Mere Fidelity
Mere Fidelity
Replay: Reading Advice
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Most of what we talk about on Mere Fidelity presupposes a lot of reading. What is the real use of reading? Is what we read more important than how we read? Why do some people who read for years never develop the habits of reading well? Alastair, Matt, and Derek discuss these questions as well as summer reading on this episode.
Derek, you asked the question. You have to close us off.
SPEAKER_02I actually I asked this to sewage my conscience because I often feel terrible for not feeling for nothing. Alistair said Acules heel last week. And we let that go. Okay, I I've never heard the word spoken.
SPEAKER_01So we but we we let it go because we all thought, is that a Britishism or is Aleister reaching for the classic Greek with two scares of an episode? How should we read? It is summertime, and this is Mere Fidelity. My name is Matthew Lee Anderson, and I am your host for the show. We are going to think about reading. How should we read? What should we read? How can we engage our minds through books well? This is the podcast where we think together about the word of God and the world that we live in, sponsored by Leximpress. We have a new Mere Fidelity Leximpress book of the month for the month of June. Joseph Minich, Bulwarks of Unbelief by Leximpress. And I'm not gonna lie, I haven't read this yet, but everyone who has read this has raved about it. Andrew has read it and loved it. Derek.
SPEAKER_02I've given it away already. Like, not my copy, because I'm gonna keep that, but I've given it copies.
SPEAKER_00I bought an extra copy. And I blurbed it on the back cover.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's extremely illuminating.
SPEAKER_01Extremely illuminating is Derek's blur, Bulwarks of Unbelief. You can get a discount on that at Leximpress.com slash Mere Fidelity, and also see all the Lex Impress Mere Fidelity books of the month. Thanks to Lex Impress for sponsoring the show. We're gonna talk about reading. And it's great to be sponsored by a purveyor of fine books that will challenge your heart and your soul. And in some respects, this is kind of a follow-up conversation on the last uh conversation we did with the Lex Impress author, Hans Borsma, on his book on Lectio Divina, which got us thinking some about reading. And we thought, hey, it's summer. People put together summer reading plans. We should think about just reading in general. Also, at the front of the show, want to say shout out to the Merry Band of Patreon supporters. If you want to join them, you can do so at merefidelity.com. I think we're going to do a Mere Fidelity QA at the end of June. So, and that's just for the Merry Band supporters. I think we're going to be able to pull this off logistically if we can figure out our travel schedules. But that's coming. So thanks to all of you for your patience and for your support. Merefidelity.com, you can join the Merryband. So, Alistair, you have been thinking a lot about reading and how we read well. What have you been thinking about this?
SPEAKER_00Well, on various fronts, I've been thinking in response to a tweet a couple of days ago that talked about the importance of Tim Keller as a reader and the example that he gives of reading widely, some of the books that influenced him. And it occurred to me that many people just don't pay enough attention to reading as a skill, and something that you don't just arrive at through reading a lot of books or reading even good books. It's something that requires certain habits, and those habits need to be um developed. And many people who've been reading for many years have not developed those habits.
SPEAKER_02So the question to me is Just say my name, Alistair. Just tell me. Just say what you gotta say.
SPEAKER_00So the big question for me is how can we improve ourselves as readers so that we don't just think that reading more is going to improve our understanding of what we read, but that we'd be able to enter into conversation with our books or bring our books into conversation with each other. Um I always find this is an issue when I'm asked to recommend books because many of the things I take from the books that I read, other people don't get gain from them. And so the question of how you read is maybe um even more important than the very important question of what you read.
SPEAKER_01I I wonder, I mean, I'm I'm amused by the irony of this being prompted by a tweet that you saw, Alistair, and you interacting with that tweet and how we should read and whether or not how we should read is compatible with the media ecosystem of Twitter. I mean, it is true that how we read is really important, but also what we read and how much we read count as well for cultivating a rich intellectual life. Uh, one of the I mean I don't I don't remember whether we've ever talked about quit Netflix on this show. It's come up in bits and pieces, but I don't know that we've ever done a I think spiritually we did.
SPEAKER_02Spiritually, okay, spiritually we've it's been it's been an undercurrent with a lot of what we do.
SPEAKER_01Well, here it is. I mean, this is this is actually the real motivation for it, personally for me, was eight years ago, whenever it was, I thought I'm not reading enough, and I'm not creating a culture of reading in my home. And streaming services and movies and all these things are getting in the way of that. And so the first thing that I needed to do to create better habits of reading was block out, was a negative move. I needed to set up a perimeter around my intellectual life so that I could read deeply and well and read in the ways that I needed to read in order to become the kind of person that I wanted to become. And that has meant removing things like Twitter from my life. And so I'm I'm curious, Alistair, as you're as you think about that. I mean, this was like Tim Keller was not on Twitter.
