Reading deeply

The Weekly Wrap: March 22-28

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The Weekly Wrap: March 22-28

The Latest AI Brouhaha

Last week, Hachette pulled Mia Ballard’s Shy Girl after The New York Times provided evidence that the book text relied heavily on AI. In an email to the Times, Ms. Ballard denied using AI in writing but conceded that a friend, who helped edit the self-published version of the book, used AI.

What is interesting about this, according to a story in Publisher’s Weekly, is that readers and reviewers in online discussion widely criticized the book for AI use, describing it as “flat.” Given that online chatter is one of the reasons publishers pick up self-published books, a PW editor in a blog post suggested it stretches credulity that no one at Hachette was aware of the criticism. (On a related note, the author’s explanation also stretches credulity and is a blatant denial of authorial responsibility.)

According to PW, the episode exposes the muddiness of major publishers on AI use. Only PRH requires “original work,” but even this is slippery. Hachette only pulled the book after public pressure. Did the book fool editors? Or did editors not look closely enough to notice?

I personally would like to see a “no AI generated text” policy on the part of publishers. Alternatively, if a work uses text generated by AI, disclose it publicly. I would handle deception on these matters as a version of plagiarism. Authors tempted to use AI as a shortcut without disclosure should realize that such a shortcut may be career-ending.

All of this reflects the conundrum of the rapid imposition of AI by high-tech companies. So several articles this week explore different aspects of AI use.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Geoff Shullenberger argues in “Critique of ‘Agentic’ Reason” that delegating agency to AI is a bad idea, particularly as this makes war on introspection.

Peter Wayne Moe was a deeply depressed English professor, due to the heavy reliance of his students on AI. Then he enrolled in a course to learn to play guitar, an experience leading him to ban screens in his classes, requiring students to read print books and PDFs, and write with pens in college-ruled notebooks. “Hollow Body” is a marvelous article describing his process.

Pope Leo XIV has urged priests not to use AI to write homilies. Jim Morin, in “A Disembodied Gospel,” extends this argument to the sacraments (no bots as confessors!) and other pastoral work. I’d love to see other Protestant church leaders address this!

Former kickboxer and social media influencer Andrew Tate says books are too slow. Joel Halldorf defends slow and deep reading, arguing “Andrew Tate Doesn’t Get the Point of Books.” I love what he says when he writes, “So I try to see reading not as a plate of vegetables, but as a glass of wine. Just as we don’t sip an earthy red in order to work our way through the stocks in a cellar, we shouldn’t read just to diminish the pile of books on our desk. There is pleasure in an attentive sip.”

I think I found my baseball book for this year after reading “Like Baseball? In This Book, You Can Play in Your Kitchen.” It is a review of Robert Coover’s 1968 classic, The Universal Baseball Association, once again in print. It was written before the rise of fantasy baseball leagues and eerily anticipates them.

Quote of the Week

Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925. Her bluntness is not limited to her stories. She commented:

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Miscellaneous Musings

Ever get a treasured book soaked in a rainstorm or drop it into a swimming pool? Open Culture posted a great video from Syracuse University Libraries on “How to Rescue a Wet, Damaged Book: A Handy Visual Primer.” The key thing is, don’t let the book dry out before following this process!

I’ve been reading The Joy of Solitude by Robert J. Coplan. It’s a fascinating exploration of the fine line between being alone and loneliness. One factoid: students preferred inflicting electric shocks on themselves to sitting alone with their thoughts for fifteen minutes.

I’ve had Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament on my shelves, unread, for years, nearly 30 as it turns out. Eerdmans just sent me New Testament Ethics, a collection of essays on Hays’ book on its 30th anniversary of publication. So. both books are now in my review queue! That’s one way to get me to read those unread books!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Julian Peters, Nature Poems to See By

Tuesday: Edith Stein, A Sure Way

Wednesday: The Month in Reviews: March 2025

Thursday: Harold Ristau, Spiritual Warfare and Deliverance

Friday: Josiah Hesse, On Fire for God

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap  for March 22-28.

