Over the past month, a fair number of new books have entered my home, and I’m not entirely certain when I’ll have time to read all of them. But just to give you a bit of an idea of my eclectic theological reading habits, here they are. There’s a little bit of fiction:

The Complete Father Brown Stories – G.K. Chesterton
The Hammer of God (revised ed.) – Bo Giertz 

A few books that have been on my to-read list for years:

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind – Mark A. Noll
Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther – Roland H. Bainton
On Being a Theologian of the Cross: Reflections on Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation – Gerhard O. Forde

 A few books of which I’ve only recently become aware but which sound fascinating:

Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do – Phillip Cary
Pietists: Selected Writings – ed. Peter C. Erb
The Christian Mind: How Should a Christian Think – Harry Blamires

And a few books that were either give-aways or otherwise cheap in store:

The Scope of our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher – ed. L. Gregory Jones & Stephanie Paulsell
The Book that James Wrote – Earl F. Palmer
Reading the Bible in Faith: Theological Voices from the Pastorate – ed. William H. Lazareth

But perhaps the best book of all was one some friends of mine brought back for me from their recent trip to England. It’s a collection of all the nonsense writings of Edward Lear. May your summer reading be less dangerous than that of Lear’s character, the dear “Old Person of Cromer.”

For your edification, or bewilderment, or both:

There was an Old Person of Cromer,
Who stood on one leg to read Homer;
When he found he grew stiff,
He jumped over the cliff,
Which concluded that Person of Cromer.

 

Feel free to let me know what you’ve thought of any of the above books if you’ve read them, or your suggestions for future reading when I’ve got these ones out of the way.