Books come in two disparate flavors: good and bad. 

Occasionally, like food, a new book will make its consumer grimace in disgust. Perhaps, it was the mold, or the weird and uneven consistency. The moving brown lumps don’t add to it either. Currently, book publishers churn out a lot of these icky casseroles dishes to unknowing customers. When they sell these books and say bon appetite! they actually mean to say bad appetite, it’s just the French accent that gets in the way. 

And those food servers are right. Their customers do have bad appetites. Horrible, actually. 

The consumer’s palates have become accustomed to knobbly mystery foods and murky water. Thus, if every food is a mystery food, no food is. All the advice I may give you lands on a mouth void of the knowledge of good flavor. The only thing I can do is give you a really good meal. A pipin’ hot dish of beautifully cheesy lasagna. Only then, will your eyes become unblinded, and your tongue unbridled. 

According to some quick searching, there are about 2.2 million new books published every year, and most of them are pretty bad. When you realize that the tap water is actually from the sewage pipe, domestic problems start to occur. Some authors don’t care about what they are writing about, as long as their check is big enough and that one can read their name on the front cover of the book from 40 feet away (actually, I may be wrong about that one). People who write for their ego instead of for God are sinfully twisting a good work. 

Contrariwise, a good writer writes because they love it. Douglas Wilson put it eloquently, “First-rate writers are more interested in what they are writing about than the fact that they are writing about it.” Writing is a gift from God, and with every gift He has given us, we should love it. Being interested in what you are writing about is also a gift from God. An interested writer can captivate me better on The History of Gerridae than an uninterested one on my favorite sport. It is just how God made us. 

Be Creative.

We were created to be creative. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” (Gen. 1:27) God creatively created something from nothing. The world is full of God’s sublime creations: the kingly mountains that are crowned anew every winter, the lumbering stalwart clouds that carry unfathomable loads, and the dog as it runs to its master. Our Lord is the master of creativity and the imaginis Dei should imitate Him. Be creative, be an image of God. Writing should not be forced, hard, and stationary, it should be creative. It is not a sin to break a grammar rule, and kool kids break them on purpose. Just like sanctification, knowing how to break grammar rules is art, and the greater art is to conceal the former, as Ovid said.

In Proverbs, Solomon writes, “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” (Pro. 22:29) These words apply to every vocation, but in considering writing, the skill is to be creative. Homer is not a classic because he was a bad writer, nor Augustine, nor Mallory, nor Dante. They are classics because they were creative. 

How then can pagans write good literature? The answer is God. Obviously. The imago Dei shines forth from the heathens. Clouds can only pale the sun. Even the darkest and tallest of cumulonimbi are pierced by joyful beams. When a tempest passes overhead patches of light dance here and there, it is not homogeneous. Accordingly, not every heathen is a good writer, nor every Christian. Choose wisely. 

Read Prudently. 

When I was younger, I was enthralled in a certain book series. I recommended it to many friends. Currently, when I recollect the series really was not that good. It was mediocre. The only reason I know now is because I read a good author. Formerly, I was in one of the ditches and because of my height I couldn’t see there were other ditches, or roads for that matter. When I read a very good book for the first time, I could see how boring the old ditch was and never went back. Except to look again at how distasteful my old ditch was. 

It is not wise to read everything you come across. Knitting for Ogres is probably not the best use of your time or brain. You may learn some tips and tricks in case you are ever enslaved by an errant ogre but you could better use your time reading about Gerridae. At least you can actually see those fascinating water striders. 

Creating a list of books to read is incredibly helpful, even if it is elephantine. If you never get to all of them, so what? It is better that you had too many good books, than too little. You never want to be the guy in the fox hole who calculated to bring just enough bullets. Most likely, you noticed that you have never heard of this guy. My point exactly. 

The greatest book ever written is the Bible. It was written by God for His people, that we may know Him. It is also the most amazing story ever written. If read as a whole it is amazing, or even just one of the books. The Bible holds the archetypes to every great plot. If anyone wants to become a great reader (or writer) they must read it assiduously. The Bible is our standard for good food, and everything should be taken into account with the Scriptures on the table. Even Jack and Jill.