What I'm Reading

Introduction to the Old Testament Prophets by Hobart Freeman

Luke gave me this book before he skipped the country. I think it wasn't dense enough for him. It certainly covers some info that I didn't know before as well as all the sides of various debates over prophecy interpretation usually reserved for patch-elbowed, tweek-clad, thickly-bespectacled, messy-headed types in seminary faculty lounges. The first half of the book is this kind of survey of interpretation debates. The last half comprises a 10-12 page introduction for each of the Hebrew prophets. I'm finding the last half to be more useful.

The Broker by John Grisham

Just can't get enough Grisham. So yeah, it's always about a lawyer. And yeah, he's always from the South. And yeah, there's usually a woman whose relationship with the protagonist is plutonic but promising. And yeah, he likes to illustrate the dangers of wealth alot. And yeah, his protagonists usually seem to escape the bad guys without really beating them. But even with all that, the guy keeps my attention. This one has a lot more cloak-and-dagger stuff in it than his other works. Most of the book is set in Italy, which was enjoyable. I read it during the Olympics and some of the similarities were remarkable.


The Texas Aggie Bonfire: Tradition & Tragedy at Texas A&M by Irwin A. Tang

Got this one on a lark. Just happened to see it at the library. In 1999, the world-famous bonfire at Texas A&M University collapsed killing 12 students and injuring dozens. There hasn't been a bonfire at A&M since then (at least not officially) and there may never be again. I can't tell you the number of hours I spent in my college days killing trees, loading and unloading trucks, and wiring logs into the bonfire stack from a rope-and-plank swing. I have been right where they were when they died. It's eerie.

As for the book, I'm a little uneasy about reading explanations of Aggie traditions from a non-reg. (That is, a student who wasn't in the Corps of Cadets. Old habits die hard.) But it's not bad. Not really well-written, but pretty fair so far. Brings to light the details of the bonfire tragedy more than anything I've read or seen, including news reports at the time of the collapse.