The friends I'm talking about are mostly encased in thin boxed-shaped items, which, when you open them up, reveal a host of pages covered with print, big and small. These friends live along the corridors and walls of my house, and I'd like to introduce you to just a few of them.
Friends in Books
A while ago my wife asked, “Why do we buy books as opposed to borrowing them? We only read most of them once.”
She's right; ninety-five percent or more of my books have seldom been reopened after my first encounter with them, and she could be right in saying there's no point buying them merely to have them take up space in the house.
But the issue is this: that first encounter with the author through that particular book is something that's remained with me, for better or worse. In some cases I felt as though I'd met someone who was a bit obtuse, not the sort of person you'd want to get close to. Yet even that author and I have bonded at some point in our lives, and I'm certainly the better for it.
There are other authors whom I'd love to read again because they opened such a door for me, or because they introduced me to a world I'd never have otherwise explored. So I'm happy to keep them close at hand, even if I know in my heart of hearts that I can never repeat the experience of going through that door again, and can never rediscover that world.
There are some authors I've outgrown, but like old family members, I don't want to leave them behind. There are some who got under my skin and rankled me, and I keep them there as a reminder that they made me step outside of my comfort zone.
Of course there are those who reinforce my comfort zone - I like them very much!
A Few of My Many Friends
But most of all there are those with whom I've deepened my friendship over the years, either by re-reading their books, or by finding more and more things that they've written.
The character of these people is now part of who I am: Dickens the storyteller with his extraordinary imagination and intellect and wit. Chesterton with his ability to turn a commonplace phrase upside down and make it into something enlightening, and for his full-steam-ahead way of expressing himself. Dorothy Sayers for being bossy in her non-fiction and witty and warm in her fiction. Thielicke for pulling me out of my basic Christian life and making me think through it further, but encouraging me all the way. Philip Yancey for a couple of wonderful books (Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, and What's So Amazing about Grace) and for his pensive tone in so many others. Adrian Plass for writing such nonsense and yet filling it with Jesus, and for giving the world one of the most laugh-out-loud books ever written: The Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass Aged 37½. Billy Collins for writing such accessible poetry, poetry that still turns out to have sudden bumps and holes you can fall into, and moments of hilarious surrealism.
Minette Walters for writing the nastiest thrillers I've ever read; yet in these same books she communicates compassion and concern for the poor. And Dick Francis, who wrote the a lookalike book forty times over and still made us believe he'd done something different - and who occasionally he wrote an absolute classic.
P G Wodehouse, who wrote absurd stories with convoluted plots and ridiculous characters, with such wonderful use of the language and such extraordinarily funny metaphors that his books continue to be read years after the world he lived in has vanished.
Space doesn't permit me to mention the host of others whom I've only come in contact with once, but who won't let me forget them. Maybe one day I'll list them all and remind myself just how well off I am in terms of human contact. Maybe it hasn't been face to face - I haven't seen God face to face either, and I've read his book a lot of times. But because these authors and friends have expressed themselves from their hearts, they are as well known to me as any friends I've pressed the flesh with.
