Reading List 2024
A list of every book I read last year.
My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year. If you’d like to see the previous posts, you can do so here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023. Mostly I do this for accountability. But I also know a few other book nerds who enjoy these sorts of posts. For what it’s worth, using my Excel spreadsheet it seems my total from 2013–2024 includes 804 books and 209,316 pages. But who’s counting?
I guess I am.
In these posts I typically offer a few myopic comments that, I hope, offer some color to what would otherwise be a boring list. I figure some discussion is better than none, even if I end up ignoring stuff a few people might have considered more important.
I’ll start by mentioning Harrison Scott Key and his memoirs. I have three of his memoirs on the list, the gateway book being his most recent and seemingly most widely read book, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. I have to give a spoiler alert and trigger warning in case you venture to read the book: he writes about his wife’s affair and portrays the agony in vivid, raw descriptions. While I liked the book, I struggled with it for several reasons. The language is a bit rough in some places and pretty sarcastic in other places—even though I understand why both the curse words and sarcasm are authentic to the author and his experience. But the deeper reason I struggled with the book is that it maps too closely with a real-time situation I know about in a church—and even though the book ultimately offers more hope than despair and exalts the importance of real, Christian community, the proximity to reality made it hard to read.
Moving on, a good friend of mine encouraged me to read two Wendell Berry books about the people who belong to the fictitious town of Port William (Hannah Coulter and The Memory of Old Jack). I’d only read Jaber Crow before when we read it for a church book club, but that was almost ten years ago. If time allowed, I’d read all the novels and short stories about the Port William membership, as it’s called. Maybe someday there will be time. (Thank you, Joe, for suggesting these books and the heartfelt discussions of them.)
There’s been lots of appreciative buzz in my pastor circles about The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt, which is sort of strange that the book is getting this kind of reception among Christian pastors because Haidt is an atheist. But he’s a strange atheist; he’s warm to religion, even evangelical Christianity, in a way that strikes me as both wonderful and odd. In the book, Haidt persuasively argues that two trends are causing massive problems, namely, overparenting in the real world and a lack of parenting and oversight in the online world. These problems manifest themselves in especially disturbing ways among those who became teenagers after 2010 and the advent of the smartphone. At alarming rates, young girls increasingly tend toward depression and suicide, while young boys tend toward porn and passivity. I encourage you to read the book. His common-sense applications in light of these trends seem sensible and wise (for example, no smartphones or social media for people under the age of sixteen). Someday in the not-too-distant future, I believe we’ll view ubiquitous smartphone usage the way we now view smoking on airplanes.
As has been the case a few times in previous years, I wrote several of the books on my reading list. And this year, all the ones on the list written by me are currently unpublished—and maybe always will be. The first unpublished book I’m calling The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (A Memoirish Essay to Encourage Christian Writers). In this book I tell the story of how I became a writer, despite the fact that when I was in high school I hated both reading and writing. (It’s one of the reasons I chose mechanical and aerospace engineering as my college major. I figured I wouldn’t have to read as much.) I really love this book project, even though it’s gotten mixed reviews from the handful of people who have seen early drafts. Not sure if I can fix that or if it is anything that necessarily has to be fixed. I’m currently thinking I’ll self-publish it sometime in 2027. That’s highly subject to change. Right now, it sits at 50k words. The second unpublished book on the list that I wrote is Fire Hammer Rain: Reflections on the Life of the Word of God in the Life of the Preacher. Basically this is a diary of what I’m learning and experiencing as a preacher. I hope many years from now I’ll write more about preaching that will be published, so I’m starting to collect thoughts now.
Toward the end of the year, I started the research phase for my current book project, a book about the return of Christ, so you’ll see some books with that theme toward the bottom of the list. (The lists always go in chronological order of when I read each book, by the way.) The working title is The Last Shall Be First: How the Return of Christ Makes Everything Sad Untrue. My hope is that it will encourage Christians, especially those suffering. The book will be my first traditionally published book. It’s scheduled to be released with Baker Books in the summer of 2026. The first draft of the manuscript is due May 1 of this year, so I’ll be busy finishing that in the spring. Among the books on the topic that I’ve read so far, a clear standout is Chris Davis’s book Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today. His book is so good. I hope I can write something half as helpful.
