As a professor, it probably comes as no surprise that I enjoy reading. It kind of comes with the territory. Then again, maybe some who read this post will be surprised at the somewhat random nature of the things I do read once you have a look below. There is a reason for that.
In my college and graduate years, I rarely read for pleasure. I simply didn’t think I had the time, so I focused on going deep with my assigned reading. There was nothing inherently wrong with that and, to be sure, I learned a lot with that approach. But I also missed out on a lot, since it is absolutely not the case that I (or you) don’t have the time for pleasure reading. Thankfully, I realized that early on in my doctoral years. That’s when I rediscovered my love of reading broadly — and as my whims led (as Alan Jacobs commends), which is what I make a practice of doing now. I find non-work-related reading particularly life giving, although admittedly there are some fuzzy boundaries with some books. (more…)
Within a discipline as small and technical as Septuagint scholarship the definition of “exciting news” starts to look pretty odd to the typical person on the street. But for those of us involved in the field, the appearance of a new edition within the corpus certainly qualifies.
