On Reading

My Favorite “Bookish” Things

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20171129_185514A certain TV personality is famous for the show she does each holiday season sharing her “favorite things.” For me the phrase brings back memories of Julie Andrews as Maria Von Trapp singing about “these are a few of my favorite thing.” That got me thinking about a few of my favorite “bookish” things.

  1. Attractive and durable bookmarks. My favorite is the genuine leather bookmark pictured above that a friend brought back from a trip to Italy. I use it to mark my place in the Bible I use for my daily devotional time. I’ve had it for years and it shows no sign of wear–unlike most of my bookmarks!
  2. Well-made books to put them in. It is always a delight to read a book with a fine paper, readable print, and elegant binding.
  3. Elegant shelves lining one or more walls of a library room. Mostly, this is a dream for me, and as I’ve written recently, I think I’ve reached the stage in life where the prescription is not more shelves but less books! The closest I get to this most of the time is the East Reading Room in Thompson Library at The Ohio State University.
  4. Attractive dust jackets or book covers. This adds to the aesthetic of reading. I would also include the spine of the book, which may stare out at me for years on my shelves.
  5. Bookish t-shirts. I treasure my “so many books, so little time” shirt, which might be one of my life mottoes. I could probably use a few more.
  6. Book weights. Something I wouldn’t spend money on but I’ve thought to be extremely useful for books that won’t lay flat on their own, particularly while I am writing reviews or copying out a quote. Usually I end up using another book or a stapler on my desk.
  7. Chairs that are still comfortable after you’ve been sitting for half an hour reading. I have a few in my house. My son’s middle school football coach once said, “the mind can’t absorb more than the seat can endure.” Every bibliophile totally understands.
  8. Knowledgeable booksellers who actually seem interested in talking with patrons. Given that many bibliophiles are introverts it’s easy to see how you can get one without the other. When you find a bookseller like this, take good care of them!
  9. Bookish decor. We just cleaned and re-hung our bookshelf wall-hanging in our living room. One of the “shelves” from that wall-hanging serves as the header for this blog.
  10. A helpful review or a book recommendation that helps you find a book you really like. Hopefully, you’ve found a few of these here (and none that were unhelpful). I even enjoy books on books and perusing book lists!

With the holidays approaching, some of these might spark some gift ideas for the bookish person in your life (although booksellers are hard to gift wrap!). And if you are that bookish person (and why else would you read this?), I’d love to know some of your favorite bookish things.

 

Book Covers

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A secular age

Over the weekend, I found a used, hardbound copy of Charles Taylor’s The Secular Age for twenty percent of its retail price. Needless to say I was pleased. I did encounter an interesting anomaly, though. The dust jacket is designed to cover the bottom three quarters of the book leaving the top, on which Charles Taylor’s name is embossed, uncovered on the front and spine. Needless to say, it further piqued my curiosity about a book that has long been on my “want” list.

It has been said that “you can’t judge a book by its cover,” which is quite true. I’ve read truly important books with prosaic covers and dull or unsubstantial books with attractive ones. But one thing can be said about book cover design–it is meant to get the reader to pick up the book and at least consider buying it (or read an online preview). I think one of the delights of a physical bookstore is the visual delight we gain just browsing the covers of books.

My wife and I are fans of the British comedy, As Time Goes By. The leading male character, Lionel Hardcastle, is an aspiring author who manages to get his memoir, My Life in Kenya, published. He is alarmed when he becomes the subject of a photo shoot for the cover dressed in khakis and bush hat with a rifle in arm and a scantily clad woman clinging to his leg. His publisher, Alistair, tells him that all this has one object–to visually say “pick me up and buy me.”

That worked like a charm for me as an young teenager picking up copies of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Yes, you guessed it–Bond in some exotic setting surrounded with buxom women in bikinis. At least it worked until my dad found my stash of Bond paperbacks and tossed them.