One final book I’d love to mention. It’s called Broken but Beautiful: Reflections on the Blessings of the Local Church. This book comes out with Gospel-Centered Discipleship in just a few weeks . . . and I’m the general editor! I’m really happy with it. I’ll say more about the book when it launches, but it’s some of the best writing we had on our website about the local church.
Okay, the end.
Did you have any favorites from last year? Let me know in the comments below.
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Books per Year
Pages per Year
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In order of completion, this year I read . . .
The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (currently unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)
Murder Your Darlings by Roy Peter Clark (352 pages)
Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic by David Epstein (368 pages)
Evangelicals Incorporated: Books and the Business of Religion in America by Daniel Vaca (336 pages)
Can Women Be Pastors? (Church Questions) by Greg Gilbert (64 pages)
Be True to Yourself by Matt Fuller (192 pages)
Male and Female He Created Them: A Study on Gender, Sexuality, & Marriage by Denny Burk, Colin Smothers, and David Closson (136 pages)
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown (304 pages)
How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy by Terran Williams (400 pages)
The Blueprint of Grace: Seeing and Submitting to God’s Design for Sanctification by Robert Allen (122 pages)
The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (288 pages)
Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today by Chris Davis (240 pages)
The Bible: Romans to Revelation, Part 6 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel James (208 pages)
Why Should I Be Baptized? (Church Questions) by Bobby James (64 pages)
How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told by Harrison Scott Key (320 pages)
The World’s Largest Man: A Memoir by Harrison Scott Key (368 pages)
The Preacher’s Portrait: Five New Testament Word Studies by John Stott (119 pages)
Congratulations, Who Are You Again?: A Memoir by Harrison Scott Key (368 pages)
The Bible: Genesis to Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Watership Down by Richard Adams (640 pages)
The Art of Stability: How Staying Present Changes Everything by Rusty McKie (155 pages)
Leadership and Emotional Sabotage: Resisting the Anxiety That Will Wreck Your Family, Destroy Your Church, and Ruin the World by Joe Rigney (120 pages)
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry (190 pages)
Finish Line Leadership: Setting the Pace in Following Jesus by Dave Kraft (224 pages)
The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land God Will Show Us (currently unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)
The Bible: Joshua to Esther, Part 2 of 6 by God (300 pages)
The Memory of Old Jack (Port William) by Wendell Berry (176 pages)
Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson (352 pages)
Church Planter: Nine Essentials for Being Faithful and Effective by Tony Merdia (194 pages)
The Bible: Psalms to Song of Solomon, Part 3 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (368 pages)
Bright Hope for Tomorrow: How Anticipating Jesus’ Return Gives Strength for Today by Chris Davis (240 pages)
Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande (304 pages)
Reversed Thunder: The Revelation of John and the Praying Imagination by Eugene Peterson (224 pages)
Always Longing: Discovering the Joy of Heaven by Stephen R. Morefield (162 pages)
Heavenward: How Eternity Can Change Your Life on Earth by Cameron Cole (200 pages)
From a High Mountain: 31 Reflections on the Character and Comfort of God by Timothy M. Shorey (157 pages)
Are We Living in the Last Days?: Four Views of the Hope We Share about Revelation and Christ’s Return by Bryan Chapell (256 pages)
Between Two Worlds: The Challenge of Preaching Today by John Stott (320 pages)
The Bible: Isaiah to Malachi, Part 4 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Fire Hammer Rain: Reflections on the Life of the Word of God in the Life of the Preacher (unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (150 pages)
Come, Lord Jesus: Meditations on the Second Coming of Christ by John Piper (304 pages)
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt (400 pages)
The Great DeChurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? by Jim Davis, Michael Graham, and Ryan P. Burge (272 pages)
Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church by N.T. Wright (352 pages)
Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation by Nancy Guthrie (272 pages)
The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery by Ross Douthat (224 pages)
How Will the World End? by Jeramie Rinne (96 pages)
Heaven on Earth: What the Bible Teaches about Life to Come by Derek W. H. Thomas (112 pages)
Eternity Changes Everything by Stephen Witmer (128 pages)
Not Home Yet: How the Renewal of the Earth Fits into God’s Plan for the World by Ian K. Smith (176 pages)
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality by Nancy R. Pearcey (336 pages)
How the Gospel Brings Us All the Way Home by Derek W. H. Thomas (157 pages)
The Bible: Matthew to Acts, Part 5 of 6 by God (300 pages)
A Spectacular Burst of Light without Antecedent: A Review of Marilynne Robinson’s READING GENESIS
I both appreciate and am confused by Marilynne Robinson’s latest book.
