Daily writing prompt

Which book have you read more than any other?

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The Book I’ve Read Most

The honest answer is the Bible.

That feels like the answer I am supposed to give, but it is also the truthful one. I have read the Bible more than any other book in my life. Not always well. Not always consistently. Not always with the kind of discipline I wish I had. Amazingly, I do not think I have ever sat down and read it all the way through from Genesis to Revelation in one steady plan, though I believe I have read all of it at one time or another.

Still, if we are being frank, that is the book I have returned to again and again.

I have read it in church. I have read it in Bible studies. I have read it when I was preparing to teach or write. I have read it when I was confused, afraid, grateful, convicted, grieving, or just trying to remember who God is and who I am supposed to be. I have read some passages so many times that they feel like old roads I know by heart, even if I still notice something new when I walk them again.

But I suspect the person asking the question probably means something more like a regular book — a novel, a classic, something with chapters and a cover and a place on the shelf.

That answer is harder.

I usually do not read novels more than once. There are too many books I have not read yet, and I tend to move forward rather than circle back. I have read some Stephen King books more than once, and I know I have gone back through some of Frank Peretti’s books multiple times, especially This Present Darkness, Piercing the Darkness, and The Oath. Those books grabbed me at the right time in my life, and the spiritual stakes in them made them feel bigger than simple entertainment.

But teaching changes the math.

When you teach literature, you do not just read a book once. You live with it. You carry it through different classes, different years, different students, different questions. Sometimes you start the year thinking you know the book backward and forward, and then a student notices something you missed. Sometimes a passage you had explained ten times suddenly hits differently because of something happening in your own life.

Because of teaching, I have read Karen Hesse’s Witness many times. I have read Flowers for Algernon over and over. I have returned to the play version of The Diary of Anne Frank year after year. And, of course, I have read To Kill a Mockingbird more times than I can count.

That may be the traditional-book answer.

I have taught To Kill a Mockingbird enough times that Maycomb feels like a place I have visited. Scout, Jem, Atticus, Calpurnia, Dill, Boo Radley, Tom Robinson — they are not just characters on a page anymore. They are part of the furniture in my teaching life. Every year, I know certain moments are coming. I know the questions that will arise. I know the discomfort that must not be avoided. I know the beauty and heartbreak of watching students meet that story for the first time.

And yet, even after all those readings, I am not tired of it.

That is one of the marks of a great book. It does not get smaller the more you read it. It gets larger. You begin by following the story. Then you notice the craft. Then you notice the moral weight. Then you notice what the book is doing to the people reading it.

This year, depending on what I am teaching, I may be returning to some familiar books again. I should know more in a few weeks. I may also be spending time with The Odyssey, which I had somehow never read until last year, and Romeo and Juliet, which I had not really seen since I was in ninth grade myself. If I am still teaching ninth grade, I will be walking through both of those with students soon.

That is one of the strange gifts of teaching. You end up rereading things you might not have chosen to reread on your own. Sometimes you discover why a book has lasted. Sometimes you discover why students struggle with it. Sometimes you discover that the book has been waiting for you to become older before it could speak to you properly.

But the Bible remains in its own category.

Other books may shape the imagination. Some shape the conscience. Some shape the way we see history, people, courage, evil, mercy, justice, or love.

The Bible does all of that and more.

It does not merely sit on the shelf as a book I have read. It reads me back. It searches me. It corrects me. It comforts me. It reminds me that I am loved, but not finished. Forgiven, but still being formed. Known, but still being called forward.

So which book have I read more than any other?

The Bible.

And after that, probably To Kill a Mockingbird.

One has shaped my soul.

The other has helped shape my classroom.

That is not a bad pair of books to have spent so much time with.