Genesis

I've read through the Bible several times in my life, using various versions of the One-Year Bible.  It's the plan I am most likely to stick with.  It lets me read some Old Testament, a New Testament passage, a Psalm (or part of one) and a Proverb or two, every day.  It's all there together in this paperback Bible, so you don't have to sit there and look up the various readings for the day.  
I confess that, more times than not, I'll fizzle out on the plan somewhere in February, usually about the time I hit Leviticus and Numbers.  Or sometimes when the Old Testament gets a little boring, I'll just skip it and read only the New Testament selections, the Psalm, and the proverb.  
Ah, but Genesis!  Genesis is never boring:  It begins with the creation of the world and ends with a coffin in Egypt, and there's every kind of adventure to be had in between.  The people are so human!  Brothers are jealous of one another; wives nag at their husbands.  Lot gets drunk.  Jacob, later renamed Israel, seems to be kind of a sissy growing up, hanging around the house with his mommy instead of going out hunting with his brother; and then he ends up being the father of a nation!    
Joseph is my favorite, I suppose.  He's a guy who, like Barney Google, could fall in a mud-puddle and come up with a diamond. Toss him in a pit to die, he ends up running a rich guy's household in Egypt.  Throw him in jail because the boss's horny wife puts the move on him and lies about him because he won't go to bed with her, and he is put in charge of his cellblock.  Next thing you know he is running the country.  You just couldn't keep Joseph down.   
I confess, I have a problem with the idea of people living nine hundred years (wouldn't their teeth wear out?) and the idea that one man and his three sons could build a boat big enough to hold two (or seven in some cases) of every single animal in the world.  I don't mull over these things and fret and reject the Bible, mind you.  I'm just saying that on some points I'm a doubting Thomas.  It's OK, God puts up with lots of doubters.  One time a preacher at a church I attended asked the question, "How many of us have had doubts about the Bible?" (Or maybe he said about God, I don't remember for sure.)  
Every hand in the congregation went up, including his.  And folks, this was a Baptist Church.   
I hope these revelations don't disappoint too many of my friends and relatives.  I do not have a problem with the details of creation; From what I've read about the big bang theory, it goes right along with the Biblical account.  
I have no doubt that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph lived.  They're too human to be made-up characters. 
I'm not trying to tell anybody how to believe, or what to believe.    
Just for the record, I believe in God.  He's come through for me and guided me in very personal ways more times than I can count.