Abby: Reading & Good, Better, Best

This has been interesting to think about today. I loved everything Aunt Rae said. There were a couple of things I thought of and wanted to mention too.

Aunt Rae, you put it so well when you wrote about how we have to make sure we are still keeping the essential things as priorities in our day. That was something I thought of right away after reading Lynness's post.

So on more of an academic level, Pride & Prejudice may not bring us to Christ in the obvious ways that reading the scriptures, the Ensign, and gospel books do but books like P & P have truths that can inspire and teach. It reminds me of how other faiths have bits & pieces of the gospel. They're not necessarily wrong, they just don't have the fullness of the gospel (so technically they really are wrong -- but they still have some truths...). There are so many books that have valuable lessons and yet they are not gospel books or scriptures. Some of them are obvious like The Hiding Place or Left to Tell but even books like Pride & Prejudice get us thinking about life and how we conduct ourselves among others. I think there's a lot of value in that.

And then of course, I think it's important to read just for the sake of reading. For the sake of escaping. Heavenly Father knows the demands on our time and knows our struggles. And I feel strongly that for us bookworms, he knows that reading is a release for us from our daily concerns. I think so long as we still remember our daily essentials, like the ones mentioned in Sister Beck's talk, we're good to go!

And I guess that's where it can be hard. Because sometimes, many times, books are so interesting to me that I just don't WANT to put them down! But yeah, moderation in all things huh?