{"id":26089,"date":"2025-02-27T14:51:17","date_gmt":"2025-02-27T19:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=26089"},"modified":"2025-02-27T14:51:31","modified_gmt":"2025-02-27T19:51:31","slug":"read-a-book-nothing-can-replace-that","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/read-a-book-nothing-can-replace-that\/","title":{"rendered":"Read a book: Nothing can replace that!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was amazed that some words on a page could change your life.\u201d<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0\u2013Testimony of a woman in rehab last Monday night.\u00a0 She had been in and out of jail more times than she could count, and in prison three times.\u00a0 These days, she is a solid Christian woman with a strong testimony and a peace that passes understanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt I had jewels in my mouth.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> \u2013Frank McCourt, writing about his youth in Belfast.\u00a0 When a teacher introduced the teenager to Shakespeare, a new world opened for him.\u00a0 The movie Angela\u2019s Ashes,<\/em>\u00a0based on McCourt\u2019s book of the same name, showed him lying in the bathtub reading Shakespeare out loud.<\/p>\n

Often I will read four or five books in a week.\u00a0 \u00a0Hey, I\u2019m retired and some weeks the calendar is blessedly empty.\u00a0 Those are great days for grabbing a book and disappearing into another world.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s funny about reading all those books last week\u2013my wife thinks it\u2019s more than a little bizarre\u2013is that I read them all at the same time.\u00a0 That is, I will read one for an hour, then switch to another.\u00a0 Some nights my bedtime reading is two of the books.\u00a0 Friends ask if I mix up the story lines.\u00a0 The answer is that about two sentences into the reading and I\u2019m back in the world created by that author.<\/p>\n

I became a writer because I love to read.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I love the image: the world created by an author.<\/em> Every reader knows what that means.\u00a0 It\u2019s the wonder of reading.\u00a0 You enter a different world.<\/p>\n

I read Western novels for pure escape.\u00a0 For a few hours, I\u2019m back in the saddle again, out where a friend is a friend\u2026.<\/p>\n

I read World War II histories and novels because I was born in that time and lived through it and have a ton of memories from those years.\u00a0 Being something of a history student (majored in it during college), I have a small library of books on Churchill and other players in that greatest story of the 20th Century.<\/p>\n

I love the historical novels of Robert Harris.\u00a0 This Britisher may be the best historical novelist ever.<\/p>\n

I read anything with a great plot, that was recommended highly by someone I trust, that drew me in by the cover.\u00a0 Yes, I will sometimes buy a book because I love the cover.\u00a0 That\u2019s how I bought the entire \u201cMiss Dimple\u201d series of World War II novels written by Mignon Ballard, who became a friend on the internet.<\/p>\n

Okay.\u00a0 A few observations on the subject of reading\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2013Read widely.\u00a0 You never know when a story\/illustration\/lesson will jump off the page and grab you by the throat and never let you go.<\/p>\n

\u2013The best way to \u201cread widely\u201d is to browse at your public library as well as the large bookstores in the city.<\/p>\n

\u2013Look around for a great used bookstore in your area.\u00a0 Ask friends in nearby cities.\u00a0 You can save a lot of money and make great discoveries that way.<\/p>\n

\u2013Set yourself a limit as to how many pages of a book you will read before deciding to give it up.\u00a0 Whatever you do, deliver yourself from the perfectionism that says not to finish a book is to fail.\u00a0 It is not! It\u2019s making use of your time.<\/p>\n

\u2013If you have bought a book and found that it is unworthy (aka, trash), rather than keeping it on your shelf or donating it to the book drive at the library, do what I do: throw it in the recycling bin.\u00a0 That\u2019s one book no one else is going to waste time reading!<\/p>\n

\u2013Even if you paid good money for a book, it\u2019s not necessary for you to have finished reading all of it in order to keep it on your shelf.\u00a0 I have lots of C. S. Lewis books I\u2019ve not finished.\u00a0 But when I have a spare half-hour, it\u2019s great fun to pull one down and read just one chapter.\u00a0 Some writers are pure gold no matter where you start in their book.<\/p>\n

\u2013When you read a book and enjoyed it, but have no further use for it, give it away. My friend Bruce Fields, retired staff minister at First Baptist Gainesville, Georgia, reads a book, then sends it to a friend.\u00a0 I was the recipient of one on one occasion, and love the idea.<\/p>\n

\u2013If you are passing along the book you\u2019ve just read to a family member, mark it up.\u00a0 Write your thoughts in the margin.\u00a0 One of my sons says it\u2019s like a visit with Dad.<\/p>\n

\u2013My wife says she reads differently from the way most people do.\u00a0 \u201cWith me, a book is like a delicious meal I want to savor.\u00a0 So, I enjoy reading a little each day.\u00a0 It takes forever to finish the book, but it becomes a part of me forever.\u201d<\/p>\n

At this moment, I have a dozen books nearby I have bought but haven’t had time to read yet.\u00a0 It’s like having a dollar in my pocket and the ice cream store down the block.\u00a0 I can’t wait.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to write more here, but the books beside my laptop are beckoning. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was amazed that some words on a page could change your life.\u201d\u00a0\u2013Testimony of a woman in rehab last Monday night.\u00a0 She had been in and out of jail more times than she could count, and in prison three times.\u00a0 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26091,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26089\/revisions\/26091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}