On Reading

I began this year with the determination to read some great books. The kind of books, that is, that you remember for the rest of your life, and look back on with great fondness. The kind of book you honor in memory. For example, one of my favorites is How Green Was My Valley, by Richard Llewellyn. I read it back in early high school, I guess it was, and I don't remember all that much about it, except I do remember how it made me feel. I remember the tears I shed at the end, and there aren't many other books that have made me cry like that.

Another was Mutiny on the Bounty, by Nordhoff and Hall.

So I was hoping to be scrupulous about looking for that kind of book. Of course you never know for sure, but in truth I have kind of let down my guard and read a lot of merely okay books instead. I can hardly remember a single title, except for Carter Beats the Devil, which was great fun, and Out Stealing Horses, which was almost a great book, I think, but somehow falls just short by being awfully forlorn, in a Nordic way.

I have always loved books that made you aware of the passage of time, the brevity of life and our need to shake ourselves awake to this world during our short stay here. Both 'Valley' and 'Bounty' have that sense about them. Thornton Wilder's Our Town is another. I've seen the play produced numerous times, but I like best just to sit and read it every now and then. It always moves me.

The other development in my reading life this year has been my purchase of an ereader. I'm fine with these gadgets, I think, and will be using it more and more as time passes, I'm sure. But there's no doubt in my mind that something is truly and definitely lost in the setting aside of the book-as-object. Especially big books, which seem to continue in your peripheral vision even when you've put them down, whereas ebooks simply disappear. Even War and Peace is essentially insubstantial as an ebook (I loved War and Peace, by the way).

Most men I know have a rather puritanical attitude about reading. They only read something if they thing they should. If their pastor at church recommends it, for example, or if they think they can learn something important, a "life-lesson," as they say. Most of the guys I know (not the women, mind you) complain about not being able to focus for long, or about the author's unnecessarily large vocabulary. If you show them a book, they immediately note how many pages it is. In other words, most of the men I know, have some sort of deficiency when it comes to reading, but it shames them to admit it. Among Christian men, in my experience, there are few who simply read for pleasure. For them reading is work, not pleasure. Or it's education, or it's some form of personal betterment, but it is never simply joy.

Anyway, to get back to where I began, I'm yearning to read a really good book, a really special book. Perhaps The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, by Alan Jacobs. Or perhaps I'll just re-read How Green Was My Valley, that is if it's available in e-format.

Now Reading

"The Mrs." has been reading John Aiken's "Wolves" novels, or at least every one she can get her hands on. She loves 'em, and has just about convinced me that I should read them too. Here's the official website, a nice review from Strange Horizons, and an interview with the late author here (in which she says she offers a low opinion of the Narnia cycle and calls Aslan "that dreadful lion").

Me, I'm reading two novels just now. Neil Gaiman's Stardust (that's my riding the bus and lunch-break book), and also Perez Reverte's The Nautical Chart (my evenings on the couch book). I'm enjoying both quite a lot.

So what are you reading?

On Reading

Sometimes I take on too many reading projects at once. Then sometimes, one of these reading projects steals all of my attention, to the neglect of the others.

I've been reading Tim Keller's King's Cross for a while now, but intermittently, while other books grabbed the lion's share of my attention. But I'm aware that I've done the book a disservice and so I'll probably read it again, as soon as I'm finished.

The book that occupied much of my reading time lately has been Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. For a while I thought it was boding well to be one of the finest novels I'd ever read. Robinson is a very fine writer, and there was much to like here (and I'll certainly read more of his work), but this book was ultimately unsatisfying. Fascinating, but unsatisfying.

Back to the Keller book. It's a kind of devotional commentary on Mark. So that in itself is particularly valuable to me because I'm starting to read Mark devotionally these days and to journal about it. The essence of my approach is not to assume too much as I read, but to try to read the document as if for the first time. So, for example, when Mark uses that phrase, "son of God," in his very first sentence, I want neither to pass it by unnoticed nor to assume I know exactly what Mark means by it. Instead, to remind myself, as I read, to look for Mark's own answers to these kinds of questions. In other words, letting the author, if he will, answer my question in his own time.

Well, that's an aside. Back to my reading these days. I've also been reading Paul Miller's A Praying Life. I'm finding it very helpful, but this one too I've been reading "intermittently." Both this and the Keller book I'll finish off soon though.

a=Also, just to note, I'm reading A Praying Life in ebook format, which doesn't feel quite as real somehow.

