Learning late to read outside of school
At age 16, I “discovered” reading and books. As a professor’s son, I had always liked learning and loved the encyclopedia. I found Edgar Allen Poe fun, but reading for K-12 school remained mostly a chore. Well, that’s almost true. Until I moved to twentieth-century literature in the 12th grade, I didn’t enjoy reading most books assigned to me.
But at age 16, I found that many books discussed very meaningful themes at a deeper level than were discussed on television, at church, or around my dinner table. They gave me special access to things that mattered. At that time, I devoured Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Frederick Buechner, and many others. Then a teenager, I especially treasured religious works because they fed my spirituality in a way that my Baptist youth group did not.
For a while, my reading stayed mainly within the confines of school assignments and spiritual interests. In college, I would love when students left town for vacation because this provided a dedicated time where I could read on my own. In my formal classes, I still pursued science, math, and technology (organized around computers and eventually healthcare), but understanding life’s meaning and integrating all knowledge were my personal, private passions.
Flirting with professions
For a while, I considered a career as a liberal arts professor of religion. In college, I took four courses in religion, helped teach a class on early Christian history with a professor, and taught myself New Testament Greek. After graduation, I even enrolled at an elite seminary to study Christian theology, but a life in the church seemed too, well, confining. I felt cloistered there, definitely not freed to pursue broad interests. I wanted my life’s legacy to encompass more than religion, but I wasn’t exactly sure how. I had a spell with a serious illness and had to take a medical leave of absence. I decided not to return.
Instead, I professionally turned to the biomedical sciences and to computer science. I meandered and (in another long story) eventually established a career in biomedical informatics writing computer code for high-impact biomedical applications. I grew happy with that choice and with the life it provided me and my family.
Establishing a career
However, I found out that there was more that I needed to learn and wanted to learn. By this time, I had 6+ years of rigorous post-graduate studies (seminary and medical school) and didn’t want to pursue an additional degree in biomedical informatics or computer science. So over a year or two, I undertook a disciplined route of self-study of any subject that would directly enhance my job performance – including software engineering, business, relevant computer languages, and biostatistics.
To process this information, I began to write book reviews and started a blog on BlogSpot to organize them. My book reviews were usually longer than the one-paragraph items that can be found on most reviewing sites. I wasn’t interested as much in financial profit as in structuring my learning and demonstrating mastery to myself. My ability to write a good book review continued to grow. And I migrated my blog to WordPress, which offered a more customizable format.
Soon I had mastered most demands of my job. I needed other things to read. While keeping up with my field, I began to peruse other works, too, on non-technical topics. Again, I had always enjoyed reading meaningful works of literature that engage with life’s persistent questions, and this blog became a repository of reflecting on those writings, too. I researched book review sites on the Internet (like Amazon, Edelweiss, and LibraryThing) to copy posts onto and shared my reflections liberally.
Onto hundreds of book reviews
Reading became and remains a way to push myself outside of my work. I can only write so much computer code without becoming a cyborg, and my extroverted, human side extends me beyond technology. Reading educates me about many topics that I’m curious about but don’t have the time or money to learn formally in a classroom. It helps me meet and converse with other interesting people who appear in my life. Also, I can freely take breaks from reading whenever household chores or family demands must take precedence.
At this point, I have many definite interests – science and healthcare, religion and spirituality, fiction and stories, writing and communication, biography and memoir, business and software, education and research, historical facts and historical stories, along with other special topics. Each genre helps me in some way do life better. And they’re simply fun.
I’ve amassed a pretty large collection of book reviews by now and have taught myself how to critically analyze books. I’ve also learned a ton about how the publishing industry operates including how to get advanced access to soon-to-be-released books. I aspire to continue to write in ways that impact people and feed me personally.