Monday, September 24, 2007

Trying to break out and giving up

Now that I am working two jobs, I am sleeping great. By the time my head hits the pillow I've been a wandering zombie for at least two hours. It turns out that reclining sleep is always better than sleeping while walking, talking, and working.

I am unaccustomed to good sleep, however, so my nightly habit of cracking open a book continues in spite of the fact that I can barely get to 10 on my sheep count. And what does a weary double minister read to escape from the day?

I was asked this at our Church Book Sale this past weekend. I was standing surrounded by very good fiction and people who love it, but I had to admit that my bedtime reading has been Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Sometimes I am too ministerial for my own good. What kind of duckbrain clergy works too many hours and then fades to black at night wiith a holocaust/pschology memoir? Okay, well, most of us, but that's what I mean. So predictable.

I believe that accountants should go to sleep reading art books and poetry. Artists should be working their way through Carl Sagan and some string theory. Rock musicians should be slogging along through Sartre... again, undertakers need to brush up on their Carl Hiasen and absurdist Irish plays, and ministers... well, obviously I think something other than Frankl is called for.

I wanted to break the mold so I picked up The Confessions of Max Tivoli and gobbled it down in about a day. Why do I do these things? It felt like wolfing down a whole bag of Peanut M&Ms. I'd already read this book. It had a different cover, a different author and was called The Time Traveler's Wife, but it was the same book. Great premise, but the actual novel, ummm, it will be a very good movie.

I'm back to Frankl, now. Predictable? Yes. Geeky minister? Absolutely. But I had my walk on the wild side. It's not for me on a daily basis. I can't handle the pressure of popular fiction. When I finish Frankl, I'm headed straight for Bertrand Russell and no one can stop me. Except maybe Paul Ricoeur.

1 comment:

The Jotter said...

Turns out that Amy Tan can stop me. As the monks of Myanmar stories started coming into my awareness, I realized I had Saving Fish from Drowning, so Bertrand will have to wait a bit longer.