Some time ago, I packed up a lot of the books on my shelves in anticipation of our upcoming move. Robin and I figured that we could get a head start on preparations by packing up some of our non-essentials. Since I didn't plan on using all of my books, I picked up a handful to read over the coming months, and put the rest in boxes in our office. On the shelf in the photo to the left, I lined up the books I wanted to read, and started to dive into them (the number of books on this shelf has nearly doubled since then, thanks to some new purchases, and I don't intend to read all the books on the shelf there anymore).

While I have gotten through a few of them, overall I haven't gotten very far. If you pay any attention to the little Goodreads widget on the sidebar of this blog, you'll notice that it hasn't changed very often. After I finished seminary last May, I decided that I needed a bit of a break, and so I took up reading a bit of literature and some other things that did not require a great deal of mental energy. Before long, though, I found that I was not reading very much at all, and now I am at the point where I am finding it a bit difficult to get back into it.

There are all kinds of excuses I could make, of course, and some of them are legitimate. Up until about a month ago I was working well over sixty hours a week, and that took away a great deal of my time. Others are not so legitimate, such as wasting time browsing through photo albums on Facebook. Either way, I have come to find that it is not as easy as it once was to sit down and so some sustained reading.

My to-read shelf contains what I think will be some very interesting reads. In the summer, I started to read Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz's Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City, and the People of God, because one of the main responsibilities I will have in the role I'll eventually be taking up at St John's Church in Hull is to find ways in which the church can minister to the city. I didn't get too far in the book, but Conn and Ortiz's exploration of the role of the city in the Old and New Testaments was fascinating, and I'm not sure why I ever put it down. I made my way through a few of the essays in Herman Bavinck's Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, and although they were quite intellectually challenging, they are all marked with Bavinck's characteristic erudition, wisdom, and pastoral sensitivity. There are also a few books up there that I have read in the past but wanted to read again – Martin Lloyd-Jones' Preaching and Preachers, Al Wolters' Creation Regained: Biblical Basics for a Reformational Worldview, and Mike Goheen and Craig Bartholomew's The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story (which I originally read in draft form in college while they were still making final revisions to it), to name a few. I added a few new volumes recently that I want to get into as well, such as a recent book by one of my university professors, James Payton, Getting the Reformation Wrong: Correcting Some Misunderstandings, and another by one of my seminary professors, John Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God. Not yet on the shelf is Jamie Smith's little book, Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition – the bookstore was out of it when I went over there a few days ago – but that is another I plan on reading when I get my hands on a copy.

I can't make many excuses about the lack of time anymore, since my hours have been cut back quite a bit. Now it is just a matter of getting back into the habit of reading. I need to regain my focus, to be able to sit down and read for an extended period of time. There are any number of distractions when I try to do this, but I need to find a way to ignore them and focus. Oddly, I have found that some of my best reading has happened in places like a coffee shop, where there is lots of activity and noise around me. But I can't afford to spend an hour in Starbucks every night just so I can get some reading done.

This turned into a far longer post than I imagined it would, so let me end by asking, are there any tips or suggestions you have when it comes to reading? What helps keep you focused?

The pastor of our church is retiring in April, and after going through his collection and taking home the books he wanted to keep, he graciously allowed three of us who are seminary students to pillage the rest of his library. We went to the office a few nights ago and began to mark out our territory. About half of Martyn Lloyd-Jones' series on Romans was there as well as Philip Schaff's 8-volume History of the Christian Church, which were the two sets I wanted most from all the books on the shelf. The other two guys did not mind, so I happily put them in my box. While I know Schaff's work is available online, I wanted it on my shelf, especially since my area of interest is church history and historical theology and Schaff's history is still an important one in the field. I was able to grab a few more worthwhile items as well, which you see in the photo to the left.

Collecting new books never gets old, but it does fill up our bookshelves very quickly—once I get these put into their proper places, we will almost be out of shelf space again.

While I was working yesterday a tweet popped up from Adrian Warnock saying that he was starting a live chat session on his blog about his new book, Raised With Christ: How the Resurrection Changes Everything. I tuned in for a little while (though I was limited to text interaction since I had neither webcam or microphone with me), and enjoyed the discussion there. I was quite intrigued when I first heard about the book a short while ago. Here is Amazon's product description:

What impact should Jesus' resurrection have on individuals and churches? Popular Christian blogger and teacher Adrian Warnock urges Christians not to neglect the implications of the resurrection.

