One Book Is Enough, But...
One of the best things about seminary is the amount of time the professors save you by focusing your reading on the "best" books and articles published, as read during their own life of study.
And yet, there is so much of the "best" that I will unfortunately never get around to reading, that in thinking about this for too long, I can get depressed. So many books, so little time.
The challenge I face now, however, is how to cull from all the "best" that I do get read what will be most meaningful and helpful to me (and others) further down the road. I've always been a reader, always been one to chronicle significant quotes and passages as I came across them; the problem now is that I come across so many so fast, it's impossible to keep up.
For instance, just in the past week, I've read stellar articles/chapters from John Calvin, George Herbert, Charles Spurgeon, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. One of the assigned books I read during the last week of July was a summary of the writings of early church fathers Gregory Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, as well as the Reformer Martin Bucer, and Puritan Richard Baxter. By the weekend, I'll have read a series of pieces by philosopher Francis Schaeffer, British pastor John Stott, and my favorite pastor/writer, Eugene Peterson.
My highlighters (yes, "highlighters" plural) can't take much more of this abuse.
At this stage of my education, three reading goals I've set for myself are as follows:
Read and highlight everything assigned, either on time or eventually (even if it's a year from now). With one year under my belt, I've done pretty well keeping up, but I do have a short list of book titles and page numbers from past semesters that I plan to read at some point.
Read carefully but quickly. The more you read, the faster you get in doing so. Though I read quite a bit before coming to seminary, the increased amount of reading I've done since arriving here has increased my reading speed. I've never timed myself, but little bad habits of re-reading previous sentences and reading only a few words at a time (instead of chunks of words) are gone.
Read as privilege and not as drudgery. I'm fortunate that I've always loved to read, but I can still feel overwhelmed at times by the amount of pages and words to get through. That's when I pinch myself that this is a part of what I'm not only expected but called to do, and I'm grateful this calling is matched by a desire and ability to fulfill it.
To quote Thoreau:
"Books are the treasured wealth of the world,
and the fit inheritance of generations and nations."
Or as Luther said:
"One book is enough,
but a thousand books are not too many."
At least that's what I read somewhere...