Now there are three other books I've started lately. Island of Lost Maps, Out Stealing Horses, and Neil Gaiman's Stardust. See, this is what comes of wandering through libraries in your spare time.

Ereading Update

Well, I bought myself a Nook. It arrived this week and I've spent a couple of days just kind of getting friendly with it.

The device came with Bram Stoker's Dracula and Louisa May Alcott's Little Women already loaded. I downloaded a couple of free Bible translations to start with, bought a 99 cent book from Barnes and Noble (just for practice)... Consider Phlebas, by Iaian Banks. I also downloaded the first ebook that caught my eye from my local library website, that being Michael Korda's Hero: The Life and Legend of Lawrence of Arabia, which should be an interesting story.

Bottom line, I'm loving this little doohickey.

Wednesday Book Report

I haven't read a great book lately. I mean, a really great book. The last really great novel I read was They Came Like Swallows, by William Maxwell.

I've put down a few books lately without finishing them. Dancing in the Dark was one. I had high hopes for that one, but it turned out to be rather heavy-handed literary criticism for the most part.

So I turned to a fantasy novel I'd picked up at a library sale a while back (costing me a nickel per book or something like that): Talon of the Silver Hawk, by Raymond Feist. It was pretty awful, juvenile stuff. I might have liked I when I was fourteen, reading all those John Carter of Mars novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Still working on the stash of books I bought from the library book sale, I have now turned to Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt. This fantasy has what the Feist book did not, a fascinating story, and fine sentence-making. If I like this book in the end as much as I like its beginning, I'll be reading a lot more Robinson.

Finally, I sent for Tim Keller's King's Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. Even just the title has me intrigued.

Book Chatter

I like book bloggers. I'm glad they're out there. Each one of them seems to read lots more books than I ever can in a year. Plus, I really like those book bloggers who read old books at least some of the time. In other words, they're not exclusively committed to the contemporary.

Many book bloggers feature reading challenges. That's where you commit to reading a certain number of a certain kind of book, or a series of books on a certain theme, or with a certain common thread (10 coming-of-age books, or 12 time-travel books, or one Zane Grey western per month, or whatever, or every Hugo Award novel). In other words, many book bloggers are sort of obsessive-compulsive about reading. Me too. Maybe a little.

But I'm only a part-time book blogger. A once in a while book blogger. But I read a fair amount and I do like to give myself reading challenges. Like the (currently on-hold) challenge of reading through human history by reading interlocking biographies. Now that's a challenge. I started with Julius Caesar (you have to start somewhere), and made my way through a few generations until I finally got really tired of the Roman Empire. I then amended the challenge to include novels, not just biographies, so that I could spread out a little, wandering further afield. Anyway, it's on hold. I'm somewhere in the second century. Long way to go.

Mostly, lately, the way I find novels is by wandering the aisles of my local library. The trouble there is that my local library seems to be weeding out the old books, stuffing the shelves with contemporary murder mysteries and romance novels (two forms I'm not excited about, sorry). The truth is, in many things I'm just not into contemporary.

The best two novels I read last year were William Maxwell's They Came Like Swallows (1937), and So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980). They were amazing. I'm interested in reading others like them. Glimpses into the past, congering up from out of mostly ordinary memories, the extraordinary portrait of a time and place. These kinds of books are like complicated artifacts, beautiful and strange, and strangely familiar.

My reading challenge for 2011 is simply to read outstanding books this year. I want the end-of-the-year list to be evocative of many glorious hours of reading happiness. I've seldom kept such a list in past years, not often, but I'll do so here at the blog, along with a sure-to-grow list of books I just might want to read and don't want to forget about. Because, you know, there's nothing quite like a good book.

4 Books

I'm reading a couple of history books. One of them is a history of popular music, which happens to be a subject in which I've always been interested. The book is called The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, by Donald Clarke. Written in 1996 and now out of print, it's one of those books you can get for a penny (plus shipping of course) on Amazon. I picked it up at a library sale for a dime! I'm particularly interested in the early decades of popular music. Everyone knows it's all been downhill since about 1934!

The other history book I've been reading is The Forgotten Man: A History of the Great Depression, by Amity Shlaes. These books are more like judicious compilations of facts than actual narratives. I would prefer the latter, but am enjoying them both nonetheless.

