Only recently within the past year have I started reading the Bible more. The main reason for this likely is that I am now a Catholic theology major and need to know the Bible!
In any case, I’ve read from many translations over the years. The first Bible I started reading was a New Living Translation. Now, for my personal reading, I mostly read three translations: Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition), The Jerusalem Bible, and the King James Version. I must say that my favorite version is the King James Version, not necessarily for a perfect rendering of the original languages, but because of its its literary and reverential language.
The Jerusalem Bible is sometimes a bit too dynamic for me and loses the original meaning, but the way it is organized makes it easy to remember the sequence of events in salvation history. There are chapter headings, and poems and hymns are clearly marked off from the rest of the text. I mostly read RSV because I have to, since it is the Bible of choice at my school.
The RSV translation is decent, but neither of the two RSV Bibles I have has no room in the margins to write notes. All the text is clumped together, which makes it difficult to read at times.
In any case, I’m acquainting myself with the events of the Old Testament, and trying to get a geographic sense of where on the map these events occured (since I’m a visual learner). It’s amazing, since many of the stories I’m reading I’ve never read before, much less heard at Mass. (Even if I did hear the story at Mass, it was only in snippets, extracted from the complete context.) I think that all Catholics should read the Bible. In fact, the Pope should write an encyclical promoting a more abundant reading of the Bible by lay Catholics.
but we own about 7 I think. 2 NIV, 2NRSV, 1 King James, 2 NAB. We have a few youth or student bibles as well but not sure what those are.