by Gary Maclean

Created on: June 09, 2010

We have so many very great books at our disposal today. Just walk into any Borders book store, or Barnes & Noble, or better yet, any library. The selection is astounding and the number of books continues to multiply every single day. 

Man has a personal relationship with the written word; whether he writes it or reads it; someplace, in every person's life, there will be some book, that has made a lasting impression. We just cannot get away from it. 

As we grow and learn new things we are exposed to more and more of these books. Most generally, through our formative years, we have little to say about the selection of many of them. Books are assigned by our teachers or are given to us as gifts or are indirectly related to our course of study and must be read for clarification. 

We are always being told what to read throughout our learning years. These readings are most often required reading. If you want to succeed in that particular class then you must read the assigned material. At times, we must even write book reports about it. 

What I am getting at is, public school has always assigned our reading material. If not a specific book, then one of our choice from an identified topic. That arrangement has been met with and worked through since I can remember. Tell me what I have to read, I will read it and I will report on my observations and interpretations. 

Through my school years, none of the assigned reading material has ever changed my course in life. I may have been emotionally affected by the topic but I have never became what I read about. My reading of Lord of the Pigs never forced me to re-enact any of the scenes contained within. Reading Treasure Island never resulted in my finding buried treasure. When I was assigned Moby Dick to read, I never had a fleeting thought about running off to sea to search for that one big whale.

These books all had an effect on my imagination. They let me slip away from my day to day existence and experience something totally different, but they didn’t change my life. Today, I can still read a good book and not be so intoxicated by the story that I have to live it. A good book is just that; a good book, nothing more. 

In my first year of college I took a class entitled “The Religions of the World.” I was, and still am, a Christian and I was curious about what the author had to say. I learned about Buddhism, Catholicism, Atheism, the Moslem faith, and several

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