My Library

Tony Reinke Books, Reading

Blog readers, you are like one big, happy, functional family to me. And to those of you who quietly lurk, waiting for the next round in the infralapsarianism vs. supralapsarianism debate to erupt, you are part of the family too, making us a bit less functional, but more like a real American family.

Which is why I would love to invite you over to my house to grill burgers and talk books. I can imagine us now—eating, laughing, disagreeing, and reconciling like real blog families do, then stepping into my modest library to peruse titles and talk about books and theology until the wee hours of the night.

But alas; we are separated by distance.

And my library will not fit in a camera frame.

But if I had a dollar for every time you requested a picture of my library I could have easily funded my film project: My Library (2009).

My Library was written, produced, funded, filmed, and acted out by me. It had a total budget of $0mil, was filmed in less than 8 minutes, and was uploaded to YouTube in a torturous span of 3 hours. So I hope you like it.

And please leave nice comments. Nothing like: “Wow. Why are you so disorganized and messy, man? I’m amazed you can find anything!”

Be nice.

27 thoughts on “My Library”

  1. That’s amazing–everything is on a shelf! I’ve given up trying to be organized. I’ve now lowered my goal to getting everything on shelves. As I write, I see that I’m losing the battle–I am surrounded by 6 vertical stacks…. Maybe one day I’ll be a responsible bibliophile like you. Until then, I’ll keep reading and stacking!

  2. I’m 23 and my bookshelf, comparatively clothed in rags, looks forward to the day when it shall appear as yours.

    just kidding….but seriously, great library.

  3. I will be showing your library to my wife. I do not think I have as many books a you (I hope) and I will hopefully receive understanding from my wife!

    Ha ha ha

    GREAT Library!
    Juan

  4. Hey, at least all of your bookshelves are the same color, which is more than I can say. It is always a struggle when we move or rearrange to know which mixture of black, wood panel and blue to go with but we always manage.

    Nice books, and well done on organization and accessiblity.

    4 1/2 stars.

  5. Very nice, Tony; thanks for taking the time to share this! Have you determined your “conference” schedule for the year yet? I am wondering if I might bump into you at (a) Ligonier in March, or (b) Banner in May???
    Thanks, Dave Bissett, upstate NY
    PS – my library is similarly organized, and runs about 1300 books. When asked if I’ve read them all, my favorites response line (a harmless subterfuge of course): “some of these I have read twice!”

  7. Wow, very nice, so much for though shall not covet. I must say this is was great to video to show my wife, see I do not have enough books yet.

  8. I see a couple of people here have commented that they have to show their wives this video because they are trying to plead their case about amassing more volumes. I showed my wife and her comment was that we need more books! This is inspiring. I’m gonna take pictures of our library and post them on my site soon.

    Jeremy – I totally understand about the mismatched bookshelves. We not only had different colored bookshelves but they were all different heights!.
    One word : IKEA

  9. Sweet! What a blessing that must be. I have a pretty nice sized library due to my love of books and being in Bible college. I am thankful!

  11. Great library, good to see. You can see what your speciality area is – Puritan authors.

    Good to see also you are not a buyer of sets of commentaries – except Calvin, Henry. It is best to pick and choose commentaries. Good that you don’t organise your commentaries in sets as well, that is a personal peeve of mine.

  12. Can you tell me the difference between an expositional, exegetical and devotional commentary and give me some examples of each for a single book?

  13. Thanks for the comments everyone! …

    Kim:

    Here is what I mean…

    (1) Exegetical commentary: Specializes in analyzing the original languages (Greek and Hebrew) and looks at Scripture quite technically.

    (2) Expositional commentary: Sometimes still a bit technical, these are likely a series of sermons intended to take the content of a biblical book and present it as sermons. John MacArthur’s commentaries are good examples of this.

    (3) Devotional commentaries: These are commentaries that are the least technical of the three and are written to help Christians apply the text.

    On the book of Ephesians it would look like this:

    (1) Ephesians commentary by Peter T. O’Brien
    (2) Ephesians commentary/sermons by John MacArthur
    (3) God’s Chosen Society by John Stott

    That’s what I mean by this distinction.

    Tony

  15. Good question, Erik. I know I have about 4,200 digital books on my computer, 100+ books scattered around my home and office, and probably 1,200 or so here in this video (just guessing). I’m richly blessed and deeply humbled: “To whom much is given…”

  17. I believe that good books if not referred to often, should be given away. If you come to that, put me on the beggars list!

  19. Tony,

    Thanks for taking the time to show us you library. What a treasure. I think that this my be one of the only exceptions to the 10th commandment. ;-)

    Bill

  21. I noticed on one of you shelves, you had a book entitled, the Book of God, by Walter Wangerin.

    I recently got that book for free the other day…do you recommend it??

  22. That is an amazing library! I am a little overwhelmed by how much reading you must do. I feel fortunate when I read one book a month along with my Bible reading.

  25. Hello Gary. I do purchase books with a high degree of selectivity and, yes, I do sell and get rid of books on a regular basis, too. If I have no use for a book it’s gone.

  26. What caught my eye immediately was the small section of Little Golden Books at the bottom of the first bookcase. After that I kept waiting to see the Richard Scarry and Dr. Seuss sections.

    I enjoyed trying to spy which books I also have. Thanks for the tour.

    Russ

  27. As a fan of Joseph Mitchell, I could not help but notice your paperback edition of “Up in the Old Hotel.” His writing is excellent.

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