I’m now a Blog Partner affiliate with Westminster Bookstore. You can find the Westminster Bookstore badge in the right sidebar of this blog. I like to go there to look at the items at the top of the left sidebar there like Coming Soon, New Arrivals etc.
They have a blog that I was unaware of until now:
Westminster Bookstore Blog
I took pictures of my library and thought I’d show them to you. The picture you see below–that’s it. My whole library fits on one shelving unit consisting of five shelves other than some fiction books and a few others I really don’t like that are on another shelf.
On this post by Nick Norelli I have the smallest amount of books of all the people who responded. Nick said, “I don’t know how you do it. I think everyone who owns over a thousand books should send one to you as well.” I agree.
If you could help a poor (not really, relatively) boy out, please buy your Amazon stuff through the search box at the right. I will be putting a Westminster link there also.
However, I love my library and I’m very thankful for it. In a way this is a lot of money. I used to get all my books from the library but then was able to very slowly buy some books.
I disabled clicking directly on an image because it doesn’t work well in this case. Click on the link below it to see a HUGE one. (Be sure your browser isn’t resizing them to make them smaller.) If you’re on dial-up it will take a very long time. Comments below.
This is the whole thing. I couldn’t shoot it straight on because our couch is in the way and with my bad back there’s no way I could move it. When I’m lying down on the couch most of the day I can see the top half of it. I often look at it and remember some of the things I’ve read in many of them.
The bottom shelf is Bibles and a few books on reading the Bible. I wish I would have taken a picture of just the bottom shelf. Many of these are on or under the coffee table where I have access to them when I’m reading. I put those few here for the picture. The HCSB Illustrated is my primary Bible and the NLT Mosaic is my secondary. Many of the pew Bibles are under the coffee table.
The next shelf up is Calvin and Calvinism, then Philip Yancey (I’m sure he’s thrilled about that), then some odds and ends, then Greek and exegesis.
The next two shelves are the reference section. Only the librarian can get these for you and you can’t check them out. I have one commentary for every book of the New Testament. My Old Testament material is severely lacking. The study Bibles are here because I only use them for reference. They are valuable because of not having much else in the area of OT material. I’ve read all of the commentaries all the way through except Luke and Acts which I plan to do next year.
The top shelf has my favorite ‘regular’ books on my favorite subjects. I’ve read at least 2/3 of them. The other 1/3 will keep me busy between the other things I read and study.
There you have it–my beloved little library.
One more below just for the fun of it.
Looks like Crossway has some good stuff coming up (gallery of eight book covers).
They all look good, especially these two for me:
I found a list too if Facebook is a problem:
To encourage a year of reading godly and edifying books, Working out Salvation with Fear and Trembling blog and his favorite publishing company, Crossway Books, have partnered together for the 2010 Book Give-a-Way! Each month he will give one brand new Crossway release to the readers of his blog.
After reading Esteban’s post I thought I should mention that I’m an Amazon Associate. This means that if you use the search box in the right column or click on most of the links to book on this site, there is code within the link so that Amazon knows that you came from this site. Then when someone buys a book I get a very small commission. There is no change in the price of the books bought this way.
As mentioned before, one way to help us bloggers out is to buy books by clicking on a book link or using the search box or buying through a person’s virtual store if they have one. Wherever you go from there throughout the site, Amazon will remember you. This doesn’t mean that Amazon tracks your every move that you make from then on, just for that visit to their site. If you see any black helicopters or people looking in your windows at night, I can assure you they’re not people from Amazon.
So that’s my disclosure and a reminder that when you buy your books from Amazon, please do it through your favorite blogger to help them support their habit site.
The untitled blog written by Kevin is giving away Jesus and “This Generation” by E. Lovestam. This book was published in 2004 and belongs to the Coniectanea Biblica New Testament Series.
Rules of the giveaway are simple:
Link to this post on your blog and you will be entered. Also, please just make a quick comment on this post just to be sure that I know you have entered. (I don’t want to accidentally miss out someone who did link to this post)
Shipping to USA addresses only.
The giveaway will be drawn on Friday September 18th.
The cover art looks spectacular.
Do you get many sales through your Amazon Associates account via a bookstore that you have set up? I think I could have a very comprehensive list of books on suffering. I didn’t think that would be a popular subject but then saw how popular Piper’s book on suffering is on Amazon, even though it’s a free Kindle book (and a couple of days ago a book about learning Greek was #100). I think I could put together some other stuff too. But it would be a lot of work.
