Tim Challies' Summer Reading

I asked Tim Challies for a list of summer reading:

You asked me to talk a bit about my summer reading, so here goes. My reading tends to fall into three areas loosely defined as serious, review and fun.

Serious reading refers to books I want to read or study for the good of my own soul and the joy of better knowing God. This year I had the novel (brilliant?) idea of asking my pastor for some reading suggestions--books that he thought would be valuable for me from his perspective as my pastor. He suggested I read Iain Murray's biography of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (which I had on my list anyways, so it worked out well) and Instruments in the Redeemer's Hands by Paul Tripp. So I will definitely be trying to work through those. I want to do some reading this summer that will prove both challenging and rewarding. I'll be focusing on Genesis for my times of personal devotion and study for the next few months and intend to read a couple of commentaries on Genesis as well as various related resources. I want to tackle at least some of Waltke's Old Testament Theology and also have my eye on Schreiner's New Testament Theology, though I doubt I'll be able to make my way through both of those. But I think they will prove the challenge I need. I've also been meaning to read Strauch's Biblical Eldership for some time now and may make my way through that volume.

Since I am a book reviewer, I will be reading a couple of books a week for review purposes, many of which will be in manuscript form for books set to release in the fall (there are always lots of good autumn releases in the publishing world). In this stack comes books like Al Mohler's Atheism Remix, John Piper's Spectacular Sins and Mark Driscoll's Death by Love. I always have a whole bookcase of unread books awaiting my attention and I'm always far behind where I want to be with these ones. Some of the titles I can see from my desk and which I'm likely to read are Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne, MacArthur's Millennial Manifesto by Sam Waldron, and several DayOne titles that showed up recently.

For fun reading while sitting at a beach or in the backyard I'm planning on reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson just to see what all the fuss is about. (It has been on the bestseller lists for ages now. I like to keep up with bestsellers but recently it's just been junk, junk and more junk so I'm hoping that this one is an exception.) I am also planning to read Touching History, a new book that describes some of the drama in the air as the 9/11 attacks unfolded. And I will probably add a thick and dense volume on World War 2 as I usually do.