One of the blogs I link to, A Fiercer Delight and a Fiercer Discontent, is kept by Stanford Gibson, a man with a wide (and deep) range of interests.  Exhibit A: the list of books he read in 2009.  Especially interesting to me about this list was the presence of two rather large and complex books of theology: Augustine’s City of God and The New Testament and the People of God by N.T. Wright.  I asked Stanford about his approach to such books and his answer is worth sharing here.

1. Read and Outline. Try to do separate the reading and the note taking by a few days so that it is two discrete interactions with the material. Try to summarize each chapter in less than 2 pages of quotes and themes. I tend to think that the less I try to retain the more I do. For popular works or fiction, I usually just record a few quotes that seem promising as future illustration material.

2. Discuss it. The major works that I have retained most successfully are the ones I read in community. I had a reading partner (Tyler the winemaker who shows up in this blog from time to time) for a couple years and am in a weekly reading group now. There is a pacing effect (e.g. it is more effective to run in a group because the group pace is faster than anyone would keep individually), but the main benefit is the insights, applications and illustrations that emerge in communal exegesis.

3. Revisit the notes. I try to set aside a couple weeks each year that are devoted to reviewing notes from some of these major works or other works I want to retain. Since I generally know my preaching schedule a year in advance, and keep files on upcoming topics or passages I know I am going to preach, this allows salient ideas from previous reading can to their way into contemporary reflection. I don’t do this as much or as systematically as I would like, but have gotten to the point that I would rather retain and implement 20% of the content of one good book than read 5 and keep 1% each.

Be sure to check out Stanford’s entire list of books from 2009.