My first edition of Lord of the Rings was the Ballantine Books paperbacks published in the 1970’s with artwork that formed a triptych. I’d heard from my friends that this was an incredible adventure fantasy, and the cover art suggested the same thing.

lotr

I am a fan of the work of David McCullough, and one of the things I have found is that the cover art on his books always represents what I will find within the pages, something I think should be a criterion. Here is his cover for The Greater Journey, about Americans who lived in Paris during the nineteenth century.

the-greater-journey

Last fall, while recovering from foot surgery, I re-read Anna Karenina in the Pevear and Volokhonsky translation. It is a great translation of this sprawling Tolstoy work centered around Anna’s illicit love affair. While I didn’t buy the book because of the cover (I had heard great things about the translation–really!), the cover leaves no doubt about the sexual undercurrent of the book, without being distasteful.

anna-karenina

Over the years I’ve admired the cover art on a number of books published by InterVarsity Press (I will acknowledge that I work for the parent organization with which this publisher is associated). I do know that this reflects an intentional effort as expressed in their statement of values where they state “Aiming for thoughtful integration of the whole person and placing emphasis on the dignity of people and relationships, IVP practices beauty and stewardship in our work.”

One of their books that caught my attention over forty years ago, not only for its astute cultural analysis, but also for the graphic design of its cover was The Dust of Death by Os Guinness, which included a work of contemporary art against a white background with the title and author in a very clean font. Here it is:

Dust of Death

That tradition of aesthetically striking design combined with content has been carried on down to the present. Here is the cover of a publication I recently reviewed, Our Deepest Desires:

Our Deepest Desires

I realize this is quite subjective and others may choose different, and surely better examples, but the covers of books, much like LP album covers, are a part of the reading experience. We encounter books primarily through our eyes (although touch and even smell are also part of it with physical books, and sound with audiobooks). I have to confess that some books I’ve kept not only because of content, but for how they appear on my shelves.

I’ve just scratched the surface and would love to hear about and see book covers that you love, and the role book covers play in your own reading experience.

Getting Rid of Books

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The latest installment in the Great Book Purge!

I have become increasingly serious about getting rid of books over the last few years. I find myself reaching a junction in life where the answer is not more bookshelves but less books. Right now I have six boxes of books that I will be donating in various ways. Sold off a couple other boxes of books yesterday–and didn’t buy more.

One of the things I’m discovering is that the more I cull books from my personal library, the easier it gets and the more ruthless I am about what stays. There are books I’ve not read that I just have to admit to myself, “I’ll never read that,” as interesting as it looks. There are times I’ll put a book back on the shelf, and a week later say, “no, I really do not need this.”

Increasingly, I find myself asking, “which books are like old friends, that each time I visit them, the experience is richer?” Many are books I bought years ago, and a number are classics of history, literature, and theology.

Some of the easiest to get rid of are the “trendy” books–when the trend is ten years old or older. I suspect they won’t get picked up by anyone else either. I look back and wonder why I hadn’t been more selective.

There are other books that still are good reading. But the subjects and the lessons are ones that were of greater interest in earlier seasons of life. Seems best to me to get them to people who are facing those seasons.

I wonder how others who cherish good books as I do deal with the realities of parting with them. How have you made these decisions? Was it easy, or hard? Maybe we can learn from each other.

Curious Bibliophiles

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Karel_Rélink_Der_Bibliophile_1902

Karel Rélink [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Bibliophiles are curious people. That may be taken in two ways and both are true. They are “curious” in the sense of being kind of odd or unusual. Books are part of their home decorating scheme. When packing for a trip, the question of “what books will I take?” may be more important than what clothes will I need. A great day is when I discover a new bookstore, or find a book I’ve always wanted to read. We are “curious” people, to be sure.

We are also curious people in that we read to understand our world. At least one of the reasons for at least some of our book choices begins with, “I always wanted to learn about…” or “I came across a book about…and I decided that might be fascinating to read.” Sometimes our curiosity is driven by real life concerns, such as when I read an in depth account of the battle of Gettysburg before visiting the battlefield. And sometimes, our curiosity seems just sparked by a whim.

Curiosity has taken me all kinds of places, from exploring the doctrine of the Trinity to the everyday phenomenon of rain. It has led me into the delightful world of Wendell Berry’s Port William Society, and through a friend’s suggestion, into the fantasy world of Middle Earth, a place I’ve visited again and again in every decade of my life. It’s taken me into darker places as well–the specter of eviction, the “problem from hell” of genocide and the evil of human trafficking.

