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You know how to read. I know that. But sometimes a little guidance on how to get control over that growing stack of books on your night stand (or wherever your favorite place to stack things is) would be helpful.
Here are six tips from Al Mohler:
- Maintain regular reading projects.
- Work through major sections of Scripture.
- Read all the titles written by some authors.
- Get some big sets and read them through.
- Allow yourself some fun reading.
- Write in your books.
To that, I would also add, don't be afraid to leave a book unfinished. If it's not worth the time to read, then don't read it. No one will give you a test on whether or not you finished. It's fair to walk out of bad movies, and it's appropriate to leave inadequate books uncompleted.
Read all of Mohler's comments.
In a recent post, Bob Kauflin wrote,
"I once heard someone say that books don't change people — sentences do. If I glean two or three sentences from a book that affect the way I think and the way I live, that's time well invested. So I read."
I find it virtually impossible to read without a highlighter and pencil in hand — highlighting the key ideas, starring key ideas, and writing down interactive thoughts, marking the outline, and noting passages and sentences to place in my quotation file.
Sometimes I stop immediately and jot down a sentence of comment on a file card. As I did yesterday. The sentence that has been transforming me over the past 30 hours or so is from Joel Beeke in Reforming Pastoral Ministry:
"Pray in response to the least impulse to do so."
I know. It's not particularly erudite but it is a godly and Biblical exhortation. One I needed and need to hear and heed.
(HT: Challies)
Today's blog on Desiring God contained a helpful commentary, "On Reading." It is worth reading (as are the links it provides to other encouragements to read).
There have never been more good books (nor more bad books, too) available than what we have available today. And most of them can be delivered to our doors within a few days at the most! We do well not only to collect good books, but to saturate our minds with them — to actually learn them — so that our minds will be saturated with joy in Christ.
Don't just be convicted to read more, but start today to read more. One thing I've done to help me read just a little bit more is to keep a devotional book by my Bible (I'm currently alternating Lectures to My Students and What Jesus Demands from the World). Just a few minutes each morning or evening (I try for 8-12 pages, or a short chapter each time), will result in reading several extra books each year.
And I've found another benefit as well. I begin my morning reading by reading my book for 10-15 minutes — before I read my Bible. By the time I've mulled over a few pages of Spurgeon or Piper or Watson, I find that my mind is more alert, attentive, and prepared for the Word of God. So reading devotionally actually makes my Bible reading more profitable.
Start reading tomorrow, or even tonight!
The Handwriting Is on the Wall, says the Washington Post. On the 2006 SAT, only 15% of the test takers completed the essay portion in long hand. The rest printed their essays. Why? Writing in cursive is an art lost to the presence of keyboard, researchers say.
So my question is, if the keyboard has killed handwriting, has the Internet harmed reading? (And by reading, I mean books, not blogs.) Do people read more or less because of their internet experience? My suspicion, based on observation only (and I know the limitations of that), is that for all the proliferation of internet book sellers and box bookstore chains, we are not only writing less, but we are reading less too.
(HT: Al Mohler's Daily Links)
