I've been taking a bit of a holiday. Logos (my employer) has a program for long-term employees that allows one month of a 'sabbatical' for every 10 years worked; this is in addition to any normal vacation/holiday time. They allow us to split it into two two-week portions. I'm taking my second two-week portion.

So I've been spending some time reading and writing, among other things. One book I've been camping in is Drobner's The Fathers of the Church (amazon.com). I have to say that overall, it is awesome.

Why is it awesome? Here are the two biggies, from my perspective:

1. Information but no overload. Drobner surveys the fathers roughly chronologically (I'm in the mid-400's right now). He has enough information about the person, his history, and stance on important issues (homoousia or homoiousia? Nicene? Condemned as heretic?) without getting into too many details. Additionally, there are further sections for most fathers detailing particular writings (e.g., "Exegetical Writings") or particular works if certain works are noteworthy.

2. Bibliographies, Bibliographies, Bibliographies. I can't say enough about the bibliographies. In the "Editions" bibliographies, where appropriate, there are volume/page citations to Migne's Patrologia Graeca, which you can now get to online. In the "Translations" bibliographies, there are series/volume/page citations to Schaff's Early Church Fathers (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Nicene/Post-Nicene Fathers Series 1, Nicene/Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2) all of which are online as well.

What else have I been doing with my time? I've also been reading (in smaller chunks than Drobner) Dooley & Levinson's Analyzing Discourse (amazon.com). I've read through the book before, but much of it bounced off of my frontal lobe and dissipated into the air around me. This time through, parts are actually sticking. This is a short book, intended to be introductory but it still has some lingo problems (seems as if every linguist in the world, even when trying to write in an introductory style, still uses terms and lingo that are unfamiliar to non-linguists). There are interesting concepts in the book, many of which can be applied to reading and analyzing the text of the Bible. It's been good to re-read the material; I'm looking forward to the section on participant reference as that is an area I've been thinking about recently.