Well, I have not done a very good job of staying on top of things to say the least.  The truth is, however, that I have not been idle.  This certainly applies to my reading.  There are a number of books that I have completed since my last post.  I will try to get them in order, but I make no promises.

Actually scratch the whole, "in order" thing.  I am just going to list them and briefly review them as they come to mind.  The first is "Understanding and Applying the Bible" by Robertson McQuilken.  This is a fabulous book on biblical interpretation.  It is very well written, and very practical.  Of all the books I have read on the topic, this is my favorite.  It is a great balance between technical and practical.  Others I have read are "Hermeneutics" by Virkler, "Protestant Biblical Interpretation" by Bernard Ramm, and "Knowing the Scriptures" by A.T. Pierson.  I highly recommend McQuilken's book.

The next two books are listed above.  "Protestant Biblical Interpretation" and "Knowing the Scriptures" are both books that I have read since my last post.  Ramm's book is good.  It is probably one of the archetypes of biblical interpretation.  It is quoted from in several other books on the topic.  Ramm is very thorough in his dealings with the topic, almost to a fault.  It is easy to get lost in the details.  His book is a little less organized, in my opinion, especially when it comes to dealing with the history of Hermeneutics.  This is a good book, but not as user friendly as McQuilken's.

"Knowing the Scriptures" is a book that I have little to say about.  I may be showing my ignorance here, but this book felt like it was totally beyond the realm of practicality.  I couldn't follow what was being conveyed most of the time and couldn't identify its usefulness when I could.  Pierson's ideas seemed to be very lofty and there were times that felt like he leaned often to a more spiritual or allegorical mind set than a literal one.  Ramm's book has my recommendation, Pierson's book dose not.

A few other books that I have finished since my last post are "Preaching and Preachers" by D. Martin Lloyd Jones, "Lectures to My Students" by C.H. Spurgeon, "Love Your God with All Your Mind" by J.P. Morleand, and "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.  "Preaching and Preachers" was a good read.  I would recommend it, but not as a primary resource regarding preaching the Word.  If I had only one book to recommend for preaching it would Haddon Robinson's book, "Biblical Preaching".  

Spurgeon's book I won't say much about for fear of offending.  I certainly appreciate the work that God wrought through the ministry of Charles Spurgeon.  He was certainly a man that was used of God, but much of what he had to say, I felt, reminded me of sermons of his that I have read.  It's good, and true, but identifying where he got it from is difficult.  Also I felt that it was very, very wordy.  I appreciate an author that can say what he wants to say, say it well, and not use more words than is necessary.  There were great bits of wisdom scattered throughout the book, but its a big book with a lot of words, and so trips between the really good stuff were long.  Please don't hate me.

J.P. Moreland's book is one of my favorite books because of its ability to rekindle what I believe has been, to a great degree, lost over the years throughout the ranks of Christendom, and that is the ability to think.  We ought to be personally convinced of what we believe.  If someone tried to get you to invest your life savings into something, you wouldn't budge until you were thoroughly convinced on your own that it was a good deal.  Christians don't operate that way with their faith.  this tells me that many believers simply don't take their faith that seriously.  J.P Moreland challenges believers to have an informed faith, and to that I say, "Amen!"  That being said, I can't endorse everything that Moreland believes and writes in his book.  It is certainly a eat the meat and spit out the bones type of a book, but one that I recommend highly.  Read with discretion.

Now for the Hunger games.  The book is a trilogy.  Each volume of the trilogy is a little shy of 400 pages.  That is a total of around 1,200 pages.  You might be asking yourself right now, "why does the total number of pages matter so much?"  The reason that matters is because when a person plows through 1,200 pages in about a week, that says something about the book they are reading.  It took me just over a week, like a week and a day, to read the entire trilogy.  I couldn't put the thing down.  For a fiction book it is incredible.  I wouldn't say that there is much benefit to the book beyond entertainment.  Where as reading something by a C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien a person might benefit from their observation of two master linguists at work, reading after Suzanne Collins wouldn't quite have the same effect.  She has contrived a fabulously fast paced, exciting, and emotionally charged plot though.  If you have the time and you are looking for a real page turner, then "The Hunger Games" would be a great book for you.  

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading, and I hope the reviews, though a bit vague, are a help.  Have a great day.

I just finished this book for the 4th or 5th time. I really can't say enough about it. In my opinion this is a masterpiece of fictional literature. J.R.R. Tolkien was a masterful author. His brilliance is manifest throughout the book as each character is portrayed in depth.  Each one feels like they are indeed their own person with their own personality and way of thinking, their own culture and humor and proverbs, and their own fine arts such as music and poetry.  It really is incredible.

The Lord of the Rings doesn’t feel like fiction.  There are, obviously mythical creatures and things of that nature, however, aside from that it feels like, instead of writing about something he was making up, Tolkien was writing about a place and events and people that occupy a portion of actual history somewhere.  From what I understand about Tolkien, that was actually part of his motivation.  He was bothered by the fact that England didn’t have its own mythology, but rather borrowed and adapted mythological accounts from its neighbors.  I’m not sure about the truth of that account, but nonetheless if there was a gap the work that went into Middle Earth certainly filled it.

I highly recommend this book.  There is a lot we can learn from Tolkien’s use of the English language and his wonderfully descriptive writing style.  I feel that the Lord of the Rings is a direct result of talent being governed by discipline to produce excellence.  What a book!

I just finished reading this book for the third or fourth time.  It is a great book.  One of the most valuable aspects of the book is that it causes you to think.  C. S. Lewis attempts to boil Christianity down to its very essential qualities the most important of which would be an understanding that there is indeed a God. 

The book begins with Lewis presenting the existence of God as a very reasonable consideration.  I believe Lewis' past as an atheist and the path to his conversion helped very much in this regard.  He makes a very strong case on behalf of the existence of God, and he does it in such a way that any thinking person reading the book would have to admit that the arguments are pretty convincing.  

As the book continues on, despite his best efforts to avoid it, Lewis' Anglican faith begins to make appearances here and there.  There are also times that, while it is obvious that Lewis' was a brilliant man who I admire greatly, he gets in, seemingly, over his head.  There are many doctrinal issues that are presented and supported by reason and logic when the most reasonable approach would be to simply rely on revealed truth.  I know that in the beginning of the book the purpose seems to be that Lewis' was trying to make a plausible case for God without Scripture so as to cause the skeptic to see that there is sense to the idea.  However, when dealing with particular doctrinal issues later on  in the book, while his approach would retain the skeptic it loses the biblically grounded believer.

Overall this is a very good read and an easy read at that.  The chapters are short, if wordy.  His conversational tone is easy to follow.  And again the book makes you think.