SPEAKER_00He was on Twitter some of the time.
SPEAKER_01Well, not much, though.
SPEAKER_02Well, also for a long time in his formative years, it just didn't exist. Yeah, that's true. Like that's just the difference. I mean, foundationally, the age at which things that crowd out our attention, uh, you know, I think social media in particular, this is we're just rehashing stuff that people know, but the a lot of these formative foundational years, uh, we've been inundated. The the reading culture is just compl is is very different.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That point about social media and Twitter in particular is really key. Your relationship to social media is part of the environment that you create. It's one of the places where you develop or have to resist habits of reading. I think a feature of social media that Michael Sarcasis has identified that I find very helpful is the fact that the words, typically, as we encounter it in a book, is inert. It's something that is on the page, we're in a context where we're not around lots of other people, it's not a reactive context, we're weighing the ideas on their own terms. But on Twitter, every tweet is an action, it's a statement, it's a form of self-branding. It's not inert anymore, it's an active gesture or some sort of signal. And for that reason, it's very hard to read well on Twitter. And the habits of reading that you can develop there, if that is your primary context of thought, will bleed into the sort of books that you read and the way that you read them and will make it very challenging for you to read those books in the sort of way that you need to read them to gain from them. You'll constantly, for instance, be reading for things. The difference between listening to a text and listening for things within the text is immense. And I think that's something that on Twitter, where so much is about the subtweet, what is this person signaling? What is this person doing in terms of his aligning with or against some other party? Um, what is the context for this? Those sorts of questions just lead to very bad reading, I think more generally, and habits of reading that close us off to texts that really could expand our horizons.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, two things on that. I think one is, you know, I I think you've all there's that early period where people used to, when people started adding photos to tweets, you're you're re you start actually reading in order for the section that you can take a photo of and post of like, oh, this is this this is the money insight section. Now that could lead to focused, uh like looking for, hey, where does the author synthetically put forward all that they've been kind of gathering together so far? But it also uh it also can just lead lead to, I mean, there's there's a skill of like good skimming, but then there's just skipping, right? And and and actually failing to attend to the way someone's developing an argument and the the rich layers that they the author themselves, the author themselves has thought is essential to getting to the synthetic point that you just want to screen grab and put forward. And so, I mean, the medium and and having that as like one of your interlocutors in a sense, the voices that you're encountering on social media are in your head as you're reading. Um, they're they become internal conversation partners in a way that, like, if you're just doing research. So, in a little bit, I'm gonna go into a research hole for to write a chapter for the dissertation, which Lord willing, will be done. I'm not saying it's gonna be good, but it'll be done.
SPEAKER_01Um, go, go, do it, Derek.
SPEAKER_02But you guys but you you guys know, you guys know how it is. When you when you're reading a set you're reading several sections, you're reading several works in the same area, the conversation partners, you're like, oh, how is this inner? I mean, besides the fact that they're often citing who who you also read, um, you are bringing the authors you've recently read into conversation with whoever you're reading right now. But if all of that, if if if every time you come to a book, you're coming in with 15 recent tweets uh in your head as well, like, oh, well, how does that, you know, how does that interact with what Dogstar 75 blah, you know, what you know, said on Tuesday about this dumb thing that happened on in something utterly unrelated. It's like just filling your mind with irrelevant, um, irrelevant um concerns as you're engaging the text. And so uh that's just that that having less of that will allow for actual focused reading.
SPEAKER_01So I I kind of turned us a little bit to thinking about cultures of readings and the ways in which various technologies affect how we're reading it. And that's you know, like it's really important. Uh one of the things that's interesting on in that vein, before we even think about like practices of reading where we're sitting down with books and how we interact with them is performative reading. So, and I'm I'm I've wrestled with this a lot because, well, there's a there's a sort of in a in a culture of reading. So, like books of TikTok, like book talk is where books get sold now. Like there's a whole world of TikTok that's people talking about the books that they read and doing TikTok videos on them. And it's actually the main driver for book sales in publishing. If you want to get your book sold, you need to figure out how to get it into TikTok because or book talk, whatever it is, right? So there's there's this performative dimension of people are reading and they're interacting. And Derek, you were talking about some of that with the screenshotting of the money quotes that we're reading, like, oh, here's the really good stuff, right? And I've wrestled with this in terms of like just displaying the books that I read on social media, like putting up the here's what I read this year list. Here's and I last year I did it quasi-monthly, put up lists of the books that I read. And I haven't done that this year.
