There are some tropes that are reasonable to expect. The more time I spend reading crime fiction, the clearer it gets.

• Cops/detectives have really bad work/life balance
• Despite the fact that they are struggling to make ends meet, they have an expensive and iconic car (which is manifestly inappropriate for tailing people with, yet that is never a problem)
• The protagonist makes the inexplicable decision to share their findings with no one, ensuring that the success of the mission continues to reply 100% on them.
• It doesn’t matter how many laws they break as they continue with their maverick actions, if they get a result, they’ll be forgiven everything.
• The mistakes they have made in the past provide fuel and unique insights into their current circumstances
• Alcohol, whether the drinks in the bar, or the whisky in the draw, is an essential ingredient in shaping their character.

Many of these themes are the very things that make crime dramas what they are, but there are two tropes I’ve been noticing that have been driving me a little nuts recently.

The hypocritical pastor

To be honest, this pops up more in modern Australian books than crime dramas, but it does feel like it appears in almost everything I read.

In its first manifestation, it’s a matter of the protagonist encountering a church minister who is supposed to be a moral and upright person, but is actually caught up in a whole bunch of inappropriate behaviours, usually revolving around affairs with women. Now I understand the temptation of this kind of character. You want some tension in your novel and the absolute low hanging fruit is to pick a character who is supposed to represent morality, then portray them as profoundly immoral. I guess I get annoyed because it feels too much like the easy way out. Rather than develop a character with a little more grit, or depth, they just pick the easy way to make a “baddie”.

What makes the hypocritical pastor even more frustrating as a trope is that they so rarely have any characteristics that actually resonate with me, or “the average Christian”. It often feels like authors who have clearly spent hundreds of hours researching geography, ballistics, animal characteristics & dozens of other subjects to flesh out their stories, have been more than happy to jump straight onto a cultural caricature of a “religious” person so they can have a straw man for their story. Christianity is reduced to simple moralism, and a faith system that is founded in every person realising that we are marred by sin & in need of a saviour, is instead the home for the judgemental and unpleasant.

The “enlightened protagonist”

This one has come to me more recently, particularly as I find myself reading more noir detective stories. Despite being set in the 40s & 50s, the authors go to great lengths to ensure the reader that the protagonist has a set of morals that would fit perfectly in the 21st Century. Whether it’s matters of sexuality, politics, or misogyny, we need to understand that the protagonist is “on the right side of history”, even if it means we have to abandon the story for a page or two to make the point!

I think the reason why this trope rubs me up the wrong way is that it threatens to speak untruth back into history. What makes many behaviours from the past so disturbing today is that our culture as a whole was responsible for perpetuating problems. We see it in the big stuff… for years there was the joke about women getting a job via “the casting couch”, with the clear implication that sleeping with a director was the easy way to get what you want. Of course now, that kind of behaviour is rightfully swept up into the “Me too” culture. It’s good that we call this kind of stuff out, but we should also own, corporately, that our culture didn’t treat it seriously enough back in the day.

So what?

Part and parcel of writing and writers is that authors will have the opportunity to take subtle swipes at things and people that they don’t like and to advocate for the things that they love. I suspect for a number of these authors that this means they’ll have a crack at Christianity, and inevitably it will mean that the element that rankles the most will be targeted. As a writer, sovereign over the books universe, it’s reasonable that they might react to the suggestion of a God who has ultimate authority. That said, it’s a shame when the characters that they write are almost unrecognisable to actual Christians!

And yes, it’s confronting to look back into history and see some behaviours that we’d now find abhorrent. But maybe the answer to that is to actually sit with the discomfort. To explain it away as an “other people problem” is to refuse to acknowledge that culture as a whole was part of the problem.

Like so many of the detectives we read, maybe we need to face more of our own demons if we’re going to make the world around us a better place.

“A classic is a book that everyone wants to have read, but no one wants to read”

Mark Twain

Why do you read?

One genre that I got into a couple of years ago was classics. We’ve all seen those web articles “100 books to read before you die“, I felt a little embarrassed that I used to be a librarian & yet I’d regularly only hit somewhere in the 30s with those articles. Part of why I read is that I want to grow myself. I want to have a bigger picture of my world & to understand things (and books) that have garners almost universal praise.That said, there is a reason why they say that quote above. Some of those classics can just feel impenetrable to get through. It was the rise of the audiobook that helped get me over the line.

Lots of people I speak to say that they find it hard to concentrate when they are listening as opposed to reading, though I often find the opposite true. If I am reading something that isn’t engaging me at a deep level, I can “read” 5 or so pages, then suddenly realise that I can’t tell you what I’ve just been looking at. With an audiobook, I might not get the nuance of every word, but I can really just ease into the story as a whole.

