Introduction to the Devout Life
Francis De Sales
ISBN-13: 978-0375725623

This is a spiritual classic — and I just couldn’t finish it. I checked it out from my local library and renewed it twice, but I didn’t make it more than halfway through. It’s not that the book isn’t good. It’s a great spiritual work. But it’s very tedious to read. The English translation is quite old. The result is that I spent a lot of time trying to understand the grammar that I was reading, rather than just concentrating on the meaning.

To get anything out of this book, you really have to read a page or two at a time and then reflect on what you’ve read. In the future, when I’ve got more time on my hands, I’ll probably buy this book and attempt to read it a little at a time. For now, I prefer to move on to something that I can finish in a week or so.