Summary: Advice for the reluctant reader.
Lit opens with an explanation that its purpose is to convince people that do not like to read, why they should read. So obviously I am not the intended audience. But I did find some to like in this book. (Although I am not sure I can really recommend the book.) The parts I liked most were the casual reading advice sections. I did not agree with a number of the pieces of advice. Tony Reinke is consciously attempting to write a Christian version of the classic Mortimer Adler’s How To Read a Book (wikipedia link). There were many places where I thought, “Why would you encourage people to do that?”. For instance he encouraged people to spend about a hour going over a book before you start reading it, looking through the table of contents, writing up questions that you want answered in the book, reading the last couple pages, looking over reviews before you start. I think some of these ideas are good, but is this the way to encourage people to read? These are maybe things you should be doing before you pick (and buy) a book. But this seems to be squeezing the enjoyment out of reading.
My larger concern is with the structure of the book. Reinke starts with almost a full quarter of the book discussing scripture and how we need to keep scripture as our prime reading material, how scripture is different than other books and a discussion of truth and how we can only understand truth in other books once we understand the truth of scripture. I understand why he has this long discussion in another type of book. It is important to his theology of reading, which is the basis for why the entire book is written. But if the intended audience really are reluctant readers, they are never going to get through that section to the advice sections on how and why they should be reading.
