I thought I would just delve into some of the reading I have been doing in the last few weeks or months. I have a couple of different challenges going on, all of which are fairly relevant to the dumpster fire that is my reading list. At last count, I had around 25 treebooks (real paper) and around 125 ebooks on my To Be Read list (TBR). I will probably be dead before I finish them, not mention, my buying has not slowed by any measurable degree.
I am reading three books at the moment. The first is The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, by Carl R. Trueman. For those of us who have no idea how Western culture cut its roots from it’s own value systems and made it hard for even medical professionals to define what a woman was, this book is a delight of insight. Trueman traces current identity politics quite a way back in history, and shows there is nothing new under the sun. He deals with thinkers like Karl Marx, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Freud, and a whole tonne more. So far, it has really introduced a lot of ideas and connections I had not seen before. Following this on from Melvin Tinker’s That Hideous Strength, Trueman’s book is definitely far wider in scope.
N.T. Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God is the second reading project I am dealing with. After extensive discourses on the nature of reading, and the terms used and a whole lot more, I got to the “good stuff” at about page 140. That said, all that foundational work was and is valuable. It really helps put Wright’s historical discussions into a wider context. I have had this book, and two others, for more than 5 years, just collecting dust on my shelf. This is one of those really solid reads you cannot rush. I bounce between this and Trueman’s book.
You might wonder at the thematic consistency of my reading. Simply put, there is none. Dinniman’s book is full of profanity at a level I have not read in a long time. Yet, it has already, at merely page 4, sucked me into the plot. Like Trueman’s book, I had long heard wonderful things about Matt Dinniman, and many people I follow on social like the guy’s books. When a local bookstore had the whole series, I started buying them one by one. I have 3. No doubt, I will soon have volume 4 in my grasp.
Drop a comment one what you are reading at the moment!
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