Summer Reading

Well, it's that time of the year when I begin to think about what I must read before Labor Day comes. Some of these I've already begun and others I probably won't get to until late August. But here it is - my summer reading list:


Out of the Garden: Women Writers on the Bible was given to me in January 1998 by a very dear parishioner at Christ and Holy Trinity Church in Westport, Connecticut as a going away present just before we moved to Holden, Massachusetts. I pulled it off of my shelf recently to re-read an essay in it by Phyllis Trible in preparation for some summer preaching from I and II Kings. The article is entitled: "The Odd Couple: Elijah and Jezebel." I love Trible and the article is classic. But in so doing I felt inspired to read the rest of the book which includes writings by Jewish and Christian women writers - really very fine stuff.

Actually, I'm almost finished with this one, by two of my favorite New Testament scholars: Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Last fall semester, I taught a course on Paul at Assumption College and I used N.T. Wright's book, which was really very good. But I am far enough into this that if I'm asked to do it again, I think I will use this book. I like how they make it clear from the outset that there is a pretty good consensus among mainline scholars that all that claims to be Paul is not Paul. Like all of us, Paul was a man of contradictions. Nevertheless, when you recognize that the writer of Titus and Timothy probably wasn't Paul at all, but a later Christian writer using his name, it makes it easier to focus in on what are clearly the authentic Pauline letters and "the first Paul" - a person these two writers are convinced was a radical visionary. They make a pretty compelling case--at least so far. And their writing is quite accessible.

Sundays In America was recommended to me (and my parish) by the Librarian at the Gale Free Library in Holden. I picked it up this winter or early spring because there was to be a discussion on it at the library but didn't get passed the "peaking ahead' part at the Episcopal congregations visited and ended up with a conflict on the night of the discussion. Basically, the writer describes herself as a lapsed Roman Catholic who, after the death of John Paul II, realized that there was something missing in her life. And so she set off on a pilgrimage to visit a different church every Sunday for one year. It's a little slice of Church in America, across denominational lines--light stuff but I think helpful for someone like me who spends so much time in one place that it becomes a real challenge to see it like an outsider sees it.

I first read Susan Howatch's amazing fictional series that is part theology, part history, and part mystery at least a dozen years ago now--maybe longer. I devoured the entire series at the time. A while back I decided I'd go back and re-read the entire series but got distracted along the way. This summer, however, I'm determined to go back and start again--at the beginning--with Glittering Images. (A friend of mine just had some pretty major surgery and shared that during his recovery he was reading this series for the first time.) This first in the series is about a Church of England priest named Charles Ashworth; I'm hoping I'll get through at least the second one as well, which is called Glamorous Powers and is about another priest named Jon Darrow.

I've become obsessed recently with Malcolm Gladwell, having read Blink first, and then The Tipping Point. He really blows me away, so I'm on to Outliers next and then What the Dog Saw. (To be honest the only reason it's in that order is that the Gale Free Library had a copy of Outliers on the shelf and What the Dog Saw was out!)

The jacket cover on this one says that "success" is not primarily about intelligence and ambition as we usually think, but that "if we want to understand how some people thrive, we should spend more time looking around them - at such things as their family, their birthplace, or even their birth date. The story of success is more complex - and a lot more interesting - than it initially appears."

I haven't heard much about Woodrow Wilson: A Biography, but I usually try to read at least one biography each summer and I've been kind of stuck on the "founding brothers" for a while now so it's time for a twentieth-century president, and I really don't know much about Wilson beyond what I retained in eleventh-grade Social Studies. (In fact, as I think about it, I'm not sure I did any American history in college at all so it really was back that far! I took European Civilization I and II, I think, and then in Scotland I took Scottish History.) So what I remember about Wilson could fit on a napkin, and this book is 702 pages!