Back on the wagon.

I've been reading again. Dangerous, I know. I don't mean reading articles and magazines and blogs. That's kids' stuff. I can do that at work and no one notices. Those kinds of reading just give you a cheap high and only make you want something harder. Heck, I do them all day and have no adverse effects.

What I mean is the real hard stuff: books.

I know, I know. When I'm on books, I can get irritable, and I get nothing else done, and I get kind of obsessed. Like every book I read is the greatest thing ever, and other people should really give it a shot, man, everybody's reading it, c'mon.

But at least I'm not using novels hardcore yet; I'm only sampling at the moment. Mostly because I'm still plodding through Susanna Clarke's Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrill, which is good stuff, don't get me wrong, but hasn't sucked me in like most novels do. I'm not sure if it's the characters or the plot or the writing (which is genius, and hysterical, by-the-by), but I'm just not that deeply into it. In the meantime, I'm not interested in picking up some other novel. I want to get through the one I'm in. So at least I've been able to stave off the novel demon for time being.

And yeah yeah, Jill and I will get together in the late evening, in the privacy of our own home, I might add, and take hits off Steven King's Dark Tower series, but that's purely recreational. Only keeps us up too late now and again.

But, I have been on a serious non-fiction kick for a few weeks, getting beat up in the best way by Jesus for President by Shane Claiborne, and Everything Must Change by Brian McClaren. Feeling discontented with my life, but not guilty, if that makes any sense. Next, I'm re-reading Claiborne's Irresistible Revolution for something lighter, if that's any indication. May re-read Walsh and Keesmaat's Colossians Remixed after that; I've changed my thinking so much even since I read that last year, and I'd like another shot. Anyway, I buzzed through all four of these books, not wanting to get bogged down in the details and lose the big picture. So now I want to go back and savor the specifics.

Reading has always been my gateway to changing what I believe. Then what I believe drives the engine of what I do. I'd like to write more here about these books, how they're changing me, teaching me, but I need even more time to process. The short version is that I don't feel like I've given near enough of my life to the things I believe in, the people I believe in, the capital P person I believe in. I am too content with what is safe, complacent, with what is socially normative, with what is uncreative, anti-creative, even. I'll get stoked up by something, and then come home, or close my book, and just want to play a game or flip on the TV, even for 10 minutes. Consume something to numb the discontent. Like turning on the radio do dull the boredom of car trip. It's exactly what I'm discontented about, and especially what to do about it, that's going to take more time to figger out enough to be able write about.

In the meantime? Mmm, books.