My Reading Report

I was interested to read this article on President Bush’s reading habits. For the last twelve years I have kept a record of the books that I have read cover-to-cover as it were. I also read the newspaper almost every day and the Bible through every year (except one year in the last twelve). I do not keep track of the reading that I do in commentaries (unless I read the whole commentary), theologies, monographs, journals, magazines, blogs, etc. Altogether, I estimate that what I don’t keep track of actually accounts to more than what I do keep track of. But I digress.

For the year 2008 I read sixteen books (a number which pales in comparison to the forty read by the president this year). My goals for each year are to read in three broad categories. One category is biblical studies. This year I read eight books in this category: Poetics and Biblical Interpretation (Adele Berlin), The Heart of the Old Testament (Ronald Youngblood), Religion and Culture in Ancient Israel (J. Andrew Dearman), Acts (J. Bradley Chance), Jesus’ Promise to the Nations (Joachim Jeremias), The Blue Parakeet (Scot McKnight), An Introduction to the Gospels and Acts (Charles Puskas and David Crump), Paul and the New Perspective (Seyoon Kim). You might have noticed that I try to read books related to both Testaments.

I also read books related to ministry. Here I read Preaching and Preachers (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones), Inspired Preaching (C. Richard Wells and Boyd Luter), and Telling God’s Story (John Wright).

A third category that I try to read in every year relates to the biblical languages. In 2008 I read Basics of Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Constantine Campbell) and Philippians: A Greek Student’s Intermediate Reader (Jerry Sumney). Alas there was not a Hebrew book this year.

Other than these categories I read Blue Like Jazz (Donald Miller), Assaulted by Joy (Stephen Simpson), and as I have already noted above, the Bible.

I already have at least two books on tap for 2009 for which I have committed to reviewing and I know that there will be a great deal of reading pertaining to the dissertation I will be writing.

Feel free to let me know what you have been reading.