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

The Weekly Wrap: January 5-11

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Ways of Reading

I’ve posted a couple articles recently (and one more here) about deep reading. One is a review with that title. The other is my 2025 Reading Challenge post, which includes challenges to encourage deep reading. But a comment on the review forced me to be honest. It concerned the quantitative challenges that are about pages and numbers of books read. And the reader asked if I was one of the “old-fashioned” who enjoyed readings and gave them the attention they deserved.

I had to be honest and answer “sometimes.” The truth is, I read a lot of books (237 last year according to Goodreads). It’s not a competition, but rather this retirement avocation of reviewing. I have a stack of books from publishers awaiting reading and reviewing. I generally post at least four reviews a week and typically have five books (plus a book club book) going at a time.

Part of how i do that is that i read different books differently. For example, I am reading a long, somewhat polemical tome which I read quickly to follow the argument (which to be honest didn’t need 900 pages!). Meanwhile, I am savoring a graphic biography of the composer Arvo Pärt, enjoying how the illustrations capture something of the essence of his composing philosophy. On the other hand, a Margery Allingham mystery is a pleasant evening diversion, although her labyrinthine plots do require attention. And an argument for how technology will help us “win’ the climate war is a straightforward matter of following a clearly stated argument. It’s a fast read.

What I don’t want to do is read a deep work of theology or philosophy as I would a murder mystery. Nor can I read poetry as I would a straightforward non-fiction essay or argument. This is what makes reading such a rich part of one’s life. Books offer us both meat and mind candy. We just don’t want to mistake one for the other nor only focus on an exclusive diet of either.

The commentor made one observation that I thought was so good that I will share it: “For me, reading is about enjoying a book and taking the time needed to honour the author and really get into it.” I totally agree!

Five Articles Worth Reading

Speaking of deep reading, I came across this article from William Deresiewicz from last May: “Deep Reading Will Save Your Soul.” He describes how students and faculty, frustrated with the state of reading in higher ed, are fashioning their own programs to deeply engage important works.

I thought this was an amazing rendering of two poems using a “Greek chorus” and instrumental accompaniment, appearing in Open Culture, titled “Laurie Anderson’s Mind-Blowing Performance of C. P. Cavafy’s Poems “Waiting for the Barbarians” & “Ithaca.” “Waiting for the Barbarians” is chilling.

Ought we read escapist lit? In “Trying and Failing to Figure Out “Escapism” in Books,” Molly Templeton says part of the question is what we mean by escapist and part is why we are reading. Sometimes, she suggests, we need a respite to give us perspective when reality is wearying.

There are a number of books on fathers and their maturing children. In “Two Different Ways of Understanding Fatherhood,” Lily Meyer reviews two recent books exploring the transition of men into fatherhood.

From fathers to children. Board books are, for many children, their first encounter with books. In “Jon Klassen on the Art of the Board Book,” the author-illustrator describes the experience of creating books for little ones who can’t read.

Quote of the Week

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Astrophysicist and writer Stephen Hawking embodied his words. He was born January 8, 1942.

Miscellaneous Musings

I finished Tom Lake this week. I told you I sometimes found her endings disappointing. She nailed this one. Look for my review next week.

I’ve done enough editing work that the editor’s voice plays in my head when I read some books. I’m thinking of a book I’ve mentioned that could easily have shed half of its 900 pages. I suspect the editor found that too daunting, and having contracted for the book, published it more or less in its form. Another book by an author with a very fertile and big picture mind tried to incorporate everything he thought into his work, barely hanging onto his thesis. Less is more is a hard lesson for authors and preachers to learn.

I mentioned the Arvo Pärt graphic biography I am reading. My son bought it for Christmas, along with four CDs of choral works by Pärt. I’m listening to some of it as I write. Arresting music that reflects his faith and immerses me in his distinctive compositional style. The book helps me understand the life journey leading to the creation of such music. What thoughtfully paired gifts!

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Rainie Howard, The Love Habit

Tuesday: Ann Patchett, Tom Lake

Wednesday: Nadya Williams, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic

Thursday: Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Friday: Neil J. Whitehouse, The Gospel of Jesus Green

Well, that’s The Weekly Wrap for January 5-11, 2025!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page.

Review: Deep Reading

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Cover image of "Deep Reading" by Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts

Deep Reading, Rachel B. Griffis, Julie Ooms, and Rachel M. De Smith Roberts. Baker Academic (ISBN: 9781540966957) 2024.