Marilynne Robinson, Reading Genesis (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024), 344 pages.
I’m conflicted about Marilynne Robinson’s writing.
When I read her essays, I wonder if I can’t understand them because she is so much smarter than me and I lack the minimum intelligence necessary to learn from her, let alone critique her. When I read Robinson, I sometimes feel like Michael Scott from The Office, needing her to stop with the eloquence and “talk to me like I am five.”
Other times I wonder if the problem is not with me. Perhaps Robinson is actually not as good of a writer as everyone says she is because her essays contain too many contorted paragraphs. Sometimes her prose appears to swat at intellectually nuanced “flies” only she can see.
And when I read her material that has an explicit focus on God and the Bible, I become even more conflicted. Sometimes I wonder if her view of God is so much better than my own—and her view of the Bible is so much more sophisticated than my own—that perhaps I understand neither God nor the Bible as well as I should. Yet in other moments, I think of her in the same way as I think of many mainline Protestant pastors and professors, as those who see some truths about God and the Bible rightly and yet also see some really big truths really wrongly.
Having read her much anticipated and much acclaimed latest book, Reading Genesis, I now believe all of this can be true at once.
Hence my confliction.
Who Is Marilynne Robinson?
You might not have ever heard of Marilynne Robinson. But in literary writing circles, not just Christian literary writing circles, she’s a legend. I’ll put it this way. When one podcast interviewer had her on his show a few years ago, he said that lots of people want to interview former President Barack Obama, but, he noted, Barack Obama went out of his way to interview Robinson. She’s the sort of author who, even when writing non-fiction about the Bible, has her book reviewed by The New York Times and The New Yorker, as well as Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition.
I was introduced to Robinson’s writing in seminary. A professor assigned us the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Gilead, the first book in a series of four novels. I loved then and still love now so much about the central character John Ames, an aging pastor in rural Iowa, and how Ames cares for his flock, his young son, and his unlikely wife. I’ve read all the novels in the series at least twice. In fact, for a few years, one of my favorite things on YouTube was to listen to Marilynne Robinson read her own novels. You can hear this example when she reads an extended excerpt from the third novel in the series, Lila. Robinson reads so monotone that her words become engrossing, like a rock ballad that constantly feels on the verge of a big crescendo.
Robinson also has had a key role in carrying forward the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a group connected to the University of Iowa’s master in fine arts program. (You can think of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a kind of Harvard Law for writers.) I don’t imagine my life will ever allow the opportunity, but many times I’ve wanted to apply to the Writers’ Workshop and experience the legacy of writers such as Flannery O’Connor and teaching from instructors such as Robinson.
I cannot do a full review of her latest book Reading Genesis because, as I mentioned above, I might not be smart enough to write that review. I am, however, very familiar with Genesis itself, having preached slowly through different subsections of the book and having worked on an extended writing project that engages with the Abraham narrative. So here we go.
A Close Reading of Genesis
I can say positively that Reading Genesis offers a close reading of the first book in the Bible. Robinson trains her attention on the details using the tools of great literature: repetition, parallelism, inclusio, characterization, foreshadowing, intentional ambiguity, authorial intent, and so on.
