Booksellers’ Choice Booksellers’ Choice
Stuck for something to read? Find out what booksellers across the UK recommend . . .
Jenny Monds, Manager, Sarum College Bookshop
John Pritchard’s books are always among our best-sellers. How to Pray: A Practical Handbook is a book I frequently recommend as a very readable book on different forms of prayer. Full of suggestions (each chapter has a ‘try this’ paragraph) stories and quotations, and illustrated with a scattering of cartoons, this helpful book is as useful for those just beginning a prayer life as for those in need of refreshment.
Jim Hope, Manager, Cornerstone Christian Bookshop (Skipton)
. . . on Living Jesus by John Pritchard
As manager of a small bookshop it is good to report that we have sold about 80 copies of this title since its publication earlier this year. The reason? It can be promoted with confidence to all customers, because it concentrates on the basics which unite rather than the peripherals which divide. No Christian, or interested sceptic, can fail to be refreshed and challenged by reading this book. In my view, one of a very small handful of “essential” books this year.
Stephen Moseling, Manager, St Pauls Bookshop at Westminster
. . . on Reconstructing Early Christian Worship by Paul F. Bradshaw
Despite the title, Bradshaw is not looking to present to the reader with every detail of the practice of the Early Church regarding the Eucharist, Baptism and daily prayer for, as he says this would “be impossible because of the limitations of our historical information.”
What he does set out to do and, in my opinion achieves, is to examine from primary sources such information that does exist on certain aspects of these rites and gives a well argued and informative analysis of them. At the same time he shows why these practices are important for the Church today. His concern is not to justify modern day ritual but to offer fresh understanding as to why what is done today has continuity and significance with how things were done two thousand years ago. A book which has to be read by every student of liturgy or early Church History.