This brings me to a question I’ve been thinking about lately. Ought we have any boundaries on our curiosity? I’m not talking about boundaries others set, which I would consider an improper, and in the American system, unconstitutional intrusion upon our liberties. The question was provoked for me when I read Bookstore, and particularly passages in which the store owner spoke of her fascination with reading about inter-species sex and about cannibalism. I think my first response was “yuck” and my second to wonder “why ever would you be interest in that?” Then it occurred to me that, much as I find these things repugnant, the truth is that they are part of the human experience, and it might not be utterly bonkers that someone would research these things and others understand them. As far as I know, this person never participated in such things and curiosity to understand phenomena like these no more necessarily leads to doing them than reading about human trafficking inclines me to traffic human beings.

I do wonder if there might be two situations in which curiosity might exceed the bounds of health. One is where that about which we are curious leads to an insatiable quest to know more and more, to the neglect of duties in real life. Do you know those who have developed an unhealthy absorption with conspiracy theories, who are constantly reading about them, talking about them, worrying about them, and in the process, alienating their friends?

The other is when curiosity leads to our minds and emotions going to places we know that for us are not healthy or even tempt us to act out in ways that are morally wrong. And here, two people may be very different. Descriptions of violence, even when not gratuitous, or erotic scenes may affect two people very differently. I had to set down the work of one science fiction writer, fascinating as I found his writing, because there was something in his recurring portrayals of violence that was not good for me. Nor do I think exploring the world of the occult, with the view of searching out the things God has hidden to be a healthy exercise of curiosity.

That said, for the most part, I think curiosity a good thing–that we were given minds of such capacity to explore every nook and cranny of God’s good world. Books are a wonderfully convenient way to do that. I don’t just read pages, but embark on a journey of discovery, whether it is of astrophysics or the composition of a Mozart. I think curiosity is one of the reasons for why we read. Curious bibliophiles, indeed!

What do you think?

Arts & Letters Daily

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Arts Letters Daily ideas criticism debate (1)

Screen capture of part of Arts & Letters Daily main page, as accessed on September 21, 2017

One of the things I love doing is helping connect people with books that will inform, entertain, and perhaps transform them. One of the ways I do that is through various newsletters and websites that alert me to new books as well as information about the literary world, authors, book selling, and all things related to books. At the same time, I realize that this blog can’t be a “one stop shop,” and so I also like to pass along the resources I’ve found useful in discovering news about books and all things literary.

One of my readers recently commented with regard to a post about one such site, “One more alternative to actually reading books??” His question raises a fair point. I really could spend all my time reading what is on these sites rather than reading books. But I think most of us have figured out how to skim them to discover what catches our attention. Sometimes, they inform me about books I decide I don’t need to read. Sometimes they pique my interest in something I want to read and review. And I think you will admit that I read and review a few books (over 100 so far this year).

That’s a long introduction to a site I discovered recently, Arts & Letters Daily, published by the folks who put out The Chronicle of Higher Education, which is the Wall Street Journal of the academic world. That should tip you off that you will find a high standard of writing in the articles aggregated on this website. Unlike The Chronicle, all content is available without subscribing, although there is a link in several places to “Support Arts & Letters Daily”

Like Literary Hub, this site curates articles on books and the literary and publishing world from all over the internet. It does so under three categories:

  • Articles of Note: Currently (September 21, 2017), the top articles on the page are on Hemingway in LA (from the LA Times), hallucinogenic fungi (from hyperallergic.com), and Kingsley Amis at 70 (from The Guardian).
  • New Books: The first three articles in this column currently are a review of a book on what writers wear from The Times Literary Supplement, a review of Why Poetry? from the Washington Post, and a  book on the evolution of beauty reviewed in The New York Times.
  • Essays & Opinions: Currently the first three are an article on Evelyn Waugh’s Catholicism from First Things, an article in The Jacobin on James Burnham’s journey from Trotskyite to conservative editor, and a London Review of Books review article by Pankraj Mishra on a collection of books exploring the future of liberalism in the age of Trump and Brexit.

The site is much less flashy than Literary Hub, being organized around three columns of articles under the three categories listed above. It adds no images to the article summaries and so allows for a great deal of content in a small online space.

