819 and Counting

As I wrote in a fb posting recently, I didn't learn how to read until I was out of college after 2 1/2 years and found myself in the navy.  I could read the words but I couldn't tell you the plot of what I had read if it was a story or the content of the information if it were a textbook.  I got through my 2 1/2 years of college playing bridge when everyone else took a break from studying for finals.

I can remember deciding that I was going to teach myself how to read for comprehension.  I determined that I would read a page in a book until I could grasp what was being said.  I determined not to put a book down that I had started to read until I was done with it.  I have since abandoned that discipline.  Some books just aren't worth reading once you get into them.

So for whatever reason I started to read and record the titles of the books I had read.  My first one on my list from October 30, 1970 was The Immoralist by Andre Gide.  Don't ask me where I got that one!

Since that time I have read over 819 books.  I realized the other day when I was typing them into an Excel spreadsheet that there are a few I forgot to write down and there are about a dozen that I have read more than once.

My first year in seminary I was assigned over 10,000 pages of reading.  Believe me, some of those books weren't worth reading.  I remember sitting in the library at Eastern Mennonite College reading a book on theology.  I had read page after page and they all seemed to be the same jumbled up mess.  I turned over 50 pages or so and read another page and it seemed just like the one I had finished before.  I don't know how someone can make something about God as boring as a theologian can make it.

My most notable books?  The first is The God Who Is There by Francis Schaeffer.  I'll talk about this in another blog sometime but I'll simply say now that my theology and belief in God was basically "My mommy told me so."  In the world I was in in 1970 that didn't go too far.

While in Athens Greece I found an English speaking church (another story for another time).  There I met some kids backpacking around Europe.  I told them of the things I was encountering in my faith and they directed me to a book.  In fact, one of them gave me the book by Shaeffer and told me to read it.  If I ever got to Switzerland, I was to drop it off (another story).

I remember sitting in the USO in Athens reading Schaeffer's book...and taking notes on it.  Something I had never done while in college.  It was transforming because it opened the door of philosophical thought and Christianity.  I'll tell you how that impacted my life in...another blog.

The second book came into my hands many years later entitled Wild At Heart by John Eldredge.  I had been asking God for some model of what a man of God was supposed to look like.  I was interested in the day-to-day face of someone who was walking with God, not some Christian celebrity who was hidden behind the donated wealth they had acquired.  I read and reread this book.  I've loaned that copy to someone and didn't get it back.

Currently, I've been reading a lot of the classics and appreciating them in a way I couldn't when I was in high school.  I've also enjoyed series by Jan Karon, books by John Grisham and many, many more.

I'm an old school guy.  I can't imagine not holding a book in my hand when I read it.  I hope they always commit some of them to paper.  In the meantime, I'll keep reading and expanding my knowledge about so many things.  Thank you God for the creativity of yours that you loaned to authors to be able to write for our enjoyment.