I had a business trip last week which gave me extra reading time, so… two more knocked off the list.

First, Merton: A Biography by Monica Furlong. This one underwhelmed me. The first part of the story (up to the point where Merton joins the Trappists) is told in a much more interesting fashion by Merton himself in The Seven Storey Mountain (which I read a couple years back). The second half of the story mostly exists to make you repeatedly ask why anyone in their right mind would join the Trappists.

Second (and much more highly recommended): The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson. Peterson is a hero among pastors to me - a man planted a church and stayed there for 30 years, who focused not on numeric growth but on spiritual growth, who made it his goal to simply consistently pastor (an active verb) the flock that God brought him… Peterson recounts his childhood, his call to ministry, and the lessons learned from decades of pastoring in his usual winsome way. Well worth the read.

I’m now cheating a bit - I found a novel that looked interesting at the library and I’m reading it this week. Then I’ll be back to something off my pile.

The book pile:

  • Surprised by Scripture, NT Wright
  • Merton: A Biography, Monica Furlong
  • Meditative Prayer, Thomas Merton
  • Resurrection and Moral Order, Oliver O’Donavan
  • Paul and the Faithfulness of God, NT Wright
  • A Severe Mercy, Shelden Vanauken
  • From Bible Belt to Sun Belt, Darren Dochuk
  • Parables of Judgment, Robert Capon
  • Theodore Rex, Edmund Morris
  • Evangelical Theology, Karl Barth
  • Confessions of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton
  • The Wounded Healer, Henri J. M. Nouwen
  • The Monster in the Hollows, Andrew Peterson

Books I’ve started but not yet finished:

  • The Kingdom of Christ, Russell Moore
  • Jesus Manifesto, Frank Viola & Leonard Sweet
  • The Fiddler’s Green, A. S. Peterson

Books I wanna re-read:

  • The Sacredness of Questioning Everything, David Dark
  • When I Was a Child I Read Books, Marilynne Robinson
  • Between Noon and Three, Robert Capon

Unread on my Kindle:

  • Barefoot Church: Serving the Least in a Consumer Culture, Brandon Hatmaker
  • Center Church, Tim Keller
  • The Pastor: A Memoir, Eugene Peterson
  • Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity, Frank Viola
  • Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Nazis, Robert Edsel
  • Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality, Richard Beck
  • Why Holiness Matters: We’ve Lost Our Way–But We Can Find it Again, Tyler Braun