On wasting no time reading

I took a speed reading course and read “War and Peace” in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. ~ Woody Allen

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I know that all three of you who read last Monday’s post on my New Year resolutions have been anxiously awaiting an update on what those annual goals actually are. It will come as no surprise to many of you (at least, not to those who know me) that I’ve already revised and rewritten my yearly objectives several times because I realized that I was dreaming some impossible dreams, and most likely setting myself up for (what has already proven to be immediate) failure.

For example, inspired by some new acquaintances, I set as one of my goals to read 52 books this year – one a week. Now, I am used to be an avid reader. In my younger days, if I was engrossed in a compelling novel, I could easily stay up until the wee hours of the morning devouring the words on each page until my eyes were bleary and my tongue felt thick and coated with cotton from lack of sleep. My bookcases are still lined with some of the best fiction and non-fiction on the market, including classics by C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Hemingway and Steinbeck, but I am less of a reader these days as a mere collector of books.

Conversations with fellow readers often go something like this:

Friend: Oh, I just read the best book! It’s called [insert name of bestseller/classic novel here] by [insert author name here]. Really inspiring!

Me: (excitedly) Oh yeah?! I have that book! I got it four years ago.

Friend: What did you think about it?

Me: I’ll let you know after I read it.

I’m not sure when I stopped reading as voraciously as I did in my teens, twenties and early thirties. Work, family, ministry obligations all came before reading. Or, perhaps my declining desire to read a book was hastened by the increased number of TV sets or the availability of high-speed internet access in our home . It became so much easier to “vege out” in front of the boob tube or surf the web at night than to pick up a book.

So, too, my changing tastes diminished my appetite for reading, at least, for reading the types of books that were once stacked eight deep beside my bed. As my secular worldview shifted to a more biblical worldview, I found less pleasure in the Oprah Book Club and NY Times bestsellers which were my usual fare. Gradually, I replaced the trashy beach novels and murder mysteries with self-help books and spiritual growth guides; gone were authors whose names I frankly can no longer recall (that’s how temporal their work); in were authors Beth Moore, Francine Rivers, Kay Arthur, Randy Alcorn, and Frank Peretti. (And, okay, I didn’t completely eliminate secular authors: Sue Miller and Pat Conroy and Diana Galbadon remain my guilty pleasures, as much for their beautiful prose as for their storylines, and I must confess that the stories themselves, although most decidedly secular in nature, are compelling and tender and heartbreaking all at once.)

Unfortunately, I think that there is dearth of quality Christian fiction (it’s plentiful, but most of it is not that good), and one can only read so many non-fiction personal growth books before the eyes glaze over and you realize what a hopeless mess you are and what’s the point in even trying to improve yourself now because you’re already middle-aged and old habits die hard. But, hope springs eternal, and one of these days I will no longer be a bad girl but instead a woman after God’s own heart who has broken free then learned to set boundaries, who has won the battlefield of the mind and celebrates discipline, who shows love and respect to her husband and parents her kids with love and logic, and has found financial peace.

Someday.

In the meantime, I better get busy reading up on how to do all that.

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Which brings me back to my New Year goal of reading 52 books this year. I have since scaled that downward to 24 books, because reading two books per month is a far more likely (and reasonable) scenario for me at this point in my life, and a goal I might actually achieve. And, along those lines, I have set some other “sub-goals” in relationship to my primary goal of reading 24 books this year:

1. Read no more than two books at a time. In the past, I was often reading four to six books at any given time; it just depended on which room of the house I was in, and yes, that includes the bathroom. There were often half-read books in the office, beside the couch, on my nightstand, and even in the car, and because I was trying to read so many at once, I never ended up completing any of them, which leads me to my next sub-goal:

2. Complete the books you start (unless they are awful). If I reduce the number of books I’m trying to read at one time, I’ll probably be more likely to finish said books. On the flip side, and usually in regards to fictional books, I have often wasted several hours of my life reading a novel that was poorly written simply because I just had to know how it ended. I’m the same way with movies – once I start it, I have to see it through. Only lately have I found the strength to turn it off if it gets ridiculously stupid or boring, and it’s even easier for me to turn it off if it gets overly raunchy, as I find I have less and less tolerance for that kind of trash these days. But, when it comes to Christian fiction, sad to say, it’s usually just… bad. I’m finally learning to “just say no” to weak characters and underdeveloped story lines. Life is too short.

3. Mix it up. I’m trying to expand my horizons, read more than just the easy stuff. You know, actually challenge my brain. In addition to personal growth books and the occasional quality Christian novel, perhaps it’s time to pull some of those tried-and-true books off the shelf. I suppose I’m of the mind of Mark Twain who once said, “A classic is something everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.” But, maybe it’s time to finally read some of those. At the very least, I’ll read the Cliffs Notes.

4. Use the library more often. I love nothing more than spending an evening at Barnes and Noble. Between the Starbucks coffee and the smell of new books, I’m pretty much in heaven. However, I’m also striving for financial peace, and realized, after a review of our five-year spending history, that I had been subsidizing B&N for far too long. (If you hear that they are going out of business in the near future, it’s probably because I decided to start using my library card instead of my credit card. After all, why pay when you can borrow?)

Currently reading:

Simplify Your Life by Elaine St. James
The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko
The Little Red Book of Wisdom by Mark DeMoss


Hmmm... so much for sub-goal number one...