Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

This is a fabulous and entertaining book about punctuation! She starts with a problem set out in the title of the book. The addition of a single comma can totally change the meaning of a sentence because the words “shoots” and “leaves” have two meanings in English. Plants have leaves for photosynthesis and trees grow by sending out shoots which develop into branches. Pandas are vegetarians and so you can say that a panda eats shoots and leaves. But now add a comma: a panda eats, shoots and leaves. So a panda turns up, has a meal, fires a gun and walks out. The book is full of humorous examples like this.

Poems by R.S. Thomas

R. S. Thomas was a Welsh poet and Anglican priest who was noted for his nationalism, spirituality and deep dislike of the Anglicisation of Wales. The turning of Welsh culture into English culture is what is meant by the word Anglicisation here. He died in 2000 aged 87 having worked as a vicar all of his life. He was born into an English-speaking family and only learned to speak the Welsh language when he was 30 years old. His poetry is all in English. He was convinced that Englishness was ruining Wales.

I love his poems because they are blunt and terse. They are not jolly or fun. He paints a picture of a hard life – he and his wife lived without modern electrical appliances – but he seems to see a purity in that. His Welsh landscapes are like the Cumbrian farming landscapes (and remember that Cumbria gets its name because its inhabitants used to speak Welsh – Cymraeg – 1500 years ago). That purity made him think about his spiritual life.

So don’t read these poems for entertainment. Expect to be challenged and maybe changed. They are short so they can be read several times to help you to digest his ideas.

Supersense by Bruce Hood

This book is of particular interest to people studying Psychology, RE, Sociology and Biology.

Professor Bruce Hood has written a very accessible book trying to address the issue about why people have religious beliefs, written from a scientific point of view. He doesn’t just mean organised religions – most of the book focusses on superstitions that are common to so many adults. He argues that we are hard wired towards such beliefs and that we learn to be more rational and scientific as we grow up. But don’t go thinking that he is going to defend religion – he points out that people like me will be reading the book hoping that our religious beliefs will be justified scientifically. He is trying to understand why people believe and whether there is a biological advantage to such beliefs.

Introducing Aristotle

Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who lived over 2000 years ago. So why is he still so highly regarded in the 21^st Century? This is an easy to read book set out in the graphic novel style to help you to understand why. The cartoons and pictures break up the text and make it easier to follow.

Aristotle was one of the earliest people to think about scientific ideas. However he thought that logical thinking was more important than testing with experiments so he often got it wildly wrong! It is his ideas on Ethics – how to live a good life – that interest me most now. What he espouses is called “virtue ethics” – that goodness comes from developing a good character rather than from following a set of rules. He suggests that we follow a middle way – neither too much nor too little. I have always been a believer in rules for ethics but as I have got older, I have seen a lot more sense in Aristotle’s way. Not everyone agrees. Read the book and see what you think.