Books, Books, Glorious Books!

I am a reader (as if the above title didn’t give that away!). I love to read, but I’m not particularly well-read. I usually read fun books – mystery novels, mostly. If God could somehow message me with the number of mystery novels I’ve read over the last few years, I’m sure I’d be shocked. Hours and hours and hours I’ve spent with these books. With an occasional non-fiction or serious lit kind of book thrown in. I’ve started 2 book clubs (at each of my last 2 churches), partly to encourage myself to read something other than a mystery novel! But I have expanded my horizons through mysteries. I’ve learned some history and experienced some cultures I’d know little or nothing about without these books. Admittedly, though, my goal in this reading is not to expand my mind. Mainly I just read them for fun.

I don’t buy books, though.  Ever.  Unusual for a reader, I know.  I just borrow them. Mostly from the library, sometimes from generous friends! 

A few years ago, just before Lent, my sweet husband innocently suggested I give up books for Lent, as Lauren Winner writes about in Girl Meets God. I was horrendously offended! While I’m not quite as addicted to them as Winner was, books are often my lifeline. At that time, Our Girl was small, I was struggling with this little creature who was so different than I expected, and I was often home alone. Books helped me maintain my sanity, and the idea of giving them up induced a panicky feeling. When my own life was too overwhelming, or too boring, or just too ordinary, I escaped into another world. It wasn’t usually a world I wanted to live in, just a world it was fun to visit in my mind.

These days, I think I could survive 40 days without books (after all, I could read blogs instead! – though that might defeat the Lenten purpose). And maybe someday I will give up books for Lent, or at least mystery novels. But surprisingly, my goal for this summer is to read more, not less. More non-fiction among the mysteries. I currently have Blue Like Jazz and Blood Brothers on my nightstand in my “To-Read” pile. I also need to find To Kill a Mockingbird for book club, but I’m finding it hard to pick that one up since I’ve read it before (even though I was only 18 when I read it, and I’m sure it’ll be a different experience reading it this time). I’m waiting for a Barbara Kingsolver book to be available at the library, and it seems like I’ve got one more book at home somewhere that I’m forgetting. If I’m not careful, I’m going to overwhelm myself! I love that I can go online and request books from the library so I don’t even need to find them on the shelf (which is difficult with small ones).

I’m currently reading Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. I read in another blog that it started strong and ended strong but kind of bogged down in the middle, which I would say has been my experience as well. There are some bits that I’ve really had to slog through, as I’m out of the habit of reading theology. But I’m very thankful I picked it up (I’m almost finished). I appreciate McLaren’s generosity of spirit and theology. I heard him speak once, and he seems like a genuinely kind man. I’m grateful for this particular book as it provides me with a vocabulary for explaining much of what I believe about God, Jesus, the Bible, etc. I’ve never been good at debating. I can memorize facts and words for a test, but I don’t hold onto them in my head very well, and sometimes I have a hard time verbalizing what I believe. Particularly when the foundation is a bit different than people often expect for a Baptist minister’s wife. But McLaren explains it all pretty well (in 259 pages), or at least gives me a good place to start, and this is one book I almost wish I had bought rather than borrowed!

I'm always looking for new books to read, so please let me know if you have any suggestions.  Fiction or non-fiction.  About the only thing I won't read is horror or something completely depressing, particularly if the depressing book is fiction - I don't want to escape into a world that just makes me cry.  Other than that, I'm wide open (or at least trying to be)!