I’ve always hated reading fiction.  Too impractical for me.  I’ve always gravitated toward stuff that’s directly applicable, today.  I’ve not read a fiction book since college, and never when it wasn’t assigned to me.  Never.  How many hours does it take to read a book?  Several!  Time is precious.  Am I to spend all those precious hours reading a book that doesn’t give me something I can go out and apply to my life or my ministry?!

Can’t you just tell how obnoxious I can be?

But then Casey Alexander turned the screws on me a few weeks ago and told me that if I didn’t read “The Shack” the world would spin off its axis, or something like that.  Then I saw Eugene Peterson’s quote on the front about how this book would come to mean as much to our generation as John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Process’ had meant to his (Bunyan’s, not Peterson’s-he’s not that old!).  OK,OK!  I’ll read it!

I liked it.  I think Eugene Peterson overestimated its impact, by a LOT!  But it wasn’t bad.  I didn’t feel like I was wasting away perfectly good hours on mere abstraction or fantasy.  But I’m not reviewing the book, I’m reviewing the fact that I actually read it.

Then I decided to read another one.  This one was a much larger endeavor.  I read “Christ the Lord” by Anne Rice.  I liked it A LOT!

So, I’m a convert.  And I’m trying to decide what to read next.  I just got a library card, so the options are pretty much limitless.  Any suggestions?

(Chris, I know ‘catcher in the rye’, and it’s already on the list…so what else?)