Reflecting on Reading (Nicola Slee)

Some opening questions/activities

- How do you feel about reading?
- Do you enjoy reading?
- What kind of reading?
- Do you find reading difficult, boring, a waste of time?

My history of reading

Think of your earliest experiences of reading, even learning to read, if you can remember them. Are they good memories or painful ones, happy or sad? Can you remember a favourite book as a child, one that was read to you, perhaps, or you read for yourself? What was it? Why did you love it? If not, did you enjoy other kinds of ‘reading’, perhaps TV, radio or films, much of which is based on books. Did you ever write a book as a child, or collaborate on one, perhaps as a school project? What was it about?

Different kinds of reading

Make a list of all the things you might read in a typical day. Try to include everything, from messages and texts on your mobile phone to the back of the cereal packet, to the timetable at a bus stop, a recipe for supper and post through the letterbox as well as articles, books, websites and blogs. And the Bible, of course, and perhaps a prayerbook (N.B. are we assuming Christian faith of our learners?). How long is your list? Are you surprised at the range and amount of your reading? Does this alter, in any way, your sense of yourself as a reader? How and why?

Reading and faith formation

What part would you say reading has had in forming your faith? The Bible has probably been important in one way or another, but there may have been other important books too: spiritual texts, biographies of saints or Christian leaders, popular Christian books, prayer books, hymn books and other kinds of books perhaps. Think about specific books but also think about the processof reading. How is that a significant factor in your faith life?

Desert Island reading

If you had to choose eight books for your Desert Island books, and only eight, what would they be and why? They don’t need to be overtly religious, but they should be the books that would sustain you, inspire you and comfort you on your desert island.

Now think about what each of your chosen Desert Island books might teach you about God. Presumably you have chosen them because they capture something really important about your life, or your faith or your core values. So, even if it isn’t obvious at first, haven’t they got something to say about God?

Academic reading

How do you think and feel about specifically academic reading? Are there any academic books (however you interpret this term) that have been particularly important to you in your life’s journey and/or faith journey? Which ones, and why?

The dark night of reading

Think of a book or article – or any kind – that you have really wrestled with, either because it was difficult to understand or because it was deeply challenging in some way. This will probably be a book or article that you have read not only once but many times; it might be a book or text you go back to at crisis points in your life. It might be a set text for an exam or a course. Think about what you learnt, as well as what you suffered, through reading this text.

Experiencing reading

How many verbs can you find which express different experiences you have when you read? In the paragraph above, I wrote about ‘learning’ from a text, which is perhaps quite obvious, but also ‘suffering’ through reading. I also spoke about ‘wrestling’ with a book or article. What other words or phrases would you use?

Bible reading

Thinking about the Bible, what is your experience of reading the scriptures? Who introduced you to the Bible and taught you how to read it? Have you had other teachers since then? How has your reading of the Bible changed or developed or expanded? (Has it?) Of course, your experience of reading the Bible is probably not unitary, since the Bible is a library rather than a book, and our experience of reading the psalms is not going to be the same as our experience of reading the Gospels, or Romans, or one of the historical books or some of the legal material.