Book Review – How to Read a Book – Advice for Christian Readers by Andrew David Naselli

A good book that knows its audience. Experienced, Christian readers won’t find too many tips to pick up here but maybe to put the ideas in place never contemplated. I would find this book especially helpful for a teen reader and/or a parent teaching their children the value of reading with a Christian worldview and how to think about books under that worldview. I would file this under the “Redeeming X” category of Christian books that have really started to come to the forefront with the increase popularity of presuppositionalism especially in the Reformed sphere.

Naselli is a perfect author to tackle this subject. The perfect level of nerd and scholar. He’s a researcher who enjoys reading fiction so he runs the gamut of how to take seriously reading in its many different forms – from the gloss to the in-depth rigor. Setting The Bible as the primary reader or the Christian reader, Naselli launches from there but always with a touchpoint back to Scripture. At times, this almost gets in the way of him making his other points, if at all possible. While this isn’t trying to be the Christian Mortimer Adler in depth or length, it would have been nice to have some more indepthness in certain areas or literature styles. Naselli uses some familiar authors in his world but for those not in his sphere of people who might not know who he’s talking about this might be a further hindrance.

Yet, this is a very valuable book from the Christian who is the experienced reader to the Christian who knows that one Book did so much to change his or her own world, so maybe there are a few more out there that can help that journey further.