*sigh* Every now and then, I find myself reading five or so books at once. This is one of those times. (Plus a new Bible reading plan I’d not tried before.) I know how it happens. Books that are just barely well-written and interesting enough to continue reading, but not well-written and interesting enough to read straight through are the usual culprits. Every now and then, a book I need to put down and think about, or just absorb, for a while before continuing makes my reading list as well.
Now? One hardcopy book. A book on my “non-fiction Kindle” and another on my “fiction Kindle” plus three more in different instances of Amazon’s Kindle Cloud Reader. Between the six, they hold my attention. *sigh*
And then there’s that new Bible reading program. Ten chapters/day, each from a different book with specific instructions to just read them straight through without stopping to think on the text. Tried that. Can’t. So, I generally read half the day’s readings and then go do other things, while the chapters I’ve read percolate. Then, at the end of the day, I finish the readings.
In between, my daily work/chores/activities and. . . the other books.
I prefer keeping it to just one book at a time, but sometimes. . . nope. Not happening.
Instructions to not think on the text? Why read the word of God and not think about what he has to say? There are, I must admit, times when it’s hard to get much from the text when it’s lists of names or census tallies, but to read without thinking? I can’t even do that with fiction.
Our church did a bible study of the New Testament this last fall that was a bit different. It uses the NIV translation, without chapter and verse markings or cross references. The order of the books was also altered from the traditional order, but they were all there. We took eight weeks to go through it all. There were five reading sessions about 12 pages per session, each week, and we held a weekly one hour session to discuss what we had read.
While I prefer the NASB or the ESV to the NIV it was still a very good experience. The course materials are available from Biblica.com. Sadly they’ve got a bunch of goat food on their site like Sarah Young’s books, but they also have bibles and some other language translations like French, Spanish and Chinese. Our study was done from their “Books of the Bible” series.
“Instructions to not think on the text?” First, I paraphrased that for brevity. More fully, not _study_, meditate on, etc. I find that impossible, but allowing myself to kind of ponder what I’ve read, after quickly reading through (where “reading” means actually understanding the words [though when does it not? Oh, when a politician reads a teleprompter or an actor learns his lines. . . *heh*] at at least a surface level) ends up being more useful than I had thought. Of course, this “read through the Bible in eight+ months” sort of reading plan can’t substitute for Bible study. That’s another ball of wax entirely.
The begats (and lists of kings/cities conquered by Moses and Joshua, etc.) almost make my eyes bleed, but it’s good discipline to actually read them, I suppose.
I refuse to use the “New Trucker’s Version” (New International *heh*). I simply do not like its liberties with the text–particularly the translations of NT Greek. Maybe that’s just me. . .