My reading list…

Posted by on 09 Dec 2006 | Tagged as: my life.

So i am working on compiling my reading list for the upcoming year.

I’ve got in all in one convenient location, my Amazon Wish list (yes that is a shameless plug.)

But one of the things I tried to do was include some books that were in areas i am not real familiar with. I blogged about this recently in Stimulate Your Brain.

So i have The complete Poems of Emily Dickison, but i really didn’t know what else to to add to my reading list. Perhaps you have some suggestions you can share with us?

BTW, i do encourage you to create your own reading list–because if you don’t know what your goals are and what you are aiming to achieve, how will you ever know when you attain a goal? i don’t want to do my life aimlessly, and i really encourage you to not do it aimlessly, too!

10 Responses to “My reading list…”

  1. on 09 Dec 2006 at 2:10 pm 1.joe said …

    Well, I love to read.

    Here are some of the books I’ve read, or re-read, in the past two months:

    Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church, by Mark Driscoll (not quite finished, but fantastic!)
    Surprised by Joy, by C.S. Lewis
    The Four Loves, by C.S. Lewis (re-read)
    The Business of Heaven, by C.S. Lewis
    Sit, Walk, Stand, by Watchman Nee
    Starting A New Church, by Ralph Moore
    The Wounded Spirit, by Frank Peretti
    Browning’s Complete Poems (re-read)
    Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, by Steve Krug (re-read)
    Designing with Web Standards, by Jeffrey Zeldman (re-read)
    Heaven, by Randy Alcorn
    The City of God, by St. Augustine
    The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate Gode, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, by Dr. Armand M. Nicholi, Jr.
    Dante’s Inferno (re-read)
    Simply Christianity: Why Christianity Makes Sense, by NT Wright
    The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is, by NT Wright
    Prey, by Michael Crighton (re-read)
    Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton (re-read)

    Pretty much anything by NT Wright. He will challenge everything you thought you believed. You can see some of his essays here.

    I also read a lot of Greek and Norse mythology…I just think it’s interesting.

  2. on 09 Dec 2006 at 2:24 pm 2.Adam said …

    Religiously Transmitted Diseases by Ed Gungor is an excellent book for any Chrisitan. Regardless of how “non-religious” we think we are, this book will show some religious disease in any of us. http://www.rtdbook.com

  3. on 09 Dec 2006 at 2:45 pm 3.joe said …

    Oh yeah, Religiously Transmitted Diseases is a fantastic book! And extremely easy to read.

  4. on 09 Dec 2006 at 3:34 pm 4.Abby! said …

    What if reading more isn’t my goal? Do I still have to make a reading list? 😉

  5. on 09 Dec 2006 at 9:44 pm 5.joe said …

    Here are a few books that are interesting to read, but be warned, most of them are written by philosophers that are the farthest thing from Christian.

    They definitely stretch your mind and help you confirm what you believe. You also get to see the total destitution of life with God removed.

    The Way of Myth: Talking with Joseph Campbell, by Fraser Boa
    Fear and Trembling, by Soren Kierkegaard (This book deals with the question: Are good and evil meerly a part of the universe, or are they decided upon by some kind of god? An interesting take by an existensialist.)
    A Treatise of Human Nature, by David Hume (Hume held that value judgments are based on emotion, not on reason, and this book deals with that in great detail.)
    Diogenes The Cynic: The War Against The World, by Luis Navia (Diogenes could be considered the father of civil liberties and human rights. Great book. Reads like a novel.)
    The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli (More of a political treatise, but still very good.)
    Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Judgement, by Immanuel Kant (Pretty heavy reading, but fantastic books.)
    Proslogion, by St. Anselm (This is something of an ontological argument for the existence of God. It took FOREVER to read…it’s a pretty tough book.)
    Discourse on Methods and Meditations on First Philosophy, by Rene Descartes (Only about 100 pages, but a good book to start with in the philosophy arena.)
    The Will To Power, by Friedrich Nietsche (Be careful with this one. It would be best to have a Bible close at hand, and talk about what you believe with others of like faith the entire time you are reading it! But, once you see the while argument, it will only strengthen your resolve as a Christian.)