Meanwhile, I've moved on to my third Frank Viola opus, this one being From Eternity To Here: Rediscovering the Ageless Purpose of God. I think Viola gets the focus right, consistently. I've just started this one, but I fully expect it to consume my attention and push those other two books to the back burner.

By the way, I'll probably be sharing from this book in future posts, but for now I would strongly urge you to listen to one of his podcasts here. I just listened to Living by the Indwelling Life of Christ, an excellent rendition of a sadly neglected aspect of Biblical (and practical) theology. That is, union with Christ. That neglect, by the way, has had a woeful effect on the church, imho.

Finally, I'm slowly reading Lyle Vander Broek's Breaking Barriers: The Possibilities of Christian Community in a Lonely World (another 1-cent book at Amazon!). I loved the introduction so much that I had to summarize it (here). This will be a slow read, and probably the last to finish among these four.

There, that's what I'm reading. Meanwhile, I'm glad I haven't lost the discipline of turning pages, like Bill Kinnon!

Sunday Morning Reading Notes

The weather in Maine has been outstanding for about a month now, but it's not too soon to begin thinking about winter. The WSJ checks in with the five best books on extreme cold.

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I picked up a few old books at the library yesterday: Christopher Morley's The Haunted Bookshop and Parnassus on Wheels, and Willa Cather's Death Comes to the Archbishop. The librarian who checked them out, an older woman, said mistily, "Nice old books," as if it were somewhat remarkable--and I suppose it is--to see them come across her desk. The old books are gradually disappearing from library shelves, to be replaced by contemporary stuff--or perhaps the stacks are simply consolidated to make room for more computers.

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I walked home from work on Friday reading. Hadn't done that in quite some time. Managed not to crash into telephone poles or trip over curbs, and dutifully took my face out of the book at intersections. I used to do this on return trips from the local library as a kid. The book, by the way, was Loren Estleman's The Adventures of Johnny Vermillion, which was engaging enough but not great.

Saturday Book Notes

Rodney Stark on the Crusades. His book is called God's Battalions: the Case for the Crusades.

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Randy Alcorn loves the feel, the smell, of old books. Me too.

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To Kill a Mockingbird turns 50.

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Here's one I'd like to read: Last Call: the Rise and Fall of Prohibition, by Daniel Okrent.


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And here's one I'm reading now: The Pacific, by Hugh Ambrose.

"A much neglected means of grace..."

John Stott is retiring from public ministry (at the age of 88). His little book, Basic Christianity, was a great help to me in my early years as a Christian. Now, in his final book, The Radical Disciple, he leaves these words of gentle exhortation and farewell:

As I lay down my pen for the last time (literally, since I confess I am not computerized) at the age of eighty-eight, I venture to send this valedictory message to my readers. I am grateful for your encouragement, for many of you have written to me.

Looking ahead, none of us of course knows what the future of printing and publishing may be. But I myself am confident that the future of books is assured and that, though they will be complemented, they will never be altogether replaced. For there is something unique about books. Our favorite books become very precious to us and we even develop with them an almost living and affectionate relationship. Is it an altogether fanciful fact that we handle, stroke and even smell them as tokens of our esteem and affection? I am not referring only to an author’s feeling for what he has written, but to all readers and their library. I have made it a rule not to quote from any book unless I have first handled it. So let me urge you to keep reading, and encourage your relatives and friends to do the same. For this is a much neglected means of grace. . . .

Once again, farewell!

HI: Andy Unedited.

Functionally Illiterate Christians

Found on Randy Alcorn's blog:

One of my lifelong loves has been reading great books. I lament the decrease in the number of Christians who are avid readers. We seem to be more interested in television, movies, popular culture, and all kinds of trivia than in great books. And we are leading our children and grandchildren into functional illiteracy, shallowness, and superficiality. Most sadly of all, someone who isn’t a reader will never be a reader of God’s Word. What does this suggest about where church leaders, and therefore churches, will be tomorrow?

On Reading Projects

Reading projects. I'm a great fan of them. For some time now I've been on a personal quest to read through human history from the time of Julius Caesar to the present. Just now I'm reading Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower. It was Godlsworthy's book on Julius Caesar that got this reading project started.

