Deep Reading - by Rachel B Griffis & Julie Ooms & Rachel M de Smith Roberts

About the Book

Presenting reading as a remedy for prevalent cultural vices--distraction, hostility, and consumerism--this book helps educators, students, and other readers to contribute to the flourishing of their communities and cultivate their own spiritual and intellectual depth.

Book Synopsis

Christianity Today 2025 Book Award Finalist (Culture, Poetry, and the Arts)

"Show[s] how deep reading habits help us manage distraction and bring about individual and communal flourishing."--Christianity Today

This book helps readers develop practices that will result in deep, formative, and faithful reading so they can contribute to the flourishing of their communities and cultivate their own spiritual and intellectual depth.

The authors present reading as a remedy for three prevalent cultural vices--distraction, hostility, and consumerism--that impact the possibility of formative reading. Informed by James K. A. Smith's work on "the spiritual power of habit," Deep Reading provides resources for engaging in formative and culturally subversive reading practices that teach readers how to resist vices, love virtue, and desire the good.

Rather than emphasizing the spiritual benefits of reading specific texts such as Dante's Divine Comedy or Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the authors focus on the practice of reading itself. They examine practices many teachers, students, and avid readers employ--such as reading lists, reading logs, and discussion--and demonstrate how such practices can be more effectively and intentionally harnessed to result in deep reading. The practices apply to any work that is meant to be read deeply.

From the Back Cover

"A book for all readers who desire to read deeply and to live deeply"

Presenting reading as a remedy for prevalent cultural vices--distraction, hostility, and consumerism--this book helps readers contribute to the flourishing of their communities and cultivate their own spiritual and intellectual depth.

"This book eloquently joins the other voices calling us to soul-forming kinds of reading that can resist our descent into superficiality and hostility. Importantly, it goes beyond them in describing the actual practices that might get us there. All those who use text to teach others should read it. Anyone else who cares about reading and spiritual growth should join them."
--David I. Smith, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin University

"Drawing from years of experience and research, Deep Reading offers insights, approaches, and practices to equip readers and teachers of readers. It's not only a book for teachers; it's a book for all readers who desire to read deeply and to live deeply as well."
--Karen Swallow Prior, author of The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis

"Deep Reading ought to be read and wrestled with by all those who want to read carefully and well, and it's particularly essential for those tasked with guiding others' reading in the classroom, the church, or the home. With its wealth of creative and practical examples, this book will enliven our efforts to read redemptively."
--Jeffrey Bilbro, Grove City College; editor-in-chief at Front Porch Republic

"This jewel of a book will speak to readers of all sorts and inspire them to engage in deep, open, and generous reading."
--Susan VanZanten, Valparaiso University

"Deep Reading is highly recommended for any lovers of books, especially educators; we all have much more to learn about embodied, engaged, deeply human reading."
--Mary McCampbell, author of Imagining Our Neighbors as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy

About the Author

Rachel B. Griffis (PhD, Baylor University) is associate professor of English at Spring Arbor University in Spring Arbor, Michigan.

Julie Ooms (PhD, Baylor University) is associate professor of English at Missouri Baptist University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Rachel M. De Smith Roberts (PhD, Baylor University) is associate professor of English at North Greenville University in Tigerville, South Carolina.