Wisdom IN Literature

As long-time readers will know, I’m what we call a ‘bookish’ person. That means that not only do I love to read, but also that I love to talk about books, think about the books I read, and better understand why I love the books I love.

I think that you can tell a lot about someone from the types of books (and media more broadly, but I’m going to focus on books here) that they love. Someone who reads widely across different genres is likely to either have a rather different temperament, or be going through rather different life circumstances, than someone who keeps to one genre — say who only reads fantasy or only reads ‘serious’ literary fiction. Even within a genre, especially one designed to elicit a strong emotional response like romance, seeing what really works and what doesn’t for a particular reader is pretty insightful. I’m increasingly convinced that the difference between a 3-star romance novel and 5-star one generally lies more in the reader more than the text. What excites, what what makes someone swoon, what makes someone want to throw the book across the room in disgust, can be a real window into someone’s mind and heart.

If this is true with for books that are just read ‘for fun’, how much more might we learn about ourselves and others in talking about the books we consider to be ‘the best’? Partly for this reason (and partly just because I like to think about books!), I recently undertook a a big exercise to figure out, and rank, my personal ‘best’ one hundred novels. (You can see the project on my bookish blog if you’re interested: Introduction, General Comments, Nos. 100-73, Nos. 72-49, Nos. 48-29, Nos. 28-13, Nos. 12-1, Final Thoughts.) One thing that stood out to me, but in hindsight is not surprising at all, was how many of the books at the top of my list deal with themes of faith and spirituality, even though none of them are what you’d call ‘religious’ fiction. And so I thought it would an interesting idea for a quick series here on the blog to look at how these great books handle serious spiritual themes.

You might call this a second half of my exploration a few years ago of fiction as a sacred practice. That initiative was about taking a piece of fiction and giving running it through some of the traditional forms of sacred Scripture reading, such as ‘Gospel imagination’ and looking at different levels of meaning we might find in the text. This will be more about reflecting on some of the major passages that jumped out in my reading of texts.

I hope you find it meaningful, and that it will inspire you to think more through your favorite pieces of media and honestly meditate on why they resonate with you as they do.