Anyway, this is a long term project that may never actually come to and end. After Goldsworthy I will have to read something that takes place in the post-Fall-of-Rome world (sixth century), whether biography, straight history, or even historical fiction. Suggestions appreciated.

Speaking of reading projects, here's another. Not too long ago I read a book about the last large-scale naval battle in history, called The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors. What an amazing story. There was at least one awestruck "wow" on my lips for each page, often several.

Anyway, I decided I would go back to the beginning of the "war in the Pacific" by reading a book about Pearl Harbor, and then reading through the war, island battle by island battle. This might be over-doing it a bit, but that's the plan for now. So the book of the moment is the meticulously researched Long Day's Journey into War, by Stanley Weintraub.

Now, I should mention that the true guru of reading projects is Sherry at Semicolon. She's reading biographies of all the U.S. presidents, for example. Great idea, and a great way to learn American political history. Her blog is an amazing compendium of things bookish.

I have one more reading project in mind of 2010, this one a little different than the others. In this project, rather than reading a series of books, I'm going to read the same thing over and over. I've chosen Paul's letter to the Romans. I'm thinking I'll read it once a week for the entire year. I'm going to center my devotional journaling around the letter. I'm also going to read Ray Ortlund's devotional book, A Passion for God: Prayers and Meditations on the Book of Romans. Expect much Romans-informed blogging around these parts.

Bob's One Big Awesomely Important Tip on Reading

Bruce Ashford has been posting on the subject of reading (one of my favorite topics). In part 3 of the series he offers tips on getting the most from your reading. He has much good advice here, something like Bookishness 101, including this, always carry a book. But of course you'll only do this if you've got a good book to carry, something you really can't wait to get back to. Something that makes you feel that everything else in life is an annoying diversion from the "real world" of the book. That's the book you're going to carry with you. But what if you've never enjoyed reading so much that you found it difficult to put the book down?

I know an awful lot of adults who have trouble reading. [BTW, what the heck happened to our schools that there were no teachers who could effectively convey the sheer joy and exhilaration of a good book?] Many of my friends who have trouble reading seem to think they really should read, they'd like to read, but they just can't seem to focus for very long. In short, they speak of reading the same way they speak of dieting. It's something they know they should do, and they know it's good for them, but the just don't seem to have the discipline. They admit this with shame and promises to try harder in the future.

Can I say, sheesh! Christians are not supposed to be fatalistic. We like to repeat after Paul, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." [Phil 4:13] Except grow and learn when it comes to reading, apparently.

My mother instilled in me the joy of reading when I was a child. She made sure we visited the local library often, and she let us linger there as long as wanted. The point is, long before I knew that reading was good for me, reading was giving me pleasure. And that, my friend, is the key.

Now, most Christians I know who have trouble reading feel a little guilty about that. They first started feeling guilty about it in the early grades, when the other kids snickered and the teacher grew impatient as they stumbled through a reading exercise. That guilt might have been compounded when they became Christians, because all of the major Christian gurus write all those "life-changing" books, and here they are with their unchanged lives, unable to read past page 5. The thing is, reading is completely off their real-life grid (although it certainly is on their fantasy Christian life grid). What to do?

Here's my advice. Reading is never going to make it to the top of your to-do list if it's merely a chore, a good-for-me duty, like brushing teeth or watching PBS. What makes a kid love reading is the sheer joy of it, and what's going to make an adult love reading is for him or her to discover that joy also. You might say, it's time to start thinking like a kid again!

Now, admittedly, it's harder for adults to discover joy than it is for kids. We're jaded. We think in terms of future pay-off, kids think in terms of present experience. So this is going to to take a little shift in thinking for some. The question you need to ask is, what kind of book is going to give me joy?

I mean, really. Don't be embarrassed, answer honestly. Is it a comic book? Go ahead, get into it. Is it a children's book with big colorful pictures? Is adventure your cup of tea? Or do you just long for a good laugh now and then? I guarantee you, there's a book for you out there. No, a bunch of books. If you would really like to become a better reader, start here: Dude, read for pleasure!

Now, I've tried this advice on a few Christian friends, and I gotta tellya, nobody believes me! It's hard to crack through the Christian-legalism when it comes to reading. As good Christian types, doing something for pleasure sounds vaguely sinful. Instead, they they think they should read something useful (because we're all utilitarians at heart), or something "life-changing" (blech!), or perhaps that one book that the Christian consumer culture is buzzing about this month (also blech!), or maybe something the pastor recommended (that's a common one), and on top of all this, something quick and easy. The thing is, none of these books are likely to give you joy. None of them are going to capture your imagination, and therefore cause you to forget everything else and simply be enthralled!

