Reading an Unreadable Book

This is the third part of our series on reading good books. Let’s assume you’ve got your book and you’re looking to dive in. How can you get the best out of the experience? Here are some tips.

When To Read: Books with good theological content are best read at a slow, reflective pace. Find a time when you are generally alert, unhurried and are not likely to be distracted. Try to learn to read for half-hour to hour stretches – good books tend to build their content and you want to get the flow of the author’s thinking. Read complete sections – try not to just stop at a random place. If possible read whole chapters. If you find a book is really feeding your soul (many actually do!), use it as a devotional book as well as reading it at other times.

Read Prayerfully: This doesn’t mean simply praying before you read, though it’s a great idea to ask God for the gift of illumination and understanding. Even during the selection process it’s good to be asking the Lord where he wants you to focus your attention. Many people read because of what they have gone through. We don’t often think that God might draw us to a book to prepare us for something in the future. But he just might do that for you. Also, pray that God would give you grace to persevere through difficult parts or things that seem boring. Often the best gold comes from the hardest digging. Folks who give up on books that aren’t being ‘helpful’ can miss much of the richness in theological study.

Plan To Finish: All theology books look intimidating when you first open them up. Long words, small print, endless footnotes, no pictures – not exactly user friendly. Remember that theology builds – theologians tackle problems, wrestle them down as best they can and try to deliver a meaningful perspective at the end. Try to read a book straight through, and try to finish it. I find that I’m not really able to keep more than one or two theology books going at once.

Keep the Source Close at Hand: Have a Bible nearby so that if an author is referencing a passage of scripture you can look it up and consider what he’s saying. I’ve found at times that I’ve been reading a theology book, consulted a reference, and seen the Bible text with such a fresh clarity that I’ve put down the book and picked up the Bible. Not a bad trade-off!

Mark It Up: Books aren’t like baseball cards, they increase in value when you write on them. Unless you are very famous, your markings in a book won’t sell well on eBay, but a marked up book is something that you can return to for inspiration and insight again and again. I value my marked up books also because they serve kind of like a journal, I can read what I marked and remember back to what God was doing in my life at the time.

Next week we’ll talk about ways to mark up a book.