My mother read aloud to us once a year; on Christmas Eve, she read Luke 2 and “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” We had very few children’s books in our home, but someone gave me—the child insomniac with chronic pain—Dr. Seuss’s Sleep Book, which I cherished. Despite crying over trying to read the word “laugh,” in first grade and being laughed at in third grade for mispronouncing Penelope (thinking it rhymed with cantaloupe), I loved reading.

As a child, I ransacked my school library, especially reveling in Lang’s fairy tales. My father sometimes took us to the Glenshaw Public Library, which had a slim selection of books–mostly Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries. At my elementary school’s book fair, I chose David Copperfield. The saleswoman told my teacher not to let me purchase such a difficult book, but my teacher said, “Let her be.” That was when I fell in love with Dickens.

As teenagers, the kids on my street discovered Tolkien—reading The Fellowship of the Ring late into the night. Then, on my dark walk home, when I got to the scary part of our unlit street, where no homes cast reassuring light, I ran the whole way past the woods, wary of ringwraiths.

My high school introduced electives during my sophomore year. I reveled in my American Lit, Brit Lit, Black Lit, and Shakespeare courses. My first trimester at college, I took a Dickens and Hardy course; each week, I had to read a novel and write a paper on it. The plot of my life became reading. My life was peopled with characters.

As an adult, my reading has gone through chapters: books on the Christian life, marriage, and parenting; books read to our children; books on the Deaf world; books on justice issues; books set in every country of the world; classics.

A fellow reader said that George Saunders’ delightful A Swim in a Pond in the Rain supplies his defense for a literary life. Not to be overly spiritual, but my defense comes from Paul and Spurgeon. Scripture records the request Paul sent to Timothy: “When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments (2 Timothy 4:13). In 1863, Charles Spurgeon preached a sermon entitled “Paul – His Cloak and His Books”:

He is inspired and yet he wants books!
He has been preaching for thirty years and yet he wants books!
He had seen the Lord and yet he wants books!
He had a wider experience than most men and yet he wants books!
He had been caught up into the third heaven and had heard things that it was not lawful for a man to utter, and yet he wants books!
He had written a major part of the New Testament and yet he wants books!

“Give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:20). When I thank God for temporal gifts, books and libraries are near the top of my list.

https://www.spurgeongems.org/sermon/chs542.pdf