I also appreciate how—in the best sense, not the worst—Reading Genesis stands on the author’s own authority. Even when Robinson mentions intricacies of cultures that paralleled Israel’s culture, stories from ancient Canaanite and Babylonian religious texts, her book has zero footnotes and almost zero referencing of “so-and-so” said “such-and-such.” This omission makes for a refreshing departure from traditional commentaries.
And her close reading often leads to profound insights. I’ll quote in full this extended paragraph from near the end of the book, a paragraph about the importance of Genesis for the rest of the Scriptures juxtaposed with the strikingly ordinary lives of the key families within Genesis.
Genesis can hardly be said to end. In it certain things are established—the nature of Creation and the spirit in which it was made; the nature of humankind; how and in what spirit the Creator God enters into relation with His human creatures. The whole great literature of Scripture, unfolding over centuries, will proceed on the terms established in this book. So Genesis is carried forward, in the law, in the psalms, in the prophets, itself a spectacular burst of light without antecedent but with a universe of consequences. This might seem like hyperbolic language to describe a text largely given over to the lives of people in many ways so ordinary that it is astonishing to find them in an ancient text. This realism by itself is a sort of miracle. These men and women saw the face of God, they heard His voice, and yet life for them came down to births and deaths, love, transgression, obedience, shame, and sorrow, everything done or borne in the course of the characterization of God, for Whom every one of us is a child of Adam, made in His image. God’s bond with Jacob, truly a man of sorrows, is a radical theological statement. (224)
I could go on quoting many instances of her helpful insights, the fruit of her close reading, but I’ll only note three final appreciations.
First, when you read between the lines about who she imagines to be her typical audience, you get the sense that she’s probably not only a bit odd to evangelical readers but also odd to liberal readers as well. “If you mapped Robinson’s novelistic reading onto contemporary scholarship of the Bible,” writes Francis Spufford in his New York Times review, “you’d find her in several camps at once.” Frequently when I expect her to endorse without qualification some stronghold of liberalism, such as skepticism toward supernatural elements within Genesis or the documentary hypothesis (which tries to discern supposed multiple authors of Genesis), she doesn’t. Instead of endorsing the skepticism of the supernatural or the documentary hypothesis, she critiques them, or at least nuances the views in a better direction. Indeed, part of the impetus for her in writing the book came from her own frustrations with these modern readings.
To give another example of this, Robinson concurs with modern, liberal understandings that the Genesis flood narrative is downstream and derivative from the creation and flood stories from other religious texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh. At the point where the stories have the most similarity, however, she argues that Genesis intentionally subverts and betters the picture of God’s character than what is found in the other religious texts. “The Genesis narrative as a whole can be thought of as a counterstatement of this kind,” she writes, “retelling the Creation in terms that reject in essential points the ancient Near Eastern characterization of the divine, of humankind, and of Creation itself” (28).
Second, I appreciate that Robinson does a good job noting the faults of those in the Bible, especially the faults of the patriarchs, rather than casting them as heroes of the stories. “Readers can be shocked by the fallibility of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” she writes. “But the patriarchs are not offered as paragons.” These faults highlight the “breadth of God’s loyalty to all the descendants of Adam” (84).
Finally, I appreciate that all two-hundred and thirty pages have no chapter breaks, having only a gap in the prose every so often, signaled by a blank space or a few asterisks to mark the beginning of a new line of thought. I love it. Robinson uses this same structure in each novel of her four-part series. Rather than finding this breach of convention daunting, I find it aesthetically enjoyable.
A Confusing Reading of Genesis
I also find her reading of Genesis confusing. Sometimes Robinson feels confusing because she seems to simultaneously hold a high view of Scripture along with a view of Scripture so nuanced that I can’t quite understand her view.
