I had just finished reading Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood and was in the process of adding new books to my Amazon wish list so their names would not disappear as well. I kept encountering more and more books that were on topics I was interested in, which would then remind me of other books that I wanted to read. More and more books are added into my wish list. I get an insatiable desire to devour all of them as soon I can.
Why don’t I just go to the library, you say? I rarely checkout books from the library—librarians always became angry when I wrote all over the books—and I try to buy whatever book I think is worth reading. A book worth reading is a book worth buying and writing in. I also want my children to inherit a large library. But I am now chasing rabbits, and this is all beside the point.
As I was thinking about all these different books, a massive thought flattened me like a steamroller: I don’t have many years left (in fact, I could die before reading another book!), which translates into I don’t have many books left to read. This thought was alarming. It cemented as I looked at the book The Lifetime Reading Plan.
I try to be a diligent reader. I attempt to read every evening and more on weekends. But even at that pace, I have only read around 25 books this year (~8500 pages). It might sound like a lot—and it might be for those whose only form of leisure is the television—but compared to the amount of good books there are, it is a speck of dust. I’m losing the Battle of Books.
Once upon a time (I have only read of it), leisure was a time for reading and education. In present-day America (and other countries presumably), leisure is a time of entertainment and amusement. If it is not amusing, it must not be leisure. Neil Postman writes,
There can be no doubt that the Greeks invented the idea of school. Their word for it meant “leisure,” reflecting a characteristic Athenian belief that at leisure a civilized person would naturally spend his time thinking and learning. (The Disappearance of Childhood, p. 7)
I would also put forward that the Reformers, the Puritans and the Founding Fathers of the U.S. also saw leisure as a time of thinking and learning. 21st century Americans, however, do not. Thinking and learning is a curse only to be submitted to in the confines of grade school. College is for partying and skipping class, and the learning that must be done is simply for entry into a career—certainly not for the glory of God or Country or personal intellectual growth.
So all of this to say I must read, and I must prioritize my reading. What books will be the best for my intellectual and spiritual growth? These should take priority. I am currently 23, and only have so many years left of my “formative” chapter of life. Rarely does one receive a great insight at 65—and when that does happen, it makes most of your older writings and thoughts relatively obsolete and out of sync with “the new you.”
So I have come to a resolution. I will not call this a “new years resolution,” for those resolutions are never resolved. I will, however, state it like Jonathan Edwards would have—for he is one of the few who could make a resolution and stick to it the rest of his life. And I encourage you to think about this and consider making this your own resolution for the next year as well.
Resolved, to prioritize and read books to the glory of God that are of an exceptional and enduring nature that will contribute to my intellectual, experiential, and spiritual growth.