Jesus truly is alive today. But compared to his atoning death, Jesus' resurrection sparks relatively little discussion in the church. Inadvertently,we can become so focused on the good news that Christ died for our sins, that we almost forget he was "raised for our justification" (Romans 4:25).

In Raised with Christ, author Adrian Warnock exhorts Christians not to neglect the resurrection in their teaching and experience. Warnock takes his cue from Acts, where every recorded sermon focuses on Jesus' resurrection. He stresses that Christians who faithfully proclaim both the death and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and live out the implications of that message in vibrant, grace-filled churches, will be enabled to reach a world that lives in death's dark shadow.

The power of the risen Christ is active in every true Christian, transforming our lives. Raised with Christ will help you discover afresh the massive implications of the empty tomb. Jesus' resurrection really has changed everything.

When I was in college, one of my professors, Jim Payton, was always very intentional about stressing the resurrection for similar reasons. Part of his interest in Eastern Orthodoxy (about which he has written a great introductory book) was owing to the fact that they place far more stress on the resurrection than Protestants do.

I think Warnock's concern is a legitimate one, and I'm looking forward to getting a copy of the book. There are a myriad of theological implications in the resurrection, and it is good to recognize that the work of Christ, and the gospel itself, is incomplete without it. Find out more about the book by visiting raisedwithchrist.net.

As I was browsing some recent books the other day, I noticed one called Education for Human Flourishing, a recent book by Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis. It attempts to lay out a thoroughly Christian philosophy of education in response to the pervasive pragmatism of modern education. In the preface, they discuss the urgent need for us to rethink how we do education. We are thrown into the educational system at a very early age, the authors write, and because of the structure of that system,

You might recall a post a few months ago with some tips and advice on reading from Gideon Strauss. I'm revisiting the reading tips again today, and these present tips concern those sorts of books which you may choose to mark up, those which you may have to read for school or just think are worth the time and effort to really delve into. Today's advice comes from the late Mortimer J. Adler (via Steve Bishop).

There are all kinds of devices for marking a book intelligently and fruitfully. Here’s the way I do it:

• Underlining (or highlighting): of major points, of important or forceful statements.
• Vertical lines at the margin: to emphasize a statement already underlined.
• Star, asterisk, or other doo-dad at the margin: to be used sparingly, to emphasize the ten or twenty most important statements in the book. (You may want to fold the bottom comer of each page on which you use such marks. It won’t hurt the sturdy paper on which most modern books are printed, and you will be able take the book off the shelf at any time and, by opening it at the folded-corner page, refresh your recollection of the book.)
• Numbers in the margin: to indicate the sequence of points the author makes in developing a single argument.
• Numbers of other pages in the margin: to indicate where else in the book the author made points relevant to the point marked; to tie up the ideas in a book, which, though they may be separated by many pages, belong together.
• Circling or highlighting of key words or phrases.
• Writing in the margin, or at the top or bottom of the page, for the sake of: recording questions (and perhaps answers) which a passage raised in your mind; reducing a complicated discussion to a simple statement; recording the sequence of major points right through the books. I use the end-papers at the back of the book to make a personal index of the author’s points in the order of their appearance.

The front end-papers are to me the most important. Some people reserve them for a fancy bookplate. I reserve them for fancy thinking. After I have finished reading the book and making my personal index on the back end-papers, I turn to the front and try to outline the book, not page by page or point by point (I’ve already done that at the back), but as an integrated structure, with a basic unity and an order of parts. This outline is, to me, the measure of my understanding of the work.

Given that I'm a seminary student and have to work my way through a lot of different books, I found these tips especially helpful. It is always good to have your own system for marking up a book, something that works for you. I employ a lot of the same techniques Adler does, my weapons of choice being a 0.7mm mechanical pencil and a small ruler for underlining. I know some people are averse to marking up books, but I'm not. When I open the book and right away see certain things underlined or the various notes in the margins, I begin to quickly recollect the information I thought important on the pages.

Also, earlier today James K. A. Smith was asked some questions about reading which he posted on his blog. Be sure to check those out as well because he offers some good advice derived from his own reading habits.