Sarajevo Summers are hot and lazy. Bosnian friends, if they’re able, escape to the coast, and routines that worked for the rest of the year are interrupted by the come-and-go of the community. Every day has to be reinvented from the bottom up. Some days are full and rich while others limp along like a three-legged dog.

I’m trying to fill my time with people, study, and creativity. A typical Summer afternoon usually means rich coffee bar conversation with friends exploring such topics as “Are our lives determined by fate, or by choice?”, or yesterday’s topic, “How do we hear the voice of God?” When friends go home I settle into a good book, answer Email, or work on that Christmas CD I’ve determined to finish before the year’s end. Gotta admit, though, it feels hugely out of context to be recording “In the Bleak Midwinter” from what feels like the inside of a pizza oven.

Here’s a short list of my summer reading so far. (I’m always open for suggestions).

• Escape from Reason: An Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought, by Francis Schaeffer
• Foreign to Familiar: A Guide to Understanding Hot and Cold Cultures, by Sarah Lanier
• Iron John: A Book about Manhood, by Robert Bly
• My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
• Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance by Os Guiness
• The Book that Transforms Nations: The Power of the Bible to Change any Nation, by Loren Cunningham