Here’s a good question, and I’m thinking you have thought about it aplenty and probably not at length at any one time: How do you choose what to read?
Photo by Alexei Maridashvili on Unsplash
This question is asked by Austin Carty, The Pastor’s Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry, the book we are reading in the Tov Book Club.
Using a term he picked up from Alan Jacobs, Austin says his pattern is “whim.” That is, “whatever happens to be piquing our curiosity or our fascination in a given moment.”
Now, let me ask you: Have you ever – and do you still – create a stack of books you want to read? (When you make that stack, you are sure in your head of heads that you want to read each one and you’re going to go through the stack one by one.) And, how often do you finish the stack? How often do books in that stack become of a stale interest? How often do the books later become boring and of no interest? How hard is it to put the books back on the shelf?
What Austin calls “reading by whim” I learned from Joseph Epstein to call “desultory” reading. That’s how I read. I read what strikes me as something I want to read, or what to read next. And I don’t get much beyond that. Unless I’m choosing to read all of some author. As I have also done.
Furthermore, my reading, beside dabbling with some iPad skimming, happens in several forms:
After breakfast, and before we take our walk, I read essays or some kind of book that permits 3-5 pages per day. I’m reading volume 3 of George Orwell’s 4 volume “As I Please.” Recently that slot was filled with the new essay volume of Margaret Atwood. I don’t spend hardly any time reading the news. 99% of it is here today and gone tomorrow.
I read for what I’m writing about or researching. Mornings, M-F.
I read an academic book – one at a time – for what will enrich my knowledge of Jesus or the apostles. Afternoons, evenings, M-F. I’m reading John Collins, The Invention of Judaism, right now. It’s a good book.
I read novels at bedtime, and I’m reading Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, which has grown on me.
On Saturdays and Sundays I read for this Substack newsletter, and I choose what I hope will help readers of the newsletter.
Evenings, too, I read the Bible. For three years I read the Old Testament every evening, and read it through three times, twice with Goldingay and once with Alter. My Bible reading time is also every morning (M-F).
Carty thinks we should be reading both fiction and non-fiction, and I would agree. But I confess I was educated to consider fiction as “make-believe” and most of my colleagues were of the same ilk – though I did have colleagues who read novels. Some were opposed to reading novels. I consider this to be a failure now. I didn’t then.
The desultory or “by whim” reading Austin Carty calls a “pneumatology” of reading. He believes the Spirit can lead us to what we most need. I have never thought of it much like that, but he’s on to something.
What are you reading? Why are you reading it? What are your patterns of reading?
Another one: Which novelist do you draw from the most?
What do you get out of fiction you don’t out of nonfiction? What do you get out of nonfiction you don’t out of fiction?
I find it salutary to pray, Scot, as I desultorily listen to my whims. Often has made an evident difference: right book at the right time. I appreciated knowing how and what you read (you're a machine!) and I have freshly resolved to read more and better. Can't come up with the necessary quality of thought in our profession without a lot of input—and throughput in our teaching and writing...
What are you reading? Why are you reading it? What are your patterns of reading?
“Learning from the Germans” Susan Norman. Recommended by our Lutheran pastor guide on a recent tour of Germany. Compares how the Germans have sought to “work out” their Nazi history with how America has treated its slavery history. Very insightful and provocative.
“My Body is Not a Prayer Request” by Amy Kenny, reflections from a disabled person on disability in the Bible and her experience as a disabled person in churches. A different take on disability, healing and how we define and treat “disabilities.”
My reading is not at organized as yours but similarly eclectic. I read scripture in the morning, too much news, and then a mix of books I’ve found through podcasts and reading and friends recommendation. I was also raised to consider fiction a waste and “not true.” But I was a rebellious reader and read a lot of fiction as a teen and then became an English and theology major. Stories - whether or not they “happened in real life” - are how we explore and learn about other ways of being without having to try everything ourselves. Learning how to interpret “story” through literary skills has been so important for my theological and biblical studies.
Another one: Which novelist do you draw from the most?
Madeline L’engle, JRR Tolkien
What do you get out of fiction you don’t out of nonfiction? What do you get out of nonfiction you don’t out of fiction?
Fiction yields psychological insight and tools for psychological processing, as well as sympathetic exposure to and understanding of the experiences and thought of people very different from me. Non-fiction provides information and argumentation and propositions to consider and investigate, engage and accept or disagree with. Fiction is less about disagreement or argumentation and more about considering the differences among experiences and how those form is as individuals and communities. I can disagree with the action a character takes in fiction but the story will also often provide understanding of what has driven that action and why it “makes sense” for the person in the moment, even if it’s clearly the wrong action.