SPEAKER_02I forgot to shame you for that. Well I'd like to take this opportunity.
SPEAKER_01I I was gonna give you a chance, was really the question, right? Because on the one hand, the performative dimension, I thought of it in two directions. One, like things that are things that are public in that sort of way induce us, they they motivate us to do more or to do better in certain things, right? Like they they have their own incentive structure that can be valuable. And insofar as last year I had a certain type of goal about reading a number of books, I thought a public structure would help me, right? There's a kind of accountability that that goes along with that. And there's also, I think, for people who are interested in this show or what I'm thinking about or the newsletter, what I'm writing about, there's an interest, I think, in hearing the intellectual like backstory. Like, oh, these are the sort of things that he's reading. Doesn't really show up in the show, doesn't show up in the newsletter. But here's what Matt is sort of broadly thinking about these days. And that's interesting for people in its own way. I'm curious, though, I haven't done that this year, and I've wrestled with this, and Derek is shaming me appropriately. What do you guys make of that performative dimension of reading culture? Should you post a summer reading list?
SPEAKER_02Uh, you know, I I've done that before. Not summer reading list, and obviously not this one because it's gonna be like well, PDF number 85, whatever. Um, but you know, I used to, I still kind of keep a yearly list of books I've read now that it's shrunk down a lot because of work and babies and et cetera. But that it's helpful for me to organize where I've been for myself mentally. I used to publish, I mean, Andrew has, you know, hey, here's my here's my books I read this year, and then that give the the that gives a and then and then you do your top tens, right? And I used to do a top 10 partially as a way of reviewing and and um I think shining a light on books that I think are helpful. The thing that I think about when it comes to performative reading, though, is right now in the current cultures, there's two perverse incentive structures, one of which is the hey, I'm reading that hot new book two drive. So I mean, there might be there's a lot of books. It's like, oh wow, this I should be reading this. Everybody's reading this. And it's like, really, I don't care. Like, I I mean, I care. I'm sure it's a fine book, but I don't, I don't actually care. That's not actually relevant to my ministry right now or my research or whatever. So, like, just put it on the list and the back burner and don't think about it for a while. But but actually seeing this online, it's like, well, I I'm missing out. I should be, I should definitely be reading this biography of this obscure figure who transformed yada yada and is of no no relevance to what I'm going through, whatever. And and that might distract me from things that I should be reading, should be engaging. Um, the other one is the way the performative dimension comes in when it comes to obviously like signaling, hey, um, here, here's the kind of person I am. Um, I'm I'm reading the you know, the appropriately diverse list, or I'm reading the appropriately non-diverse list.
SPEAKER_01I I don't I don't know where reading trollop novels falls in that category. I think it's just sort of outside of it. People looked at my list and like, this is Trollope and Shakespeare. We're not sure what to do with that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And like if you have, if you have like moral convictions about like I want to expand in certain ways, and that's that's cool, that's fine. But when it comes to the public dimension of, you know, showing that this is what you're doing, I get that in terms of leading, you know, if you're a pastor, if you're some sort of other kinds of academic, that your opinion sometimes shapes and forms what other people read. There are ethical responsibilities there. But I think right now in the current culture, they are bent and warped. And so because of the way influencer culture works, everybody's got to be reading the same hot book at the same time, regardless of whether or not it's a value to the job you're doing and you're called to do in that moment. Uh, you want to be on the inner ring of people who've read it first or read it soon.
SPEAKER_01But just to be clear, Joe Minish is bulwarks.
SPEAKER_02You need to.
SPEAKER_01That's actually very, very good.
SPEAKER_02And if you don't, you have missed out and Jesus loves you, but but your life won't go as well. Um no, but but but so so that I think is one of the reasons I backed off a little bit. Also, I'm ashamed that I I can't read as much. And so um I'll I'll still post a photo of a book that I like, but um let's be clear.
SPEAKER_01Andrew puts us all to shame in this sort of category when he posts his list. It's always like really interesting stuff, really eclectic. And he reads so fast. I mean, it's just insufferable.
