How and What I've been reading

How and What I’ve been Reading

By Dan McDonald

 

            I recently changed how I go about reading books. I have always been a person who thinks constantly and enjoys writing his thoughts out. While books I have read have had an immense impact on how I consider and hopefully navigate life, I haven’t been one to read many books. In recent years I have tried to change that but with mostly partial success. I suspect that there are quite a few people who were reading more, and in addition to reading more had a stronger degree of intentional purpose in their reading program. I am writing this blog to suggest that recently I stumbled accidentally on a plan that I think will both increase the amount and the value my reading has in regard to how I use a reading program to strengthen the varied dimensions of my ability to think and also to converse constructively with others.

            In the past I have sought to focus on reading one book at a time. I figured I would be able to understand the message of the book better if I focused solely on one book at a time. I was definitely into one book relationships. Maybe it is part of a personality disorder. I tend to eat my food the same way unless I think someone is watching me. Yes I will start with one thing on my plate and work my way from one thing on the plate to another until I am finished.  Since I have heard that is a dorky way to eat if I see you watching I mix things up because I want to be cool. So anyway if an old Beach Boys song was parodied to speak of my reading style it would “Be true to your book.”

            That is okay, if you do it that way and like it. I had no plans to change my habit. At the end of last year and the beginning of this year I read a wonderful book using that method. I read The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. It was about family members from an older generation lost to the holocaust. The generation that knew the family best was dying and Daniel Mendelsohn wanted to know the story of his family members, the six of six million. I came home every night yearning to read more of the book. I readily recommend it as one of the finest books I have ever read.

            When you are a be true to your book sort of guy who reads only one book at a time, there is a sort of difficult time selecting the next book. You are suffering from a break up for one thing. How do you move on when you have been reading The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. You can’t imagine the next book will be better. You expect a letdown. That is one of the problems I have always had reading one book at a time. You want that next book to be the right book for right now. The choice of that next book is like going through a cafeteria where you only get one main entrée and you know that whatever you select you will wish you had chosen a different one by the time you sit down and say your “Bless these gifts to our use and us to thy service.” Then finishing your prayer you think I wish I had taken the manicotti.

            I went through at least a month trying to figure out the next be true to your book selection. Then Lent was coming. I try to keep Lent. I find it a deeply enriching season. I definitely wanted to read a meditative book. I had often tried to read No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton. That would be a great book to read during the Lenten season. If I read 7 pages a night for forty nights I would read it in the Lenten season. I figured I could do that.

            There was also a book written by Michael Wear entitled Reclaiming Hope. I had followed Michael Wear on Twitter. I was a Republican and a Conservative although finding I was becoming increasingly comfortable with much that can be viewed as Progressive. Michael Wear had worked with the Obama administration, but mostly I appreciated the respect he showed to most everyone with whom he discussed some political issue. This was the sort of guy that I figured we needed more of, if ever we were to see civility in our polarized national politics. He had even asked me to read his book and to express how I viewed it. I had ordered his book before it was published and I felt both an obligation and desire to read it. I added it to my forty days of Lent readings, again 7 pages for forty nights was doable for two books and not just one.

            This summer I was scheduled to go to a conference involving Christians and the Arts. It was sponsored by Image Journal, a magazine founded by Gregory Wolfe, who had also been instrumental in beginning the Glens Workshop. His book Beauty Will Save the World had been recommended to me. I decided to make that my third and final book for my Lenten Season reading program. I did add reading the quarterly Image Journal from cover to cover to my reading, although I didn’t set a specific goal of how quickly to get that one done.

            I discovered that reading more books with fewer pages as a goal for each book had some benefits. First of all I didn’t get as obsessed about the books I was reading. You know the sort of person who is always a bit too insistent that you just need to read this book. As I began reading Merton, together with Michael Wear, and Gregory Wolfe I found that each of these writers had something to say to me, and because they weren’t the same genre of literature they affected different aspects of my humanity. Obsession was seemingly minimized and I was being impacted in a more rounded out way. Perhaps I shouldn’t say that. People that know me could make a better judgment than I can. But at least I felt that this reading three different kinds of book at one time was feeding my intellect in a more rounded way.

            Perhaps I will write book reviews eventually. It was quite an accomplishment for me to get through Merton’s book. I had tried to several times before. But reading fewer pages and not feeling that I needed to get everything out of the book or I was failing to do it justice helped me to absorb what I was at this time ready to absorb. Merton is a careful thinker. He writes in a contemplative way, often pithy, but he is setting out views on great spiritual considerations. He engages the soul, and speaks to the will while contemplating the spiritual life with heart and intellect. There is a simplicity and intensity that exude from the pages of his writing.

            Michael Wear’s book proved to be as wonderful as I hoped it would be. I could wish my most Conservative friends would read his work, in order to realize that there are Democrats, who if we wish to build a more perfect union of states will be helpful to us in making our nation work better. If Benjamin Franklin were speaking to us in our day he would likely give some of the same advice he gave to those hoping to transform the thirteen colonies into one United States of America. He would tell us “We must either hang together or hang separately.” In his day if the revolutionaries failed they would likely be rounded up for treason. In our day as much as we might not be able to stand the other side, and especially the other side as we imagine them, the consequences of not being able to work together and hang together might be a preliminary to either an unworkable nation that will begin its decline into irrelevance, o we might become a nation of warring passions with enmity characterizing our politics and endangering our safety no matter much we spend on defense. Michael Wear’s book exemplifies civility.

            I have left almost no words to say about Gregory Wolfe’s Beauty Will Save the World. Wolfe had begun making his mark on the world supporting the Christian right that led to the Reagan presidential triumph. In a short time, he felt the emptiness of the victory. Part of his book is his expressing why he decided that cultures are changed and shaped more by the arts than politics. It doesn’t mean that politics is unimportant. But is our culture more shaped by our politics or by the books we read, the poems we remember, the songs we hear and sing, the crafts we find giving our hands creative outlet to express our feelings mind, body, and soul.

            As I have finished these three books, I do not feel the need to pick the one perfect book to read next. I have been long thinking about what sort of books I should read next. I know there will be variety in the sort of books I will read. I will plod through the books a few pages at a time. I have actually read slightly more than a book a month this year, which I probably haven’t done in decades. I fell into reading multiple books when I couldn’t decide which book would be my next one and only. I probably will read multiple books for the rest of my life. I hope you have enjoyed this piece. Maybe next time I will write about my newest three books I am reading, but this piece is already long enough don’t you think? Besides, I have some books I ought to be reading.

            I can recommend all these books: