The Day I Fell Down The Toilet
By Steve Turner. Lion Publishing. 96 pages. £3.99 ISBN 0 7459 3640 7
Great is the Glory
By Timothy Dudley-Smith. Hope Publishing Co. 101 pgs. ISBN 0 916642 64 X
Through the Bible in a Year
By Dennis Lennon. Scripture Union. ISBN 1 85999 196 3
The Last Battle
By C.S. Lewis. Audio tape, BBC Radio Collection. £9.99. Running time: 2 hours. ISBN 0 563 39073 5
Carols & Capers
By Maddy Prior & The Carnival Band. Park Records, PRK CD 9. £14.99. Running time: 48 minutes approx. PO Box 61, Oxford OX2 9RB
Price Above Rubies
By Daphne Swanson. New Life Publications, Istanbul. 70 pages. £2.00 including p&p. Available from Mr. L. Le Grice, Gardener's Rest, Lower Farm Road, Ringshall, Stowmarket, Suffolk IP14 2JE. ISBN 975 7509 78 7
The American author, Garrison Keillor, has a parody of an old Christian song which goes like this: 'You've got to do that Christmas shopping, You've got to do it by yourself. No one here can do it for you, You've got to do it by yourself.'
EN can't do your Christmas shopping for you, but here are some excellent books and sundries which might make acceptable gifts - if you can bear to give them away.
The day I fell down the toilet is poet Steve Turner's first book of verse for children. It is great fun for adults too, full of the kind of things that fascinate children or make them giggle. These are poems to be read out loud - the reader senses the poet's passion about words. There are some serious ideas here, tucked among the exuberant and funny ones. The book might even inspire a reader to become a writer!
For those whose taste in verse is more theological or musical, the latest collection of hymns by Timothy Dudley-Smith would make a fine gift. Great is the Glory contains 36 new hymn texts plus notes which give an insight into the author's mind. The verses combine exegetical accuracy with freshness of phrase and that pleasing precision of metre which is the writer's hallmark. This book would serve as a superb devotional aid to any Christian, but might be of particular interest to a would-be composer, since they are hymns in search of tunes.
It can only be good to encourage a fellow believer in the discipline of daily prayer and Bible reading, so another fine idea would be Through the Bible in a year by Dennis Lennon. Subtitled 'a spiritual journal', this is largely a diary-style book with blank pages on which the reader may record his own comments and thought on the prescribed daily Scripture portion. If the reader perseveres, the whole Bible will have been read in the course of a year. There is a helpful Bible overview at the beginning of the book and a plethora of quotes to jolly things along.
If you haven't caught on to the BBC Radio 4 dramatisations of the Narnia stories, you and your family have missed a treat. However, they are available on audio cassette. The final book of C.S. Lewis's series, and in many ways the most wonderful of all, The Last Battle, was broadcast earlier this year and the cassette can be recommended as a very good investment, especially if you ever take long car journeys. The dramatisation is very faithful to the original book and the actors are of a high calibre. This is two hours' worth of a story to capture the imagination of any child and stir the heart of any believer.
A CD of Christmas music is probably more appropriate as a pre-Christmas gift. Carols and Capers is less Kings College, more Thomas Hardy's Wessex, but equally full of excellent musicianship, of the shawm, fiddle and tin whistle variety. It features the cool, clear voice of Maddy Prior accompanied by the multi-talented Carnival Band and is a follow-up to the previously released and much praised A Tapestry of Carols. This collection of traditional festive songs and tunes features musical arrangements which are by turn haunting and frolicsome. There are dance tunes, cradle songs, carols and well-known Christmas hymns, from whose joyful pace many a congregation could learn.
Price above rubies is a little gem, written by Daphne Swanson about her mother. It is an everyday story of Suffolk country folk, from the days when women had wash-days and hairstyles called earphones. It is quaint in both its language (very AV) and its context. The past, as L.P. Hartley said, is a foreign country; they do things differently there. Yet there is something about this account of this small life, which the reader cannot forget. It is a tribute not just to this woman, but to Christian womanhood and it underlines the value of a life lived quietly and faithfully for Christ.
Esme Shirt