I also find her confusing because some sentences get so contorted that I can’t figure out what she is affirming or denying. For example, consider this sentence from a section about the meaning of life. “If [life] is the essence of everything, a breath of the very Spirit of God, it is fit and right that, first, as the basis of all understanding, of all righteousness, life itself should be properly felt and valued” (47). You can try to read that sentence a few more times, and you might get closer to the meaning than I can, but I’m still puzzled. I think she’s saying something like, “If life from God is everywhere, we should respect life more.” But I don’t really know. And so go many such sentences, sometimes even full paragraphs—alas, even full pages. On page 64 there sits a single paragraph that begins on the previous page and extends to the next page. Woof, that’s a big paragraph. All this, again, leads to my confliction.
I’ll give another example, this time from the copy on the jacket cover of the book. I know authors themselves often do not write the promotional material on the jacket cover, but it accurately illustrates the kind of “almost-orthodox-view-but-maybe-not-at-all-orthodox-view” that appears throughout the book.
The cover states that Robinson intends to appreciate Genesis’s “greatness as literature, its rich articulation and exploration of themes that resonate through the whole of Scripture.” Great, I think to myself. I’m here for that. Genesis is not less than great literature, and I’d love to learn more about the many ways the themes at the beginning of the Bible ricochet right through until the end.
Then the promotional blurb continues, “Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis . . . is a powerful consideration of the profound meanings and promise of God’s enduring covenant with humanity.” I’m here for that too.
But then notice the twist at the end of this final sentence. “This magisterial book radiates gratitude for the constancy and benevolence of God’s abiding faith in Creation.”
Wait, wait, wait—“God’s abiding faith in Creation”?
Reading Genesis well should indeed lead us, I believe, to gratitude. But does reading Genesis produce gratitude for “God’s abiding faith in Creation”? It does not. The dysfunctional family that left Eden clothed in animal skins soon sees one brother kill another brother. And on and on each member of the original family tree goes, sinning spectacularly right through to the end of the book. The only good reading of Genesis is the reading that sees God, in his long-suffering of his loving-kindness, as abiding with a humanity that merits no faith at all. A reading of Genesis that attempts to foreground God’s supposed abiding faith in humanity is not a good reading of Genesis, even when done so with beautiful prose.
Another example of this “almost orthodox” view is seen in a quote I used above. She wrote about how the faults of the patriarchs highlight the “breadth of God’s loyalty to all the descendants of Adam” (84). Later, in a beautiful section of the book on this same theme, she writes “of God’s loyalty to humankind through [all of humanity’s] disgrace and failure and even crime” (174). But the Scriptures do not teach God’s broad loyalty to all humanity and to every person born of Adam, so much as they teach God’s special loyalty and gentleness to the special line of chosen people, a chosen subset within all people. In other places, Robinson seems to know this distinction well. “Out of the inconceivable assertion of power from which everything has emerged and will emerge there came a small family of herdsmen who were of singular interest to the Creator.” Can you see why reading Robinson can be so difficult?
Evangelical readers will also be frustrated by Robinson’s cryptic comments about the historicity of Genesis. At times she seems to suggest that she believes Genesis gives us real history. “From this point in Scripture,” she writes about Noah’s family, “we begin to enter history” (66). But what is she implying about the historicity of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel? At one point in an aside, she writes, “[King] David, whom I take to be historical . . .” (79). Okay, she takes David to be in some sense historical, but do we have a true, historical account of him and others in the Scriptures? It’s not as easy to tell how she views this. Speaking of the exodus, she writes, “Debate about whether these events actually occurred, whether the figures involved are in any sense historical, can never be resolved and need not be” (199). I disagree. When the Bible presents stories as though they did happen in history, it matters whether they did.
I’ll also mention Robinson’s book also has little mention of Jesus. One might respond to this comment with pushback, saying, Yeah, neither does Genesis itself, and it’s only my evangelical gospel-preaching impulse that “needs” to see him everywhere.
I can receive that. I neither expected nor would I require each section of her book to read like a good Christian sermon. But I would have appreciated hearing more about how all these meandering stories in Genesis of nomadic tribes only find their ultimate meaning in the promise and fulfillment of the serpent crusher with a bruised heel prophesied in the third chapter of the book. This is not merely my reading of Genesis but Jesus’s reading. To an audience more familiar with Genesis than any of us, Jesus once said, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39).
