Identify

 A book can only do you a lot of good and even be enjoyed if you can identify with it.  We know this when we read a novel.  I am not much for sci-fi books but love historical fiction.  I identify with the story, the persons in it.  The Bible did not much much sense to me in any important way until I could identify with the people God was trying to help in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.  I did not really begin to read it in any depth until my later 20s.  I saw myself in the lost sheep, the prodigal son and so on.  When younger, I thought I was Jesus!   People get into recovery from addiction when they can see themselves in the Big Book or whatever the literature that is trying to help them.  I read Buddhist Sutras, not so much to understand Buddhism, as to understand me in the Sutra.