By james art On My Shelf helps you get to know different writers through a behind-the-scenes look at their lives as readers.
I asked Sarah Irving-Stonebraker – Associate Professor of History and Western Civilization at the Australian Catholic University and author of several books including Priests of History: Managing the Past in an Ahistorical Age– about what’s on her nightstand, her favorite fiction, the books she regularly reviews, and more.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
My Bible (ESV) and My Book of Common Prayer are always on my bedside table (which in Australia we call a “nightstand”!) and travel with me. I find the morning prayer and evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer to be helpful rhythms for structuring my day and keeping me grounded in the historic Christian faith. The prayers from the prayer book have been very helpful in my own faith growth.
I also think that when we talk to new converts to Christianity, we sometimes don’t give them an idea of what the rhythm and practices of the Christian life might look like and what it means for one’s prayer life to be accepted into a historical people. The Daily Office provides a way to follow Jesus, to be connected to the rich traditions of the Christian faith, and to be formed and strengthened in the faith. I am aware that some people may be concerned about “set prayers”, but in fact I find great joy in praying for God’s help to put my heart into the prayers of the prayer book so that I can be formed and shaped by the faith of those who are gone before me. The Book of Common Prayer has also been a great comfort to me at times in life when sorrow or heartache has left me searching for the words to pray with.
The Book of Common Prayer has been a great comfort to me at times in life when sorrow or heartache have made me search for the words to pray with.
I also read Peter Harrison A Little New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age and to Nigel Biggar Colonialism: A Moral Account in my free time so they are on the nightstand too! Harrison’s book is in many ways his magnum opus, and he does a wonderful job exploring how we historically came to categorize the world into “natural” and “supernatural.” Biggar’s book is a fascinating look at colonialism and highlights the moral complexity that much of history presents us with.
What are your favorite fiction books?
I tend to read a lot more non-fiction, but perhaps unsurprisingly for a historian, my favorite fiction books date from earlier centuries. About a year ago I read George Eliot’s book Daniel Deronda and has become my favorite work of fiction to think about and talk about, and in many ways I think it rivals the much more famous Eliot Middlemarch as one of the greatest novels.
One of my favorite things to do right now is read aloud to our three children, and some of my favorite fiction books and book series are the ones I’ve read aloud to them. I absolutely love Spicy Maggie series which is about a teenager playing ‘Aussie Rules’ football in Melbourne, Australia. There are some beautiful vignettes of family, male friendship, father-son relationships and a very Australian childhood. They are a lot of fun to read.
Other fiction books I love (and read aloud to kids) include Children of the New Forestwhich takes place during the English Civil War of the 17th century, and on Anne of Green Gables series (esp Anna from the island and Anne’s dream house).
Which biographies or autobiographies have influenced you the most and why?
One of the most formative literary experiences for me was reading and studying Robert Lowell’s series of autobiographical poems. Life science as a teenager in high school. Somehow Lowell manages to explore what is so precious and special about human life (the specific memories of childhood, the stories of generations of family), yet resists sentimentality.
I think there was something that appealed to me, the young historian, about the way Lowell reflected his life (and his family’s life) in the context of American history. Many of the poems explore a moment in Lowell’s own life or his family’s life while also being a vignette of a moment in the much larger story of American history, from the Winslow-Starks of the Mayflower to Lowell’s conscientious objection to serving during World War II, to his mental breakdown in the “relaxed fifties.” There was something about the high drama of the story juxtaposed with Lowell’s individual experience, in all his intimate vulnerability, that I found touching.
I still get a lump in my throat reciting lines from Hour of the Skunk imagining Lowell’s pain. Now that I am a Christian (and knowing that Lowell is not), I hear a particular desperation in Lowell’s cry: “I hear the sobbing of my evil spirit in every blood cell, as if my hand were upon his throat. . . . I myself am hell; nobody is here
What are some of the books you regularly re-read and why?
Mostly it’s poetry that I re-read, oddly enough. I will read TS Eliot Four Quartets out loud quite often because the experience is so deeply moving. There really is a transcendent foundation of beauty! Reading “Little Gidding” aloud, for example, prompts me to praise the transcendent God, the author of all beauty.
I often re-read CS Lewis books, esp Just Christianity and The Big Divorce. Lewis played an important role in my journey to faith in Jesus, and these two books in particular engaged my reason and imagination, my mind and my heart.
For my work, I always re-read the texts I teach. It’s Richard Hooker’s this week and next Laws of church organizationof Francis Bacon New Atlantis and Progress of learningThe American Declaration of Independence, by Thomas Jefferson Political Writingsand of John Locke Letter on tolerance.
What books have most profoundly shaped the way you serve and lead others in the name of the gospel?
More recently, I have been struck by the way the stories of Christians throughout history have inspired and encouraged me. I recently read the Rachel Ciano and Ian Maddock series of books Ten Dead Girls You Should Know and Ten Dead Boys You Should Know. These stories reminded me of how different the cultures in which we are called to serve are, and of the incredible courage of Christians throughout the ages.
The story of the missionary Gladys Aylward, for example, who traveled across China with hundreds of small children at the height of the Japanese occupation, is simply remarkable. I often find myself thinking about her or some of the other Christians and I remember that I am actually surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses through the ages.
What are the history books, the craft of history, or the writing of history that have shaped you most indelibly?
As a PhD student at Cambridge University, I was shaped in many ways by the work of Quentin Skinner, the intellectual historian whose famous essay Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas (now republished in a book of Skinner’s essays) helped shape how I read historical texts such as intellectual historian.
As a history undergraduate and PhD student, I read Stephen Shapin and Simon Schaffer Leviathan and the Air Pump. This book helped me to consider what was involved in writing the history of 17th century “science” in the context of larger political issues of the time.
Many of the formative works on history were those that introduced me to different schools of historical writing—different ways of doing history. Some were examples of different approaches to history, such as EP Thompson’s social history The Making of the English Working Class. Most memorable for me as a student was Robert Darnton’s famous cultural history essay, The Great Cat Massacre. This made my undergraduate class horrified at how strange and foreign the past (“another country”) could be.
What’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever given or received?
When working on ideas, I try to speak my argument out loud to process the ideas and articulate them more clearly. When I do this, I explain them and communicate them to others (even an imaginary audience!) and it clarifies my thoughts and forces me to be concise. I think we are generally better at explaining things briefly and clearly when we speak than when we write (where we can overcomplicate the argument).
What is the book every pastor would like to read?
Long submission in the same direction together with The pastorboth by Eugene Peterson. I think pastors in our cultural moment would benefit from Peterson’s call for personal discipleship and faithful honesty in pastoral work. My family and I do not need gimmicks or the next great church growth strategy imported from the business world, but we do need humble leadership that always calls and challenges us to follow Jesus; we need pastors.
What are you learning about living and following Jesus?
Lately I’ve been aware of all the invisible ways people serve. I recently learned of women serving in several different Muslim women’s ministries in south-west Sydney; teach them to drive, teach them to read English, etc. As one of my mentors said, this very slow work is often unglamorous and unrecognized by others.
By contrast, my own vocation as a university professor has placed me—for reasons only God knows—in a very public position, even though I am a deeply private person. It got me thinking about the different ways God places His people with different gifts and responsibilities, working together to build up the body of Christ.
On Sundays at our church (which is a church plant) I feel so much joy in being part of this small group of people who do so many different things during the week and yet work together. It makes me see not only the truth of how God “equips[s] the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12), but also that what Peter said is so true about who we are now: “Once you were not men, but now you are God’s people” (1 Peter 2:10).