I know summer is officially a month away, but in order to get the amount of reading I have planned completed (I never actually do), I thought I would get a head start. So, here’s what’s on the shelf…
Currently opened and past the first chapter are Jackson Lears’ Something for Nothing: Luck in America [1], Brad Miner’s The Compleat Gentleman [2], and Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion [3], vol. 1. The Lears book, which I’ve been picking at for a long time is a pretty facsinating look at how Americans view luck, and how Providence and grace differ from the culture of chance in which America now finds itself. Miner’s book I got a couple of weeks ago and will finish quickly—it’s a smart book that is heads above any other “masculinity” book I’ve ever read. Calvin’s work, of course, is a classic that displays both genius and a pastoral nature simultaneously.
Sitting on the shelf waiting to be read are: David McCullough’s John Adams [4] (my biography selection for the summer), Philip Roth’s The Human Stain [5] (I’ve never read any Roth, but I feel I need to be familiar with this American icon of letters), Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood [6] (which I know will be splendid), and James Herrick’s The Making of the New Spirituality [7] (which Ken Myers says should be required reading for any seminarian or pastor).
If I get through these, I still have Carl Henry’s six-volume God, Revelation, and Authority [8] awating me, along with John S. Feinberg’s No One Like Him: The Doctrine of God [9]. As usual there are a few others waiting in the wings as well.
Will I finish all of these by summers end? Probably not. I’m a slow reader and I tend to read several books at a time, thereby making it take an eternity to finish one volume. I will probably even pick up something that’s not on the list (like Walker Percy’s The Second Coming [10], for instance).
In other words, I need to quit writing now and go read. So I will.