SPEAKER_00But I found quantity of reading doesn't really say that much about how well people are reading. I've been reading several, several books a week, and at the end of the week I gain something from those books, but I've not gained as much as sometimes when I've just been studying one book very closely for a month. And there are certain books that will reward that close reading and rereading and engagement where you're trying to metabolize their thoughts by developing their thoughts in your own writing, and so you're maybe writing to summarize the book, writing to develop certain areas of the book's thesis or certain aspects of its approach. And that I find is far more edifying than just reading through lots and lots of books that you can skip. Now, for that reason, I'm a bit more reluctant to share the lists of what I'm reading. Also, because people in certain circles have the expectation of the books that you recommend being things that you're completely signed off on, that you're completely agreeing. You recommend this and it's safe and good. But the best books I read are seldom safe. They're books that challenge me, they're books I argue with, they're books that I disagree with in significant ways, but they force me to think about things that I've not thought about well before, or they force me to sharpen my own thinking. Now, that form of reading is one that I just don't think many people are primed for. They're looking for books that are orthodox and safe, and if I'm sharing too many of the books that I'm reading, people will get the wrong impression. I don't agree with most of the books that I read. I read them because they sharpen my mind and they force me to think over against that book in conversation, not just saying, oh, this book expresses what I already believed, but in a way better than I could have expressed it.
SPEAKER_02This is where I want to ask you guys what you guys think about the kind of office or the kind of person who's doing the reading, you know, the responsibilities that people have. I don't think most people who have uh normal jobs that aren't academic or are not like verbal argumentative, that kind of processing jobs should actually spend that much time. You know, if you've if you've got 12 books a year, 15, 20 books a year in your mental budget. So so I guess that's my question is like how much who you are as a as a as a in your office in your role and all that should impinge on how you think about the kinds of reading you're doing. I think a lot of people should basically just be reading safe, but like orthodox books that are going to distill and synthesize and edify.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Alistair, do you have thoughts on that? Like, you know, you you you're you don't want to scandalize people by posting the and now inquiring minds, like those those those who follow you will be tempted to engage in curiosity, the sin of wanting to know what we ought not to know by wondering what is Alistair reading that is so renegade. But I mean, there's there's like you have a particular vocational responsibility here. And how how do you map that on to what ordinary people, ordinary people, you we know you're not ordinary Alistair, but you know, non-academics, people who don't have your vocation. How do we how do we make map that onto that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so don't think everyone has the responsibility to read in the way that I mean, this is part of the due diligence that we have as part of our profession, that we need to read widely, we need to test our ideas, because we bear responsibility for teaching in ways that others do not. And for that reason, we do need to read more rigorously and more broadly than most people would have to. Also, I don't think everyone needs to be reading unsafe books. In many ways, I think people should avoid those until they've really thought and read widely in their own orthodox tradition, then they can move out, having a firm sense of where they're coming from. Beyond that, I think there are also ways in which we need to bound our own realms of reading from the expectation, the social expectations and demands of other people's gaze and ourselves as we perceive ourselves as being exposed to other people's gaze. And so whether that's thinking I need to read a lot of books to appear like I'm a well read person, I'm someone who's constantly reading, or to appear like someone who's reading the right sorts of books, whether that's sufficiently diverse or sufficiently focused in one particular area or tradition. That I find unhelpful because to read well, often you almost need to detach. Yourself from the crowd, stand back and create a realm of solitude. The best reading, I think, occurs in a context where you're able to think through the ideas without that social pressure, without the time pressure, without that sense of being cornered. And for me, that is often a matter of not telling people what I'm reading. So I'm not being expected to come out with an opinion or some review. I'm just allowed to have it assimilate and think through it. And sometimes I'll be thinking through what I've read in a book for a year or so before it actually settles. For that reason, I find being a little less public about what I'm reading is helpful for me in the process of reading because so much of reading is being attentive, and so much of being attentive is delaying judgment and just being open and considering and weighing ideas for a while before, as a result of a mature judgment, you make your mind up on where you stand relative to something. And that I just find is it's a short-circuited process if we're constantly broadcasting what we're reading, and if we're expected to arrive at a judgment at the pace of social media, it's just not going to be good for your reading.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's exactly right. One of the things, Alistair, that you were talking about that I reflect a lot about is deep reading, reading in the sense of books that really challenge us versus books that uh we can skim that we would get superficial information from. And there was embedded in your comments, I think, a tacit distinction between types of books, right? Some books are going to do more for you. You're going to have to sit with them and let them get into you and deepen you. And some books are not going to do that. Some books are thin books.
SPEAKER_00Um, I've got to just skim some books or just read a single chapter or just read the beginning and conclusion of each chapter. That may be all that you need from certain books. That's right. So I mean my reading to read everything through.