I'm serious. Read for pleasure. Read for joy. Read to be enthralled.

One last point. You may not have ever stopped to think about this, but all your favorite movies are stories. That's what they are. Stories. Story-telling is perhaps the art form that undergirds all other art forms, it is a built-in inclination of all humanity. So if by now you're wondering what kind of book might give you pleasure (and I hope you are), my answer is, it's probably some kind of cracking good yarn, that's what kind. And by the way, your local library is full of these, for every reading level.

Look, I know I've had certain advantages. Namely, a mother and big brother who enjoyed reading and set the example for me. They instilled in me the love of reading and talked about it with me as I grew up. That kind of thing is huge. If you didn't have that, I'm sorry. The next best thing might be a friend who also enjoys reading, with whom you can sit down over a coffee (or a beer, a schnapps, or whatever) and recount the latest chapters in the book you've been reading. In other words, tell the story back to someone. I mean it. Look for a friend who likes to read too, and share your stories with one another. Try it. I promise you, you are going to love doing that.

Bottom line: go find yourself some reading joy!

[Update: Check out Why Should Christ-Followers Read Fiction? Lotta good points.]

Summer Reading.

You're starting to see the annual "summer reading" articles, a kind of ritual post for bookish types: Christianity Today tells us what their editorial staff is reading this summer, and Al Mohler does the same here.

Presumably "summer reading" is different than Spring, Fall, or Winter reading. Mohler's list is all military history, for example. For me, reading is a continuous adventure, with ever-changing landscapes and seasons, but my choices in summer or not much different than the rest of the year. I try always to be reading a novel, always at least one book of Christian spirituality by an author I trust, and a third book which might have as its subject some episode or period of history, some facet of natural science, or anything else that catches my fancy.

Anyway, I like these "summer reading" articles because they give me ideas for my own future reading. I keep feeding my brain titles and authors, and my brain has its own arcane way of filing this information so that as I wander the library aisles, search a catalog, or (less often) browse the shelves of a bookstore, titles jump out of me: yes, I remember reading something about this somewhere.

This past week I made two visits to the local public library, carrying home a small stack of novels, but probably only one that I'll actually read (that's how my system works). That one: Carlos Ruiz Zafon's The Shadow of the Wind. Oh my, this one looks really good. I've just started, but it's got me in its grip.

As for the "Christian spirituality" book, I'm slowly reading and enjoying Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. I talked about this in our small group last night. I actually have a lot of ease in my life right now, a lot of satisfaction, and very little suffering (well, none actually). But I know that suffering will come again someday, and although I do realize that we are never really "ready" for it, I want to understand what God has to say about it. I want not to have to work through illusions and misconceptions as I face my season of suffering. That's why I'm reading this book. I'm about half-finished, and I high recommend the chapters by Steve Saint, Carl Ellis, and David Powlinson. Much wisdom here.

And then there's the third reading stream, which is usually some form of history (including sports history, a topic I find fascinating). Right now I'm reading something that will help in my work. It's a text book on the subject of cartographic history (the history of map-making), called Maps: Finding our Place in the World. Of this book someone said:

From religious pilgrimages and vacation road trips to depictions of the ocean floor and the magical landscapes of J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, maps chart both physical and imaginary worlds. As geographer Denis Cosgrove explains "World" is a social concept . . . a flexible term, stretching from physical environment to the world of ideas, microbes, and sin. Arguably, all these worlds can be mapped.

Cool. Plus, one chapter was written by an associate of mine.

That ought to do it for my summer reading plan! What's yours?

Saturday Library Post 1

It's Saturday morning, and I'm in the library. Only this morning I've brought my laptop, which seems a little disloyal to all these books surrounding me.

Anyway, I think I've probably mentioned (a million times) that I love the library. I love little libraries, like the kind in which I spent so much of my childhood
9and like the one I'm in this morning), and I love big ones, like the NYPL and the BPL. When I was a boy, my best friend George Knorr (where is he now, I wonder) and I used to walk to the library on just about every fine Saturday morning, each of us coming home with an armful of books more often than not. As I think of those days, they are always sunny. Why is that, do you suppose? For I'm sure it was not always so.

