book meme

Ben has come up with a meme about books... I've tagged a few people below, but I'd love to hear anyone else's responses, too!

1. One book that changed your life.

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

2. One book you've read more than once

Joan Aiken, Wolves of Willoughby Chase
(at least fifteen times before I was 12!)

3. One book you'd want on a desert island

Psalms

4. One book that made you laugh

Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

5. One book that made you cry

Primo Levi, If This is a Man

6. One book you wish had been written

Jurgen Habermas, The Simple Version

7. One book you wish had never been written

The Scofield Reference Bible
(just the reference bits, obviously!)

8. One book you're currently reading

Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement, 1783 - 1867

9. One book you've been meaning to read

William Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination

10. Tag five people:

Greg
Simone
Simon
Stephen

No Presbyterians, No Machines

... was the slogan of a group of Luddite campaigners in the North of England during the industrial revolution. I mentioned it to my mother, and she said it sounded like the perfect world. I think (given that she's a Presbyterian minister's wife) that she was joking. But the slogan is evidence, once again, of how intertwined religious and social change are in British history. Why were Presbyterians and machines associated? Because if you were a dissenter from the Church of England, you were barred from almost every means of advancing yourself except through business and industry. In addition, because dissenters were not allowed to attend Cambridge or Oxford, they got a much more practical and thorough education through their own academies, which were more open to new science and technology. In particular, the Scots (who were mainly Presbyterians) had a far superior education system to the English. So many of the inventors, businessmen and industrialists at the forefront of industrialisation were dissenters.
It is because of this kind of connection that I am going to spend much of my first few weeks of tutoring explaining basic elements of Christian doctrine and church structure to my students. That, and the fact that I'm on much safer ground there than trying to explain how the spinning jenny worked!

all done bar the waiting

Yes indeedy, the thesis is in. The forms have been signed, the champagne has been drunk, the celebratory balloon has been received (a Melbourne Uni tradition). After three and a half years working on this project, I feel like someone who has just done something incredibly risky - presented my work to senior scholars for their merciless scrutiny - WHAT WAS I THINKING???
And now: semester has begun, I start tutoring today, I have post-docs and jobs for which to apply, articles to write, publishers to contact, seminars to organise.... and plenty of blogging to catch up on! I'm looking forward to it all.