T.S. Eliot asserts, "Wide reading...is valuable because in the process of being affected by one powerful personality after another, we cease to be dominated by anyone, or by any small number."
In addition, theologian Michael S. Horton notes, "Those who do not care to read secular books will be impoverished and will be susceptible to subtle and indirect seduction, while those who do not carefully study Scripture will lose their only plumb line for judging truth from error, belief from unbelief, right from wrong."
Recognizing the truth inherent in Eliot's and Horton's perspectives and recognizing that great writing stems from reading great writing, the CU Writing Center encourages the CU campus to read a book of literature a month.
And it won't just be novels. We'll throw in poetry, nonfiction, and plays, too.
Books to make you think. Books that are beautifully written. Books that may, or may not, be "Christian." Books whose styles and ideas will trickle through the veins of your minds, through your fingers, and into your own words.
You must read to write (well).
2012-2013 Read-to-Write Books
September
A Study in Scarlet
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
October
Malcolm Muggeridge: A Biography
by Gregory Wolfe
November
The Things They Carried
by Tim O’Brien
*2012 Winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize’s Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award
December
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
January
Surviving the Island of Grace: Life on the Wild Edge of America
by Leslie Leyland Fields
February
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot
March
Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare
April (National Poetry Month)
The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton: 1965-2010
by Lucille Clifton