This morning, walking into my local public library (on a sunny morn, by the way), browsing the new books rack, I find this: Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, of which Nicholson Baker said,

"Oddly inspiring.…This is the Super Size Me of lexicography….Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.”

Speaking of reading, I've begun John Piper's The Pleasures of God. Just out of curiosity, I tracked down the single Amazon reviewer who gave this book a 1-star rating:

I read this for a theology class and found is crass, speculative, and self-serving. The picture of God as a pleasure-mongering hedonist was horrifying. It runs absolutely counter to the biblical data used to support it. I don't recommend this book even for a door stop - too light weight!

I will only say this: did you ever notice that people who take theology classes are always claiming books and authors are "too lightweight" for them, thus showing off their theological sophistication?

Anyway, here's a quote from the book itself:

I regard this book as a vision of God through the lens of his happiness. What the church and the world need today, more than anything else, is to know and love god--the great, glorious, sovereign, happy God of the Bible. Very few people think of God as supremely happy in the fellowship of the Trinity and in the work of creation and redemption. The volcanic exuberance of God over the worth of his Son and the work of his hands and welfare of his people is not well-known. God's delight in being God is not sung the way it should be, with wonder and passion, in the worship places of the world. And we are thepoorer and weaker for it.

I'll take Piper over aforesaid theology-student any day.

On Saturday (Sometimes) I'm a Litblogger

I'm somewhere in the second century of my AD Reading plan. That's the history-nerd reading extravaganza in which I read interlocking biographies (I actually began with Julius Caesar, in the pre-AD era) that carry me generation by generation through the centuries, all the way to the present! Well, to read interlocking biographies was the original idea, but I've softened that restriction considerably. When I can't find a biography I want to read, I try a general history book or even a novel set in the period.

[I'd love to do this with a group of readers, three or four say, each reading different books but coming together to discuss their discoveries (even on a blog!). Calling all history-nerds!]

Anyway, the current book is called Rome of the Caesars, by Thomas Africa. It takes up the lives of a series of first and second century folks, from (among others) Herod Agrippa to the apostle Paul to Galen, whose dates were 129-200, according to Wikipedia.

From here I'm going to move sideways, I think, and look for more books about this period, but in browsing the stacks of my local public library (the blessed shrine), I think I may have stumbled on something. A novel set in second-century England, called Island of Ghosts, by Gillian Bradshaw.

If you're like me, you remember wandering through library stacks as a young boy, perhaps 12, old enough now to venture into the "adult" section, and probably in terrible awe of the rows and rows of mysterious and promising legends that now surround you! Not sure where to begin, you find a secret place, deep in the stacks where no one can see you, browse the spines on the lower shelves (drawn to the thickest and therefore most thoroughly engrossing tomes), flip quickly to the first page, and begin. The familiar world falls quickly away. You are not in a library at all, but perhaps in a country graveyard at night, in England. You have fortuitously discovered Great Expectations. And you gladly exchange your old familiar world for this new one, though it is surely strange and frightening (or because it is so).

Do you remember that feeling? And do young readers still feel that way about books? Do they still read old books, old legends, not because required by school, but because they hear the call from that world within the book, and are simply drawn?

Well, I've only read the first paragraph of Island of Ghosts, but consider me drawn.

On Christian Reading Habits

Most of my Christian friends think reading is very good for them, like daily exercise or eating your vegetables. They try to do it. They often say, "I wish I had the time to read more . . . " They start many more books than they finish. They like books that affirm them and tell them they're princes and princesses, rugged adventurers or lovely to the core. In other words, they look for books that tell them what they want desperately to be told (a phenomenon mis-labeled "encouragement" in Christian circles).

I almost never run into guys in the church who read novels. Sometimes they'll read history or self-improvement. Some are into politics. Few indulge themselves in mere fiction. This has been my experience, but I don't know for sure that it's representative. Whatever happened, I sometimes wonder, to getting lost in a good book.

I know some adults who say they wish they were better readers. I tell them to read something that will capture their imagination, rather than trying to slog through another forgettable self-improvement best-seller or theologically dubious book about spiritual warfare or something. Get into a ripping good yarn.

But you know what? No one has ever taken my advice.

