Lit! A Christian Guide to Reading Books

This was just not a book written for me – don't need encouragement to read, and widely. Not crazy about his overall approach in the practical half of the book, either. Sure it's advice, not edicts, but if you ask me, the reasoning is off.

And don't get me started on that nonsense about marking-up books. Sure, I know a lot of people do it – even some of my friends – but people (even friends) watch Survivor or America's Got Talent. Doesn't mean it's a good idea. Show some respect, Reinke, trees gave their lives for those things you're covering with graffiti.

Every now and then, he overwrites a passage, but on the whole, a decent enough read, and it could be a decent tool in the right hands. Those hands just aren't mine.

Short review: Lit has unfortunate timing. Alan Jacobs already has a very good book out about reading (The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction). But even more than the timing, Jacobs' book has the opposite focus. Lit is a traditional “How to Read a Book” style of book. Jacobs' whole thesis is that we should read more at whim and with less outside pressure about reading properly or reading the right things.

That being said, Lit is decent. It has a very good defense of why Christians need to read books by non-Christians and some good thoughts about how to develop as a reader and create more time to read. Most of what I enjoyed were the casual reading advice sections. The major problem is that the first quarter of the book is focused on reading scripture, the primacy of scripture and why we need to know scripture to read other books. The content isn't bad, but at the beginning of a book that is trying to help non-readers become readers, I think it was a very bad decision on organization.

Also according to the introduction, its purpose is to inspire non-readers. As a big reading I probably am not the right one to evaluate that, but I think that it missed its mark.

The full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/lit-reinke/