SPEAKER_01That's right. My reading of Trollope is an evening reading. It's the last thing that I do before I turn in. It's not actually, in the first place, meant to be for moral or spiritual edification. It's because I just love Trollope. And I've recommended, as people know, to many people over the years, reading PG Wodehouse at the end of the day as a perfect palate cleanser for the day. Like, end of your day, been a rough day. You cannot have a serious thought reading PG Wodehouse. It's incommensurate with the text. And, you know, so, you know, like 20 minutes of Wodehouse at the end of your day, regardless of what has happened, you'll laugh and it'll be fine and you'll go to bed and it's great. So there's different contexts and different ways of reading. But one question that I'd have, Alistair, for you is for people who are not intellectuals, either as pastors or academics or in related vocations, but for people who want to cultivate an intellectual life, how can they encounter or read books that are going to stretch them more, right? Like to read the sort of thick books. Because one of the things, one of the misperceptions, it seems to me, is that those types of books take a lot of time. But I'm reading rereading the Iliad right now, which I would put in the category of thick books. You can you can do a lot with the Iliad. You can think about the world in a lot of different ways. And it doesn't actually take that much time to read and to meditate on it, to marinate in and to allow it to seep in. So I'm just curious, have you like as like we're we're limited because we're we are all in intellectually oriented vocations? Have you talked with people about how they can immerse themselves in thicker books over time in a more effective way who are not in vocations like ours?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um, there are various ways to do it, and it really depends upon people's circumstances. I actually went through more material in my own study in some ways during years when I was working in a warehouse than in certain years when I was in a academic context. Because I was just listening to things non-stop, lectures, I was listening to the Bible read through, I was listening to other books, audiobooks. And for that period of time, I was nine hours a day, I was doing that, and the commute as well. And so it's possible for some people, it's also possible for many people on their commute now to read things, listen to audiobooks, to have access to a far wider range of material that's accessible for your um travel purposes than there would have been in the past. Make the most of those moments. Sometimes there are books that you can read in um five-minute intervals while you're waiting for something. I mean, one of the things you can do in way of deep reading that's bite more bite-sized is poetry.
SPEAKER_01I was just about to say that, Alistair. The best thoughts I've had in the last year have come from memorizing poems.
SPEAKER_00And that's not going to take a lot of time in many cases. You can take a few minutes out of your break, a few minutes of a break, every couple of hours, perhaps, while you're doing your regular work, read a poem and then meditate upon it just in the background of your mind while you're doing everything else. And I've found that process of meditation and um chewing things over is such an important part of reading. If you're going to read well, you can't just gorge yourself. You need to have time for things to metabolize and to meditate and ruminate upon things. And that process is, of course, one that's prescribed for us in the reading of scripture, but beyond that, it's something that will be of value in your reading. And another thing to do is recognize that along with setting aside time for yourself, whether that's in short moments every day or whether it's a single time that you set apart for an hour every evening, for instance, when you're by yourself and you're reading, also find other people who are reading books and talk about the books that you're reading with them. Because so many books invite communal um discourse and communal reading. And that's very different from the sort of online reading that you'll find on Twitter where there's an urgency and everything is at the pace of the discourse. This can be something where you're reading Dante for a hundred days or something.
SPEAKER_01Oh, oh, oh, we got it in a whole show on reading, and we slipped it in in the 33rd minute or whatever we're in right now. Nicely done, Alistair. I approve.
SPEAKER_00But there are many contexts where you can find people who are looking for fellow readers and look out for them because often they will be people who have skills of reading that you will pick up as you read with them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I'll I'll say I I have never the poetry thing is just not something I've I've read poetry before and enjoyed it. I've just never thought, you know, not a total.
SPEAKER_01What a qualifier there. Guys, I have read poetry.
SPEAKER_02I have read no, I mean, I just I you know, I I I I'm not a poetry hater or appreciator, that kind of I, you know, that kind of thing. But in terms of like where I'm gonna go to initially, like it's I would be lost uh to say, like, oh, here's my little po here's my little collection of good poems that I leave uh by the bathroom or something like that. And and you know, that's that's where you know I'll have my I'll read my one poem and then I'll think about it for a couple hours. Um so I'd be curious, you guys later uh giving me a list of like, hey, here's your here's where you start. Um one thing that I have found helpful is yeah, the audiobooks um outside of my field. So Audible is how I do history books. So I just read it, I listen to a ton of history. Um, I don't listen to podcasts. I don't know who does, hint hint. Um I just throw our audience under the bus.
SPEAKER_01No, no, I've actually audiences that you don't listen to mere fidelity anymore and you're reading more books. We are all okay with that. That's a that's a win from our point of view, just so we're clear.