The other feature of the site is the column of links on the left hand side of the page. From top to bottom following a box allowing you to subscribe to a weekly email newsletter, these are grouped under “Nota Bene” (a collection of miscellaneous articles), “The ALD Archives,” “Newspapers” (26 newspapers from around the world), “Breaking” (links to breaking news on various media outlets), “Magazines” (a long list), and “Book Reviews” (another long list of links). One fun feature under “Archives” is a “Random” link which randomly selects an article in the archives to show you.

Essentially, this is a portal into the literary world. I like the simple organization without the distraction of visual images that links you to content that appears of interest. The alphabetical lists of links to magazines and literary reviews is handy to have in one place.

As noted above, Arts & Letters Daily also sends a weekly email of its “Top Reads” each Friday. Here is a screen capture of the web-version of the September 15, 2017 newsletter:

Top Reads From Arts Letters Daily

The motto of Arts & Letters Daily is “Veritas odit moras,” a quote from Seneca that translates “truth hates delay.” I don’t know if this is what the editors were thinking, but the format and content of Arts & Letters Daily seems designed to get the truth out without delay, a mission ever more crucial in our day.

Flash Fiction

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Photo by J.D. Hancock [CC BY 2.0] via Flickr

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

This is perhaps the classic example of something I just learned about today — flash fiction. This six word story has a beginning, middle, and end and leaves us wondering about the rest of the story. It was attributed to Ernest Hemingway, crafted to win a bet. This Quote Investigator article suggests the actual origins of this quote. The attribution to Hemingway makes good sense. Hemingway was a master of economical use of language, and in 1931 published a collection of 18 stories taking up a total of 31 pages titled In Our Time.

“Flash fiction” is a catch-all term for very short fiction works. A maximum might be 2,000 words, but can also include “Six word stories,” “Twitterature” (stories in 140 characters or less), and stories within various length limits: 50 words (the “dribble”), 100 words (the “drabble”), 150, 300, or 1,000 words (source: Wikipedia). Other terms include short short stories, micro fiction, sudden fiction, or quick fiction.

David Gaffney, one of the better known authors of flash fiction gives these tips for writing flash fiction:

  1. Start in the middle. You don’t have time in this very short form to set scenes and build character.
  2. Don’t use too many characters. …
  3. Make sure the ending isn’t at the end. …
  4. Sweat your title. …
  5. Make your last line ring like a bell. …
  6. Write long, then go short.

Writer’s Digest describes the appeal of writing flash fiction in this way:

Why would I want to write flash fiction? Flash fiction slush piles tower as high as those for longer forms, but the rewards are similar—and with a flash story, you’ve likely spent less time writing and revising. Opportunities run the whole gamut of publishers, and flash publishing credits can count toward those you need to qualify for membership in professional writing organizations such as the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America and the Horror Writers Association. And no matter what you write, stringent word limits can challenge and sharpen your skills in ways that can improve even your long-form work.

So you might be wondering where you can go to read examples of flash fiction. Here are some websites I found that were a good starting place for me:

100 Word Story. It’s just what it says, an edited collection of 100 word stories.

Flash Fiction Magazine publishes a daily story and also offers a free e-book of stories.

Well, I’m approaching 500 words, positively wordy in the flash fiction world. I would be interested in hearing if others follow this genre, your favorite authors, sites, etc.

Shelf Awareness

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Shelf Awareness (2)

Screenshot of top portion of Shelf Awareness home page, accessed September 19, 2017.

“If you cannot read all your books…fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that you at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them, at any rate, be your acquaintances.”  –Winston Churchill

I do think it is valuable to be aware of the books on our shelves and I love this Churchill quote. But that is not the focus of this post (although I thought you would enjoy the quote).

I subscribe to various newsletters and online publications to keep up with the publishing world, and the related worlds of literary figures, bookselling, libraries, and of course, new books. I’ve recently come across a new source of book news, Shelf Awareness. I’ve included a screenshot of the home page, as it appeared on Tuesday September 19.

