Really pleased to announce that the UK edition of ‘Other‘ is available in the US and Canada as an eBook via Amazon (as it is in the UK too.) As I’m sure you know, you don’t need an actual Kindle to read Kindle downloads – you can get the software for free on your Mac or PC or mobile. I’ve got a copy on the Kindle app on the iPad, and it looks great.

If you’ve got an iPad, it’s also in the native iBookstore too, but I can’t link to that – sort it out Apple!

As for a print edition, negotiations with a US publisher are in (hopefully) the final stages, and a US print edition should be available in a couple of months, which will be great.

If you’ve not read it yet, ‘Other’ is an attempt to unpack what Jesus’ summary of the law might mean in the politically complex and technologically advanced world we are living in:

Noisy neighbours, international terrorism, racism, teenage violence and religious fundamentalism … from the personal to the local to the international and theological, it is our failure to engage ‘the other’ that is at the heart of so many of the problems we face.

It draws on a huge variety of sources, taking in pirates, AA Milne, Zizek, Facebook, Heidegger, Celebrity culture and video gaming…all spiced with some original poetry too. And some great people have said some great things about it:

Brian Mclaren:

With his new book Other, English author Kester Brewin joins Peter Rollins from Ireland and David Dark from the US as leading public theologians for a new generation of thoughtful Christians. He moves gracefully from Scripture to philosophy to pop culture to sociology and back to Scripture again, offering fresh, honest, and needed insights at each turn.

Pete Rollins:

In our socially networked and technologically advanced world we remain surrounded by mystery: the mystery of others, the divine mystery and mystery that we are unto ourselves. OTHER masterfully explores how we might embrace this often complex reality and draws out how love of that which is other is central to the Christian experience. This is a work of rare beauty.

Phllyis Tickle:

This is a brilliant work. Half-mystic and half hard-core intellectual, Brewin here offers us an intimate, personable, completely accessible and, at times, hauntingly beautiful engagement with the hard questions of emergence theology. It illumines with reverence and care the paradox that is faith, even as it speaks, always with vigour, of love and the reality that lies at the centre of our not-knowing.

Hope you enjoy reading it – all being well I’ll be in the US in the next few months with a little tour, so be great to meet people then and engage with the ideas face to face.

What he says is interesting in the light of the short series of posts I did on whether the Emerging Church has retreated back to more institutional structures. First of all, he makes the point that:

A lot of us have foolishly identified institutions as the problem, something to be eradicated, not realising that our anti-institutionalism serves only to create new institutions by accident.

I’d want to press Brian on this a little: if institutions are identified as problematic, that doesn’t necessarily mean a call for their eradication. It does call for their modification though. He then goes on to say that:

From my perspective, institutions exist in a dynamic relationship with social movements: simply put, institutions preserve the gains of past social movements. And with amazing consistency, they also oppose current social movements. With equal consistency, however, if a social movement survives without being ignored, oppose or co-opted by the institution it seeks to change, that movement’s gains will enrich the legacy of the institution, and the institution will conserve those gains.

I think this is excellent analysis. Reflecting on my concerns in the previous series of posts, it is the incredible hard work that movements have to do (not being ignored, opposed or co-opted is a big battle against large institutional momentum!) that is the problem. So many movements with so much going for them simply don’t make it. And while it is good that institutions do have some inertia to stop them being swayed by every little current, I do think that the balance is currently wrong – and this is why I would look for the TAZ influence in institutional processes: taking things down every once in a while and rebuilding.

Great book – highly recommend it.

Some good people already have liked what they’ve read, and I’ll be posting some endorsements here over the next few days, kicking off with the wonderful thinker Maggi Dawn, who said:

Startling, heart-warming and thought-provoking, Other opens up old themes for a new generation. There are plenty of books that tell you what you expect to hear. This, I’m happy to say, is not one of them. Drawing on a mixture of sources from philosophy, history of science, sociology and theology as well as lots of personal anecdotes, Other explores the challenge of understanding the self, as well as God and other people.

She also has a new book out later on in June which looks fantastic. Check back here Monday for more news of the release, plus a free talk I did last week on the book to download / listen to… and get yourself along to Apple on Wednesday to raise a glass in celebration of the launch. If you say the right thing, you could land yourself a free pint, or free copy of the book! (See end of previous post for details)

One interesting repercussion of the advent of the e-reader may well be the disappearance of the bookshelf. Before you scoff and say never just remember how resistant I/we were to putting our CDs and vinyl away. But away they have been put, and the solitary ipod is now the norm.

So if e-readers become more ubiquitous – and I think the jury is still out on that – will the bookshelf go too? And if the bookshelf does go, what will replace it as the vanity object in our homes?

Because, let’s be honest, the beautifully arranged rows of books are not about function or ease of reach. They are a shortcut, a quick sketch of our identity that we put on display for visitors. And very useful it is too. When I go to someone’s house my eyes are immediately drawn to their books, if they have any. (If they don’t I walk out and defriend them. JOKE) A quick scan of the shelves can tell us a lot about someone, or at least give us an opening into some more rich conversation.

So if our music collection has gone, and our books follow, what will we put up instead? I have no desire for a screen to do this job. And I can think of nothing worse than a pure unadorned room with no objects of interest in it. Nor do I feel able to tell much about people from their ornaments, though this may have to change.