What I particularly like about audiobooks is how they can recover “dead time” for me. It started when I was living in the shire and my day off was a Wednesday. I’d take our dog for a walk along the coast for an hour or two. There was always some value in letting my mind wander & sift through my life, but I also loved the opportunity to jump into a good book. For some reason, I particularly loved the juxtaposition of enjoying a view, the sun in my face, and yet working through the depravations of “The Gulag Archipelago“, or the dreary & painful relationships in “Wuthering Heights“.

The difficult part of the quote about classics is that sometimes people just want to read these books so that they can say that they have read them. I have to say that I enjoy getting a higher count on the “100 lists”. But I think you can also read the quote in a different way. The reality is that for most people, Classic literature is not an “easy read”. I read more Stephen King than anyone else and part of that is that it is just so easy to read his stories. Try and read Alexandre Dumas’ “The Count of Monte Cristo“ by comparison and you have to work through a much slower story style, language that can be dense, historical stuff to navigate, and a moral framework that is in a different generation.

There are two big differences with Classical literature though:

1. The classics help us understand culture. So many of these great books are the foundations of literary themes that play out in other areas. We can also see direct homages to them. Lisa Simpson builds a diorama of Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart” and “The Raven”. Solzhenitsyn’s “Prose and poems” gives a helpful insight into the life and lunacy that was communist Russia.
2. A lot of the classics are classics because they have been so artfully put together. I read Cormac McCarthy’s “Blood Meridian” late last year. I found myself driven to a dictionary again and again to unpack lots of words, some in Spanish, some complex, or super-specific, but in the end it was worth it because McCarthy captured such a real sense of life in the Wild West near the Mexican border.

So why do you read?

If it’s purely for enjoyment or escapism, then it may be that reading Classics is not for you. Or maybe you’re smarter, or have a higher brow than me & classical literature just naturally resonates with you? But if you suspect that you live somewhere in between, then it’s worth looking for the “reading” style that works for you. There are some amazing books out there, and though they are hard work, the payoff is worth it even more, even if you don’t do the top 100 questionairre!

What’s your favourite classic & why?

Over the last 5 or so years, I’ve organised my daily bible reading a bunch of different ways:

• The Bible in one year, suggested by Sam Chan, was good fun. You get to read multiple passages (or have them read by the author Nicky Gumbel) and you get a little commentary on them. I didn’t always agree with everything I heard in the commentary, but all in all it was fun and insightful. The only downside was the “Pippa adds” bits. She’s Nicky’s wife and sometimes she had some really helpful insights, but often her comments sounded a little trite. I remember my wife cringing at a number of them. The app was well done & it was achievable.
• Youversion has a whole range of different reading plans. I’ve done two different plans with this app. The first was “For the Love of God”, which follows the McCheynne reading plan (you read the OT once, NT & Psalms twice in a year) with a page worth of commentary each day, based on one of the readings. Last year I did the “Bible Project” reading plan. This went through the bible from beginning to end, a couple of chapters a day, as well as a Psalm a day. It also included each of the Bible Project videos as the book or theme came up. I appreciated being able to spend more time in each individual book (good for my brain), but I have to admit that, as much as I love the BP videos, sometimes watching multiple a week became a bit much!

This year it was time to mix things up a little! I had been thinking that I would pick an individual book then spend between a week and a month just reading it slowly and repeatedly. I had been thinking about starting with Romans, but when I saw an “Illuminated Scripture Journal” for the book of Hebrews, I couldn’t help myself. I don’t always like to mark up my bibles, so this was a good compromise. I’m looking forward to the opportunity to make more marks each time I read it, jot down some notes & maybe even think about some poems or illustrations that really resonate with the passages.

The challenge for me is finding a way that ensures that my reading doesn’t become mechanical. It can be easy to feel like you have to “keep up the stats” when it comes to days missed and sometimes this has meant that I’ve found my eyes gazing over the words in some chapters, but not really engaging with the text. Finding creative ways to keep your mind engaged & really soak in the scriptures is super-helpful.

It’s good to spend time in God’s word.

It’s good to think about different ways that we can engage with the bible.

I’ll let you know whether this method proves good for me…

I got through 84 books in 2022. Partly this was because I read some very short books (and I’ll be honest, I had a few moments where I said to myself “I could finally read Anna Karenina, but that would really mess up my “Goodreads” numbers, so I might read a shorter book instead“), but a lot of my “reading” also happens by way of audiobook. I asked my Librarian sister if that still counted as “reading” and she said it does, so that’s good enough for me.

One of the great benefits of the audiobook thing has been that I’ve borrowed lots of free books from the Library apps, “Borrowbox”, “Libby” and “IndyReads”. Restricted by their limited collections and the books that aren’t on loan, it’s meant that I read a lot of books that I might not have otherwise touched! Always good to broaden your horizons. This is what put me onto Australian murder mysteries, but it’s also what convinced me that there are a whole bunch of tropes that come with those mysteries!

