Summer Reading Plan

Here's the reading list I promised about a week back (I know Julie, you could hardly wait). My plan for the next few months is to take it easy. My reasons for this are: 1) I think my brain has earned a deserved reduced reading break. 2) My schedule is in constant flux lately and will continue to be this way until sometime after Noah is born. I don't know what my schedule is going to be from week to week and probably will not know what it will be like from day to day once he's born. 3) I think I'm long overdue for some fun reading. So here's the plan.

First, I'm currently reading Wright's The New Testament and the People of God (I'm somewhere around pg 80). It's slow but delightful reading. In addition, I'm also about 80 pages into Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner.

Let me digress for a moment about the latter title pictured above. No, it's not a cuss word despite the fact that it has a BLOGAN ring to it. Let me digress even further on the term I just coined. You've probably heard of "Bennifer" (Ben Affleck and JLo), "Tomkat" (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) and "Brangelina" (Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie). Let me introduce you to "Blogan." That's a combination of Tim Baylor (of Luther's Stein fame) and Scott Logan. Anything that's cussworthy or that smacks of the profane, shall heretoforth be known as being "blogan" or "bloganesque." I encourage you to adopt this new term into your vocabulary and employ it on your blogs (just remember you heard it here first!).

Returning to the first digression, Freakonomics is an attempt to wrestle with life's more interesting and odd questions from the vantage point of a brilliant young economist who teaches at the University of Chicago. He wrestles with questions like: "If drug dealers make so much money, why do they still live with their moms?" His major premise is something to the effect of: If morality describes how we wish the world was, economics describes how it really is. It was recommended to me by my good friend and fellow grad, Andy Davies. It's also #5 or 6 on the NY Times bestseller list and you can check out the web page here.

Next on the list are two devotional works. I just bought Bruce Waltke's Finding the Will of God: A Pagan Notion? I started it on Sunday afternoon, and it's good so far. Tonight I was at Barnes and Nobles on my lunch/dinner break and read about 20 pages from Wild at Heart. Though I certainly disagreed with some of what I read, I was largely intrigued. I'm planning on picking it up tomorrow and continuing the read. Anybody out there read it? Any thoughts?

I conclude with some reference reading. I just bought the Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible and am planning on page turning through it after it arrives and reading the essays that catch my interest. I also just purchased The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels and am planning on doing the same with this book later this summer/fall. However, this one will probably get a more rigorous or systematic reading since I am aware that I need to sharpen up my synoptics/historical Jesus studies and my interest was peaked by Michael Bird's recent post regarding the relative neglect of Luke/Acts studies especially among PhD students.

This should be sufficient to keep me occupied for the summer. If I finish NTPG and Freakonomics before Noah's born, I'll be happy. We'll see about the rest. Once he's born I'm sure life will be marked by craziness and sleeplessness for the first couple of weeks (months?). I have a more intensive plan for the fall, but that will have to wait for another day since this post is already a bit longer than I anticipated.