Things That Mean a Lot to Me (part 1)--Books

Second Monday of Lent

Lectionary Texts: 

OT: Exodus 20:1-6

NT: John 2:13-22

Psalm 19 (UMH 752)

First, thanks to April for her comments, especially on church reopenings

Second, just in case anyone is interested, blog reads for February were 534. For January they were 543. February was a shorter month. They were down considerably in the first couple of weeks of the month, but had a spike after I sent the email suggesting blog reading as a Lenten Discipline. The lowest month was November at 455. The highest was last spring one month. I don't remember how many.

I've been wondering what to write about on Faith Journey Narrative Mondays, since I've already taken you through my whole life. I decided to write for the next while about things, not necessarily spiritual things, that are important to me. This is not to suggest that they should be important to you. It's just stuff to let you know me better. 

I became interested in books in childhood.  My nine years older brother Gerald was beginning to collect. He was a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club. I was the kind of younger brother that, if Gerald did it, I wanted to do it. I remember the first book I ever bought with my own money, The Wings of Eagles, by John Godfrey. It was the memoir of a WW II fighter pilot. Since that time, I have bought upwards of 5,000 books. My collection was culled dramatically when we left N. Wilkesboro at the end of 2010. There I had a large office, another book room on the third floor, and many book shelves in the parsonage. Here I had my study, a large book case in the living room, and the shed. My collection is down to around 2,500 now. I'm in the process of unloading more. Of course I"m still buying, as is Marianne, about 50 books a year. The vast majority of my books are in Biblical Studies. I do not own a Kindle or similar device. I love the feel of books in my hands, of print on paper. I have all the most essential tools for Biblical Studies, the Greek lexicons, the Hebrew lexicons, the concordances, the texts in all their editions. I own 36 Bibles of one sort or another, English, Greek, Hebrew. 

 

Although I love to read, I am a congenitally slow reader. I don't get nearly as many books read as I want. I average reading only about 50 books a year, although quite a few are of the 600+ page variety, many of them technical scholarly with lots of footnotes. I read every footnote. I'm a compulsive finisher. I never quit on a book, even if I don't like it very much. With all my other little hobbies, I don't spend nearly as much time reading as I would like. 

My most unusual reading habit is that I keep a record of every book I read. I record author, title, and number of pages. I have this record going all the way back to 1977. I also have an extensive list of categories of books read that I keep a tally of. I also have a record of every book I have bought during this entire time period. In recent years I have consistently read more than I have bought, thank goodness. When I was engaged in scholarly research and publication back in my Elon days, I checked a lot of books out of the Duke Divinity School Library (the Divinity Library has over 300,000 books). I have reading privileges there and at both Durham and Chapel Hill public libraries, but now almost all of my reading is from my own books. 

I also read other stuff. I read the N & O and the New York Times everyday (paper, not online). I subscribe to and a number of magazines, National Geographic, The New Yorker, The Christian Century, The Biblical Archaeology Review, as well as a number of cooking magazines. I also watch too much TV and sleep too much (the joys of retirement). Next Monday will be the first of several Mondays on music. 

O God of the Word,

Thank you for books and for the Book. May we be more faithful readers of them and it.

Amen