Anyway, I thought I’d put together a little collection of my 5 favourite books different genres. The fact that this will hopefully kick off my blogging again is just a corollary benefit. So here we go!

Best History Book–

Bullies and Saints by John Dickson

One of the challenges with Church history books is that Christians tend to write them as hagiographies. One would be excused for thinking that butter has never melted in the mouths of history’s great characters. John Dickson’s book tackles Christian history warts and all. It’s important to acknowledge that Christians have done some spectacularly stupid things throughout history, but that said, on the balance, Christianity has been a net positive and many of the evils enacted by the church are very much condemned by Jesus himself.

John Dickson is very easy to read & if you know someone who is a little skeptical, this is a great “conversation starter” book.

Biography

Tough by Terry Crews

I” be honest. I read this book because I love Terry in “Brooklyn 99” and I thought I had heard somewhere that he was a Christian. I really was not anticipating that I would love this book as much as I did. Terry is raw in his honesty, confronting the abuse he experienced as a child as well as the toxic nature of his behaviour for much of his life. For a guy who is one of the most impressive physical specimens in the world, it is heart-warming to hear him speak about the importance of emotional vulnerability and the vital importance of people in positions of power/influence using the power for the advancement of those around them.

Terry is a multi-talented guy. He was an athlete, he’s an actor, fine-art painter, dancer, and he can definitely add “author” to the resume. Of all my books this year, this one was most definitely the “surprisingly awesome” winner!

Non Fiction

Lead by Paul David Tripp

We worked through this book as a staff team at my work. I figured it would be just another book on leadership with a bunch of encouraging quotes, but not much else.

I.LOVED.THIS.BOOK

Tripp does an amazing job at calling out and speaking into many of the toxic behaviours that leaders can display. I particularly enjoyed his calling out the dangers that come with success in leadership and the constant need for people in positions of authority to humble themselves before God as well as before those people they serve (as all good leaders are supposed to serve those under them!).

Trip also looks at things like acknowledging our limits & building a culture of honesty. A great book for any Christian in leadership.

Challenging Book

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

I read and enjoyed “No Country for Old Men” and “The Road”, so figured that I ought to give his Magnum Opus a try. It was long…. it had lots of words that I needed to look up in a dictionary (to the point where sometimes I was happy to just go with understanding via context) and it was one of the most violent books I have ever read (one professional reviewer said that it took him five attempts to read the book, because they found it’s violence too confronting), but McCarthy’s language is beautiful, and even though his picture of the Wild South West is horrifying, he also captures some of the beauty of this vast and terrifying landscape.

Most definitely not a book for everyone.

Favourite Work of Fiction

11/22/’63 by Stephen King

It’s the second time I have read this book (which you can also watch as a TV series on “Stan”), and I enjoyed it just as much as I did the first time. In the first instance, this is a time-travel story, where the main character Jake Epping finds out a way to go back in time to the late 50’s. He decides that the best way to make use of this awesome opportunity it to save JFK’s life and through this, hopefully stop the cascading tragedies that are the Vietnam war, MLK Jr.’s assassination and other things.

At the heart of this story, however, is Stephen King’s fascination with the whole Lee Harvey Oswald story. This page-turner of a novel looks closer of the history of the 20th Century’s most famous assassin & the likelihood of whether or not he had any help. King, who is the easiest to read author I know, also manages to weave a love story, a thriller and a teeny bit of paranormal into this story. Such a great book!

There are lots of other books that I read & loved & if you are interested, you should go check out my Goodreads (and friend me if you haven’t yet).

Let’s wait & see whether or not I manage to write about reading more often in 2023, or like last time, I get one blog in & then stop!?

OK, let me start by saying that I have a monster sized head. I’m on the very last button of adjustable hats and those supposedly “one size fits all” caps? You’re kidding me!

So, knowing that I had a week off while Shona was at a conference, I figured I’d dash down to “The Strand Hatters” in the city & see if a proper hat shop couldn’t help me out with one of my daydreams of owning a “driving hat”. Then…. each time I had remembered my plan, I also remembered that two of the kids would be at school for the week, which means I’d have to be back home by 2:30. The only chance? Take all four down on Saturday.

Sounds great! I’d started working on ideas like Driving to the Zoo, taking the cable car down to the ferry, riding across to Circular Quay, then taking a train into the City (my kids love public transport), but when I heard about the weather the other day, it looked like it would all fall apart. Still, the kids sounded interested and there was a DC Comics Lego exhibition at the Powerhouse Museum, so we decided to give it a go.

So on one rainy day, we enjoyed two tram rides and three train trips, helped the four kids enjoy 5 different things that day.

1. Trains: Easy entertainment for the kids. Not only a means of getting to stuff, they enjoyed chatting to people (four kids with only a small age gap seems to be a great conversation starter). Travelling over the Harbour Bridge is always great too.
2. Trams: They were pretty excited about “trains that drive on the roads”, but they’re pretty crowded in town. Handy, but not too exciting.
3. Just being in the city: We caught a train into town hall, walked through eh QVB & up through the Pitt St. Mall. For kids who’ve spent almost all of their life on the Central Coast, all the big buildings were a blast. I had figured that being in the city, finding gluten free options would have been easier, but with the rain bucketing down at different times, we were stuck in one food court. Muffin Break came to the rescue with a GF choc-chip muffin!
4. The Strand Hatters: (OK, this was my highlight, not theirs). Is it hipster central? Yep. Does it really matter? Nope! They were really really nice guys working there. The bloke who spent 10 minutes helping me find a hat had all kinds of opportunities to show me more expensive stuff, but in the end he said that a couple of the hats on sale were closest to what I was looking for & I ended up buying two hats for less than I thought I’d pay for one (he even gave me an extra 10% off on the two 50% off hats he sold me!). I’d go there again in a heart beat!
5. The Powerhouse: The DC comics thing was pretty awesome and the powerhouse itself has all kinds of different things to look at. Were I to do it again, I’d consider driving in and/or going there first so the kids weren’t quite so tired. That said, it was still pretty awesome & the kids loved it.

Best of all, with the wise use of awning & tunnels, we managed to time things so we basically never got rained on the whole time we were there!

So I did it! New hat(s) and a great day out with the kids.

And now for the pics:

A long time between posts (surprise, surprise), but I’m still thinking about it.

It’s a glorious thing that we live in a world where we have such easy access to so much information. Facebook, Twitter etc. has democratised information dissemination to the point where anyone, anywhere can share their thoughts with the world, and if you happen to get picked up by someone with enough followers, a thought that germinated  in a quiet Central Coast suburb can burst into full flower around the globe!

It’s lovely that it is so easy to share my thoughts with the world, but there are costs to this convenience. It’s far easier to share ill-informed arguments and it’s just as easy to critique solid arguments in an ill-informed way. Let me explain.

2.1 Dodgy ideas

We’ve all had that brilliant idea at midnight, which, when dissected in the cold light of day, turns out to be a manifestly silly prospect.
let’s face it, sometimes we NEED a little time to let those thoughts ruminate, solidify and show their true selves. Sometimes we’ll find a solution, making it a better, clearer & more helpful idea, while other times we realise it was a silly idea to begin with and not worth broader discussion.

Put a keyboard (or mobile phone, or tablet etc. etc.) in front of everyone and all of a sudden we have the opportunity to share every idea straight away. The cost of this convenience is that we remove that wonderful break that causes us to consider more deeply. Sometimes people just make mistakes. Idris Elba shared on Graham Norton, the occasion when he went to text one girl and accidentally sent a suggestive pic to the whole of the internet. Google created a feature that allows you to recall an email that you just sent, this to amend that moment when you find yourself accidentally having hit “reply all”, or maybe sent an email about your boss to your boss.

The bigger danger is every crazy, ill informed idea we have gets spewed out onto our social media feeds, creating all kinds of excitement that we might not be prepared for. You never know who will read your posts, and it’s quite possible that someone a lot smarter than you will come across it.

2.2 Dodgy arguments

But here is where we hit the other great cost of convenience. Living in a sound-bite world, with reams of information flicking past our eyes every time we sit down in front of a computer, it’s much easier to make assumptions about what we read, then critique it without every really engaging with what we’re reading.

NPR had the ultimate example of this about a year ago, when they posted the question “Why doesn’t America read any more?” with a link to an article about. Literally thousands of people left comments berating NPR for making such sweeping generalisations and castigating them for making a verbal attack on the American people. The problem was, if you clicked on the link, this is what you found:

People were so quick to have an opinion on the headline that they read, that they didn’t bother to listen to the argument put forward.

I see it all the time (and I engage in it more often than I’d like to). You read a headline, you already have an opinion about a subject, so you jump in without actually engaging fully with what the interlocutor had to say. The upside of our connected world is that we can share much more information (and I need to be clear, it can also be good when we share unformed information and use online platforms to nut things out & discuss them), but the downside is that we appear to read much more, but we think  much less about what we’re reading.

Conclusion:

The answer? I don’t know. I guess for me, I’ve been trying to slow down my responses. I still bite sometimes, but I find myself asking far more often, “is what I am saying helpful? Have I thought through all the angles, or am I just jumping in with my own thoughts & ideas before engaging with the question?”

Maybe a good start is to say, “I won’t critique an article that I haven’t read all of”?