My wife and I, newly married and preparing to enter training for ministry, hosted a seasoned pastor in our home for one of our entrance interviews. He asked what sorts of books we’d been reading, and we answered. I expected him to be impressed with my answer. After all … well, never mind.

But he smiled kindly. “May I offer a piece of advice?”

What were we going to say? “No”? So we gave the expected answer.

“Don’t read books,” he said. And then, after an artful pause: “Read authors.”

Ding ding ding. I may not be smart (hold your comments, please), but I knew immediately that this was something to hold onto.

He explained briefly that there are so many books to read (and this was before Amazon existed!), that one could spend a lifetime consuming this and that, wheat and chaff, hit or miss. But when you find an author of worth, you’ll do yourself a favor if you make a note and pursue his or her oeuvre.

I remember nothing else of our appointment with that good man. But that was worth the price of the glass of our iced tea he drank. Since then, my life has been enriched by so many authors: William Shakespeare, William Faulkner, E. M. Bounds, Samuel Logan Brengle, Eugene Peterson, Dallas Willard, Robert Frost, Dashiell Hammett, E. Stanley Jones, A. W. Tozer, Louis L’Amour, C. S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, Francis Schaeffer, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, James Michener, Charles Dickens, Wendell Berry, Jack London, Mary Oliver, Anne Lamott, G. K. Chesterton, and, more recently, Wallace Stegner, Kent Krueger, Leif Enger, and so many more—including my wonderful clients, of course, all of whom belong somewhere between Lamott and Chesterton in the above list.

This is not to say that there’s no room in my reading for new authors (or “one-hit wonders,” so to speak); I intentionally include such books in my annual reading plan (which I’ve written about here). But once I find an author who floats my literary boat, I’ll keep reading like a dog on a bone, even if that means mixing metaphors and similes.

So, how about you? Do you read “books”? Or “authors”? Do tell, please.