The Nice Chameleon

  I'm in. I'm going to try the " Back to the Classics Challenge " for 2021. This will be the first time in a while that I've done a "prescribed" challenge, and I'm looking forward to diving in and reading some books I've always wanted to read. Only one of these (that I know of)   of these will be a re-read. Here are the categories, with my possible selections. I believe these are all classics; if I discover that something isn't a "true classic" (whatever that means), I will change it to something more ... classic. UPDATE:  I am going to mark the month completed for the books below as I finish them. Book reviews will be forthcoming ... I hope ...) A 19th century classic: any book first published from 1800 to 1899 -  A Tale of Two Cities , by Charles Dickens (1859) (COMPLETED in April) A 20th century classic: any book first published from 1900 to 1971 - Till We Have Faces , by C.S. Lewis (1956) (COMPLETED in August) A classic by a w...

I really shouldn't. I shouldn't do this. Every year, I start with such grand dreams of reading all my listed books, and every year, I end up reading a bunch of other books instead. Not that that's a bad thing; I just feel silly each year as I re-read the list and realize I've barely read anything I'd planned to read. When I looked at the beginning of my list from last year , I was pleasantly surprised. At some point last year, I read all of the books listed, even though I'd long forgotten about my original list. All total, I read 30 books last year, ranging from a few of my fifth-grader's chapter books to the entire Bible. Here are my stats as of December 25, according to Goodreads. (I've finished two books since then, so I imagine the stats will be updated at some point.) Books read: 28 Pages read; 10,714 Shortest book: Lois Lowry, Number the Stars Longest book: The New Inductive Study Bible Average book length: 382 pages I imagine that, if I didn't...

Lately it seems I'm seeing a lot (tweets, articles, etc.) about Bible reading and biblical literacy. I haven't added to the conversation because I am a theological nobody, a lurker on various blogs who is relatively new to Twitter and has few followers. On top of that, I'm a relatively new Christian, though not new to Christianity. But I've been a little surprised at how many Christians are saying they rarely read the Bible, or that they read it in phases (every day for a month, then a few months of not opening it). And many have read only bits and pieces. I would expect this from someone who isn't a Christian, but these are Christians saying this. I honestly don't get this. Maybe I will once I have more years of being a Christian behind me. But I can't get enough of the Bible. It's all I want to read. I get up at 5:00 every morning, sometimes earlier, so I can read the Bible. I gave my life to Jesus last October and immediately began reading through the...