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The term "summer reading"
conjures up leisurely days immersed in fiction. I have a few items in that
pile.

Up until
now, my ideas about summer reading were driven largely by guilt. My bookshelf
is packed to the gills with books that I "should" read:  books people have given me and I need
to return, or books that have been sitting there so long, I have given myself
ultimatums--either read this or get rid of it.

Musicophilia, by Oliver
Sacks. This promises to be a fascinating, in-depth account of the
physiological/psychological/emotive effects music has on us.

The Little Way of
Saint Therese of Lisieux: Into the Arms of Love, by John Nelson.
Therese--who died of tuberculosis at age 24 and was canonized less than 30
years later--was an unassuming woman who found great joy in her littleness.
This volume promises to be refreshing spiritual nourishment.

Gary Dorrien's spring Century
article, which argued for economic as well as political democracy, whetted
my appetite for the book that part of it was adapted from: Economy, Difference, Empire: Social Ethics for Social Justice.

I have two major reading projects that I'll be continuing in tandem this summer. They may sound like polar opposites, but I find them to be quite similar.