I have always been surrounded by books. I am grateful to my mother for instilling a love of reading within me from a young age. She read to me regularly, and I watched my older brother devour thick books at a speed I have never come close to attaining. As a result, I was reading before entering kindergarten. Once there, I made quick work of plowing through the required reading for the year and had completed the first-grade readers as well before ever stepping foot inside an elementary school.
My love of books and passion for reading has never waned. More than half a century later, books line my walls and inhabit stacks throughout my house. And that’s before even getting to the hundreds more residing in my Kindle and Kobo e-readers. Yet, after all this, I have to agree with Solomon. There is no end to books and learning (Ecclesiastes 12:12). Unless we put into practice what we learn, it is all vanity, a chasing after the wind (Ecclesiastes 1:14).