Summary: Practices to grow in attentive reading that subverts distraction, hostility, and consumerism.

Many books on reading focus on what to read, offering reading lists of good or “great” books. The authors of this book take a different approach. They believe we are in a culture that undermines the deep reading of any text. Thus they focus on practices to subvert what they believe are three vices of our culture: distraction, hostility, and consumerism. Likewise, they believe these practices help cultivate virtue and good character. Unlike other approaches by Christian educators, they focus on practice rather than worldview approaches that often feed vices of hostility and consumerism that work against virtuous reading and the appreciation of a text.

For each of the three cultural advices the authors address, they consider two sets of formational practices

Subverting Distraction

First of all under this heading, they consider practices to cultivate temperance, particularly with the digital devices in our lives. The authors observe the disembodied attention digital technology engenders as opposed to embodied engagement with a text and a community of other readers. They suggest gradually extending periods of uninterrupted reading, leaving phones and other screens in another room. Positively, they encourage the use of practices like lectio divina and other slow reading practices to deeply engage texts rather than the skimming we often practice.

Second, they focus on “Attentive Reading Processes for a Digital Age.” Surprisingly, they do not rule out using a variety of media to engage a text: audio-, electronic-, and physical books. This is one of the first books on reading I’ve read to recognize neurodiverse readers and that reading processes will vary from person to person. Equity and inclusion allow for these different approaches, even allowing students to secure different (and sometimes cheaper) versions of a text rather than as syllabus-mandated version, requiring adjustments when referencing the text. One of the authors describes setting aside time in class for communal reading using reading logs and how this helped students develop attention.

Subverting Hostility

First the authors engage the practice of developing diverse reading lists, often using worldview as a launching point for polemics for and against ideologies. Rather, they encourage the development of reading lists to develop empathy and charity. They discuss listening to texts from the past with neighborly charity, not ignoring racism or patriarchy, but also seeing past them to enter deeply into the author’s perception of the world in their day. Sometimes a contemporaneous text with a contrasting view may be read alongside.

Second, rather than fearing harm from diverse worldviews, the authors address reading practices for interpreting worldviews. They encourage an approach of prudent wisdom rather than hostility or fear. This includes reading widely, reading primary texts rather than hostile summaries. It means reading with self-forgetfulness that seeks to meet a text on its terms rather than ours. It involves distinguishing cultural mores from good and evil. The authors also consider the use of trigger and content warnings.

Subverting Consumerism

Reading can often be reduced to a transactional activity where information is a commodity and even others in online communities are commodified. First of all, the authors explore reading a as a gift-giving conversation. This assumes reading in a community. It begins with forming open-ended questions of the text and one another and practicing generosity in conversations in putting away distracting media and communicating intent listening through one’s body. It assumes a collaborative rather than competitive approach to understanding a text.

Finally, the authors address learning to read for enjoyment, rather than just getting one’s money’s worth. They explore Joseph Pieper’s idea of leisure in contrast to the total work/total entertainment ethos of our culture. In teaching settings, they encourage beginning with easy or familiar texts and incorporating humor. One author uses commonplace books in which students record compelling passages or pair poetry and images.

Reflections

As may be apparent, this book is written by Christian educators, reflecting applications in a primarily Christian setting. Yet I believe the practices they commend may be adapted more widely. In particular, there is a crisis of student disinterest in reading in higher education, a place where reading deeply is crucial to student formation. The practices commended here appear to address the recovery of reading for joy at the heart of a lifelong love of reading.

The practices the authors commend seem applicable beyond the classroom. Many of us are conscious of the ways our culture has undermined our own experience of deep reading. In particular, the stress on vice, virtue, and character gets at what many of us believe, but do not always experience–that reading can be transformative.

I also appreciate the authors critique of worldview approaches to reading. I learned to read this way as a young adult. And I appreciated the discernment it offered me. Only in more recent years have I realized the implicit hostility with which I approached texts. This prevented me from fully appreciating them and understanding the world of an author or the characters.

