Lit! by Tony Reinke

"Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books" by Tony Reinke is a book about... reading.  From the back cover:

Learn how to better read, what to read, when to read, and why you should read... Offered here is a theology for reading and practical suggestions for reading widely, reading well, and for making it all worthwhile.

It's an interesting book, and it's written by a guy who obviously loves to read and who gets a lot of spiritual juice out of what he reads.  As part of my "Year of Discipline", I am trying to improve my reading life, and this book had some really useful suggestions on how to do that.  Things I really liked:

• The initial chapters that set up a "theology of reading" -- why reading is important to Christians and why being thoughtful about what we read is so important.  The contrast between Scripture and everything else that is not scripture was laid out very well, and it's a great reminder as I start this new year to keep Scripture as the staple of my reading diet.
• Chapter 4 on thoughtfully analyzing the worldview of the book you're reading.  I think this is applicable to much more than books, and I have a feeling the youth group at church will be hearing about this sometime soon...
• Building a list of reading priorities to help make sure that you're reading a wide variety of stuff.  I end up in the SciFi section by default way too often when there's so much else out there to read!
• The chapter on how to build a home full of readers.  In particular, I liked the idea of buying as many books as your kids can read, provided they identify five important pages from the book, summarize the content, and then read them aloud to the family.

I will admit it -- I had a hard time with the chapter that encouraged writing in the margins of your books.  I see his point, but a lifetime of being reminded not to write in my books will be a hard habit to break.

Anyway, this book was interesting, and a quick read.  Think about it -- if you read a book a week for the next fifty years, you will only have read 2,600 books.  It's worth some time thinking about what you're reading to make sure you're getting the most out of it.