49 Followers
58 Following
markk

markk

It's almost summer reading time!

It's May Day, which means that summer is fast approaching. While for most people it means summer fun and vacations, for me it means something even more fun -- reading projects! Here's what I'm already preparing to undertake:

 

Reading up on Martin Luther - 2017 is the quincentenary of Martin Luther's issuance of the 95 Theses. Reading more about Luther has long been a goal of mine, and for the past couple of years I've had the three volumes of Martin Brecht's biography of Luther taunting me from the shelf. The time has come to read them, along with some collections of Luther's writings so as to better understand the development of his theology and his arguments.

 

The Paraguayan War - This is actually a continuation of a reading project I started last month in preparation for interviewing Thomas Whigham this fall about the long-awaited second volume of his history of the conflict. Having finished Chris Leuchars's shorter overview, it's time for me to tackle volume 1.

 

Multi-volume composer biography - I posted about this a few weeks ago; I want to read one of the multi-volume biographies of classical composers that I have been adding to my shelves of late. I really want to read that Mahler biography, but ever since I read that La Grange was finishing a revision to the first volume when he died I've been restraining myself, as I really don't want to have to read that twice just yet. So I'm probably going to end up reading about Liszt or Berlioz.

 

Broadening myself - In case you haven't noticed, most of my reading is in the realm of history and historical biography. And while that won't change, I would like to broaden myself over the next few months by reading Daniel Lieberman's book on the human body, Siddhartha Mukherjee's new book on genes, and some of the classic lit that has been sitting on my shelf unread for years.

 

That, of course will be is addition to my podcast-related reading, reviewing obligations, writing-related efforts, and whatever I read to/with my son. So this summer will definitely be a busy one reading-wise -- and I can't wait for it to start!