SPEAKER_02But but uh no, I actually have started listening to you, but but but audible like audiobooks uh history has been really fascinating for me for the last few years out of my wheelhouse because what's been fun for me, and the thing I like about history, it is a narrative, it's not just a novel, but what's been fun is um it gives you it it connects you to reality, it connects you to things that have happened in a way that oftentimes, you know, for for me, you know, I've been just dosing theology for 10 years. And his, you know, we can get some church history in there, but ideas, um, concepts, uh, scriptural narrative, and there's a lot of history there. But but in terms of getting yourself out of the normal grooves of your subject matter and encountering, in a sense, ideologies and realities as they occurred, as they worked out, has been super helpful for me as I've just engaged. And I will just say the audiobook thing uh as I deal with kids as they're we're going to walks and we're we're hanging out. It's it's great to have some of those background things because thoughts will occur as we're hanging out that I wouldn't have had had I just sat there and just tried to digest, actually going on the walk and listening and processing physical practice, like actually being physically engaged in a different way. People knock audiobooks because it's not real reading. I I I disagree. Certain, there's certain texts I don't think you can encounter that way, but narratives and history and things like that, actual physical engagement as how, and it's just walks, it's just good for you, uh, stress-wise. It's a good way to uh be involved uh with the text in a way that I had not appreciated several years ago before I started doing that. So that's a kind of a weird, I guess, practices walking and listening for me as I as I think about that.
SPEAKER_00We could also note that this podcast is conversation about reading most of the time. We're most of the time with people about their books. We're talking about our reading of scripture, and we're a community of readers who know each other very well, who've been engaging with each other for several years now. And for that reason, we have gained from each other's insights brought to common texts. And that I think is something that hopefully our audience gains from as well.
SPEAKER_01It's one of the things, actually, hearing you say that, Alistair, that reminded me uh of Tim's first appearance on this show. I think he called us an intellectual community, and it's one of the things that he liked about us. Um, and I still like it's it's hard to get us all to read the same thing because we have eclectic interests and responsibilities. But I still think we should, you know, pick up the same book at some point and talk through it again, like we did in days of your uh with uh begotten or made and and others.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I think that's been some of the most formative thing for me with this podcast is you know, your voices, obviously in themselves, but really the voices you're listening to. And that this gets back to the, I mean, uh the O'Donovan, I was not really, I'd heard of him had really engaged, I'd not engage O'Donovan in the way that I have I'm forced to because of because of you guys. And it's been good.
SPEAKER_01Derek, do you have do you have my voice in your head when you are reading? Too much.
SPEAKER_00I certainly have no voice in my head.
SPEAKER_02Too much. Um, and I listen, I listen to Alistair's Aleister's YouTube commentary on the Bible is something that I listen to a lot when I'm walking or doing things. But but what I was gonna say was two things. One, if you're actually looking practically where to do this, if you're a member of a church, starting book clubs at churches is like the easiest no-brainer boot thing to do. You you you can you can gather these things fairly quickly, even if it's just two or three people. So if you're looking for a practical way to start with that, start there. The other thing is even engaging with people, even if you don't if you haven't read what people are reading, the conversational insights, like you said, they they they really start to work in the grooves of your own thought. The third thing, and this is like my favorite thing, and this is this I we keep coming back to Keller, but uh reading who you like, uh what they read. I could just front notes and end notes is the that was the tip that a friend gave me in college when I just started reading nonfiction. I was just reading some pastors. It's like, don't read pastors, read the thing that read the thing. He was such you're such a jerk. But he was like, read the read the guys that your pastors, read the girls, read the authors that your pastors are citing, because that's where they're getting it. And that sort of leapfrogging reading, I didn't have reading mentor direct mentors for a long time. What I had was a bunch of endnotes leading to other endnotes, leading to footnotes, leading to rabbit trails of, and it's not algorithm driven, right? You, you know, Amazon, you may people who bought this also bought this. Well, that's fine because the algorithm kind of told them to. But when when you actually are are latching onto an insight in a text that was of value to you, and then you'd go looking that I think has that has given me so much. That has given me so much. And that is a sourcing practice that is foundational for so much of what I've read and learned.
SPEAKER_01I think that's exactly right, Derek. One of the things that had always mystified me about C.S. Lewis readers is the way in which they become C.S. Lewis devotees, but don't go upstream from where Lewis was and start spending time with what Lewis read, which it seems like is what Lewis kind of wanted and would have preferred for people to do intellectually. But I do think it gets back to this imitative dimension for reading, right? That in reading people that we like, one of the things that we're doing when if we read a writer whose intellectual life influences or shapes us in some way, is we want to become like that person. There's, there's, we want to think like they think. And the only way in which we can do that is by moving upstream and by incorporating the sources that they read to think like, how did they become the sort of writer that they are? How do they become the type of thinker that they are? And there is there is an imitative quality to our reading practices. And that's that that just to take us full circle, that is one of the interesting features of the publicity of reading that that it does foster that sort of imitative dimension. It makes it transparent for people, um, with all the distortions that we've already talked about.
