I don’t know if you are like me in this, but my ability to get through books comes and goes.  I don’t know if it is seasonal or what, but there are periods in my life when I am primed and pumped, and I can get through a series of books with little problem, and once I finish one title, I am ready to read the next one.

Often this ability to serial read appears after I have been told of a great book by a family member or friend.  I read it, and either because the book was so well written or the topic was so intriguing, I am ready to another one by that author, or on the previous book’s topic.  The one book gives way to the next, and I motor through 4 or 5 books in 2 months, and my mind feels lithe, muscular, and agile.

And yet, as precipitously as these reading spurts develop, they dissipate just as quickly, and my hunger to read just disappears.  I pick up a book, open it to chapter 1, and the words are all in alien cuneiform.  Or the chapter has the same appeal to me as an article from a technical journal on neurosurgery.  And just as suddenly as I was hungry and able to read with the endurance of a zealot, the drive leaves me, and books return to being kindling.

—

My last great reading surge happened over the winter of last year, on into early this spring.  The focus of every book I read touched somehow on events in World War II, most often discussing the experiences of men who went through combat and campaigns.  I was fascinated and amazed at what soldiers and sailors faced being thrown into war, having to fight for life and liberty.  And wondering what happened to them as people as a result of their experiences. I powered through 6 books on air warfare over Europe, the life of a bomber pilot, survival of D-Day following a landing craft deployment and somehow getting off of open beaches, life in the French Resistance, and the slow erosion of Nazi Germany’s war machine as Hitler plunged deeper into megalomania.  It was a fascinating ribbon of reading.

I read these books, and I recall the basic push of what each book was about.  I remember particular scenes and the emotional impressions they made on me, and visual images they formed in my mind.  I recall my own emotions when thinking about what these (young) men went through, wondering how I would have done as a young GI in the Big War.  And I remember little vignettes of experiences conveyed  in the books- little isles of stories that for some reason my mind grabbed onto, that I wanted to remember- that separated themselves from the overall arc of each book’s drama.  I remember moments from my reading.

What I realize, though, is that I do not remember many facts.  I do not remember names, or units, or locations, or campaigns.  I do not remember the faces and facts from the grand story that should help me to recall the significance of each book’s import.  I did not come away from each book with a moral, with much wisdom about the meaning and consequences of war.

I am not sure what I learned from those books.

—

Exit spring and enter summer, and the reading muse leaves me.  My heart is off and away chasing other interests.  I cannot hear any book’s call.    I run.   I work.  I decide to buy a house.   I pine for a woman.  I pray.  I hurt.  I sleep.

—

The opening came when I pulled a Brennan Manning book out of my library.  Brennan has always talked to my heart in his books when nothing else could get through.  After a season of wrestling over a failing friendship and lost love, my heart has found its way out into the desert again.  And in the middle of nowhere, usually Brennan appears, and leads me to an oasis.

After Brennan, my running buddy Ben gave me a copy of “Born to Run”.  Pre-marathon, this book got my mind off of my heartache and onto fitness, letting me know that people are capable of some amazing physical feats with their bodies when they put their minds to it.

And then Tim Keller’s “The King’s Cross” pulled my heart back from the brink, and reintroduced me to the Jesus of Mark’s Gospel.  He reminded me that this Jesus, the One who is there and who cares, is He who I gave my life to a long time ago.  And he suggested I give my heart back to Him again.

To face the loss of (pseudo-)love, another friend suggested I give Josh Harris’ book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”, a read.  Wading into that book, I realized it contained a lot of great wisdom, a lot of good lessons I should learn.

And that’s when it hit me- that that’s what I was missing in much of my reading.  I wasn’t learning from my reading.  I wasn’t gleaning the seeds for personal growth that these authors’ ideas intended to plant.  I wasn’t hanging on to their suggestions and challenges at all.  I wasn’t interacting with their thoughts.

I was just wading through their words.

—

I am trying to change my approach on reading with the book I am currently reading.  Instead of merely reading for entertainment, I am trying to read for results.  I am trying to understand the point of each chapter, and ask myself what it is I should be responding to in each reading session.  I am asking myself, “What is the author trying to say to me in this section about how I should deal with life?”  What is God trying to say to me about how I am handling this lfe He has given me.

At present, the book I am working through now is Patrick Morley’s “The Man in the Mirror”.  As I am a man interested in being the best man God created me to be, I am seeking guidance in this area.  This book is great on the topic.

And I am striving to read each chapter not for more pleasure or knowledge in my world- but for results in my life.