Book: 'The Cloud of Unknowing'

I love getting to read books I would never have found on my own. As a happy antitheist, I would definitely not have discovered this one had it not been lent to me - which would have been a shame, because it's quite a fascinating work. I find it completely absorbing to try and understand why believing sorts of people believe in what things they believe in. It's an interesting experience to discuss faith with someone who can articulate their beliefs in a way that makes sense, rather than just garbling out recycled propaganda. Such folk seem to be few and far between, but I think this anonymous Medieval author must have been exactly that type. The sheer beauty of their phrasing, and the analogies they draw, bring a certain appealing logic to a subject which I usually find completely appalling. It's particularly lovely how their lessons make it clearer than ever to me that, deep down, nearly all religions are founded on the same basic ideas (I read this side by side with a text on Shinto, and marvelled, despite the differences in their surface trappings, at the uncanny similarities between Eastern mysticism and Christian mysticism).

I did feel a slight sense of loss in the translation from Middle English to modern English. Though Dr. Butcher did a bang-up job recreating the comfortable and familiar attitude of the original text, which (at least in the little I've read here) reads like a letter to a close and beloved friend, I can't help feeling a bit thrown off by her use of modern colloquialisms. For we particularly nerdy readers, there might be more joy in reading an untranslated edition with the aid of a Middle English dictionary.

Film: 'On Any Sunday' (1971)

This is a really lovely film. Directed and narrated by the brilliant Bruce Brown, king of the surf movie, it captures a few glorious, golden (and sometimes mud-stained) moments in the exhilarating world of motorcycle racing. From the surreal beauty of the Bonneville salt flats to the frigid wastes of Quebec in winter; from Florida to Spain; from thigh-deep mudholes to the 30-degree banks of the Daytona speedway, on any Sunday, someone, somewhere, is racing - some to win, some for the hell of it, some because they can, and some because they can't imagine doing anything else. As a fan of both two-wheeled vehicles and those very sweet-natured early-'70s sports documentaries, I delighted in the joyful tone of Brown's celebration of all levels of racing, from the mesmerisingly hair-raising high speed AMA championship events to the ridiculously silly (though still hair-raising) Widowmaker hill climb event. Whether or not you care much for motorbikes or racing, I think it's nearly always a pleasure to watch people who are very, very good at something perform, and this is a prime example of why: