Prelude to a Book Review: Killing My Pride, Expanding My Mind

Guinea Fowl*

I love reading and writing. “You must love books and libraries,” people say.  No, not necessarily, that would be too broad a statement.   I do love books and libraries, but only some books, and some libraries. Like so many things in life, it depends on what is in them.

My preferred reading material is admittedly narrow. I'd rather not waste time reading something that is not edifying. I am a Christian who hates doesn't like doesn't appreciate popular, main-stream Christian-book-store books, especially if they are filled with emotion-manipulating bleary-eyed sentimentality. I feel equally repulsed by mainstream fiction, if not more so.

The Purpose Driven Life? Own a second-hand copy, have yet to read it. 

Jesus Calling? Read a few pages, gave it away. 

The Shack? Nope. 

The Prayer of Jabez? What is that? 

Karen Kingsbury? Whosbury? 

Sensible Shoes? Looks too touchy-feely girly. 

Bill Hybels? Beth Moore? Joyce Meyers?  Nope, no, nyet, nine and uh-uh.

Max Lucado? The Christmas Candle was a seasonal Christmas story sold solely on his name. The other book which I read by him was so propositionally thin and repetitive that I grieved for the time wasted reading it. 

The Story by Max Lucado and Randy Frazee? Read two chapters and quit. I prefer  the rich, unabridged, full length version called The Bible.  

The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks? Couldn’t get through it without laughing. 

The Twilight Series? Negatory. 

Steven King? Read two books from him, Cujo and On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

James Patterson? Nope. 
Etc., and so on

Don’t get me wrong- it’s not that I don’t think these people can’t write well (I didn’t read most of them, how would I know?) or that I don’t like the stories. The fact that I know their names and the titles they wrote lend a lot of credence to their ability to sell books.

But I want more than a story, I want my brain to be wrinkled. I don’t want just to be entertained, I want to learn something, to grow, to exercise my critical thinking. I want to change some part of me for the good.

I always read “old” books to get fresh ideas–ideas that aren’t swirling around the drain at the moment–and to glean new perspectives from past thought. I read them to learn about history, about people outside my modern world. The books that have kept afloat in the literary tide without being drown and forgotten are the ones that fill my bookshelves.  

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And so, I write what I read. My long-term goal is to publish an upmarket, literary novel within my lifetime, which would make it a contemporary work, so it only makes sense to understand what today’s books are about.

It’s time that I peek into the world of contemporary books, not only literary novels, but (sigh … really? do I have to?)  … genre fiction and nonfiction.  

The newest fiction I’ve read was Susanne Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (2004), which is written in the style of a British novel, heavily influenced by Dickens, so it’s kinda old-fashioned. That’s why I liked it so much. The newest nonfiction was Susan Cain’s Quiet: The Power Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (2012).

Doing new things is a learning experience. For a while, I pledge to tamp down my literary snobbery and pride, and open myself up to books I usually wouldn’t give a second glance. 

So, dear Robert Burton, your The Anatomy of Melancholy will have to wait patiently on the shelf while I read an Amish love story. 

*I can't find appropriate pictures for the content, so here is a guinea fowl (strange birds) and a butterfly. Relevant simply because words on this background and these creatures are both black and white. It's a stretch, I know.