Nowadays, I listen to books more than I read them, but I’m trying to get back into reading. Our house is full of books, mainly non-fiction. Most of mine relate to Christianity, music, history and railways. As it happens, I’m currently listening to and reading The Cross of Christ by John Stott.
I probably bought the book around 30 years ago. I’ve read it on various occasions. I do like to read new books, but many of the older ones are classics. And you change over time, so nowadays, I might pay closer attention to what I would have considered “boring bits” in my youth. I also listen to the book. I got the audio version free on Christian Audio some years ago. I find it relaxing to listen to audiobooks – so relaxing that I sometimes fall asleep 😄.
Here are three audiobooks that I’ve listened to over the last month or so:
I started buying Dominic Sandbrook books with my monthly Audible credit, simply because they’re really long, and therefore good value. And they’re good! They touch on stories that I would have been vaguely familiar with growing up. They cover the UK more than Ireland, but we were always aware of what was happening in the UK. A similar Irish book, which I must listen to again is We Don’t Know Ourselves by Fintan O’Toole.
Some books on Audible are temporarily free to listen to if you’re a subscriber. The Life of Moses is free at the moment. It can be quite tough to read through some Old Testament books such as Leviticus, though I have done so on several occasions. But books like this one, which provide a high level view are very helpful for getting to know the early history of Israel.
I was a big fan of Elvis Costello in my youth. I always find it fun to read or listen to pop star biographies. When I was young, I used to dream of being a pop star. One thing that strikes me is that much of their lives are either mundane or highly stressful. There’s nothing magic about them really, though they’re music brought much magic to my youth.
Of course, I like to read the Bible everyday, and I’m keen on reading hymns from hymnbooks too. But I assume today’s prompt relates to specific books that you just happen to be reading at the moment. I tend to dip into various books throughout the day. I’d like to get back into the habit of sticking with one book and finding it hard to drag myself away from it. I was more like that in my younger days, but these days, there’s so much to distract us. It’s all to easy to stop reading and start looking up some person or place mentioned in the book on the web. A friends suggested that it would be better to jot down what you might want to look up and keep reading. You can then look it up later.
Anyway, I always like to mention a few hymns and quote Scripture. So, given that the main answer is The Cross of Christ – here we go:
1 Peter 2:24
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.”
Hibernia Gospel 