2 - Where do I start?

DIY gurus always advise against buying a ready-made toolkit. You will end up with a spokeshave and tyre levers, they say, that you will never use; you may not even know what they are for! "It's far better to buy individual tools as you need them; then you will gradually accumulate the equipment you need and save a lot of money in the process."

That's good news for readers too. Attractive though it might appear to buy a bundle of books, because they're at bargain prices, or would fill your empty shelf, it's far better to buy books you are going to read as you need them, and get real benefit from them, there and then. Otherwise, when something really useful comes along, you will find yourself saying, "I'd really like that book, but I just haven't got any room left on my shelf!"

Why read?

Reading is an acquired habit, and lots of people have acquired it. Booksellers are having a boom time in many countries, and the evidence is all around. People sit on park benches, in trains, on buses, even sometimes walking along the street, with their heads buried in a book.

We like to think of ourselves as 'the people of The Book,' so we know what they're experiencing. When first reading God's word it might have been a bit of a struggle to cope with all the detail, and to meet so many new characters. Then, as the scriptures got a grip on us, we found we were fascinated by the message, and those characters become part of our life experience. They started to live for us, and with us, and Bible reading became a pleasure and then a fascination.

How grateful we should be to those people who first taught us and then encouraged us to read! And if that hasn't happened for you yet, just keep reading God's word. It will!

We are a reading community: that's evident whenever anyone has a garage sale, or the ecclesia decides to hold a Jumble Sale. Books appear on all sorts of subjects, many of them works of fiction. But what should we be reading?

Recommendations

The best place to start is with a recommendation from someone you trust, and whose interest more or less coincides with your own. It's no good asking a history buff, or a mathematician, if you hate both history and sums! Very soon you will begin to get a taste for the sort of writers you like and then the books they recommend, or refer to, will be worth looking at. And if you enthuse about the latest book you've read to other readers, they are likely to enthuse back. That's how it works; and that's why people are buying so many books nowadays. Enthusiasm breeds enthusiasm!

On your behalf, I have been asking keen readers to recommend half a dozen books they think a new reader would enjoy, and here they are (Christadelphian books first):

All of these books are available from the Christadelphian Office, either new or second-hand. But it doesn't really matter which book you start with, as long as you start.

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