Monday, May 25, 2015

And then there are the books that you kind of want to keep to yourself.

There are, of course, any number of reasons for this - guilty pleasure, a deep connection you suspect no one else could understand, a feeling that you yourself don't quite understand what you've read (and a desire to keep that lack of understanding private), and so on. Or in this case...I don't really know.

I wrote a few years back about the responses that I get when I read classics. People make assumptions about the reasons for choosing big, fat books and they almost never assume that you're reading that thing because you want to. So if I have started reading the Bible (I have), perhaps I'd prefer to keep it to myself (and this blog that no one reads) to avoid trying to explain why.

Actually, I can try to explain. It's a few different reasons, really. I finished with Shakespeare, whose plays I was re-reading (chronologically, because that's how the book ordered them) and I really liked having that kind of big project and I missed it almost immediately. The Bible is one of those things I've always meant to read (and I've tried a couple of times) so it seemed like a good choice. Especially since it's broken down so nicely into books, allowing me to alternate really easily between Bible and other, shorter things. And it's a good palate-cleanser between those shorter things.

But also I'm kind of enjoying it! A lot of it is a slog, I won't lie, but there's some great stuff in there. I'm in Deuteronomy right now and it's just magnificent. I can see where Michelangelo got his mental image of Moses, because when I read his words, I see and hear them delivered by this guy:

Like I said, I've never made it all the way through before (I did get as far as Isaiah once), but this time I wrote it in pen in my reading log (and now I've talked about it here), so hopefully that'll keep me going. It definitely also helps to be breaking in between books. We'll see.

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