Anyway, a co-worker of mine has been raving about a novel called Child 44. I finally took her advice and started reading it, and all I have to say is, I'm good and lost. I believe the commonplace reviewer's term is "gripping." I'm not normally into harrowing murder mysteries, but this one, taking place against the brilliantly-drawn backdrop of Stalinist Russia, is simply very difficult to put down.

On Saturday (Sometimes) I'm a Litblogger

Have you seen the article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled Is Google Making Us Stupid? The author, Nicholas Carr, suggests that our love affair with the Internet is rearranging the neural pathways in our brains, dis-inclining us to careful, extended focus, making us impatient skimmers instead of readers. Now, I happen to know that Carr says all this not because I've read the article, but because I've skimmed a blogpost about the article over at From Where I Sit.

So I'm guessing the author's on to something. Carr puts it this way:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

If all this is real--I mean on a culture-wide level--and if it is truly a long-term trend, then sitting all morning with a good book is becoming increasingly counter-cultural and even perhaps counter-chemical (in terms of brain chemistry). It feels that way for me sometimes. The people I know who are most plugged in culturally, most at home in the tech-age, are the people I least expect to be curling up with a good book.

I myself sense at times a mental push-pull when I sit down to read. As if I am swimming upstream, as it were, against an internal tendency or trend. If all this is so, then reading becomes all the more a kind of discipline, like meditation or chosen silence. Let me always be a rebel in the cause of "deep reading." Happily against the grain, that's me. In choosing to read, rather than skim, we choose the great good that is a quiet journey of the mind. When all about us our friends are riding roller-coasters, we choose a raft on a slow river. More and more these days, I want to be a defender of this waning practice.

And now I'm going to get off the computer, throw a load in the washing machine, and sit down with a mug of java and a good book.

Oh, by the way, I'm reading Margaret Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. It's beautifully slow and deep. I'm loving it.

On Saturday (Sometimes) I'm a Litblogger

One of the best contemporary novels I've read in recent years (not that I've read so many), was Leif Enger's Peace Like a River. Now I see he's come through with a sophomore effort, So Brave, Young, & Handsome. I've read no reviews, but if it's half as wonderful as the first novel, I'm all over it!

On Saturday (Sometimes) I'm a Litblogger: The AD Reading Plan

The AD Reading Plan is a long term project for reading through history by reading interlocking biographies. Here are the basic guidelines.

Historical fiction is allowable, although it probably should be the exception rather than the rule. Biography and autobiography will form the basis of this plan.

Begin within a generation or two of the Year 1. Browse the biography section at your local library or do your research online. Choose a life you think will fascinate and inform, someone who stood at the center of important events. This is the first "link" in the biography chain.

In the course of this "life," you will come across mention of numerous people and events which may help in choosing the next biography. These are intended to be "interlocking biographies," so the the second subject should not only be younger than the first, but his or her life should have intersected in some way with the life of the first. And, obviously, the second life should carry us further along the historical stream.

In the same way, the second "subject" will lead the reader into contact with the third, and so on. In a real sense, then, these lives intersect one another, and the next choice of the reader will be somewhat constrained by the events and the setting of of the previous. This is why one should choose the books carefully, and always be looking out for the next life as you read along. That next life will no doubt carry you into new lands, new conditions, and of course a whole new generation.

Thus, the plan may start in Rome (or ancient China, or the Middle East, wherever you choose), but the life of one's subject may in time carry you off to England or Spain or North Africa, and the next life to yet another locale. But you are not leaping through history (or geography) randomly; instead you are reading history, generation by generation, by reading lives.

After all, history unfolds life by life and place by place, and so to read history in this way, life by life, generation by generation, is in accord with the actual nature of time and change (aka "history").

This is a long term plan. It may take several years to complete, and at times it may be a challenge to find the next book. Other possibilities are to read through the history of a nation in the same manner, or, say, the history of a great city (like Rome, or London, or New York). In this latter case, one is constrained not only generationally by locationally, but in the end one achieves a deep sense of the history of that place.

I'm going to begin my reading plan with a kind of stage-setting book, going back to the time of Julius Caesar, who (you history buffs may recall) crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, bringing an end to the Roman Republic and setting in motion a chain of events that would establish a far-flung "empire" that stretched from England to North Africa and to the border of Persia in the East. So my first book will be, Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland.

And where I go from there . . . only time will tell!