A good book

The theme for this little stretch is about the top 10 books that have had the biggest impact on me growing up, in chronological order.


This probably is no surprise but book #1 is...The Bible.

I was raised in the Episcopal Church, to which I am still more or less attached. I wasn't always (or even usually) ((or maybe ever)) excited about going to church as a kid, but some of it must have stuck.

There is a vicious rumor out there that I have made it my mission in life to correct. That rumor is that Episcopalians don't read the Bible. In fact, we do--just in case we ever go on Jeopardy.

But seriously, even though Episcopalians aren't big on literalism, a good chunk of a typical service consists of readings from the Bible. This usually involves a psalm, another reading from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, a reading from one of the gospels and one from the epistles. So even if you don't read it, you wind up hearing a lot of it.

I wound up reading it too and have made it all the way through several times, some parts more often than others. And I've kept picking it up even when I wasn't particularly religious. It really is a great book--more accurately, collection of books--and it's too bad that so many people in this country claim to believe every word literally but know very little about it.

Would that the reverse were the case...

NOTE: El Cabrero is officially unemployed this week and next week, so these posts have been prepared in advance and won't contain links or comments about current events.