Reading Is About More Than the Classics
I'm feeling sick today, which (in my case) always seems to carry a cloud of depression with it. Any quick prayers appreciated. I've just been reading a book which I won't identify, given that the author might not be terribly complimented that it prompted these thoughts. A very meat-and-potatoes book, a biography of an outstanding (albeit rather obscure) Irish priest of the nineteenth century. There's nothing wrong with it at all, but I'm guessing it's not a book that anyone will consider a classic. It occurred to me, reading it, that I've probably taken far more pleasure, by orders of magnitude, from ordinary books than from classics of any kind. The pleasure of reading, to me, has a lot to do with the activity itself. It's as likely to be stirred by a local history book or a magazine article as it is by 1984 or Lord of the Rings or Mere Christianity or any of the books that get called "classics". It's often occurred to me that a diet of cl...