I don’t get many sales through book links here or the search box.
Would it be worth it?
I’m going through France’s commentary on Matthew. There is a very truncated introduction because the commentary is already 1200 pages long and he wrote a previous book called Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher which he expects you to read. So I checked out An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods and Ministry Formation by David A. deSilva from the library for the second or third time. Since I had book money I decided to finally just buy it. My little library is sorely lacking in reference materials. This came highly recommended by Mike Aubrey and others and since I was able to take a look at it I knew I would like it. It was “A 2005 Gold Medallion finalist!” One of the things I really like about it is it “integrate[s] instruction in exegetical and interpretive strategies with their customary considerations of authorship, dating, audience and message”. (added emphasis)
Our group Bible study is going to be studying Ecclesiastes, which was my suggestion so I’m very glad about that. I already had Eaton’s Ecclesiastes and decided to spend another whole $6 and by Kidner’s (used) just to get another look. I may do a brief comparison at some point. I found that I like the NLT Study Bible’s treatment of Ecclesiastes better than the ESVSB mainly because the NLTSB is more thorough with more quantity of helpful information. I love Ecclesiastes and love it even more now.
I’ve been “learning” Greek using Croy’s beginning grammar book. I had been thinking it might be nice to get Black’s and/or Mounce’s just to get a well rounded treatment and possibly help me learn some things better by having them explained differently. I’m a NetGalley reviewer and requested Black’s Learn to Read New Testament Greek. After I requested it I saw that it’s only for teachers. But they sent it to me anyway. And not a galley but the book with the workbook! So I thought in order to do a good review of it, I might as well get Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar to do a good comparison of all three. In reading some of the Amazon reviews of the Mounce I see that it’s good for people who are self teaching. I did not know that as Johnny Carson would say. So I’m looking forward to all of this. I’ll say that the Black book is beautiful. You’ll see a review of that in the future.
After Matthew I’ll be going through John with the help of Carson’s The Gospel According to John: An Introduction and Commentary (Pillar New Testament Commentary).
I think that brings my slowly growing library to well over a hunderd (sic) books. I bet you’re jealous. My library is smaller than yours and I’m content (Phil 4:11-13).
Matthew Burgess at confessions of a bible junkie is giving away Bart Ehrman’s The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (4th ed; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). If you would like to enter all you have to do is write a post on your blog like I have here.
I have to admit I wasn’t sure if I’d want anything by Bart Ehrman but I can use as much NT (or OT) reference material as I can get.
Mike Aubrey suggested I save a search for Calvin’s Institutes so that I would get an e-mail message each day notifying me of new items up for bidding. I’ve bid on a few and most are going for about $40 which is more than I want to pay much less the $50 new on Amazon.
So I saw one come up with a Buy It Now price of $25 plus $4 shipping in like new condition. Since that’s so much lower than what they’ve been going for I thought I better get it while I’m up with this dreadful insomnia.
I probably won’t read it until next year but at least I have it now. After that I’d like to read some of the earlier Puritans and move on to a book or two by Jonathan Edwards.
Tony Byrne of Theological Meditations lets us know that Dr. Curt Daniel’s doctoral dissertation, Hyper-Calvinism and John Gill, is now scanned and available for free download at EthOS (Electronic Thesis Online Service) and that there will soon be more to come.
EthOS is something Nick Norelli mentioned not too long ago.
If you haven’t registered, you will need to do so. Then after you’re logged in, search for the paper you’re interested in. Then you can proceed with the shopping cart and download.
Books:
Bibles:
Sorry if I left anybody out.
Now that my wife has a super duper video recorder on her cell phone I was going to record a video of my library like the one below but I’m afraid people would be so underwhelmed by the sheer paucity of it that I would spare them. (If you really wanted to know you could find them at Library Thing.)
This video made the rounds a while ago but I thought I would post it again. This is Tony Reinke’s library.
HT: Shaun Tabatt
Some people wanted to know which beginning Greek book I was going to go with after reading Greek For The Rest Of Us. Although I briefly mentioned what I would be getting in a previous post, on Monday I ordered Croy’s A Primer of Biblical Greek because it’s deductive in style and deals a little bit with the Septuagint. And Mike and Esteban recommend it.
I used a CBD.com gift card and had just a bit left over and came across this–
The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Introductory Articles, Volume 1 for only $5. I’m sure I saw this mentioned on another blog but can’t remember where. Even though it’s a little old, with names like Bruce and Metzger among many others, I felt I couldn’t go wrong at that price. My library is sorely lacking in reference works other than NT commentaries.
I thought I would mention it in case anyone else might be interested.
I’d like to know what Christian books you think are worth reading twice. More specifically:
This would not include reference type books unless you’ve read them cover to cover as you would a normal book.
Starting with #2 I have read these books twice:
This is the best book I have ever read, bar none. I’m sixty years old. Been in ministry 30 years. Mason has turned my nice neat evangelical theology on its ear. I never read a book more than once. Ever. I am starting my fourth reading this month. I would give a month’s salary to sit down over coffee with this author.
Books I would like to read again:
I’d like to hear yours but notice I didn’t turn this into an evil meme. If you’d like, please reply here or write a post on your blog.
I’ve scheduled this to post while I’m having surgery. Isn’t technology great?
Let alone Bibliobloggers?
From:
Influential Books and Authors: 2
An Interview with Dr. Craig Blomberg
at Koinonia
This clip is only two minutes long.
This book helped me to have a minor breakthrough regarding forgiveness.
If you want to be cool this week, you need to write a post about how you mark up your books. So because of my need for acceptance and a daily affirmation (therapists say this is a good thing and I’m OK), I will show you a couple of my own.
I don’t take many notes in books. In commentaries I do some highlighting. It’s sparse enough so that if I’m looking for something that’s important, I can usually page through it and find the quote I’m looking for. Lately I’ve been writing themes or subjects at the top of the page in commentaries. I need to now go through all of them and write down the subjects and what book and page they’re listed on. I think I will put these in my Wiki.
If anyone else has a system like this I’d like to hear about it.
Here is an example from Schreiner’s 1-2 Peter, Jude:
Marking up the Bible is more complex. If you don’t have an advanced degree you might not understand it, although I don’t have any degree, but I’m probably smarter than all of you but I’m also probably the most humblest person you’ll ever meet.
Anyway, green is memorized Scripture. If it’s a long passage it will be vertical next to the passage. Yellow is regular highlighting. If there is a word within the highlighting to be emphasized that will be underlined in pencil (not shown). Orange is for a definition or further comment. An orange dot below will have the definition or further comment. Corresponding words or phrases will be underlined in pencil. In this picture I’ve used colored pencils as a special example because there were so many corresponding terms. Cross references will be in the margins which is a really tight fit (none on this page). Other notes are in pencil.
These are the cool bloggers I try to emulate:
I’ve been meaning to write more lately but stress, fatigue, doctor appointments and back pain have been slowing me down. I’ve been meaning to write a post on books not realizing that everyone and their brother (and sister) are doing year-end book posts. Mine is a little more eclectic.
The books I won this year were:
From Shaun Tabatt’s 12 Days of Christmas:
Thank you very much to Shaun and the publishers who contributed.
Regarding Greek, I’ve decided to go through A Primer of Biblical Greek by Clayton Croy for a number of reasons. Before I do that I’m learning English grammar. Hopefully the CD will be helpful if I can ignore the Erasmian pronunciation. When I get through the Primer, maybe I’ll go on with the Verbal Aspect book although I’m guessing Basics might not mean that it’s easy or the next step in the process.
Regarding the book on the Institutes, of course this means I will have to read the Institutes first which I’ve been wanting to do, although I don’t know when I’ll get to it. The Battles translation has been highly recommended and I will be going with that. If anyone has a used set with pages in good condition that you would like to sell please let me know.
Most life changing book read in 2008: Trusting God: Even When Life Hurts by Jerry Bridges
Most practical book read and used in 2008: New Testament Exegesis: A Handbook for Students and Pastors (3rd Edition) by Gordon Fee
This book was generously bought for me by Robert Jimenez. I didn’t mention that earlier because I didn’t know if he wanted to be anonymous and I felt to awkward in asking. I used this to exegete (to the best of my ability) 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:5 and am now starting on 1 Peter 1:3-12, after which I will be reading Schreiner’s commentary. This book is incredibly valuable and I would like to do this 3-4 times a year.
I also have D.A. Carson’s Exegetical Fallacies which I would like to read this year and of course will be using the above mentioned Introduction to Biblical Interpretation.
