Reading Books: a substantial world both pure and good

“Dreams, books, are each a world;

and books, we know,

are a substantial world,

both pure and good. Round these,

with tendrils strong as flesh and blood,

Our pastime and our happiness will grow.” (Wordsworth)

Margaret (an education and motivation for learning specialist) is wondering about the different ways of reading we have all developed. She is especially intrigued by how some people (me included) read several books at once – not all together, but moving from one to the other and back again. It’s an interesting question(s) – how do we read and why do we read as we do? Thinking about it, I do usually have several books going at the same time, but that can be governed by a number of considerations.

I have set times in the day when I am likely to be reading – they aren’t the only times I read, but reading is about the only thing I do at those times. Those who observe the details of my blog have noticed the early posting times – I’ve even had a row for it from Graeme. But because my mind is active and alert early, for an hour in the morning I tackle the substantial book on my desk. Substantial means intellectually demanding, taking me to new ideas, challenging my comfortable assumptions. That’s when I’m reading John Swinton’s, Raging with Compassion, at present for example. So I always have an early morning brain workout!

Alongside that I’m likely to be reading at least a couple more. Functional reading for my teaching is mostly done throughout the week at times wrestled free of other responsibilities that can often seem more ‘essential’ than the reading that informs a lecture and keeps it current. Currently Migliore’s Faith Seeking Understanding, Joy Macdougall’s book on Moltmann (on sidebar), and a couple of Galatians commentaries, are lifted and laid around my desk.

If I’m writing something, then material is chosen by the subject and the reading clusters around the writing time – whenever that too can be extracted from the routine of academic admin and teaching. Recently baptist stuff (small b in deference to Stuart) and George Macleod have cluttered my desk.

Novels,( a good murder story – Henning Mankell just finished), poetry, biography (and philosophy I’m afraid) and other reading-what-I-like-when-I-feel-like-it, type books is usually at night -often the book preferred to the telly. Not always though – I can’t read a book and watch the telly. I have a friend whose daughter can read a book, watch the telly and listen to her Ipod without blowing any mental fuses! And for as long as I remember I’ve read in bed – but I am getting more and more like those dolls whose eyes are weighted to close as soon as they lie flat!

Now all that said – the question of how you read several books at once isn’t really answered. It probably isn’t timetable or routine or technique that’s the main issue – but the way different minds work. Some folk simply don’t move easily in and out of alternative worlds of fiction, biography, history, theology, poetry, psychology or whatever our different interests are. Concentration and afterthought aren’t easily preserved if too many things are going on at once, and there can be a feeling of superficial non-engagement:

The elephant is a bonnie bird

it flits from bough to bough

it makes its nest in a rhubarb tree

and whistles like a cow

So is it a habit that can be learned; or a difference in how our minds process and assimilate what we read?

Who retains most – the one book at a time reader, or the several on the go at once reader?

What do the rest of you think?

Why do you read as you do?

Are you a one book or a several book reader?

Do you retain what you read and manage to keep the plots / arguments / worlds / of each book separate?

And isn’t the question of purpose important – Why I’m reading what I’m reading – for information, formation, recreation, inspiration?

One closing thought at this stage (cos I’m going to post a bit more on this) – having several books on the go at once, is that a multi-disciplinary way of learning, or is it pretentious dilettantism? Hmm? Come on Jim – own up – how much of that suff actually sticks?