I started keeping track of what books I read, what movies I watched, and what performances (concerts, plays, &c.) I attended when I turned 18.
In 2010, I did the 52 in 52 challenge with my sisters. I read 52 books that year; I only watched 31 films.
In 2011, I picked another reading challenge that I called 4 in 4: four books of over 1,000 pages in four seasons. I did not actually read a book per season—I studied abroad in the spring semester and read three of my four books in Europe. The last one I devoured over Thanksgiving break to finish the challenge up. All told, I read fewer books and watched fewer movies that year, 26 and 29 respectively. I might have actually read more pages that year than in 2010, but I didn’t start tracking pages counts until 2011, so I can’t compare the numbers.
In 2012, I tried to do a 12 in 12 challenge, but I didn’t finish a single book in January. It was a small failure of a legalistic, defeating winter. I read just 19 books over the course of the whole year (and watched a record 39! movies), and I realized in December that aside from three Batman anthologies, they were entirely non-fiction. Now, I like non-fiction, be it exposition or narrative, but I don’t like the idea of completely eschewing fiction, so I borrowed David’s copy of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and gobbled it up in about 25 hours. I wonder if the lack of a reading challenge let me get away from fiction, and so I only could justify to myself spending time on reading non-fiction. I also didn’t have any campers to read stories to in 2012, and C.S. Lewis was a big help in completing 52 in 52 the summer that I had a lot of younger cabins.
I’m currently munching on The Fountainhead (and reading it as a filter, not a sponge, just like Charlie’s teacher tells him in Perks), trying to get in some more fiction before the scholarly reading of the semester begins again. I don’t think I’ll do a reading challenge this year. I’m not against them; I don’t think they make me read legalistically, even though goal-setting can sometimes turn me into a rule-worshipping, performance-driven machine. But I’m glad that I’ve started keeping Google Docs of my reading and movie-watching habits. They help me remember what the year was like. They alert me to imbalances like my accidental fiction fast in 2012. They encourage me to not leave books half-finished.
If I have any readings goals for 2012, they are these: Don’t stop reading. Read different kinds of books about different kinds of subjects. Read the assigned texts for my last college classes; get the reading done before class. Read the Bible more. Read joyfully and not guiltily. 

50. Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi (finished 29 Dec)
51. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (finished 31 Dec)
52. Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg (recited to me by Sarah Neff shortly before midnight on 31 Dec. Does this count? Probably not. But I could just as well retcon my list to include Simone Weil’s The Iliad, or the Poem of Force which I read around February, but did not feel like counting because it’s only 24 pages long. Either way, I read 52 books this year, so there.)

46. Final Crisis (finished 31 Oct. Yes, another graphic novel, part of the Crisis series that has popped up a lot on my list this semester. Thank Ben Zuerlein for that. No really, thanks, Ben. I’ve enjoyed these comics a lot.) 

47. The Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts by Clarence Jordan (finished 20 Nov. Part of a really refreshing translation of the New Testament. Used to read the Cotton Patch for laughs, but this semester I read it as my morning devotional.)

48. Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill (finished 26 Nov. Started reading this after Thanksgiving dinner and didn’t go to bed until I had finished it. Humble, honest, heart-wrenching, hopeful.)

49. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game by Michael Lewis (finished 8 Dec. Very well written look at the changing nature of football strategy and its effects on Left Tackles, and in particular a Memphis-born phenom named Michael Oher.)

As my sisters noted yesterday, there are just six weeks left in this year. Fortunately, I only have to read six more books to complete the 52 in 52 challenge. It looks like two of those books are going to be Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick and The Cotton Patch Version of Luke and Acts by Clarence Jordan.

Any suggestions for the other four?

