Hello, folks! I was considering how last year I released quite a few books in a short space of time, which was a really silly thing to do from a promotional point of view, because I didn’t give each book the promotional time and effort it deserved. I kind of regret that, but the way I work tends to be in bursts of energy, and at the time I felt it best to release everything asap in case I died or something (true story!).
So, I thought I’d write a few posts introducing the books that got a bit lost, and try to persuade one or two of you to invest in a copy, if you’re genuinely interested, of course.
Today, I’m writing a little about my book, A Collection of Essays by Steven Colborne. Yep, it’s not rocket science; you kind of know what to expect already, but I thought I’d provide a few more details about the essays to help anyone who’s interested decide whether or not they’d like to buy a copy.
Here’s a list of the essays included in the book, and I’ll explain a little more about what they are and why I’ve included them below:
A Listener-Centred, Dialectical Model for Popular Music Analysis
Heraclitus and the Nature of Change
The Schopenhauerian Concept of Will
The Soul in Christianity and Platonism
George Eliot and Feuerbach on God and the Good
Karl Rahner’s Anthropology
Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election
The Trinity and Suffering
A Letter to George Eliot about God and the Good
God and Suffering: Approaches and Issues
An Almighty Predicament: A Discourse on the Arguments For and Against Christianity
The Only Question You Ever Need Ask
The first essay is my undergraduate dissertation, in which I outline a new approach to music analysis, which focuses on listener subjectivity and listener experience as the key to understanding the ‘meaning’ of a piece of music. This is in contrast to the more traditional formal styles of music analysis — styles that locate meaning in the structure of the music — that you get in classical music, for instance.
Most of the other essays were written during my time as a postgraduate student at Heythrop College in London. Heythrop is a Jesuit Catholic college (nope, I’m not a Jesuit). The course I studied was an MA Philosophy and Religion, and the essays in the book are from the Contemporary Christian Thought and Selected Themes in Western Philosophy modules that I took. I graduated from these studies with a postgraduate certificate rather than an MA, as a hospital admission prevented me from completing all the modules for the course.
The final three essays in the book are essays that I wrote outside of an academic setting, and are based more on Bible study and research into the divine sovereignty versus human free will problem, which is of course the focus of much of my writing these days. These essays discuss issues including suffering, free will, predestination, heaven and hell, and more.
For a look at the book cover and a short synopsis, see this PDF. The book is available from Amazon, Apple Books, Rakuten Kobo, Google Play, and my publishing imprint Tealight Books, as well as many other digital retailers. This page will link you to the retailer and local store of your choice.
If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email or leave a comment, I’ll be happy to answer.
Perfect Chaos 