0716 | Seeing Islam as Others Saw It | Robert Hoyland
What Hoyland has tackled here is no less than a complete literary survey of any non-Islamic writing that refers to Islam between its 630 AD emergence and 780 when it…
0715 | Stick and Rudder | Wolfgang Langewiesche
I’ve always been fascintated by flying and, since building myself a computer that can cope with it, I’ve been using a flight simulator to teach myself how to fly. Stick…
0714 | Corrections in Early Qur’an Manuscripts | Daniel Brubaker
Dr Brubaker’s work has caused something of a minor stir in the centuries-old arena that is Christian-Muslim dialogue. While the world waits for publication of his more technical doctorate-level work,…
0713 | The Thirteen Clocks / The Wonderful O | James Thurber
Thurber’s wonderfully bonkers children’s books were so short that Puffin reissued two of them in one edition in the 1960s. This is very convenient because Thurber’s writing is the kind…
0712 | Flat Earth | Christine Garwood
Just before Christmas, this popped through the door completely anonymously. Tearing it open, it sounded like just the thing to while away a day or so reading over the break….
0711 | Nothing to Envy | Barbara Demick
Barbara Demick has struck exactly the right tone in her classic description of life in North Korea. Granted, the book was written in 2009 so it’s a bit dated now,…
0710 | Mother | Maxim Gorky
This reads like a cross between Dr Zhivago and the last part of The Jungle. It’s packed full of characters who, in true Russian fashion, each have seven names they…
0709 | The Triune God | Fred Sanders
Having completed The Deep Things of God by Sanders only recently, I was encouraged by that to continue with The Triune God, a book I was having a hard time…
0708 | The Gospel According to John | D. A. Carson
I read this meticulously over three years and loved every single minute of it. Previously, I’ve not been an avid fan of Bible commentaries. You can often find yourself following…
0707 | Hue 1968 | Mark Bowden
While Max Hastings attempted to do the impossible and cover the entire 14 years plus of the American War in Indochina, Mark Bowden humbles himself before the historic edifice and…
0705 | Baltasar and Blimunda | Jose Saramago
The last effort from Portugal I endeavoured to read through was the utterly futile Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa. It is with great thankfulness that I can report Saramago…
0706 | The Deep Things of God | Fred Sanders
The vast majority of us Christians aren’t as informed on the character of the God we worship as we should be. Neither are we adept at moving out of our…
0703 | No One Writes to the Colonel | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A book of short stories which is far, far more satisfying than ploughing your way through the tedium that is One Hundred Years of Solitude. What Garcia Marquez has done…
0704 | The Circle | Dave Eggers
Whoever reviewed this for The Guardian said it was “prescient, important and very funny.” Two out of three ain’t bad, I suppose; there are precious few laughs to be had…
0702 | Did Muhammad Exist? | Robert Spencer
Oh, what a question? How could you even ask that? But, yes, this is exactly the kind of question Islam should be subjected to. For the last 200 years, beginning…
0701 | Moon Palace | Paul Auster
Again, another Auster, and the only question you’re left with is why he bothered writing it. Composing this review by copying and pasting chunks of my review of The New…
0700 | No God But One: Allah or Jesus | Nabeel Qureshi
The strength of this book lies in its unique perspective. Very few books comparing Islam and Christianity are written by people who have been committed to both camps. If there…
0699 | Pachinko | Min Jin Lee
My word this is a mess of a book. It’s a mess of a story, it’s a mess of characters, and most shockingly for me, it’s a literal mess: it…