Robinson claims in the opening sentence, “The Bible is a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil” (3). And what the Bible is generally, Genesis (as well as the book of Job) is specifically, a work exploring the tensions between the goodness and sovereignty of God in a world filled with evil. Yet without a robust engagement with the cross of Christ, his resurrection, and the second coming, I am not surprised Robinson struggles to present satisfactory answers to the problem. Yes, she is correct that the story of Joseph underscores with literal words that what his brothers meant for evil, God meant for good (Gen. 50:20). Behold the beauty of providence. But where the story of Joseph only points through the theodicy glass dimly, the New Testament streams in 4k. God the Father put Jesus forward as a propitiation for sins, writes Paul, “to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom. 3:26).
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In the end, I can’t say whether you should buy and read Robinson’s book, which I know makes for an admittedly strange and unsatisfying ending to my review. My own reflections echo the both-and in the title and sentiments of Jared Kennedy’s review, “What Marilynne Robinson Sees and Misses in Genesis.”
Like many other brilliant individuals God has blessed with oodles of talent, Robinson can be hard to pin down and put into convenient, tidy categories. It’s not fair for evangelicals to dismiss her as a mere liberal, as I’m sure some will certainly do. It seems to me that as Robinson ministers in her own context, her audience would see her as advocating many views that are more often associated with fundamentalism and evangelicalism. We need to appreciate what she does see so well.
At the same time, here is the best I can say: if you do the hard work of giving her words a close reading, as she gives a close reading to Genesis, you might end up as I did, both blessed and conflicted.
* Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash
Reading List 2023
A list of every book I read last year.
My first post of each new year always contains the list of books I read the previous year. If you’d like to see the previous posts, you can do so here: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022. Mostly I do this for accountability. But I also know a few other book nerds who enjoy these sorts of posts.
As has been the trend over the last few years—as my children have gotten bigger and my responsibilities in life and at church have also gotten bigger—I read fewer and fewer books. I hate the phrase “it is what it is,” but . . . it is what it is. I’m content to know that, before the Lord, I’m making the right choices.
Small as the totals were this year, I had a few favorites. Twice in the early months of the year I read Timothy Keller’s book Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?. And, yes, that means I count the book on my list twice. Such a great book, by the way. I also enjoyed Collin Hansen’s biography of Keller. If you happen to listen to the audiobook, Hansen included a few classic Keller sermons.
I typically read several books about writing. This year the best two were Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies and Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg. The Stein book has some PG-13 rated content, so be aware. And the Klinkenborg one has an interesting structure, but I loved it.
I reread All the Light We Cannot See in anticipation of the Netflix series and my article on the book for Christianity Today. No, I didn’t love the series as much as the book, but it did get better and better across the four installments. I also had a cool email exchange with Anthony Doerr after the article, which made my day. . . or maybe my week.
Also a re-read for me was Everything Sad Is Untrue: (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri. Oh man, this is a good book. I read it again for our church book club, and I’m glad I did. It can be a little goofy, but it makes serious points.
I’m a sucker for books about fathers and sons, and I already love Bret Lott, so I really enjoyed his book Fathers, Sons, and Brothers, which is a memoir of his growing up as the son of an RC Cola salesman. The book is not new, but new to me. Related to this theme of father and sons, I also re-read The Road by Cormac McCarthy around Father’s Day, which has become something of a semi-annual tradition for me.
Probably my favorite book of the year, although it came out last year, was Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey. I know so little about the art world yet I’m fascinated by it. The phrase “in the wind” from the title has a double meaning. Rembrandt painted himself into the disciples’ boat on the Sea of Galilee, so that’s one meaning. The other meaning comes from the art world. For a painting to be “in the wind” means that it’s stolen, which happened to that particular Rembrandt. Ramsey’s chapter on Rembrandt, along with the epic story of Michelangelo carving the epic David statue, made the book for me. Ramsey is a top-shelf Christian writer, and I echo what one of my writing friends said of Ramsey: “I want to be like him when I grow up.”
