Mercifully, the grading is finally done. I may crash for a day or two, and then I'll rev up for a summer of research and writing, which will be a great break from the pure teaching of the last eight months.

Still, as the poster to the right shows, I'm already having to look ahead and take care of some of the preparation for my fall classes. This year, I'll be advertising a bit more.... I always liked this Time cover: I thought it was a great piece of graphic design, and that it creatively capitalized upon – rather than was limited by – how we don't know exactly what Jesus looked like, and have thus imaged him variously through the centuries. My final book selections for that course, as I partially discussed the other week, are going to be:

Theology: A Very Short Introduction by David F. Ford
The Gospels
Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture by Jaroslav Pelikan
God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology by Christoph Cardinal Schonborn
Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection by Pope Benedict XVI

So, conceptually, that makes the class readings (in order): "orientation" text, source texts, historical/cultural text, hard-core theological/historical text, and then spiritual text. This will be my second time teaching the course, so I'm hoping that these tweaks of selection will help me get the recipe "juuuuuust right."

In the meantime, vegging with a vividly non-academic book sounds really attractive right now. Actually, I already had a thought about that, but I seem to have foiled myself, as the one book I went looking for is gone. Milwaukee Folks: I have a vague recollection that I loaned one of y'all my fussy, purist British-English paperback edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, but I cannot for the life of me remember to whom. It'll be too late to satisfy the craving, but I would like to keep track of that. Help a guy out?