Jessica Hooten Wilson does an excellent job of showing how reading can truly bring you closer to the Lord in this book. Through her very readable and relatable style, the reader is encouraged to take steps towards using their reading life as an actual act of prayer.

Summary: An exploration of reading as a spiritual practice, including the reading practices of Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass, and Dorothy Sayers.

Jessica Hooten Wilson believes how and why we read to be as important as what we read. She invites us to imagine the message of the angel to John on Patmos to “eat this book” and what that means for reading the Bible and for reading other books. For those of us who read for amusement or information, she invites us to consider what it means to read as a spiritual practice. For many of us lost in screens, this means the recovery of a lost art. Along the way, she will introduce us to guides from whose reading practices we may learn.

She begins by asking why read anything but the Bible, acknowledging the Bible’s unique place in the life of the Christian. She proposes that we are not self-contained knowers of all and that other books often cast light on scripture, filling out what is lacking in our own knowledge of the world scripture discloses to us. She leads us into the distinction between “use” and “enjoyment” and the “uselessness” of much in life, including God. To “use” God is to turn him into an idol–we are meant to enjoy God and use things. In the case of books, she proposes that if we just use them, we denigrate their value in promoting our enjoyment of God and God’s world. She notes how many see poetry as “useless” and yet how poetry points us to the good, the true and the beautiful, toward what is of great value.

She asks whether reading good books can make us good people. Not necessarily, and there are vicious as well as virtuous readers. Among other things, virtuous readers are slow, attentive readers, receptive to what gifts they might receive in a book. There is a trinity in the ART of reading–author, reader, and text. We seek to discern clues to the author’s intent. We receive the text almost sacramentally, looking for the image of God and the presence of Christ, even in fallible and fallen works. And we approach humbly, charitably and generously. Reading that weaves these together is a kind of perichoretic dance.

She explores the different senses we employ in the reading of a work. She proposes a recovery of the four senses employed by the church fathers in sacred reading: the literal, the allegorical, the tropological, or moral, and the anagogical, or spiritual. The last two seem very important to reading as a spiritual practice. In moral reading, we internalize truth so that we may live and pray it, and in spiritual reading, we so contemplate upon a work that it shapes our imagination. Memory is part of this. The author goes on to consider how works are remembered and that memorizing is also a spiritual practice. We also remember through repeated readings of important works such that they become part of our mental furniture.

I mentioned that Jessica Hooten Wilson also introduces us to guides at different points in the text. They are four: Augustine, who read humbly and in silence, contemplatively and spiritually; Julian, who shows us a woman reading in a world of men, seeing multiple sense of scripture, and particularly the tropological; Frederick Douglass, who discovered liberation in reading and used it to empower others through his speaking and writing; and Dorothy L. Sayers, whose reading of fiction, particularly of Chesterton, illumined her translation of the gospel in radio plays and of Dante.

The book concludes with an invitation to recover our character as people of the book, whose reality begins with the Word and ends in the book of life. She rounds out this treatment with an example of a “twofold” reading of a story of Flannery O’Connor. This is followed by an FAQ about how we determine whether a book is “good,” how to decide what to read next, on marking up books (she encourages this), on finding time to read more, and intriguingly, why Catholics have all the good literature! The final appendix includes reading lists by age and time period.

This is far more than just a book about books or an apologetic for reading. Jessica Hooten Wilson conveys how, for the Christian, reading is an important spiritual practice. Nor is this just reading of scripture. Other great works often illumine the human condition to which scripture addresses itself and the matters of ultimate reality and our destiny. How and why we read, both in terms of virtues and practices is vitally important to the discovery of the riches on offer in literary works. She also casts a vision of the sheer enjoyment that awaits families and communities who engage in reading of good literature for the love of God. It has been my observation that those who have discovered this have a richer and deeper hope in God, as well as a shared language of illusions to stories, to characters, and places, and the memories of sharing these stories with one another. Through Jessica Hooten Wilson’s book, I hope their tribe will increase!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher. ( )

A pearl.
I started to read this book with a bias; something the author quickly convinced me was an incorrect approach. My bias was generated by something an ancient Greek philosopher, it may have been Socrates, commiserated about. Paraphrasing him, he said, “Books spell the doom of civilization. Why would students truly learn without argument and the clashing of ideas with fellow students if they only needed to refer to a book for the answer?” He lived when the transfer of knowledge was transitioning from oral to written. To an extent, we are now when the transition is from oral to visual. It has gone from “I heard it somewhere” to “I read it somewhere” to “I saw it somewhere”. Jessica Hooten Wilson’s rejoinder is a resounding ‘WHOA’. She directly addresses the issue on page 97 through the words of James Baldwin. The oral transition is transitory—once heard, the imprint on the brain is gone; the visual transition is constricted; only the written is retained for continued availability for reference.

Especially enticing about the author’s message is that she imbeds her ideas in a spiritual context. She implores readers to broaden reading habits and, by doing so, enhance their sensitivity to the messages contained in spiritual readings. She uses the writings of Augustine of Hippo, Julian of Norwich, Frederick Douglass and Dorothy L. Sayers as examples to follow. The section focusing on Augustine read like mini sermons. I mean that as a positive.

The book is intimidating, the author gambols through cites with gay abandon. Many of her cites seem to be fellow professors, past and present, with a student or two thrown in. I discerned that many of her citations were secondary—cites to previous writers who cited other works. One citation that escaped scrutiny was to Makoto Fujimura’s Art and Faith where, on page 83 of this book, the artist refers to gazing out to sea standing on the beach in Los Gatos, California. Unless the Santa Cruz Mountains have floated away, Los Gatos is miles away. A small and insignificant point.

Not to be considered a negative is the uneasy feeling that the readers who could profit the most from this book are those least likely to read it. To a great extent, it takes a person somewhat comfortable reading about great writings to appreciate the wisdom Jessica Hooten Wilson has conveyed here. I am marginally comfortable but struggled. ( )

I received this work through the Early Reviewers giveaway program. I requested the work because I enjoy books about reading; the phycological, physical, sociological, linguistic, etc. aspects of the act. I also enjoy books about the Bible - particularly about the Bible as a work of literature. This book hit both buttons!

Wilson did a nice job of explaining the need for reading, specifically intentional reading, and why it's important to read the 'right' things. I enjoyed her recommendations on what constitutes the 'right' things - agreed with some and disagreed with others. But I particularly enjoyed her asides on how to read like other writers. Her pieces on Douglass (didn't know where he got his last name til now) and Sayers.

In any event, I'd recommend this book to any interested in the act of reading and/or anyone interested in reading the Bible as a work of literature. But be prepared, you'll come away with a long reading list based on Wilson's recommendations and commentary.

As Christians we are meant to love beautiful things. Pg 55

Read the work and consider it on its own merits. Pg 57

Our eyes are not enough by which to see. Pg 62 ( )

Reading for the Love of God is a plea for people to recognize the benefits of reading for spiritual formation. Wilson, the author, encourages people to read literature in order to enhance their reading of Scripture. This book is written in a more academic style, complete with a dense amount of references and quotations to other literature. I highly enjoyed the chapters on the reading lives of influential Christians: Augustine, Julian of Norwich, Dorothy Sayers, etc. It was helpful to see how these principles of reading could be applied in people's every day lives. Reading for the Love of God is written by a literature professor. One can immediately recognize and commend Wilson's passion for reading literature and encouraging others to do the same. However, this book is likely to only attract people who are already strong readers. This book might be difficult for those who do not normally read or are not strong readers. I received a copy of this book from the publisher. The opinions in this review are my own. ( )