I love reading. I learned to read at age 3, and ever since then I have always loved reading. Books, magazines, fiction, non-fiction, blogs, airline safety instructions, I read all of them (my wife knows that under no circumstances will I help her with her oxygen mask on a plane until mine is first properly working).
There are very few books I don't enjoy reading, or can't finish. However, as of late, I have had a rare encounter with one. It is a 500 page biography of Augustine of Hippo. Usually, if I encounter a book that I don't like, I try to bull through it and finish it anyways, or I put it back on the shelf and hope that it will be of more interest to me later on in life. I have a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses that has been on my shelf for 2 years now. I love Joyce. He was an incredibly descriptive novelist. But 2 pages into this book, and I knew I couldn't do it. So I look at it longingly each day hoping that some day I will gain the desire to try again. It hasn't happened yet. Well, this biography is another book like that. The only problem is, it is required reading for a class I am about to take, so not only do I have to bull through it, I have to know what it says. Therefore, what usually takes me a week to a week and a half to read has taken me a month and I'm halfway done. The book is written by Peter Brown who is the foremost English authority on Augustine in the world (according to his book). He graduated from Cambridge and now teaches at Princeton. He writes like someone who has graduated from Cambridge and now teaches at Princeton. To read this book, not only do you need an unusually large interest in Augustine, but you need to have a working knowledge of Latin and an geographic mastery of Imperial Roman Africa, of which I have neither. Right now I am on a read one chapter and then nap for 30 minute routine. I have never had a book put me to sleep like this one. 3 pages in and I am drowsy, by the time I get through the chapter you could do outpatient surgery on me and I wouldn't know. Then I wake up 30 minutes later and plow through the next chapter, only to fall back asleep for 30 minutes. I hate cliff notes, but I would seriously buy them and read them instead of this book. I'm not sure even Cliff could summarize what this guy is saying.
To make matters worse, this book is interrupting a current list of books that I promised my wife I would finish before I purchased any other books. I am on a book buying freeze, and I can't continue on with that list until I clear this giant roadblock since it is required reading for a class. What is ahead of me you may ask? A Tim Keller book, a biography on Bear Grylls, given to me by a great friend for an airplane ride that I fell asleep too long on, a John Stott book, a book debating Calvinism, and a book on marriage that I haven't decided on yet. All better options than stupid Peter Brown and his attempt to make one of the greatest theologians in the history of the world boring. If I was Augustine, I would be angry at Peter Brown for ruining my life. That isn't an exaggeration... when you write a bad biography, you are literally ruining the subject's life. So, Augustine's life has been ruined, 1600 years post-humously, by Peter Brown, the foremost English expert on his life. Great man... ruined. Thanks Peter Brown for ruining Augustine's life, and for limiting my book purchasing to Amazon wish-listing. I hope you and your colleagues in the Ivy are enjoying smoking your pipes and ruining the lives of great men.