Some of my areas of interest are:
Obviously the last two overlap.
The best book I’ve read on Jesus the Messiah in general is The Lord by Romano Guardini. Although I won’t be reading others until next year I’ve added quite a few to my wish list: Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, Incarnation: The Person and Life of Christ, Four Portraits, One Jesus: An Introduction to Jesus and the Gospels, Studying the Historical Jesus: A Guide to Sources and Methods.
On prayer, Praying Backwards: Transform Your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus’ Name is an excellent book. I also plan on reading John Calvin, Of Prayer: A Perpetual Exercise of Faith (Forgotten Books), Call to Spiritual Reformation, A: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers and added Teach Us to Pray: Prayer in the Bible and the World to my wish list. The latter two are by D.A. Carson.
Regarding #3 the Institutes should cover than fairly well.
Regarding #4 I have and plan on reading Polishing God’s Monuments and have added Being Well When We’re Ill: Wholeness and Hope in Spite of Infirmity (Living Well) and How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil to my wish list. I’ve read many other books on the subject including Suffering and the Sovereignty of God and Cries of The Heart.
After the letters of John I’ll be going through The NIV Application Commentary: Revelation by Keener, then back to the Gospels alternating with OT with The Gospel of Matthew (New International Commentary on the New Testament) by France, Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis by Ross, Mark (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries) by Cole, Ecclesiastes: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries) by Eaton, The Gospel of Luke (New International Commentary on the New Testament) by Green, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction & Commentary by Motyer, The Gospel According to John: An Introduction and Commentary (Pillar New Testament Commentary) by Carson, a commentary on Daniel (suggestions?), and The Book of the Acts (New International Commentary on the New Testament) by Bruce.
After that I’ll have Old Testament Theology by von Rad and Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament.
That should take me well into 2010.
The Sermon on the Mount is another area of interest I may look into and I’d like to go back and do exegesis on all or nearly all of Colossians.
I’d like to then do a lot more book reviews.
So far my “library” is less than a 5′ x 3′ book case so compared to all of you book grubbing beggars I should be the grubbiest. I’m so thankful for the books that I procured for free this year to help increase my resources. The good thing about a small collection is that I read all of my books. Although my library is woefully lacking in reference books other than NT commentaries.
How do you like to keep track of books you read each year?
If you have any comments or suggestions please post them.
A few other blogs:
P & R Publishing has a sample chapter for many of their books. When perusing the New Releases, most of the ones I looked at have a sample in PDF format.
Also see: Westminster Books Free Chapters
The Truth of the Cross by R.C. Sproul
In my first book review on this blog I’d like to start out with a passage of Scripture and a quote from the book.
“And I, brethren, when I came to you, did not come with excellence of speech or of wisdom declaring to you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:1-2 NKJV).
he [Paul] told the Corinthians he had determined to know nothing except Christ crucified. Clearly Paul was determined to know all kinds of things besides the person and work of Jesus. He wanted to teach the Corinthians about the deep things of the character and nature of God the Father. He planned to instruct them about the person and work of the Holy Spirit, about Christian ethics, and about many other things that go beyond the immediate scope of Christ’s work on the cross. So why, then, did he say this? The answer is obvious. Paul was saying that in all of his teaching, in all of his preaching, in all of his missionary activity, the central point of importance was the cross.
Those are mentioned on pages 3 and 4 and serve as a good basis for the book.
Generous use of Scripture is utilized including exposition of longer passages like Genesis 18 and rules about slaves and marriage in Exodus, which to me is a bonus. We even get some lessons in history like learning a bit about Anselm of Canturbury and how limited atonement was first widely articulated by Augustine. Useful but short personal anecdotes are used sparingly with Scripture taking center stage.
The book serves a wide audience. He uses theological terms but always defines them for those who may not have a wide vocabulary in that area.
Some other interesting topics he goes into:
just to name a few of those that especially interested me.
I would like to have seen him go more into original sin. Maybe it wasn’t in the scope of this book.
This was the first book of R.C. Sproul’s that I’ve read. I thoroughly enjoyed his writing and teaching style and look forward to reading more of his books.
Other reviews:
Reasons to Get Reading, Reloaded
This is a great list and I have experienced nearly every one of them.
This goes along with:
Reading Better with Richard Baxter
(I’m having computer problems and am doing some short posts.)
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