It’s a Jonathan Edwards Year

There are some books that you can read without a plan. But there are others that will sit unread just by sheer size and weight unless you sit down and come up with some kind of plan to read through them.

Last year I came up with a plan to read five fairly weighty volumes totaling almost 4,000 pages. The five volumes are pictured below, the ones to the left:

The plan worked, although I have to admit there were days I only got to my reading late at night. I kept up because I knew I didn’t have a chance of catching up if I got more than a day or so behind.

I mark up my books and write references to pages I think I might want to read later. Here’s what the back of the Institutes once I was done with it.

I was reading Calvin last year like many others in honor of his quincentenary.

This year I’m tackling two books with much smaller type, the two books at the right of the picture above: The Works of Jonathan Edwards. These are only 1952 pages, but it looks like there’s as many words as the 4,000 pages I read last year by the size of the type.

I’ll also probably read a biography of Edwards as well as Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought.

Not as ambitious as what Tim Challies is planning, which is probably good. I’ll let you know how it goes.