Building Up My Reading Muscles

Wherein I am starting a reading plan, again

I want to be one of those people who are well-read. I did not receive a classical education, and I had no time to really acquire one during my homeschooling years, as much as I tried to make it available to my sons. While I feel like I have a good idea about what a classical education is, I am well aware of my shortcomings in that department.

I love book lists. I am about half way through Martin Edward’s’ list from The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books. I have found other lists: must-read classics from sources such as homeschool curricula, and lists of what comprise the Western Canon, or the great books of the western world. I sometimes get carried away, and want to read all the things, and read them now. It was in that frame of mind that, just last month, I drew up a reading plan for myself. It had it all: Scripture, spiritual reading, catechism, Shakespeare, Dante, Agatha Christie, Aquinas, and Trollope! I mean, what could go wrong?

Well, what did go wrong was decision paralysis. There are too many things to read. I love nothing more than spending a Sunday curled up on the sofa after Mass, rich coffee giving way to festive weekend beverages as the day wears on, with my nose firmly planted in a book. But, I mean, asking me to read seven different things on a Sunday is a bit much. Besides, I am in the middle of an extremely delinquent crochet project, which was due last Christmas. The baby will be too big for her sweater if I don’t get a move on with it. Sundays are really the only time I have for crochet and other arts, and I don’t want to rob all of that time cramming in classics. So now, upon further review, I am cutting back my plans to focus on just four essential books at a time.

The first book is the Holy Bible. More specifically, the Douay-Rheims Bible with Haydock’s compendium of commentary. I have told myself that I am going to read the Bible. Not in a year, but eventually. I am using the excellent guide in T. S. Flanders’ Introduction to the Holy Bible for Traditional Catholics. But, where Flanders fits it into a year by having two, or sometimes three, passages in one day, I am just doing one of those. I put a little dot next to the one I have read, and next year, God willing, when I cycle through again, I’ll read the unmarked passages. If I am diligent I will have read it all over three years. The plan after that is to just keep going over it again. I mean, it’s the Bible, you can’t read it too much. I am reading it on the free iPieta app, which beats the cost and gross tonnage of the actual Haydock Bible.

The next book is the one I use each day for mental prayer. This being part of my prayer life, I don’t even consider it part of reading the classics. I read the daily passage, mediate on it, talk to Our Lord about it, and make resolutions from what I have gleaned. This book may change each year, there are several good ones out there, and I own two or three. This year’s book is Light of the World by Dom Benedict Baur. It has daily readings and a prayer based on the traditional liturgical year. It goes well with Flanders’ book, as he based his Bible reading plan around the traditional breviary. I will run across some of the same themes in both books.

And now we come to Frank Sheed, noted Catholic author and publisher of the first half of the twentieth century. Several years ago I ran across his Ground Plan for Catholic Reading. Remember my love of lists? It was around eight years ago, because I remember struggling to read Chesterton’s Orthodoxy on an Amtrak train bound for New York City, on a certain trip I very much remember taking. But I fear I soon abandoned Chesterton and Sheed. I never finished Orthodoxy.

I came across Sheed’s pamphlet again last month, which was the catalyst for making my over-ambitious plans. I’ve decided to pare it back down to just Sheed’s plan for my serious reading. I have cut all the other greats, hopefully to meet them again in the future, in order to read — you guessed it — Orthodoxy. Sheed places Orthodoxy, and three other works, at the top of his list, in a section he calls “To Tone Up the Mind.” Well, this mind needs toning up. So I am tackling Chesterton again, and I will let you know how it goes. It is slow, for me, because it is very rich and can’t be breezed over.

As far as Sheed’s plan, it has its quirks and flaws. I believe, as a publisher, he favored titles in his catalogue. He also favored his own authored works. But I admire the system he has used to select the reading, to build up the person as a child of God first and foremost. The whole idea of this plan is to prepare the reader to tackle the classics firmly grounded in the Roman Catholic faith. That appeals to me! He calls it the fortification of the mind.

The fortification of the mind is the total possession of the true view — a possession fundamental and operating as a matter of course in every judgment; to a mind thus fortified, everything serves; falsehood is seen to be false and not given hospitality. Yet every falsehood contains truth or suggests it; and this truth, too, the mind makes its own. — Frank Sheed

All of the above reading I do in the morning, with coffee. We have in our little domestic church what I call “holy hour” each morning. It consists of Dad watching the Mass and rosary on television. I sit with him in the living room, and that is when I get this time with Scripture and Our Lord, and, now, Chesterton. I benefit from my odd working arrangement, where I live in the east, but work on Pacific time. That gives me plenty of time in the morning when my mind is fresh, to tackle the serious stuff.

The fourth and final book is my pleasure reading, done in the evening, after logging out of work. It is my unwinding time, and I plan to fill it with detective stories, Wodehouse, and the like. It is easy reading, done primarily for entertainment and relaxation, although some home truths can be found in the likes of Wodehouse and Sayers. I’ve recently taken a break from the classic crime top 100 to dive into the world of Perry Mason. Not that Perry Mason, erudite gentleman lawyer played to greyscale perfection by Raymond Burr. The Perry Mason of the stories, at least the earliest ones, is quite the hard-boiled character. He was spiffied up for television. So at present Erle Stanley Gardner is taking his place in the foursome with Baur, Chesterton, and the Holy Ghost on my newly reduced “currently reading” list.