Finally, there is so much here about reading in community and how that may be done well that has applicability to Bible studies and book groups. In our individualistic society, we tend to view reading as a solitary activity. I love the idea of conversations around texts as a form of gift-giving. Reading, or even talking about books with others, is almost invariably mutually enriching.

I so appreciate the approach of these authors. Rather than rail against disinterested or distracted readers, they invite us into the joy of deep reading by showing us how. Rather than complain about consumeristic approaches, they commend a better way. Instead of protesting polemics, they position us to listen and engage with charity. and in so doing, they help us become not only better readers, but perhaps, better people.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

A Skimmer or a Deep Reader?

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A young girl intently reading.
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NPR recently posted an article titled How to Practice ‘Deep Reading.’ It’s a great interview available in both print and streaming audio. For any of us dedicated to what I like to call “the art of reading,” this is worthy of our intention.

One of the observations was that we were not pre-wired for reading–that for all of us, this is a learned skill, and like any learned skill, we have the opportunity to keep learning. It also suggests why reading doesn’t always come naturally for us. Neither does typing, playing a musical instrument, or painting. But we can develop our proficiency as we practice.

The interview explores the idea of deep reading, where we fully engage what is written with our thoughts, our questions, reflections, and even emotions–what does this evoke in me? In fact, reading with affect is one of the ways books become imprinted in our minds. I think this so true–whether I rhapsodized over the writing or an exceptional plot, didn’t like an ending, or got angry with an argument–those are the books I remember.

The article contrasts deep reading with the practice of skimming. And this caught me up short. I skim a lot of material–articles for posting, emails, and to be honest, some books, at least to a certain degree. I suspect many of you do as well. Since I read many books, an occupational hazard of a reviewer, I read books where people cover ground I’ve seen others cover before. I’m looking for what they bring to the conversation that is new.

What catches me up short is not that I do it, but seeing how doing it affects all my reading. This has been brought home to me recently by reading A Secular Age by Charles Taylor along with a friend. It is a long, dense but elegantly written book reflecting a great mind tracing an intellectual history spanning centuries and dozens of thinkers in several languages. I was trying to read 20 pages a day, and found it difficult to absorb. My friend told me, “I can only do 10 pages at a time, and I have to go back and re-read the 10 pages.”

I’ve decided that this book is my primer in deep reading. One of Taylor’s sentences often provides ample fodder for thought. I’m going to allow him to teach me to take the time to read him well and not read just to get the gist. And this practice is suggesting a rule worth applying to other things–if I only have a vague notion of what this book is saying or how this story is put together, I’m probably reading too fast.

The interview also suggests some form of note-taking helps us absorb and keep track of the flow of an argument and the things we remember. I don’t like to write in my books because I will re-sell many, and I don’t like slowing down to write in a journal. One suggestion from the article I might try is jotting down (maybe on a slip of paper) in the back of a book) page numbers of key thoughts, maybe with a key word or phrase. I’d love to hear how other note-takers do it.

Taylor will keep me busy for a while, so this will give me a good opportunity to practice deep reading. Perhaps after that, I may try to have at least one book where I follow a suggestion from the interview to “read at your own pace and the book’s pace.” Actually, it’s pretty exciting to be approaching my eighth decade and still be learning to read!

Review: On Reading Well

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On Reading Well

On Reading Well, Karen Swallow Prior. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2018.

Summary: Makes a case that the reading of great literature may help us live well through cultivating the desire in us to live virtuously and to understand why we are doing so.

Karen Swallow Prior wants us to heed John Milton’s advice to “read promiscuously” great works of literature because they may help the reader distinguish between vice and virtue, and hopefully choose the latter. In doing so, Prior advances an argument contrary to most of contemporary literary criticism that argues against the purpose of teaching literature to form moral character, perhaps most famously argued in Stanley Fish’s Save the World on Your Own Time (review). Prior argues that great books do set before us not only examples of vice and virtue but help us see the telos or purpose or end of living a virtuous life.

Along the way, as she introduces her theme, she proposes some helpful advice for how we might read well, summarized here:

“Read books you enjoy, develop your ability to enjoy challenging reading, read deeply and slowly, and increase your enjoyment of a book by writing words of your own in it.”