Shelf Awareness is designed for two groups. One group is readers, which probably includes anyone who follows this blog. Each week they identify 25 of the best books coming out during the current week and provide reviews of those books. These include categories of fiction, mystery and thriller, science fiction and fantasy, food and wine, biography and memoir, history, business and economics, body, mind and spirit, social science, nature and environment, children and young adult, and poetry. Not all categories are included in every issue. There is also a “book candy” section with newsy tidbits, and an author interview. In the current children and young adult section, for example, you will find a review of a children’s version of It Takes a Village by Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The other group is people in the book trade. Shelf Awareness describes its effort for this group as follows:

“Shelf Awareness was born out of a need to provide a range of people in the industry–booksellers, librarians, book buyers at nontraditional stores, members of the media, marketers, salespeople, publishers and others–with essential information for their businesses, including news about titles coming out now, titles getting buzz in the media, authors on major shows, movie tie-ins, sleepers, news about the business, tips on how to sell, etc. We publish daily–first thing in the morning.”

In today’s issue, I learned that Amazon is opening two new warehouses to join two others in Ohio, one near Cincinnati, and one near Cleveland in North Randall (the other warehouses are near Columbus). There is also news of a bookstore closing (openings and closings are announced on many days), the theme for University Press Week (“Knowledge Matters”), an image of the day, Top Library Recommended Titles for October, a book trailer (a pretty common site on publisher websites these days), and more.

All this may be accessed on the Shelf Awareness website, but may also come to your email inbox. The readers version is called “Shelf Awareness for Readers” and is sent out twice a week on Tuesdays and Fridays. The booktrade newsletter is called “Shelf Awareness Pro” and is sent out daily. There is a checkbox that allows you to subscribe to both. The subscription is free. Of course, a service like this includes advertising and “advertorials” including links to buy books (not in the reviews however).

One of the leading alternatives in this field is Publishers Weekly, which also puts out a variety of daily newsletters. While the two overlap around reviews of books and news about the publishing industry, Shelf Awareness, at this point at least, seems much more streamlined, offering a much more reader-focused newsletter, and what seems to me a wider spectrum but more concise daily news summary of the book world.

If you are interested not only in what is on your personal shelves, but what will be appearing on the shelves of your favorite bookseller, Shelf Awareness is a great new resource. Give them a visit!

What to Read

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Long_Room_Interior,_Trinity_College_Dublin,_Ireland_-_Diliff.jpg

Long Room, Trinity College, Dublin. Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia

In one sense, answering the question of what to read is truly daunting. In 2010, Google ran an algorithm to estimate the number of books ever published in its efforts to develop the capacity to catalog all these books. They came up with the number 129,864,880. That brings new meaning to one of my favorite laments, “so many books, so little time.”

That does make the choice of what we read worthy of some thought. This is also part of the “battle” we readers face. Consider, if we read 50 books a year for 40 years, that is 2,000 books out of all those ever published. This is one of those FOMO (fear of missing out) moments all of us encounter. We will inevitably miss out on many books. For me, the question comes down to what book, or at least what types of books, do I not want to miss out on. Here are some considerations I bring to this question:

  • I want to read books that have stood the test of time–decades and even centuries have passed and they are still influential. I don’t just want to read about them, but want to follow advice Marilynne Robinson gave in a lecture: “Read the primary sources!” I’d class The Bible, works of Shakespeare, Plato, Homer, Augustine, Calvin, Doestoevsky, among others in this category. C. S. Lewis recommended we read one “old” book for every recent book we read in an essay introducing a very good old book, On the Incarnation by Athanasius
  • I want to read the best books I can in genres I’ve found life-giving, which for me ranges from mysteries to presidential and other leadership biographies, American history, and science writing.
  • Finally, I read books related to my own work and calling. In my case, I work in a Christian ministry among graduate students and faculty and hold a Masters degree in biblical studies. So I try to keep up on current literature in biblical studies, theology, and other ministry-related fields, as well as reading books on current developments in the world of higher education.

Your answers to these criteria will be different from mine, but they will help you think with greater discrimination about the books you choose to read, and be able to give better criteria to booksellers and librarians who may help you connect to these books.

