Booky

It is a time for reading and quieting. When I can. Here's what I'm reading

• Finished two out of three of my Christmas books India Knight's "Prime" is for ladies of a certain age i.e. me to tell us that we are not dead yet. I disagree with lots of it, written as it is with London sophistication about affairs and dating and breakups but I like the bits about teeth and clothes. I think it is true that when I was young 50 was old. Lots of ladies had cauliflower hair which had been shampooed and set  and you accepted you were going towards the last lap. I don't think it is like that now. It's a good read though.
• Sali Hughes "Pretty Honest" is a guilty pleasure about make-up and skin care and it is really good. (Well I like it) Although it has changed almost nothing about the way I do my stuff (I would faint having to pay that for a moisturiser) it is physically beautiful and a joy to read and if I am rich one day, I would still not spend that much on a moisturiser and I would still think foundation is an unnecessary faff for most of us but I would probably build a really nice lipstick collection.
• I am still dipping in and out of my Nora Ephron Collection and alternating between joy and despair. What a writer she was. I am out of my depth.
• I went a bit off piste with a Christian book and read "We make the road by walking" by Brian McClaren. I shouldn't really have just read it through. It is supposed to be read throughout the year and you are all supposed to link hands and light a candle at the end of each chapter or something. I hardly ever do that, I just keep reading - no self control. BC is a bit controversial in Christian circles for being, as I understand it, a bit wishy washy about things like Heaven and Atonement and Hell and things. Not that you were able to get much of that from his book. It's not what you would call strident and full of opinion. I read with interest about the Virgin Birth, but the whole chapter was about three degrees above useless if you wanted to know what he really thought. Maybe I'm reading the wrong book by him. I at least liked his willingness to look at the Old Testament and the character of God there, which can be a little alarming sometimes. If I am not sure about his explanation of the Bible unfolding as a more complete view of God culminating in Jesus so that the Old Testament is a splintered fraction of him - then at least he is having a go. Lots of Christian leaders seem to ignore it. 
• I am now reading the most up to date Shardlake. They are really good I think - although they have got really gory now. You still have to find out who did it though. I find myself asking Catherine Parr - being married to Henry VIII - what was in it for her? Not getting your head chopped off I suppose.