Total pages read for April 2026 was 494.
I finished Hari’s Stolen Focus. I found some of his theses helpful, but others were more of a stretch. The book could hve been half the length to good effect.
I started and finished rereading Jim Glennon’s Your Healing is Within You. I read the introductory chapters to Introducing the New Testament by Achtemeier, Green and Thompson. I stopped when I got to Matthew because I didn’t see much value in reading further about a New Testament book when I wasn’t reading those Bible books. It may be helpful to read selective chapters to accompany reading the books of the Bible.
Total pages read for March 2026 was 1,050.
Firstly, I finished Simon Singh’s The Code Book.
I started and finished rereading James Sire’s How to Read Slowly. I first read it around 30 years ago. I also read Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism. I enjoyed this book and have implemented a range of measures to reduce screen distraction. I also reread C S Lewis’ The Weight of Glory. When I first read Weight of Glory in 2017 I was looking for connections between the essays/talks - but there aren’t any. Their only common feature was that most were delivered against the backdrop of WWII. Some are excellent, others have perhaps lost their relevance.
Total pages read for February 2026 was 1,002.
Firstly, I finished Tony Abbott’s Australia which I commenced in January. Some parts were quite interesting - the early days of the colony, the gold rush, our involvement in WWI and WWII and events that I could recall. Parts that weren’t so interesting were the politics of the 1920s and 1930s.
I started and finished Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club. It was a very slow, tedious start but did improve.
Total pages read for January 2026 was 607.
First up was to begin reading Bonhoeffer’s Discipleship again. I first read it in 2017 and got around 90 pages in this time until I stopped. It’s fairly heavy going and I found I wasn’t giving it sufficient attention.
Given that I was reading something translated from German, I thought I’d pick some fiction also translated from German. I considered some Kafka but settled on Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front instead. In the Dedication the author states that the work is neither an accusation nor a confession. Neat.
Total pages read for December 2025 was 1,194.
I finished Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium. It was something of an epic story covering a lot of territory in its 650+ pages.
Those that were started and finished in the month were Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It was an ugly, unattractive story - but I guess that’s the idea of gothic horror. I also read Dick Eastman’s The Hour that Changes the World, Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Woodrow Kroll’s booklet How the Book was Born.
My total pages read for November was 1,320.
I finished Kenneth E. Hagin’s The Woman Question.
I started and finished the final four Hardy Boys books that are currently in the public domain: Hunting for Hidden Gold, The Shore Road Mystery, The Secret of the Caves, and The Mystery of Cabin Island.
My next assignment was to begin to tackle Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium. I first bought this book around 25 years ago (at a guess). I had started it previously but didn’t make much progress. It came to mind when I read somewhere that some of Lawheads’ other works are being made into movies or a TV series. At the end of November I was around two-thirds of my way through the book.
Well, Bible rebind #1 is complete. I completed the process over about six days doing a small range of tasks each day. The process wasn’t as difficult as I imagined it would be. It was a matter of proceeding a step at a time carefully measuring, cutting, glueing, smoothing. Rinse and repeat.
The outcome is far from perfect, and I would/will do a couple of things differently next time. But I’m content with the result - a useable, serviceable rebound Bible.
We’ve got three Bibles that are fairly frequently read and are falling apart in various places. I have a Crossway ESV Single Column Legacy Bible in ‘Trutone’ where the cover is flaking and the cover is separating from the end papers. I had taped it up with duct tape a number of years ago to secure the cover but the faux leather continues to flake off, make a mess and look unsightly.
My total pages read for October was 1,789. I finished one I started in September (Murray), started and finished four (Jane Eyre and three Hardy Boys), and started another (Hagin).
At the end of September I had commenced Andrew Murray’s Abide with Christ. Many of Andrew’s books are designed to be read a chapter a day for 31 days so I got in step with the calendar and read a chapter a day to coincide with the date.
My total pages read for September was 1,928. This number may be on the high side as I’m reading more on my ereader than previously and the page numbers I’m recording are actually screen numbers.
A quick search of word counts per page in the interwebs yields somewhere around 250-300 words per page for a novel. My ereader seems to have around 230-240 words per screen so my page count may be around 15% overstated.