SPEAKER_00Alistair, you were gonna say, Yeah, I think there's also on that imitative dimension. For most people, there is a particular set of thinkers who have been so formative for them that they tarry with. They're not um going to read their books swiftly, they're going to spend a lot of time chewing over what they're saying and trying to understand how they think. And so there's a sort of they serve as a model. Um, even though they might be one of several writers who are worthy of such imitation in the current context, they are someone that for you, um, you really want to understand how they think and get behind their thinking to see the sources that they're drawing upon and to understand how they are engaging with the sources to arrive at their insights. Also, there are so many books produced nowadays that you would waste your time reading if you spent your time just with the current um conversation and the current um publications. Spending time going upstream to the sources and to the classics. They're classics for a reason, and often spending time with Augustine himself or with Aquinas himself or with um any number of these classic writers, um, you'll find you gain so, so much more than those who have just popularized their thought um many years later. And they're drawing upon things that you'd learn so much better at their source.
SPEAKER_02We've all seen this. The most generative writers right now are the people who are actually deeply conversant and are in conversation with the classic sources. There's just almost always a greater depth instead of somebody just uh ex nihilo producing a new thought, which is not really new. It's just something warmed over that you didn't realize was warmed over because you're not reading anything old. Uh, and so so that kind of that kind of deep conversation with uh the sources is often and the often if the the kind of writing was meditative in itself, and it forces that kind of reflection, it forces that kind of tarrying in a way that modern kind of academic influenced uh or pop influenced forms of writing are meant to, in a sense, speed you through and demonstrate we have a bunch of these sources, but aren't they not shaped in such a way that, like, oh, this is meant to last. Often it's meant to demonstrate and show that I've interacted with what's last or or or hey, we're gonna get you through this moment. But the the kind of the the perennial quality uh is not something that perennial is not often quality of a lot of contemporary uh writing. And and so it's just it's it's a different kind of reading that's involved.
SPEAKER_01I think that's right. Uh as we're moving towards the wrap-up, the only other practice that I'd put in a word for would be reading letters. So where poetry uh fits a small space of time and you can ruminate on it. If there are authors that you like, I've really enjoyed reading letters. I I replaced, I took social media off my phone, and it's the only thing that I read on the Kindle app. But I I download, I've read through all of Lewis's letters this way. I'm reading through uh Dorothy Sayers' letters right now. I've been through Tolkien's letters. And it's letters are great because you can read a letter in two or three minutes and you can think about it in the times in between when you're in transit in places. And so like it provides a sort of intellectual ambiance, if you will, where you're just sort of surrounded by these thoughts. And it's also the case that, you know, when it comes to the deep reflection and the rumination, a lot of times it is a paragraph, but a lot of times it's also just a sentence. Like one sentence hits you, and that sentence just like it has weight to it. It strikes you at the right time and the right sort of way. And encountering sentences like that, I are, I think, like really, really valuable. And so if there are really great writers who you admire, who you just think like that's a wonderful sentence. And it is, you know, like you read someone like Lewis and you think, like, man, that guy dashed off more insightful sentences in his letters to, you know, Helen Jones from Wichita, Kansas. You know, like he just buried stuff in his letters that was phenomenal, way more phenomenal than anything I'm ever going to write. And like, so it's it's rewarding to have access to those sorts of sentences and those sorts of letters. But it's it's a nice digestible form of prose that we can ruminate on and immerse ourselves in. Uh so Derek, if you don't, if you don't embrace the poetry, maybe, maybe the letters are where it's at. Maybe you should go that direction.
SPEAKER_02That's that might be the thing. And that that actually just seems fancier in a way, because you're like, oh, well, I've been reading so-and-so's letters. That's deep scholar stuff. And so you know, that can satisfy your vanity as well.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Kierkegaard's one of the Kierkegaard's one of the people who I'd actually sit there and want to read his letters um and the epigrams and all that. So, no, absolutely, I'll have to look into that.
SPEAKER_00A lot of good reading is also like um it shouldn't be too purpose-driven. You're wanting to read widely because reading is good, and there's something about this that enriches your soul that is delightful. And so you're not always reading because you want to have information on a particular topic or you want to look good to other people. So much of your reading should be just serendipitous things that you pick up and things that grab your attention or areas of fascination that you have for a few months and you just read everything you can on that subject and then turn to something else. That is how a lot of thought occurs. To grow in knowledge, it's often like the process of going to sleep. If you're trying to get to sleep, putting all your exertion towards it, you won't do it very well. Um, likewise, when you're reading to understand, much of it is just immersing yourself within a wide range of different things and enjoying it. And you'll find that your understanding grows, but without you aiming directly towards some end.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And this is this is why like bookstores and libraries are so valuable institutions because they walking into a bookstore and seeing things that you didn't intend to buy, much to my wife's chagrin, that's an immensely rewarding experience uh intellectually, because there's always something. Like I didn't really anticipate coming out of here with this, but I'm excited to. So, you know, there there are practical limits on that. But uh maybe this summer, if you're listening, embrace the bookstore or library experience.
