Favorite Books: Part I

To whom it may concern:

First, my apologies. This post is long in many ways. So, to help speed things up, I've decided to break up this topic into at least two posts, maybe a third will evolve before it'd done. I promise not to do the same with music, movies, or art. Thus, without further ado . . . .

There may be no dearer topic to my heart than books and reading them. Mention books and my soul lights up, even my subconscious takes conscious notice. When combined with conversation (speaking) and writing, reading completes the social and communicatory trifecta.

I don't know why, but Blogger asks for my "favorite" books - plural. To me, being the geek that I am, my mind requires the word favorite to be a superlative. Thus, disallowing the possibility of there being more than one. However, I imagine they were just being generic with the classifications and really mean, what are the books which have meant the most to me in some way. I'll not bust their chops on this lest while living in a glass house I throw stones to my own detriment.

Before I begin giving titles, some preliminary remarks might help set the stage. All my life, people from all walks of life have told me that smart people read good books. Maybe that's true as far as it goes. My mentor in college used to answer the question, "what do you do for a living?" with, "I teach people to read difficult books." I always assumed he meant that because he taught Greek and Latin that they were difficult because of the effort required to translate them. Once I began reading ancient philosophy, even in translation, the import of his comment became all the more poignant.  One local pastor said on more than one occasion that he no longer had time to read good books: he only had time to read great books. Regardless of the minutiae one attaches to classification, I think Mark Twain summed it up quite memorably when he declared that:

"The man who will not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them." 

Collateral to this discussion, it didn't take me long in my reading career to realize that if challenging books had the power to make one smarter or wiser, then the one who wrote the book must, by default, already, and maybe forever, be smarter and wiser than the reader. So, now, when reminded of the habit of smart people to read good books, I agree with my well intentioned adviser before advancing the probability that smart, maybe I should say the smartest, people actually write the good books. Maybe wise people read them, but it takes something very special to write a good one.

Regardless, Blogger didn't ask about my theory of writing, but of my favorite books. I'm really glad that they asked for favorite books rather than my all time favorite book. However, even that broadening of the field doesn't remove my major hindrance to answering the question. The major problem for me is that I can never narrow down my choice to a single book for the same reason I can't narrow it down to a top 10 list, or even my top 10 within a given topic. I would argue that I have an internal, intuitive gauge of ranking books. It looks something like this: Loved it; hated it; or read it but won't read it again. Pretty generic I know, but in the "loved it" category fall many titles which I either have or will read over and over.

Someone during the Enlightenment, and I wouldn't put it past Frances Bacon to be the culprit, once remarked that if a book was worth reading, it was worth buying. That, in a time when books were very expensive, was probably very sage advice. But now that books are so much cheaper in relation to one's income, and free lending libraries so plentiful in most areas of the US, I'm beginning to see the wisdom of such a plan even more acutely. Thus, I've taken his statement and modified it. Now it reads, "unless a book is worth reading twice, don't buy it." This prevents buying a room full of books which I will have only read once.

Like many readers I know, I read a multitude of books at once, broken down into some broad categories. In order to prevent the truly great, and often difficult books, from being trampled by their easier, and typically more fun brethren, I discipline myself to have one slightly more difficult, non-fiction work in progress. This requires I set aside time and priority for it so it doesn't get started, then neglected for weeks. Generally these books cover anything from very deep and difficult philosophy or theology to just a non-fiction topic covering one's memoirs or autobiography. Next I make it a priority to read one serious fiction book usually drawn from some "classical" or literary reading list. Of course for those nights when I'm tired I reserve something lighter on deck. I think of this one as my fun book. It can be anything from popular fiction, which may or may not be easy reading, sci-fi, or just something contemporary. Obviously, there is some overlapping.

One last aside before beginning in earnest. It has been claimed, I think by John Piper, a minister in Minnesota,  that one is not affected by good books, but rather by good sentences within such books. With this I'd have to agree. Consider Jerry Bridges's book The Pursuit of Holiness. In it he lays out all sorts of illustrations and schema for sanctification, the pursuit of holy living. However, the only thing I took away from it was the rational for obeying divine commands, namely, "It is not the thing commanded but rather the majesty of the law giver which is the standard of obedience" (quoted from memory, sorry can't provide an exact citation). Not that all good books fall into this category, many are so revolutionary that they are paradigm shifting from the very beginning and challenge our thinking all the way thru. But by in large, the ideas which change our thinking, and by extension, our lives, typically come in small sound bites which attach themselves to our receptive brains, maybe after being opened to the ideas by the skill and intention of the author, or maybe as a stroke out of the blue.

Having preambled more than enough, I'll mercifully stop here and begin with my actual favorite books in my next post. Thanks for reading, and thanks especially for you patience. And if I might be so bold as to make a small assignment to read before next time, please have a look at O. Henry's The Four Million. It's a collection of a dozen or so very short stories. It's available in e-reader formats (most of them) at Gutenberg.org. Just food for thought to get you started.

Until next time,

Contemplate the mysteries, and remember to breathe.