Finished reading: Purgatorio from The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri 📚 The introduction of Beatrice at the end is amazing and makes me eager to read the final book. Not a bad poet, this Dante guy!

I was brought face-to-face with the challenge of the great reading just after I posted as I decided I would take a look at the books I have listed in my reading list on Micro.blog and realized that I didn’t feel like reading either of them right now. I suspect that feeling is not going to be one that I can indulge much if this exercise is going to be successful… Now to decide whether Dante or the book about a 19th-century missionary is more interesting…

Of course, life continues alongside my other plans. That’s the big challenge. I’m currently trying to learn Biblical Greek and Biblical Hebrew with a friend as well as Scots Gaelic on Duolingo. Chan eil thu math! as my great-grandmother who only spoke Gaelic might have said about me. (I’m not sure what a Greek or Hebrew speaker might say, nor do I know how to show those languages on this platform.)

These hobbies / personal goals co-exist with my actual responsibilities as a dad, husband, son, friend, neighbour, church leader, and employee. There is definitely not enough time in each day. Maybe the goal is simply to live with integrity, intention, and responsiveness, not beating ourselves up when we fall short of our ideals, but just to keep trying and to make sure we lean on God for help.

I have always been a guy with a lot of books. Every once and a while, a post will go floating around the internet about a Japanese term for people who own a lot of books but don’t read them. I don’t remember what that term is, but it’s me. I have read a lot and – some years – do read a lot (although I haven’t been reading as much these days for some reason). But I have way more books than I’ve read, and I sometimes wonder if that’s a problem.

Anyways, I’ve decided that I need to deal with this problem. I don’t want to always have to say, when someone comes into my house and asks if I’ve read all the books on my shelves, “No.” (Or, more commonly, they’ll ask how many of the books I’ve read, and I’ll have to say, “Not many.") More than that, I want to move towards a more minimal existence. If I have a book that just isn’t any good, why am I letting it take up space?

And so I’ve decided that I’m going to try to read through all of the books in my personal library. I don’t actually know how many books that is. I suspect it is north of 3000. Given that in a good year I probably only read 25 books, it would take me at least 120 years to read all of those books. For that reason, I am going to give myself a few parameters:

• I don’t have to finish the book. If I decide to stop reading the book because it’s no good, then I am allowed to do that. However, if I do that I need to seriously consider getting rid of the book. This happened to me when I was reading Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series. I really liked the original series, but some of his later volumes were absolute trash. I may have finished them (I don’t recall now), but I also got rid of them.
• The priority is speed. This means that I am not trying to squeeze every last drop of meaning from the book. I am ok to skim. I want to read these books strategically – especially the non-fiction. Fiction and poetry might be a different story, but at least with the non-fiction, I want to get through the books as quickly as I can. I can always go back and re-read the books that are really affecting.
• Blogging as a way to stay accountable and to keep a record. I read a very interesting post recently about the importance of writing things down in order to remember what you read. I didn’t write down the URL, so ironically cannot remember where I saw it.
• This is related to the first bullet, but I need to emphasize that I need to not be doing this like a student. The goal is quantity not quality and no one is going to grade me. To make an actual go at getting through the library, I need to be “reading” (and I’m ok to even call it “reading” with the scare quotes) way, way more books every year.

Ok. Time to start.

Finished reading: Attensity! by The Friends of Attention 📚 Powerful words and inspiring! The last chapter in particular was a home run. It is making me think about “attention” in completely new ways.

Finished reading: Affirming by Sally Gary 📚 I’ve read and really enjoyed a couple books by Sally’s wife, Karen Keen. Loved reading Sally’s story – beautifully written and very thought-provoking.

Finished reading: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan 📚

This looks extremely good. HT to Mark Hurst for the recommendation! Attensity! by The Friends of Attention 📚

Made a bunch of recent updates to my blog, including a follow-up to an earlier post about reading the Bible.

Recently, I unexpectedly encountered some distant relatives while reading Dante.