SPEAKER_02Final final question I have, one word from each of you. To finish books or not finish books is sin or not sin. Like what what is not people have people are very people have very deep convictions about not finishing books that they started. And so they don't read a lot because they're like, oh, I started it. You've been doing it for three months. I know, but I have to finish it.
SPEAKER_01Do you? Do you? Yeah. Alistair, are you a finisher?
SPEAKER_00Different types of books. Um if I'm reading a classic something that's more canonical, I do feel some sort of duty to finish it. If I'm reading most modern books that are designed to be read very quickly and just um digested without too much effort, I don't feel any responsibility to finish them. Um they're there to serve me, and if they're not really benefiting me, and in many cases, you've read this material elsewhere in some other form, and there is a point at which you realize I'm not getting much in exchange for the time I'm putting into this. I'm just going to put this aside, pick up something else that's more interesting and useful to me. Um reading should be enjoyable, and if you find that your reading is becoming a chore, it'd be better to put down the book that you're reading and pick up something else.
SPEAKER_01I think that's right. I I feel the same way. I I do have bad, this is now confession times. This whole show has been kind of a confession for me. But I do have bad intellectual proclivity. So I'm not only a finisher, I'm kind of a completist. So I like with a writer, I will get in these modes where I kind of feel like I have to read everything that they wrote, or I don't really know about this writer. And so I, you know, like I am making my way through all 44 trollop novels, whatever it is. Like that's it's gonna happen in my life.
SPEAKER_02Um I have that feeling occasionally and I suppress it very quickly.
SPEAKER_01I try to, I, but I'm not I'm not very successful at suppressing it. So, but I do, but I do think Alistair's point about like modern books being written differently. I mean, they're just our our publishing, our books are thin. Um and you know, so a lot of times I'll just ask, like, what counts as reading this book? And I'm reading for different purposes, and I will spend a very short amount of time on certain books and not immerse myself in them and think like, well, I've completed it in the sense that I've gotten out of it everything that I need to get out of it. Um, and I think that that's fine. Derek, you asked the question, you have to close us off.
SPEAKER_02Um I I actually I asked this to sewage my conscience because I often feel terrible for not feeling for nothing. It's what a sewage. I told you I think I listen, listen. Alistair said Alistair said Accolle's heel last week and we let that go. There were like said like three or four words. Okay, I I've never heard the word spoken.
SPEAKER_01So we but we but we but we but we we let it go because we all thought, is that a Britishism or is Alistair reaching for the classic Greek with two sick as of an episode?
SPEAKER_02But okay, okay, so with that said with that said, I try to finish, but I I have reached the comfort. The dissertation has given me the freedom to be like, okay, this is not worth my time. I'm stopping.
SPEAKER_01That is very true.
SPEAKER_02That just does that that that breaks a lot of your your moral reading compunctions. Yeah, and there's con being high.
SPEAKER_01So because you just can't finish it otherwise. And with that, on that was some kind of ending to the show. Derek Alastair, uh, this has been a lot of fun. Um, I would say that I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys read this summer, but maybe I won't. Maybe you're just not gonna tell me because you've got restrictions about who you can tell what you're reading. Um, but I do look forward to further conversations with you guys about what you've read at some point in the future. If you've been listening to the show, we hope you have a great summer of reading. We love books, obviously, here at Mere Fidelity, and we are grateful to Luxem Press for sponsoring this episode of Mere Fidelity. And Joseph Minich's Bulwarks of Unbelief escapes all of the critiques that we have made. I'm told I haven't read it again, so I don't know for sure. But people that I trust like Alistair tell me and tell the world in endorsing it that it is a book that should be read. So uh do pick that up, leximpress.com/slash mere fidelity for a discount on that. Thanks also to the Merry Band uh for supporting the show. We don't know what's happening over the summer, it's always touch and go with in terms of travel schedules and the rest of it. So we don't know what we're doing, but we are planning on, if we can, having great conversations about the word of God and the world we live in here at Mir Fidelity. We hope you'll join us and that you'll tell a friend. Until then, though, this has been Mir Fidelity.