I didn’t plan to give up blogging for Lent. It just sort of turned out that way. Aaaaaand my readership continues to slip away…
I handed in my last paper of the semester yesterday. Now I start thinking about the reading I need to do for the two classes I’m taking in May.
Tonight is the seminary grad banquet. Neither of us is graduating, but we’re going to the banquet. I am winning some kind of award (it’s an honour just to be nominated!). Tomorrow morning we leave for a 6-day stint at Elkhorn Lodge or some-such, a resort north of Neepewa and on the edge of Riding Mountain National Park. It’ll be the Vandersluys’s plus another friend, then a few days later that friend and his wife, and then a few days later another couple friend. It should be good times. I hope. Let’s be honest: the kids a kind of the wildcard here. But there’s a pool and possible horseback riding and hikes.
But after that, after the getaway and the classes in may, I will read what I want to read.
What I think I can reasonably finish in the summer:
Theology:
- N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God
- Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
- Thomas Halik, Patience with God: The Story of Zacchaeus Continuing in Us
- H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
- C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
- Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
Biography:
- Eric Mataxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy
Fiction:
- Gavin’s sermon from a couple of weeks ago inspired me to pick up Three by Flannery O’Connor again and read at least The Violent Bear it Away
- I’d like to have a second go at Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ One Hundred Years of Solitude.
- Something else by Graham Greene.
Maybe this list isn’t reasonable for me to finish. All of these books will be beneficial reads, but I think now of the books I would benefit from practically by reading them this summer, such a s William Willimon’s Pastoral Theology (a text for a Winter 2012 course) and something on spiritual direction. Plus I need to re-learn Greek over the summer in preparation for the school year.
Let’s be honest: this reading list looks almost nothing like I will actually read this summer.