Birthday Reflections

I just added about two thousand pages to the great unread collection of books that I hope to eventually get to. This week, I completed another revolution around the sun. In recognition of this, Amy presented me with two books: 1) Christianity, The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch and 2) 2666 by Roberto Bolano. I am very excited to receive these books. The Christianity book was favorably reviewed in the NY Times Book Review section. The history of Christianity is essentially the history of western civilization. There are serious gaps in my historical knowledge that I am interested in discovering: what was it like for the early Christians to be persecuted by the Romans? What led to the schism between the eastern and western churches? What specifically happened during the crusades? These issues are relevant today as we see people of faith being persecuted around the world and we see people of faith practicing intolerance and persecution. This book will likely sit on my bedside table and take a while to finish. I have to finish the other book on my bedside first, The Cuba Reader. As for 2666 (see my post from April), I am really looking forward to reading this novel. I will start it immediately after finishing Gilead (and Hyperion and The Lost Symbol).

I have come to the point in my life where I realize that I will not be able to read all the books that I plan to. There is a serious backlog of books I want to read and I keep adding to it. But that's OK. I am simply going to focus on enjoying the books that I do read. It's not like I win a prize at the end. That being said, I want to make every choice count. If I am not enjoying a book, I will drop it and move on.