. 'When the queen of Sheba had observed... the seating of his officials... his valets and their clothing...'
5 February - another reread, read this as a teenager and remembered bits, especially the wonderfully evocative verse 'the trees that walk/ the streams that stand/ the beasts that talk/ the singing sand.' A strange sort of detective story; stranger than I think she intended, but very good.
29 January - have been dipping in&out over a few months, and have read most of the stories before. Chesterton is a tradcath, high Tory xenophobe, but v good at atmosphere & (from a certain angle) plot. Extremely creepy, largely enjoyable, not sure how far the good theology is outweighed by the bad.
19 January - also non-fiction. Started, optimistically, when the nearly-3-year-old was a newborn; finished within three years (by a couple of weeks). Erudite, well-written, interesting, the final chapter on the Reformation definite shades of Eamon Duffy, not perhaps the most *exciting* of reads.
10 January - hesitated over listing non-fiction (especially work-adjacent non-fiction) but it is a Book and I have Read It. (Very chatty, very funny, I had read Craddock before and am not sure I have gained much from reading this as well.)
5 January - a Christmas present from @idleconcern.bsky.social. This is incredible. A reimagining of Huckleberry Finn; a dialogue with Candide; a play on picaresque that's immensely serious; and an all-action conclusion that made me cry in my son's brass band rehearsal.
1 January. YA fantasy in an alternative contemporary London run by a bureaucracy of magicians. It's a fairly common premise but a really good execution. I loved Stroud's Lockwood and Co and this is just as good. Narrated partly by a vain djinni (a very enjoyable voice).
The upside of not being precentor is that I can have festive nails. (The downside is not being precentor. Not used to Christmas without 36 lessons and carols.)
A belated Christ is Risen, Happy Easter to all! With thee O let me rise As larks, harmoniously, And sing this day thy victories: Then shall the fall further the flight in me.