Emily will readily admit that she wishes she read more. Me, too. But I wish I read books more efficiently which in turn would mean, perhaps, that I read more. The problem I find is that as soon as I start reading one book, I hear about another that I instantly want to read as well. O how the reading heart wanders! I then have to bind my wandering heart like a fetter to the book I’m currently committed to. And the queue builds…waiting like an impatient credit card-carrying customer behind a precious daughter of many years writing a check at the checkout.

There is thus a certain discipline of reading that guides how we read as well as finishes one book before beginning another. If reading cultivates self-discipline as much as self-education, then it has done us a double service. We don’t after all just read books for the sake of saying we read them, do we?

Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.  –Ecclesiastes 12:12