Kevin Stilley

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My Relationship With Books

I can’t resist the opportunity to talk books, so when I was tagged with the following questions I welcomed the opportunity to respond.

1. What author do you own the most books by?

Soren Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis, and Charles Haddon Spurgeon are the authors taking up the most space on my shelves, but if you throw in all the mass market paperback books shoved in my closet the answer would probably be either Louis L’Amour, Agatha Christie, or Ray Bradbury.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?

I own about 5 or 6 different translations of  St. Augustine’s Confessions.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

Like fingernails on a chalkboard.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Now, that’s a silly question. However, I remember that when I was about sixteen and read Quo Vadis for the first time I was pretty interested in Lygia.

5. What book have you read the most times in your life?

The Little Engine That Could.

6. Favorite book as a ten year old?

I loved the Sugar Creek Gang books as a ten year-old. I still do.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

The Existential Pleasures of Engineering

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?

I have read some really good books in the last year so it is hard to decide. Probably the book that grabbed my attention the most is The History of the Medieval World: From the Conversion of Constantine to the First Crusade, by Susan Wise Bauer (this book hasn’t been released yet – I read a pre-publication copy).

9. If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?

The Collected Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters. Most folk would find Plato fascinating and easy to understand, but they are too intimidated to attempt reading him.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Ender’s Shadow and its sequels

11. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, by Kenneth Pike

12. What is your favorite devotional book?

I really like the devotional commentaries penned by F. B. Meyer.

13. What is your favorite play?

Murder in the Cathedral, by T.S. Eliot

14. Poem?

I use Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” to lecture on Hermeneutics, and I think the familiarity that comes with repeated and frequent use has probably made it my favorite.

15. Essay?

The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis.

16. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

Richard Foster

17. What is your desert island book?

ESV Study Bible

18. And…what are you reading right now?

A History of Christianity in Asia: Beginnings to 1500, by Samuel Hugh Moffett

Please use the comment section below to share some of your answers to these questions.

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“I Am Sure They Will Be Good”

reading-list

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I saw my reflection in the mirror presented by the letter of a child. In Madeleine L’Engle’s book A Circle of Quiet she writes of a letter she received from a girl who really poured it on.

“Dear Miss L’Engle, you are one of the greatest writers of all time,” and so on, fulsome phrase after fulsome phrase. She signed her name and then wrote, “P.S. I have not yet read any of your books, but I am sure they will be good when I do.”

That P.S. parallels my experience with Russian authors. For years I was convinced that I would love the work of a handful of Russian authors — Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Pasternak, Nabokov, Chekhov, Turgenev. In fact, I can remember praising them to others, quoting them, and even sharing analysis of their work.

The problem? I had only limited exposure to them. What I found when I actually started to read them in depth was that I much preferred excerpts from their novels, relevant textual quotations, and commentary upon their corpus of work to the experience of actually reading them. I had been like the little girl who wrote to L’Engle “I have not yet read any of your books, but I am sure they will be good when I do.”

Okay, I’ve entered the literary confessional and shared my embarrassing experience as part of my academic penance. Now, it is your turn. Check out some of the titles on the following lists and see if you have been guilty of praising some of the titles included without having actually read them.

Share your confessions in the comments below. You will feel better after you do.

Reading Lists:

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