Spaces to discuss our sins* and seek steadiness

Paperback launch, zoom book club and Exeter event.

*Sin = The Human Propensity to F*** Things U

Today is the paperback launch of Fully Alive: Tending to the Soul in Turbulent Times. I’m delighted that it is now available in my favourite format. Hardbacks are durable but a) expensive and b) heavy and c) do not fit in a handbag or a pocket. If one is to take every opportunity to read (rather than spaff one’s atttention fruitlessly into devices) then books should be portable. And now this one is!

The paperback has also been updated with some extra goodies:

1. A reading list of other books I love on related subjects.

2. A discussion guide. I hope this will be useful for the many groups which I know are using it (including a bunch of men’s groups which I am somewhat surprised and delighted by).

3. The author Q&A which several of you contributed to. I feel about that the same way I feel about a lot of the book: the faint fear that there is such a thing as too honest. Let me know what you think.

If you have not yet read it, I hope you’ll consider ordering it, either in paperback, audiobook, ebook or from your library. Do support your local bookshop if you can.

One of the many joys of this year since launch has been speaking lots of you about what the book has left you pondering. The main thing I want my work to do is provoke thought and, ideally, deeper conversations about the things that matter. I’ve had many wonderful emails, messages and cards letting me listen in on some of them (if you sent one, thank you. Writing can be lonely and scary and encouragement is so helpful). Now I am craving conversations which are less 1 to 1 and more collective.

So, given I am always going on about community, I thought we could gather! Digitally, at least. On June 12th, 8pm-9.30pm BST I will be hosting a zoom book club. There will be time to meet other people, discuss which temptation to disconnection we feel most strongly about, ask some of the questions from the discussion guide and generally pool both our befuddlement and hard won wisdom. Knowing what I know about you readers, I cannot *wait*.

If you are already a paying subscriber you will be able to see the zoom link below. Paying subscribers are a big reason I continue to be able to write, so thank you. If you’re not, and would like to come, please consider upgrading for a month - it is just £5 - and if that is prohibitive drop me a message and I’ll comp you.

Exeter Library Event

Also next month, I will be in conversation with my friend Iona Lawrence in Exeter, at the library. Iona is an agnostic, and I’m (insert hand wringing over language and then land on the closest comprehensible label) a Christian. We will gather with whoever wants to come, whatever you believe, to discuss how we find some steadiness of soul and resist the temptations of disconnection (my other definition of sin). The aim is to send people out feeling reoriented and reconnected. Local bookshop legend Bookbag will be there selling paperbacks and I’m happy to sign anything you put in front of me.