Part of Lent is about “ordering your appetites.” For those who consider reading to be a deep pleasure, it wouldn’t hurt to bring some order to our bibliophilic hearts…

After college, I have always read books at my leisure, the ones I wanted to, when I wanted to… according to my feelings, which is why I often have 3 titles being read simultaneously.  Easy fiction when I feel like escaping or pleasure. Non-fiction on subjects that interest me or for when I worry that my brain is going to atrophy from the rigors of laundry and diapers. Spiritual for keeping on track with my faith. (Currently, these three books happen to be Wise Blood, French Kids Eat Everything and Will to Love). You get the idea. While this is generally fine and it works for me, I think it’s important to develop some discipline every now and again just to make sure we still can.  So I’m twisting my 3 books into rigid categories for Lenten purposes and invite you to do the same.

1. Read a classic piece of fiction that you feel like you SHOULD’VE read by now or have always WANTED to read but never made time for. At the top of this list for me personally are  Les Miserables,  The Brothers Karamazov and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
2. Read something spiritual that focuses specifically on the life of Jesus, His Passion or the concept of suffering/spiritual poverty. The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ  has been on my to-do list for a decade now. I’m making it happen this year, despite not feeling like it. The next item on my spiritual list was to be The Discernment of Spirits but I’m buckling down to put my attention on Christ instead.
3. Read an intellectually challenging book of non-fiction. I’m thinking something “boring” or profound that you know think you ought to read but are reluctant to commit the mental energy to. It’s important to stretch our brains… and it’s okay to have to read a paragraph 3 times before you “get it!” Expose yourself to a bit of philosophy via the more accessible philosophers of today like Josef Pieper, (try The Concept of Sin) Stratford Caldecott (e.g. All Things Made New: The Mysteries of the World in Christ), or Roger Scruton (Beauty: A Very Short Introduction). Or read something academically edifying like  How to Read a Book  (which I think should be mandatory reading for all people, despite my own ‘putting it off’) or A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.

That’s it! 3 books, 40 days. Commit some time to it every day. Who’s in?

Take the challenge.  Spread the word. Read with discipline.

* Regarding point 2, I have some suggestions if you need a place to start:

Spiritual Reading:

Life of Christ. Because, Fulton Sheen. Very specifically, (and much shorter) The Seven Last Words.

Happy Are You Poor: The Simple Life and Spiritual Freedom. Life changing. A must read for everyone in my opinion… should be revisited every few years.

Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance Into Jerusalem To The Resurrection. The second in then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s trilogy and the most appropriate for this season. Because he was a theologian/philosopher before he was a pope, this book is brimming with both insight and intellectual rigor.

Arise from Darkness: What to Do When Life Doesn’t Make Sense. Fr. Benedict Groeschel, God rest his soul, was a transformative writer/speaker for me as I came back to the faith as a teen/young adult.  He is awesome.