Lila by Marilynne Robinson

"I believe in the grace of God. For me, that is where all these questions end"

and then this:

"then there he would be, fresh from the gallows, shocked at the kindness all around him."

I can't remember the last time I cried while reading a book. I could feel the sobbing welling up inside. It was doubly embarrassing because I was lying next to a pool in the Cote d'Azur on a brilliant blue day, and my wife was reading Bill Bryson.

Perhaps it was post-traumatic stress speaking after my coma and paralysis three years ago. The book I was reading had the weight of an old hymn, suffering graced in music.

Or perhaps it was because God was beautiful and humans, like mathematics, need infinity to make the sums come out right.

Either way, Marilynne Robinson's Lila is extraordinary.

The OED

My family didn't get this at all when I enthusiastically shared how I now had access to the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the definitive guide to the largest language in the known universe, and it hides behind a paywall. But I found I can access it for free by using my library card -- our local library subscribes to it.

So now when I want to look up:

hi-hat

or

scrip

as I needed to two days ago or discover whether the word 'luck' is derived from the word 'Lucifer,' I can. (It isn't).

It's like getting the keys to the linguistic universe. What a resource. What a discovery. So why do my family look at me so strangely?

David Lloyd: Teach yourself small business accounting

Dead simple, comprehensive, believable and jargon-free, I found this book empowering and freeing. Bases all your accounting on your monthly business bank statement, perfect for small business owners who'd rather be doing something else but want to stay legal and in control.

The complete idiots' guide to time management

An unlikely Good Read, it coincided with me discovering mortality. I think I picked it up as a busy and ambitious bloke with wide opportunities* opening up in the world of publishing and in the organization I worked for. And not enough time to fit everything in.

I read it after a near-fatal heart disease that left me, in my mid-thirties, disabled, off work for three months, banned from going out in the evenings, waking up with severe heart pains and every time I looked at my four-year-old son and my six-year-old daughter, thinking I was going to die.

I didn't die. I have lived to see my kids become bigger and wiser than me. But I did learn that 'time management' is not about packing as much into life as possible, but taking out as much out as possible -- everything that, in the final analysis, doesn't really matter. I loved this book.




*in my little world at least

French women don't get fat: Mireille Guiliano

'Nothing is sinfully delicious. If you really adore something, as I adore chocolate, there is a place for it in your life. But we cannot allow guilt-ridden scarfing. Only with cultivated pleasure can you enjoy chocolate in the clear light of day.'

I've been driving my family mad with references to this book which can summed up as: knowing your enemies, drinking lots of water and champagne, and relishing fresh, in-season food in small portions.

I don't know what 'scarfing' means but plan to use it sometime.

The Bible

It seems slightly odd to include the New and Old Testaments in a list of favourite books, but it would be even odder to leave it out, given it's the only book I read virtually every day.

The version highlighted is a modern, easy-to-read, thought-for-thought translation of the original, with a funky metal cover, a Bible that not only slips into a bag but also sets off airport security alarms and probably stops bullets.

This is a fine version but I think the best idea is to read every version you can get your hands on, including the word-for-word translations like the NIV and paraphrases like The Message. Then buy a Greek-English interlinear version and a book like Vine's Dictionary of New Testament words and make your own translations. The New Testament has sold even more copies than the Da Vinci Code, I'm told, so there must be something in it.