The great book giveaway

This morning during meditation, my monkey mind was especially chattery, and an image came to me. In the room of my mind, narrow jagged cracks were splitting open in the walls and through them, dark figures came scrambling towards me. Rather frightening, and a very vivid representation of distraction. (Of course, for the rest of the meditation I had to keep setting aside thoughts of how I would share that image with you in this post…)

What has this got to do with books?

I felt quite sad last night as I looked through my bookshelves. So many books I’ve never read, or read years ago and will never return to. And a couple I have duplicates of for some reason.

Every one of those books is a distraction, a reminder of what I won’t do or what is past. Every one a witness to my monkey mind. But I love them and I want them to go to good homes. I’m reflecting that giving things away is actually a subset of hospitality, my word for the year. Sharing ideas and potentialities is one of the most hospitable things we can do.

So below are details of 15 books I’m giving away, with Amazon links for further information.

If you want one or more, let me know which in the comments – by next Sunday 28 February. If there’s competition for a book, I’ll put the names in a hat (do I even own a hat?) and pick the winner. Then I’ll email to ask you for your snail mail addresses. Don’t worry if you’re not in the UK, I’m happy to post anywhere.

1. The Year of Living Biblically by A. J. Jacobs. A very funny and insightful record by a secular Jew living in New York of his year trying to take the Bible literally. A great “delve into it from time to time” book.
2. The Reflective Life by Ken Gire. Creating pauses in our lives to listen and become more sensitive to God in our everyday moments.
3. Surprised by Joy by C.S. Lewis. His classic autobiography.
4. The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis. His exploration of why, if God is good and all-powerful, do God’s creatures suffer. The pages are a bit yellowed, I’ve had this forever.
5. Julian, Woman of our Day edited by Robert Llewelyn. An anthology of work by eight authors exploring the mystical insights of Julian of Norwich.
6. In Search of a Way by Gerard Hughes. Hughes is a Jesuit priest. This is the story of his physical and spiritual journeying.
7. Transitions, The Challenge of Change by Barrie Hopson and others. A thin, practical workbook with a sense of humour and cool illustrations that will help you meet change more positively.
8. In Search of Stones by M. Scott Peck. Subtitled A Pilgrimage of Faith, Reason and Discovery, and described by the author of The Road Less Travelled as “the closest thing to an autobiography I will ever write”.
9. Befriending, a Self-Guided Retreat for Busy People by Joseph A Payne, O.P. A practical book full of suggestions, exercises, scripture and other treasures. Flicking through it, I came upon lines by Blake: And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love.
10. The Good Life Guide: Saints, Snobs and Sanity by Bernard Basset. A book about prayer and life that tries to draw a distinction between pleasure and happiness and does so in a very unstuffy way. Some of the pages are a bit scuffed – I dropped it at some point.
11. Why Did I DO That? by George New and David Cormack. Subtitled Understanding and Mastering your Motives. Someone recommended it and gave it to me as a gift but I’ve never been able to get into it. It looks very sound though, lots of diagrams and questionnaires.
12. Angels in Art by Belinda Wilkinson. A beautiful and very tiny book with colour plates of angel paintings by some of the great masters, such as da Vinci’s Annunciation and Gauguin’s Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.
13. How Proust can change your life by Alain de Botton. An exploration of Proust’s writing, and how it applies to everyday life. Described (by people more educated than me who have actually read Proust) as intoxicating, stimulating, charming and amusing.
14. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf. Let’s always remember the need for women to have financial, intellectual and creative freedom.
15. All God’s Creatures by Sister Seraphim. Old enough (1966) to be described as “gay” in the former sense of the word, these are the autobiographical writings of an eccentric, animal-loving Englishwoman who became a Russian Orthodox nun and takes “all creatures great and small” pretty literally. She rescues them as often as she can, like the live rabbit brought to the monastery as a gift for the dinner table. I inherited this book from my aunt, who seems to have inherited it in turn from the Surrey County Library.

Image by Vince Alongi
(check out his work – a very talented photographer)

Elsewhere:

Several links for the price of one: Christine’s Lenten Reflections signposts other moving Lenten journeys. By coincidence, she also mentions Jacob wrestling with the angel (book 12 above).