On the pleasure pile you'll find John Grisham's latest, Sycamore Row, a legal thriller if you will which tackles important issues like racism. You'll also discover Tom Perrota's The Abstinence Teacher, one of his older novels. I loved his book The Leftovers and decided to look for some of his earlier works. I also have Christopher Paolini's Inheritance, the fourth and final installment in his fantasy series called The Inheritance Cycle. (I still can't believe he was only fifteen when he wrote the first of these Tolkeinesque works!)
My "Presidential Project" continues as well. I'm up to number nineteen in my effort to read a biography of every present. Rutherford B. Hayes. On tap is Garfield. I'm still trying to do one a month, but that doesn't usually pan out--this one is 600 pages long! (Who would have thought there could be that much to say about Hayes?)
For work I'm tackling a variety of books related to courses I'll be teaching next season. I just finished a volume on the Gospel of John by Robert Kayser. All the years I've been leading Bible studies, I've never taken on John. I'm co-teaching a course on antebellum attitudes towards race as reflected in literature and religion, and so I'm tackling Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin and a new biography of Stowe by Nancy Koester. And for the course I'll teach next spring on the religious history of Florida, Michael Gannon's The Cross in the Sand. (I LOVE the title!)
When I was a boy I would sneak out into the hall after I was supposed to be in bed, and read by the hall light until I heard my parents start up the stairs to go to bed themselves. And my summer days were filled with reading--I used to love the hammock on my great aunt and uncle's porch, where I would swing and read for hours! I guess old habits die hard! Summer and reading--perfect together!
But enough about me--what are you reading this summer?
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