Perhaps it will be a virtual shelf – a scrollable, changeable playlist of books and music and other cultural paraphernalia that we will literally use to ‘project’ something of ourselves. Of course, it will change with mood and according to friend type, pulling forward Dickens and Hardy when mum is around, or more edgy stuff when Nic comes calling. And thus my self will become less whole and more fragmented, as the guilty pleasures on my shelves that I never put away and allow all and sundry to see will get hidden.

[ HT Krystian - great interactive bookshelf shot on Flickr ]

It’s pretty much a year to the day since I began writing my new book, and I now that the contracts are all exchanged I thought it was time to pop the lid off and start getting the word out there.

Don’t go rushing to Amazon just yet – it’ll be on shelves in July next year. I’m thrilled that it will be published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton. News of US and other regions as I get it.

Entitled ‘Other: Loving Self, God and Neighbour in a World of Fractures‘ the blurb in the publisher’s catalogue goes something like this:

Noisy neighbours, international terrorism, racism, teenage violence and religious fundamentalism… From the personal to the local to the international and theological, it is our failure to engage ‘the other’ that is at the heart of so many of the problems we face.

Beginning with Jesus’ instruction to love God, and love our neighbour as we love ourselves, and drawing in pirates, quantum physicists, Facebook, Satre, AA Milne, development practice, feasting and hospitality – all framed with dazzling theological insights and scattered with original poems – ‘Other’ explores how we might better engage the other within the Self, within God and within the worlds we inhabit.

Drawing on Brewin’s work in London as a Maths teacher, education writer, poet, father and theologian, this accessible and highly original work prompts us to reconsider the key question of ‘what kind of selves do we need to be in order to live in harmony with others?’

Well, you can’t believe everything you read, but I’m really excited about the manuscript, and think those of you who’ve enjoyed reading here will do too. You’ll obviously recognise some of the themes of the book from blog posts I’ve written here – so thanks to everyone out there who’s helped shape my thoughts over the year. Look forward to continuing to throw things around here as we approach publication.

Just back from holiday, and just hear that Thomas Pynchon has a new book out.

For any fans of this most difficult, funny, bawdy and darkly brilliant writers these are nervous times: will we understand a word of it, let alone the many hundred-thousands of words that some of his books can run to. The early reports are positive. Published in a few days. Can’t wait.

But you shouldn’t keep flogging a dead horse. There have to be periodic moments of silence / jubilee / death / hidden-ness if the moments of speech / action / life are to have any meaning.

So I’m going to stop this blog, and spend some time working on a follow-up book.

The idea, as it stands in various sketches in my note books, is for an extended meditation on the idea of ‘the other,’ leaning left on the poetry/theology continuum, and hopefully drawing on the stories of some fantastic people I’ve met.

I’ve been pondering Jesus’ summary of the Law to ‘love God, and love your neighbour as yourself,’ and re-phrasing it as ‘love the other, love The Other.’ The other within the Self, the other within our communities, The Other that is immanent and beyond all… It strikes me as the core of everything we are about as people of faith. Indeed, since the birth of consciousness, it’s at the core of everything we are about as people.

And yet, with the continuing rise in anti-social behaviour, teenage stabbings in London, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, theological schism, global terror threats and clinical depression, it seems that in our fluid, multicultural, melting-pot, border-less, easyJet world, we are further from accepting the other than ever before.

Yet, despite all this. I think there are signs of hope. And we need to be those signs of hope. Personally, communally, locally, corporeally, we need to be communities that have this love for God and other at our core.

No, I haven’t got a publishing deal, or even spoken to anyone about one. I’m not sure how much that matters, to be honest. I’m just going to spend some time thinking and writing. And if you have any thoughts you’d like to throw in on the theme, any good books to read, do get in touch, come for a beer, leave a comment, or whatever.

Doubtless I’ll be around online again at some point… No idea when. But you’ll find out

Fare well, for now. And thanks. It’s been fun.

With a book, the text is the object. Fine – the text can be inked digitally, but what I don’t think can be replicated is the ‘flick value’ of a book. I never just read a book – I read a bit, flick around, look at the cover again, turn back… It’s a much more physical experience than we often think. And I just don’t want to give that up.

With music, the emotional centre is the listening. With a book, the whole object – the spine, the binding, the font, the leading, the stock – all of these things are tied up with the emotional content of the actual text.

I read news online. But a novel? Forget it. Won’t kindle no spark for me.

In The Shadow Of The Moon is a magnificent movie. No voice-over. No animation. No mock-ups. Just archive footage, and interviews with the Apollo astronauts. It’s stunning as a film, stunning to be reminded of perhaps the single greatest technological feat of mankind, and stunning to be reminded – in a way Gore never quite achieves in AIT – that the earth really is immensely precious. Armstrong’s continued absence from any documentary – literary or on film – only serves to add mystery to an already ethereal and epiphanic event. He was the first to step out onto another world; what God whispered to him before leaving for someplace else he will continue to keep to himself.

If, you’re in London, you’ll have to catch it soon, as it’s been on a scandalously limited release. If you miss it, buy the DVD, with the largest screen you can lay your hands on. Or, better still, read Andrew Smith’s ‘Moondust‘ – which very likely inspired the film.

Technorati: Al Gore | Andrew Smith | In The Shadow of The Moon | Moondust | Neil Armstrong