The most notable feature of Carl Sandburg's preserved home at Flat Rock, North Carolina is its 11,076 books. There are books in bedrooms, hallways, dining rooms, and the kitchen, and a second home full of books he did not deem worthy of including in the main home. Little slips of paper marked pages in each book that had something worth coming back to. He worked his collection, mined it's combined insights, treasured its wisdom. I'm still working on that.

On the table behind my office desk, there is a teetering stack of about 18 books that I have intended to read. Some have been waiting a few years, gathering dust. I keep adding to the stack, and the ones on bottom are slowly sinking, compressed, to be dug out by some future archaeologist who will draw gross and silly conclusions about American culture from my books. (I have imagination.) In my bedroom nightstand, there are something like 25 more books. I mean to read them, I really do. But you begin to lose consciousness of them; they melt into the paint, lay dormant. Then, when I add to it the sample books I have added on my IPad, there must be 60 books or so I mean to get at. I'm getting behind. Guilt nips at me as I imagine what their authors might say to me.

So, Sunday afternoon I decided to do something about it. I drew out ten books and decided I would at least skim the contents of each, read the preface and first chapter, and then decide if I really needed to read the book. Books not worth having around I would put in the disposal pile; books worth keeping but not to further read, in another pile; and, in what I hoped would be a very small pile, I would place books that I really wanted to read and felt would be profitable. . . now.

So, I read one short story out of John Grisham's Ford County, a collection of short stories. I had never read Grisham, figuring him not literary enough, but he is an entertaining and capable writer. The story, entitled "Blood Drive," a rollicking late night journey to Memphis by three good old boys to give blood for a friend, one sidetracked by a strip joint, gang shooting, and other antics, was hilarious. That book's a keeper.

Then it was on to Algebra: The X and Y of Everyday Math. I know. . . what was I thinking? (It was on sale.) I appreciated the philosophical way it started, with a quote from Augustine of Hippo about how "mathematicians had made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell," the clarity and playfulness of its prose, and the mini-bios of mathematicians inserted throughout, but it doubt I'll continue. I will save it for when I retire.

Next up: The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ, a collection of essays on such matters. I'll save this as a good resource and a book to loan out. It has, for example, an essay on blogging for pastors and attempts to address how such tools might be used as a help for pastoral care, as well as an essay on theological blogging and one on youth ministry in the Facebook age. While generally upbeat, it sounds plenty of cautionary notes along the way. Given the rapid way media use changes, I give this one little shelf life and plan to hand it off to pastors pretty quickly.

My sister loaned me The Pleasure Was Mine, by Tommy Hays, a local North Carolina writer. It's a story of Prate Marshbanks, a man losing his wife of 50 years to Alzheimer's. It's moving, and yet the sadness is lightened by the humor and the relationship Prate develops with his grandson (well, not much yet in one chapter). Hays' characters are believable, and so I plan to return to this book. . . in the future.

A friend suggested Daniel Taylor's Letters to My Children: A Father Passes On His Values, years ago, I am ashamed to say. Taylor tells good and true stories to his children, answering questions he imagines them having, as if (or in the event) he's not around to answer them. And yet, serendipitously, he is also answering his own questions, like "What Price Popularity," where we all get a sense of what people-pleasers we can be, of how conscious we are of appearances. I'll keep it, and even recommend it, and yet I feel like I have already been writing about such things for years and so doubt I'll read more. It's signed: "To Steve: Blessings in all your stories." Yes. "Calvin, '08." Thank you for the in person prompt, Daniel Taylor, all those years ago.

Oh my goodness. The Gospel According to Lost, by Chris Seay, really takes me back. Our family watched all nine seasons on Netflix in six months and, in the end, turned to each other and said "huh?" Seay teases out the questions and tries to shine the light of Scripture on them. I'll keep it, but I have lost so much of the story that I don't think it profitable reading until I can watch it again, if ever. His statement that "the Lost narrative is uniquely intertwined with the Judeo-Christian and the beauty of Christianity found in its unyielding proclamation that no one is beyond redemption," is provocative. Maybe in a long cold winter I'll take the plunge again.

[Title deleted], a self-published title by a good friend, is, sad to say, not good. This one I need to move out. I barely made it past the first page. Friend yes, good writing no.

Christian Aid Mission publishes the thin volume, Finishing the Task: How Indigenous Missionaries Are Reaching the Unreached in the 21st Century. Reading these amazing stories of healings, answers to prayer, escapes from danger, preservation during imprisonment, and the such I vacillate between near cynicism (a product of a smallish faith) and a hunger for a fuller reality of Christ's life in me. Are these stories embellished, containing elements of legend? I might have thought so until I met Pastor George in Uganda last year. Thank you, whoever gave me this, or sent it, like God-mail. This is the real thing, an antidote for unexercised belief. (Get the book free here.)

Choosing Your Faith (In a World of Spiritual Options), by Mark Mittleberg, is much better than I thought, a bit easier to read than Tim Keller's Reason to Believe. Good for skeptical yet inquiring friends, it makes the case that faith is inevitable --- the question is faith in what or in who? I don't know that I'll read more, but I definitely want it as a resource and as a giveaway.

Finally, Mission Drift: The Unspoken Crisis Facing Leaders, Churches, and Charities, sounds an alarm for how we individually and corporately can stay true to our commitments, to our mission. It documents how some have gone astray (YMCA becoming simply Y) and others stayed true (Compassion International). It doesn't encourages stasis necessarily, but helps us own up to and examine carefully how we change and if we should change. As I serve on a church Session and several non-profit boards, and sense the pull of circumstance on my own priorities, I think this book will be a valuable resource, one I will read and loan out.

The stack is getting smaller. Sandburg would smile at my pittance of books.