Prior then leads us into the practice of reading literature with an eye to what great works might help us understand about specific virtues. Most of this work focuses on twelve virtues in three groups, with a discussion of that virtue being focused on a particular work. While other virtues may be found in each of these works, her discussion is focused around one virtue in each work. Here is how the work is organized:

Part One: The Cardinal Virtues
1. Prudence: The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding
2. Temperance: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. Justice: A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
4. Courage: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Part Two: The Theological Virtues
5. Faith: Silence by Shusaku Endo
6. Hope: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
7. Love: The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy

Part Three: The Heavenly Virtues
8. Chastity: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
9. Diligence: Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
10. Patience: Persuasion by Jane Austen
11. Kindness: “Tenth of December” by George Saunders
12. Humility: “Revelation” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge” by Flannery O’Connor

One of the effects of reading Prior’s discussion is to introduce us to the vocabulary of virtue, one that may seem archaic for many, and yet is central to the well-lived life. Tom Jones’s observations of the imprudence of many helps us understand that prudence is “right reason direct to the excellent human life.” From The Great Gatsby, we discover that temperance is not abstinence but that “One attains the virtue of temperance when one’s appetites have been shaped such that one’s very desires are in proper order and proportion.” While chastity may often be regarded, in the words of C.S. Lewis, as “the most unpopular of Christian virtues,” we discover through Ethan Frome that “chastity is not withholding but giving” of our bodies in the right context, keeping faith that we say with our bodies what we’ve vowed with our lips and that individual chastity is nourished in a community that healthily values the living of chaste lives.

Prior’s discussion is nuanced, distinguishing between false versions of virtues as well as how each virtue is a mean between an excess and a deficiency. For example, from Jane Austen’s Persuasion, we learn not only that patience is born out of enduring suffering but also that patience is virtuous “only if the cause for which that person suffers is good.” It may not be a virtue to be patient with injustice!

One of the effects of reading this work was to make me want to read or re-read the works she explores in her book. Some, like The Great Gatsby or Ethan Frome, I read in high school. Her chapter on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and her discussion of hope amid the dystopian setting of the book intrigued me enough to pick up a copy of the book.

I do find it curious that all but one of the writers she chose were westerners of Caucasian descent. The exception is Shusaku Endo and his fine work, Silence (review), in which she explores the virtue of faith. Perhaps her selection reflects her own academic area as a professor of English whose research has focused in the area of Eighteenth century English literature and the work of the Eighteenth century women’s writer, Hannah More. It might be valuable in future editions of this work (for which I hope!) to offer a reading list, perhaps organized around the virtues, of other great works, including those of non-Western authors and Western authors of color.

The book includes a discussion guide at the end, making this a great resource for reading groups, as well as for personal study. The work features delightful illustrations at the beginning of each chapter by artist Ned Bustard (who also drew the cover illustration).

Karen Swallow Prior makes a convincing case in this work for what many of us have intuited–that great literature can change our lives as we reflect on examples of virtue. And far from “spoiling” the great works she discusses, she opens them up in their possibility to instruct us such that we want to go out and read them for ourselves. But before you buy the works she discusses, I would suggest you pick up On Reading Well, because I believe it will enrich your reading of the other books.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

The Battle to Read?

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Reading-books

By Omarfaruquepro (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0] via Wikimedia Commons

This week, Philip Yancey posted a blog “Reading Wars” that was picked up in the Washington Post under the title “The Death of Reading is Threatening the Soul.” Yancey begins the post noting the change in his own reading practices, from about three books a week (about what I typically read) to much less, and that he is reading far fewer works that require hard work.

He attributes this to the internet, and the tendency to read a paragraph or two and move along to something else, and to skip around from one thing to the next, and be easily distracted. He also notes the constant interruptions of emails and other messaging that wants a reply now.

He quotes a Charles Chu who estimates that it would take approximately 417 hours over a year to read 200 average sized books. Chu is walking proof that it’s possible, having read 400 books in the past two years. He notes that the average American spends 608 hours on social media and 1642 hours watching television. It is not a question of time.

Rather it is a question of seduction. And this is where the battle to read comes in. Between distracting notifications on smartphones, and the temptation to go from there to different social media can consume a lot of time. It’s mind candy, kind of fun really. There’s a video–was that really ten minutes? It lures us away from our books, and makes it harder to concentrate when we sit down to read them.

Yancey joins a chorus of people from Senator Ben Sasse who is trying to cultivate practices of reading in his family to Rod Dreher in his Benedict Option who are urging us to lay aside, or even fast from our technology to make time for deep reading of the printed page. Many business are arguing for setting aside at least an hour a day for reading.

Why does it matter? Isn’t this time one could more productively employ elsewhere? Personally, I reached a decision in my forties, that having passed the peak of my physical powers, I needed to take more time to read, and think, and pray if I was going to be spiritually and intellectually vital and fresh in my work. I could not just keep recycling what I learned in college and the first years out in the work force. I was changing, the world was changing, and the advance of years brought new questions, and questioned previous assumptions.

More than that, I came to realize that there really is something grand about this collective project called humanity–noble and sometimes hubristic dreams, great ideas like the freedom of conscience, and not so great ones like race theory, and great works of art and literature, that capture in a particular piece aspects of the universal human experience. I came to discover in the Christian faith not only the two to three millenia-old sacred scriptures that are our rule of faith and practice, but that conversation of great minds from Augustine and Athanasius to Barth and Niebuhr and Kuyper that sought to understand and apply these truths to their times. Many contemporary writers and speakers, as compelling as they seemed, were pretty thin fare by comparison.

Most of all, what I think I am trying to do as I read is to live an attentive life. I want to listen for God’s voice in the things that I read, and to be open to the possibility that a word of scripture, or an idea on a page might transform my perspective, question my ways of doing things, or lead to insights into how to live or work more in sync with God’s workings in the world. More than that, if God is the real hero of this story and mine but a small supporting role (and even that is something), so much of reading is a walk in the wonder of understanding the works and ways and majesty of God, whether in a book on the latest discoveries in physics, a history of a people, or a biography of a leader of the past.

There is so much more to life than what can be expressed in 140 characters or displayed on my smartphone screen. If we are dissatisfied with the banality of our public discourse, then perhaps a good beginning is to attack our own lack of attention to deep reading of ideas that matter. We might even discover that there is great joy to be found in a rich interior life. We might want such people to be leaders in our communities, and maybe our nation. We might even become them.

In the next days, I want to discuss more of what we can do to give substantive reading a greater place in our lives, and some practices and sources that can get us started.

 

Reading the Bible without a Net

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By George E. Curtis (1830-1910)[2] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

By George E. Curtis (1830-1910)[2] [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

I work with graduate students who not only read books but read books and articles about the books, study manuscripts of the book, deconstruct the book, study books in original translations, and more. And I find this is what they want to do with the Bible. They want to get the best commentaries out of the library, understand what the text says and means in the original languages, understand the origins of the text and more.

I have no quibble with this per se’. Having attended seminary and learning something of biblical exegesis (though I by no means consider myself a biblical scholar in the professional sense), I seek to do the same when I’m in a formal teaching setting and have (or make) the time to do this work. Often, this work does contribute to enriching my understanding. I do value learning from those past and present who have worked in the same text and discovering whether my ideas are totally out to lunch.

But I also think that all of this sometimes becomes a “net” that may distract us from developing the “high wire” artistry of reading the scriptures well.  Furthermore, it seems to me that it develops a culture of “the expert” that says that only those who can read in the original languages can unlock the “secret code” of the Bible to us.

What I want to propose is that more fundamental than all this is simply bringing the practices of reading well to the Bible. My experience has been that there are scholars who read the scriptures poorly in spite of their scholarship (as well as those who read it well) and uneducated people who read well. So what goes into reading well:

  • Attentiveness to the text and to the literary art within it. The Bible, like any other book, conveys ideas through story, poetry, discourse and other genres and uses various literary cues to point us to meaning including repeated words, the climax of a story, the ordering of ideas, contrasts and comparisons, and figures of speech. When we read anything attentively, we pay attention to these sorts of things.
  • A willingness to suspend our judgment as far as this is possible while listening to the text and living within the story or poetry or discourse. Often this involves multiple readings and the use of imagination.
  • An awareness of the context of what is written. Outside sources can help, but often the most important contextual clues for any work can be found within the work if we are observant. One thing that is a good practice with any book is to skim first, then read closely. With the Bible, this can be a general skim of the whole to get a sense of the big story, or a skim of the particular book in which one is studying.
  • An openness to the text that involves a willingness to be engaged and transformed by what we encounter. When we are hostile, indifferent, or distrustful, it seems that our assumptions are those of suspicion rather than presuming the best.
  • Christians also believes that God provides illumination as we study scripture (and other things as well). It seems to me that it is not wrong to ask for this and to believe that if God is there, God wants to communicate meaningfully and intelligibly with us.

