Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2009, the 150th anniversary of the Origin of Species, 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, 450th anniversary of the final edition of Calvin's Institutes, and 500th birthday of John Calvin. One of my goals this year is to read both books. If you'd like to join me, you can get them in daily installments: DailyLit has On the Origin of Species in 205 parts here; and Princeton Theological Seminary has The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 365 parts here. Both can be subscribed to with a reader.

Here are my other resolutions:

1. To finish my thesis (I hope to defend in September).
2. To apply to PhD programs (which means taking the GRE, ugh!).
3. To present at least one paper at a conference.
4. To publish at least one paper.
5. To publish at least one book review.
6. To read at least 3 chapters of Greek per week.
7. To read at least 3 chapters of Hebrew per week.
8. To get my French back to reading competence.

Anyone else like to share their resolutions?

2 comments:

Carmen Andres said...

oiy, mine seem so pathetic next to yours, ack! re the French, i learned to read the language for graduate school but can't read a lick now. i do remember, though, reading a Victor Hugo story in French and being stunned by how much is lost in translation. which is why i envy your Greek and Hebrew ability, sigh.

Ken Brown said...

Funny, I was just thinking yours all sound a lot more noble than mine! Meanwhile, mine seem rather too ambitious. It's only Jan 3 and I'm already thinking there's no way I can finish three chapters of Hebrew a week, on top of everything else.

As to French, I totally agree. Actually, one of the things I like about Hugo's Les Miserables is that even the English translation includes a whole lot of French; still, I'm very rusty.