Archive for January, 2010

Just read J.I. Packer’s evaluation of the Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky: Who Is the Greatest Novelist of All Time? (HT: Justin Taylor). There must be something wrong with me! I can appreciate the depth of this novelist’s faith, but I could never get into or through any of his novels. I really do not like his work! But then I have not been able to read any of the Russians, except for A Solzhenitsyn, whose Red Wheel cycle I loved (but then I cannot read his Gulag series or any of his other novels). But what can you expect from someone who has never been able to make it through Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress ?!! 

No, my favourite author in the 19th century is Jane Austen (can anything be more different than Dostoevsky?) and in the 20th J.R.R. Tolkien (now there is an epic writer!).

Some of my friends on Twitter have been reminiscing about where they were ten years ago.

Ten years ago, I was a year into my first job outside of academia: the editorial directorship of Joshua Press. To think what has happened in this decade: I had three more years at Joshua Press, a position I loved, and then nearly came to Southern in 2002, but drew back at the last moment, and only came part-time. Instead I served as Principal of Toronto Baptist Seminary from the summer of 2003 to the fall of 2007. And now have been at Southern since January 2008 full-time. Two full years, and two of the best years of my life.