Reading Habits: Odd or Normal?
I’m in the middle of about six books right now. I don’t know why I do this to myself. It just happens. I guess I just get excited, jump the gun and start one before I can finish another. But maybe it’s because they each have their own particular context in which they fit more appropriately than another. So, I thought I’d share briefly the method behind my madness and let you into my world just a little bit–if for no other reason than to help justify in my mind why the heck I do this. Perhaps it will help me make some sense of my own peculiarities regarding reading. Or perhaps not.
Category 1: The bathroom reading category–usually a lighter read on spiritual growth or a novel or something like that–not necessarily excerpts from The Church Fathers, systematic theology or anything that requires a long sit-down. Right now this would include Beyond All Measure by my friend Wes McMurray and Praying Backwards by Bryan Chapell.
Category 2: The airplane/once-a-year visit to the mall/have-a-ton-of-time-to-kill category–usually something a little deeper that requires slower reading on my part in order to grasp the content (not a good place for an “Amen.”) Right now this includes: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ronald Sider and The Reason for God by Tim Keller.
Category 3: I’ll simply deem the “diarrhea category”. This is the type of reading that never really concludes. More often than not this includes books that make great reference materials. A continuous perusing of several staple books that I keep coming back to over and over again. I read a bit. Put it down for a couple of weeks. Pick it back up. Put it down again. And so on. Right now this includes: Commentaries and smaller works within larger works, God Songs by Paul Baloche, A Godward Life by John Piper, Beyond by Greg Laurie, The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, books on marriage and parenting and much more.
If I had a point here, I guess it would be in the form of this question:
Is this normal? Just wondering.