There are a variety of reading lists one may find online that may help with the first and, to some degree, the second of my three criteria. For the third, so much of this comes from reading reviews of books in journals related to your field of work, or just going to those sections at a good university library. Here are a few sources of  book lists that I’ve found helpful:

  1. For books that have stood the test of time, the Great Books lists can be helpful, although they may be criticized as Western-centric. Other lists may compensate for that. Wikipedia provides the list of books that comprised the Great Books series as well as a list of universities that still have “Great Books” programs. One of these is St. John’s, which provides PDFs of the reading list by semester through the four years of their program.
  2. There are numerous lists of “100 greatest books,” some which may overlap with the Great Books. Wikipedia has gathered the most prominent of these lists in an article with links, including lists for genres like crime fiction, fantasy, and science fiction as well as more general lists.
  3. For the thoughtful Christian reader, James Emory White at his Church and Culture website, has a wonderful collection of lists including “Ten to Begin With,” “Twenty Five Toward a Christian Worldview,” and a “One Year Reading Program” of 26 books and twelve other topical lists. A personal favorite for discovering thoughtful Christian writing is Byron Borger’s “Booknotes” blog which connects you with his store, where you can order the books you read about, usually at a discount. Byron is one who can listen to you, and on the basis of what you tell him about yourself and your interests can suggest ten books to you–and they will be good suggestions. He typifies what is best about brick and mortar booksellers.

Of course, I hope you will follow Bob on Books if you do not already. Over the course of a year, I will review about 140 books along the lines of the books I like to read and think important, and I hope some of these will find their way into your hands as well. Equally, I hope some of my reviews may help you choose not to read certain books in favor of others more congruent to your answers to the question of “what to read.” That, also, is a good thing.

Readers’ Bootcamp

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exercise-boot-camp-clipart-1

“Bootcamp” WorldArtsMe

Perhaps the title involves a bit of hyperbole. But if we are indeed in a battle to find space in our lives for attentive reading amid the distractions of modern technological life, it might involve something akin to bootcamp, where in a short space of weeks, civilians are turned into soldiers, and where civilian habits that might get you killed in short order are exchanged for habits that enable you to live life under fire.

Perhaps the drastic metaphor of bootcamp has a place. At one time, our shopkeepers and farmers read Shakespeare, The Bible, Plato, Aristotle, John Locke and others. John Adams traveled from town to town with a “poet in his pocket.” The great ideas that shaped our republic came from people who weren’t academics, but who kept company in the books they read with great ideas. At one time in this country, workers’ Athenaeums  were popular for people who wanted to improve themselves and their understanding of the world. Apart from some things like TED talks, much of the content we have online that occupy much of our time are tweets that amuse or arouse us, memes, pictures and news of often-dubious and editorially biased origin. To break our addiction to these distractions to recover the experience of deep, extended and attentive reading might require something of a “bootcamp” experience in our lives.

Here are some starters I might suggest:

  • Figure out a time when you are mentally sharpest and carve out a space of that time to read. Maybe to start, decide on the 15-20 minutes you will dedicate to reading, or a goal to read 10 pages during this sharpest time.
  • Now, the hard part. Put yourself as far away from any screens including your smartphone as possible. You will find your ability to focus immeasurably enhanced by doing this.
  • At this point, I would strongly discourage reading on any tablet that is not a dedicated e-reader, and would favor using a physical book. Any piece of technology with other apps will provide distractions that will undermine the goal of attentive, undistracted reading.
  • Don’t start with a dense philosophical tome by Kant or Heidegger. Pick a genre and writer you like and start reading.
  • If you already have the book at hand, so much the better provided it doesn’t violate the previous suggestion!
  • If you don’t have something to read, I would suggest going either to your local library or a brick and mortar bookstore. If you want to cultivate a reading habit, you want to make friends with the people in these places who are highly motivated to help you find good books, because you will keep coming to them for recommendations! Besides, would you rather get a book recommendation from an algorithm than a friend?
  • Speaking of friends, find a book buddy, maybe someone else is on the same journey to recovering literacy that you are, that you can meet up with to talk about the books in your lives. This can also help as you graduate to books that require more mental effort to understand. I’ve often found that great books demand multiple minds to really grasp their full meaning and I see so much more when I read with friends.
  • Keep a book journal where you record the books you have read, and key thoughts you want to remember from those books, and how, if at all, the book has changed your thinking. Online tools like Goodreads make this convenient as long as you don’t get distracted from actually reading. (That’s really how this blog was born–as a way to remember what I read as well as to talk about books with others).

I’ll stop there other than suggesting that you might try working up to the goal of an hour of focused reading a day. Actually, I think if you follow some of these ideas, you will find yourself wanting to read more and stopping will be the problem.

Tomorrow, I will talk a bit more about what to read.

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.