Pleasure Reading
Originally published at Grasping for the Wind. Please leave any comments there.
Provocative Church has a quote from Albert Mohler on the Importance of Reading for the Christian. He also recommends a text found in my own library called How to Read A Book. This book is probably the most comprehensive and understandable document on the subject I have ever found. It is dedicated mostly to non-fiction reading, but fiction does have its place in the book.
Reading is an important Christian discipline. Further, growth as a Christian disciple is closely tied to the reading of the Bible, as well as worthy Christian books. This is why the Christian church has championed the cause of literacy.
Do our own young people read books? Do they know the pleasures of the solitary reading of a life-changing page? Have they ever lost themselves in a story, framed by their own imaginations rather than by digital images? Have they ever marked up a page, urgently engaged in a debate with the author? Can they even think of a book that has changed the way they see the world . . . or the Christian faith? If not, why not?
- Albert Mohler
Having been a reading teacher in a former life, I can honestly attest to the power of reading. I had some parents come to me one day, telling me they were concerned because all of their efforts to encourage their son to read had come to naught. He was one of those slow and methodical readers (People I often refer to as having an engineering frame of mind; they refuse to gloss over details.) that see every period or quotation mark, and read ever single word.
(Contrast this with the fast reader who glosses over the page and seeks to get the gist of the story by connecting dots made on the page. I am one of these myself and often skip whole paragraphs without realizing it.)
The boy just couldn’t get up the desire to read. It took too much time and effort for him, so he didn’t bother. My solution was to first find out what books he liked to read when he did read, and then suggest titles for him to try. I also did not assume that because he was a slow reader that he couldn’t read large books. This fifth-grader was smart so he understood what he read, he was just slow in doing so. He tackled the Brian Jacques books at my suggestion. End result: He is now a voracious reader who can’t get enough. His parents were happy, and every time I go back to my old teaching haunts, they always let me know how grateful they are and update me on what he is reading now.
He will be much more successful in life now that he can enjoy reading. It’s no longer just mechanical. He will have to read things that are mechanical, but will be more equipped to handle it, and not completely turned off to reading because that is all he reads.
Enjoying reading is the very first step to making even necessary reading possible. Mohler, in the quote above, talks about the “joy of reading a life-changing page” but really misses the point. There should be joy for the young person in the simple act of reading for no other purpose than the act itself. For any reading teacher or parent, the true measure of your success in stressing the importance of reading is when your child reads for pure pleasure by their own choice.