Amy and Katie unanimously approved audiobooks for 52 in 52. I agree with them. I wouldn’t want all my 52 to be audiobooks (or graphic novels, for that matter), but the two audiobooks I’ve listened to so far have been great. They required plenty of attention, but they were good stories and their readers had great voices. So the latest additions to the list are:

• The Song of Roland by anonymous (which I listened to back in March, but am just now adding to the total)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
• V for Vendetta by Alan Moore
• The Driver by Garet Garrett (read by Jeff Riggenbach)

Do audiobooks count?

I started reading The Divine Comedy when I was a senior in High School. I intended to write a lengthy paper on the doctrine of hell and was combing Dante for material, but the paper’s topic ended up being changed to Christianity & anarchism, so I abandoned the book. I’m giving it another try, and enjoying it so far. We’ll see if it ends up being one of my 52 in 52 or not.

So for those of you who don’t know, The Divine Comedy is a first-person account of Dante Aligheri’s tour of hell, purgatory, and paradise over the course of several days in April, 1300 AD. His tour guide for hell and purgatory is the famous Roman poet, Vergil, who hands Dante off to Beatrice for the journey through heaven. Let’s pick it up with Vergil introducing Dante to his co-residents in the first circle of hell:

…they sinned not; and if they merit had,
‘Tis not enough, because they had not baptism
Which is the portal of the Faith thou holdest;

And if they were before Christianity,
In the right manner they adored not God;
And among such as these am I myself.

Vergil goes on to explain that the inhabitants of the first circle of hell are “only so far punished, / That without hope we live on in desire” (IV.41-42). By this, Dante is aggrieved, for “people of much worthiness” (IV.44) to be suspended in Limbo.

But wait a minute. Dante and Vergil seem to have rightly identified that those who lived before Christianity are “without excuse” (Rom. 1:20) for having “adored not God” (IV.38), “for what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:19-20). But what’s this about “people of much worthiness” who “sinned not”? As it is written, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-13).

Frankly, I think Dante is a bit star-struck. Look at the roll-call in the first circle of hell: Vergil, Homer, Horace, Ovid, Hector, Aeneas, Caesar, Plato, Socrates, Democritus, Tully, Livy, Seneca, Euclid, Ptolemy, Hippocrates, etc. He realizes that his favorite heroes, philosophers, writers, and scientists were all Greco-Roman pagans and cannot be in heaven, but he wishes to speak no ill of them and not show them in torment.

But does Dante think that it inconsequential that these damned “adored not God”? Each of them spurned the Fountain of Love, and so even if they could “understand all mysteries and all knowledge” (like Plato) or deliver themselves up to be burned (as Hector ultimately did for Troy), if they had not love—they were nothing, they gain nothing (see 1 Cor. 13).

Now, I’m willing to consider the possibility that Dante wrote his charitable words about these pagans in light of Romans 2:13-16: 

For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

Perhaps Dante considered these Greco-Roman icons to have been excused by their consciences on the day of judgment, but to be in hell anyway for lack of saving faith in Christ. I’m afraid I’m a bit confused by Paul in Romans 2, so I can’t rule out that possibility. I’d love to hear a thought on this from someone who groks Romans 2 better than I.

That’s all for now. I’ma go play some Ticket to Ride.

Here’s what I’ve read since my last post in early July.

• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
• The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
• August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
• Profiles in Courage by “John F. Kennedy” (actually written by his speechwriter, Ted Sorensen)
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s six Lewis books so far this year.

After taking stock, I was surprised to find that I’m doing better than I thought at the 52 in 52 challenge (barely ahead of Katie, slightly behind Amy). So here’s what I’ve read from the beginning of May until now.

• Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
• Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
• The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (at least my fourth time to read this one)
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Cross Centered Life by C.J. Mahaney
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Didn’t finish very many books in March.

• The Privatization of Roads & Highways by Walter Block (494 pages, finished 2 March).
• The Bacchae by Eurpides (65 pages, finished 16 Mar). This is a re-read; I read it in February for class, and read it again in March for a paper for that class.
• Antitrust: The Case for Repeal by Dominick T. Armentano (112 pages, finished 26 Mar).

Fifty-two in fifty-two challenge found here.