Books

Looking back, I am quite amazed and often embarassed by the amount of pretentious moments I've had the past few years. I chide myself now for being so silly and naive to pretend that I was more knowledgeable than many other people. I wonder how many adults who knew me then mentally shook their heads when I made some assertion that was fantastically flawed. Although I might like to believe myself more special than anyone else, more cultured than anyone else, or generally superior to the rest of the human population with the exception of J.R.R. Tolkien, Albert Einstein and the Pope, I am repeatedly humbled by a book. For example, Myra asked me if I had read "A Clockwork Orange". That book has been sitting on my "To Read" list for ages, and I only know the jist of it from the Amazon.com blurb and a brief description told to me by a youth pastor. Much as I would love to be able to toss my head and say "Why, indeed darling, I read that book AGES ago" I can't say that. That brings me to thinking: There is ALWAYS someone more educated, knowledgeable, talented, and cultured than me. All I can do is continue to feed my genuine hunger for knowledge, and go at the pace I can handle. I can genuinely say that I have read books way above my level, felt sophisticated because of it, but completely missed the point (Or completely forgotten the point) because it simply wasn't the time for that particular book to impact me. However, I'll never know if I'm ready until I read the book the first time. I can always pick up the book again and see if I'm ready, but I'll never know if I'll be touched if I never read it in the first place.