“So you’re a reader,” she said. “What have you read this year?”
I have no idea how many books I’ve read this year.
Currently I'm in the middle of another Benjamin Franklin biography, another Sinclair Lewis novel, 12 books on small groups that my pastor lent me, and volume 2 of A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud and Hebraica (which is occasionally annoying to read because the writer’s an anti-Semite, so sometimes you gotta ignore his conclusions because of his prejudices). And because of yesterday’s rant I'm now re-reading The Celestial Hierarchy.
That’s this week. That’s apart from scripture and the newspapers and Yahoo news and blogs. And none of them, I should point out, have anything to do with my studies… which really isn’t anything to brag about. I need to get to reading that stuff.
I read very fast and I have a retention level of more than 75 percent. It’s not a photographic memory, despite what Mom tells everyone; it’s just a very good one.
And my reading speed is highly annoying to most people. I think I already mentioned how my sister is annoyed whenever I completely read one of her books before she can get past the introduction. But there are others.
I used to have a roommate who was also a Bible/Theology major and we were both taking most of the same classes. At the beginning of each semester we’d buy our textbooks; and I would read them. He would take them to class, but some wouldn’t ever get read. Others would—if there were test questions from them. I read ’em because I paid for them and I wanted to know if they would be useful at all—and if they weren’t, I could sell them back quickly. Which I sometimes did. Got full price!
So, come midterms or finals, my roommate would finally crack the textbooks and read it in order to find test answers. Meanwhile, I’d be doing something else—reading for fun, or writing obnoxious posts on the Bethany Online system, or putting together the ultimate Monty Python and the Holy Grail homepage (which the school took off its servers once they discovered the Castle Anthrax scene.
“What are the three types of ecclesiastical authority?” he’d ask, or some other ecclesialogical test question.
Without looking up, I’d tell him.
“I hate you,” he’d respond.
“Read the book,” I’d shoot back.
He was reading the book. Right then. But sometimes I forget others don’t have my retention level, and I can be a little too obnoxious or condescending about it. I've been working on that.
Some people say geniuses are snotty. Okay, that’s fair. Some of us mean to be snotty, too; we suck at other things and we feel the need to remind everyone we do excel in some things, just to keep some sort of societal balance. In my case, I didn’t consider that others struggle at things I find easy, and I’d become unrealistically impatient with them. It actually wasn't until I started teaching that I realized I had to cut this evil crap out.
But this is why I can’t put together a booklist. Ask me to list something more realistic, like how many different kinds of coffee I currently own. Simple: Trader Joe’s French Roast, Gevalia’s Antiguan, and Gevalia’s Espresso Roast. There. Easy.