As I write this, I realize that this kind of reading requires mental effort. It is different from simply allowing a text to wash over me or have someone tell me what it says. I suspect that some of what motivates resorting to the “nets” of original languages and commentaries is that we buy the notion that this is a mysterious book that only experts can understand. I also suspect that sometimes, we are looking for a sure fire short cut to understanding. Actually, to really do the biblical scholarship thing right is itself a long-haul proposition and a little learning here may also be a dangerous thing. I can’t believe how many really bad readings of scripture I’ve heard that were prefaced by “the original Greek says.”

Most scholars of great literature will come back to the idea that whatever else you read, you must read and re-read these great texts and soak yourself in them. They are deep and rich with meaning that doesn’t yield itself to a quick, casual glance. And so it has been with my experience with the Bible. When I began reading it, there was much I didn’t get. But there were compelling stories, especially the various encounters Jesus had with people, poetry that gave voice to my longings for God, and instructions in the letters of Paul, John, and others that made sense.

Many who follow this blog are good readers. You know what it takes to read well. Whether you are a reader of the Bible or not, I hope you will do some reading “without a net”. And if you have the time, definitely use the resources of other scholars to enrich your reading. I just hope you won’t spend all your time in the net!

 

 

Reviewing and Reading Deeply

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Earlier in the week, I reviewed Dallas Willard’s last book, Living in Christ’s Presence. In this post I included Willard’s advice for readers:  “Aim at depth, not breadth. If you get depth, you will have breadth thrown in. If you aim at breadth, you will get neither depth nor breadth (p. 149).

I’ve been chewing on what Willard said. As is apparent, I read quite a few books–some for enjoyment and some to go deeper in my understanding of life and the world. Doing a book blog that includes reviews is a bit of a double-edged sword in this effort to “aim at depth.”

One the one hand, the reason I began writing reviews and continue to do so is simply to both remember and engage what I’ve read. This happens in several ways for me. One is, knowing that I will write a review, I pay closer attention to the plot or argument, because usually I will want to summarize it and do so accurately. Also, while I’m reading, I’m thinking about my evaluation of the book, the soundness of the logic and evidence, the plausibility of plot and characters, and how I am reacting to the writing style. Being an introvert, I do this mentally rather than spending a lot of time writing in margins or journalling about the book. I’m like this with presentations I do as well, where I work out in my head my thoughts before I write (yet I’m also surprised by the act of writing and the insights that come as I write, something that has arisen from blogging). All this means I go deeper with a book than I might otherwise. And I remember it better.

But I’m also thinking of the transition from a casual reviewer to something more. Now, I sometimes receive books for review, which I will do if they interest me. The transition has been from simply writing reviews to remember and crystallize in my mind what I’ve read to reading in order to write reviews and have these engage others. To be honest, it tempts me to try to read more and even think, what kinds of books would those who follow the blog like to see reviewed? As I ask this I’m reminded that I’m reading a book on people-pleasing, and it occurs to me that this might be a version of people pleasing.

I think what I’m coming to are a couple questions to keep in mind as I engage in this process. One is, am I still enjoying reading?  If it just becomes work in order to produce reviews, forget this, especially since this isn’t a paying gig! A second question is, am I reading deeply enough, and listening carefully enough to not simply comprehend the book and to be able to review it but to be changed by it if I am convinced by its conclusions or “re-oriented” by what it shows me of reality?

Does that mean I’ll read fewer books? I have to say that I don’t know the answer to that. I think if I can truthfully say “yes” to my two questions, the number of books will take care of themselves.

I’d love to know what other bibliophiles think about reading widely, reading deeply and the number of books you read!