Good books allow for good workout
- Aug 9, 2007 - comment
Most folks watch television while on the treadmill, and some brave souls read magazines, but very few are able to read books and walk or run at the same time.
Count World magazine editor Marvin Olasky among the latter group. And if you consider the titles he recommended in a recent World magazine article, “7 Fat Years,” he’s not doing any light reading while working out.
Some people have a stack of books next to their bedside table; Olasky apparently has stacks of books next to his exercise equipment. Since July 2000, he has been updating World readers on the books he has read and that he recommends.
In the cover article of the June 30, 2007, issue, which highlights 100 of the approximately 400 titles he has read while keeping physically fit, Olasky says these are “books that exercise my mind while exercising my body.”
“Seriously, I couldn’t read a book if I were running. But since I’m walking at a 4 mph pace, it’s easy to hold one,” Olasky told me.
Among the 100 books featured in the magazine’s “2007 Books Issue” were several from Southern Baptist authors, including Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, and Thom Rainer, president of LifeWay Christian Resources.
Land’s recently released The Divided States of America? What Liberals and Conservatives are Missing in the God-and-Country Shouting Match! (Thomas Nelson) and Rainer’s 2006 release, Simple Church, earned spots on the list. Eric Geiger, executive pastor of Christ Fellowship church in Miami, co-authored the Broadman & Holman book with Rainer.
Olasky, who spends half the year teaching at the University of Texas and half the year as vice president for academic affairs at The King’s College in New York, said he carries only a few of his books with him on the road.
“I took only ten books with me to New York, and The Divided States of America? was one of the ten,” he said.
Olasky said at least part of the criteria for a book making the final cut was its ability to keep the reader engaged: “A half-hour on the treadmill with some books feels like an eternity. Time flew with books on this list that kept me treadmilling for an hour or more.”
Other Southern Baptist authors making the cut include:
Ken Connor and John Revell with Sinful Silence: When Christians Neglect Their Civic Duty (Ginosko, 2004). Connor, an attorney, is the founder of the Center for a Just Society; Revell, with the Southern Baptist Convention’s Executive Committee in Nashville, is editor of SBC Life.
William Dembski and James Kushiner as editors of Signs of Intelligence (Baker, 2001). Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher, is Research Professor in Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. Kushiner is editor of Touchstone magazine and a member of the Institute for Religion and Democracy advisory board. Dembski’s Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing (ISI Books, 2004) is also on the list.
Matthew Staver wrote Eternal Vigilance: Knowing and Protecting Your Religious Freedom (Broadman & Holman, 2005). Staver is founder of Liberty Counsel and dean of the School of Law at Liberty University.
Bruce Ware is author of God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism (Crossway, 2001). Ware is Senior Associate Dean of M.Div. Studies, Associate Dean of Theology and Tradition and professor of Christian Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Olasky’s wide-ranging list—it includes William F. Buckley’s The Fall of the Berlin Wall (Wiley, 2004) and Mykel Mitchell’s Word: For Everybody Who Thought Christianity Was for Suckas (New American Library, 2005) is built on the fact that there are books worth reading. Mitchell is a Los Angeles hip-hop recording industry executive.
“It’s hard to beat learning in two hours what it took someone else two years or two decades to figure out,” Olasky said of non-fiction books. And he noted that a dialogue between two characters in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings suggests the value of fiction books.
“Sam Gamgee had it right when he and Frodo are exhausted while climbing what seems to be an endless staircase: Sam mused about how pleasant it is to read about hardship, and how unpleasant to endure it,” Olasky said.
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