    Those are some of the better philosophy works I have read. Some of them are kind of dry, and most are pretty complicated, but they make you think, and they really really really stretch your mind.

  6. on 11 Dec 2006 at 7:51 am 6.nathan said …

    I guess i need to clarify:
    I’m looking for books in areas i know nothing about. (Areas in which i know so little about, i can’t even name those areas.)
    and fyi, i’ve read Kant and Machiavelli back in my political days.

    maybe a good history book that won’t bore me sideways? (Homer bores me sideways and upside down)

    thanks!
    nathan.

  7. on 11 Dec 2006 at 9:12 am 7.Todd Helmkamp said …

    History is my specialty.

    If you are interested in the settlement of the Ohio River Valley, I would recommend “That Dark and Bloody River” by Allen W. Eckert. IT’s fiction, but extremely historically accurate with about a million footnotes providing contextual and historical background. Set from the early 1700’s to the early 1800’s. Talks about Ft. Wayne, George Washington surveying, Tecumseh, etc.

    Roman history, I would recommend Caesar’s “Conquest of Gaul.” It’s his (Julius Caesar) personal memoir, but it’s written from the third person. Good stuff.

    Arthurian history: stay away from Norma Lorre Goodrich, she’s a New-Age feminazi. Arthur Ashe is excellent. Or you could actually read Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Historia Regum Brittanica” (History of the King’s of Brittain).

    For more history recommendations, let me know.

    Poetry: Walt Whitman and Robert Frost.

    I would also HIGHLY recommend Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.

    Incidentally, all of these are books that I have, so let me know.

  8. on 11 Dec 2006 at 1:21 pm 8.Adam said …

    Oh um… haven’t read it… but if you’re looking at history, I’ve thought about reading Josephus. He is sort of LIKE “Acts Part 2” in a away. Josephus was a Jewish Christian who wrote out a detailed account of Jerusalem falling to the Roman empire in like … 122 AD or something like that. He describes what happened to all the Christ followers and what was going on with the early church. I read excerpts from it in some Bible classes and always wanted to read his book, but never have.

  9. on 11 Dec 2006 at 7:10 pm 9.joe said …

    Yes, Josephus is very good! Specifically Life of Josephus and The Fall of Jerusalem.

    And I second the Thoreau and Emerson recommendation.

    A few more good poets are Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Greenleaf Whittier.

    Vladimir Nabokov was a fantastic Russian novelist in the ’50’s and a few good selections from are The Vane Sisters and Pale Fire.

    Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man is another great novel.

    The Gettysburg Gospel and The Lincoln Enigma by Gabor Boritt are both very interesting books and I didn’t find them boring at all.

    A few more good history books, but they might be little dry…well no more dry than Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul:

    The Annals of Imperial Rome, by Tacitus
    The Juqurthine War and The Conspiracy of Catiline, by Sallust
    The Agricola and The Germania, by Tacitus
    The Twelve Caesars, by Suetonius

    I’ve read a lot of pop culture books and art books, but I can’t really recommend any because most of them were disappointing or incredibly shallow.

    You could always read Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. It wasn’t a complete waste of time. But it was pretty worthless. Although it did help me see things from a new perspective. He is definitely an extremist!

    A few interesting categories are Urban Development and Planning (you gain some interesting insight into growing planning for the future) and Social Sciences (specifically anything dealing with Archaeology, Gender Studies, Linguistics, Media Studies, and Methodology).

    OK, I’m completely done commenting on books now. I have to stop myself, or I will just keep going. Like I said, I LOVE reading.

  10. on 12 Dec 2006 at 1:46 pm 10.Todd Helmkamp said …

    Sallust? *yawn* 🙂

    Adam, excellent! Josephus is our only source for how James the Just died. Definitely check him out. You may have to look for Flavius Josephus. His most famous work is History of the Jews.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed

Leave a Reply