I don’t want to skip over the handful of books I endorsed, so I’ll mention those as well. I wrote endorsements for Memorizing Scripture: The Basics, Blessings, and Benefits of Meditating on God’s Word by Glenna Marshall, Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity by John Beeson and Angel Beeson, A Time to Mourn: Grieving the Loss of Those Whose Eternities Were Uncertain by Will Dobbie, and A Call to Contentment: Pursuing Godly Satisfaction in a Restless World by David Kaywood. I’ll say that Will’s book is particularly interesting in that it’s a book written on a needed but underrepresented topic, the time when a believer has someone close to them pass away who likely was not a believer. Will brings pastoral and biblical wisdom to the topic.
I also wrote a review for The Gospel Coalition of Drew Dyck’s excellent book Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything (A Guide for Exhausted Christians). Drew loves his books with two subtitles, but I don’t hold that against him because so do I.
Did you have any favorites from last year? Let me know in the comments below.
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Books per Year
Pages per Year
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In order of completion, this year I read . . .
Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? by Timothy Keller (272 pages)
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (368 pages)
Fathers, Sons, and Brothers by Bret Lott (208 pages)
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: It’s Impossible to Be Spiritually Mature, While Remaining Emotionally Immature by Peter Scazzero (240 pages)
Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I? by Timothy Keller (272 pages) [Yes, I read this twice and I’m counting it twice.]
Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes by Zack Eswine (264 pages)
The Author as Abram: Writing to the Land He Will Show Us (currently unpublished) by Benjamin Vrbicek (160 pages)
Stein On Writing: A Master Editor of Some of the Most Successful Writers of Our Century Shares His Craft Techniques and Strategies by Sol Stein (320 pages)
The Bible: Romans to Revelation, Part 6 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Living Life Backward: How Ecclesiastes Teaches Us to Live in Light of the End by David Gibson (176 pages)
The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis (160 pages)
All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir by Beth Moore (304 pages)
Memorizing Scripture: The Basics, Blessings, and Benefits of Meditating on God’s Word by Glenna Marshall (160 pages)
Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity by John Beeson and Angel Beeson (248 pages)
The Bible: Genesis to Deuteronomy, Part 1 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Spare by Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex (416 pages)
Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir by William Zinsser (240 pages)
The Word within the Words (My Theology, 3) by Malcolm Guite (96 pages)
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (592 pages)
Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson (224 pages)
The Road by Cormac McCarthy (287 pages)
Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg (224 pages)
On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by William Germano (208 pages)
Church History 101: The Highlights of Twenty Centuries by Sinclair B. Ferguson, Joel R. Beeke, Michael A. G. Haykin (100 pages)
The Bible: Joshua to Esther, Part 2 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Go Outside: ...And 19 Other Keys to Thriving in Your 20s by Jared C. Wilson and Becky Wilson (144 pages)
Understanding and Trusting Our Great God (Words from the Wise) by Tim Challies (244 pages)
Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel by Anthony Doerr (608 pages)
The Elements of Eloquence: Secrets of the Perfect Turn of Phrase by Mark Forsyth (256 pages)
The Winners: A Novel (Beartown Series) by Fredrik Backman (688 pages)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (416 pages)
The Gospel Waltz: Experiencing the Transformational Power of Grace by Bob Flayhart (255 pages)
The Bible: Psalms to Song of Solomon, Part 3 of 6 by God (300 pages)
A Time to Mourn: Grieving the Loss of Those Whose Eternities Were Uncertain by Will Dobbie (96 pages)
Where the Light Fell: A Memoir by Philip Yancy (320 pages)
Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation by Collin Hansen (320 pages)
Just Show Up: How Small Acts of Faithfulness Change Everything (A Guide for Exhausted Christians) by Drew Dyck (192 pages)
Abiding Grace: Unmerited Favor for Salvation and Life by Glen Whatley (158 pages)
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (531 pages)
Diary of a Pastor’s Soul: The Holy Moments in a Life of Ministry by M. Craig Barnes (240 pages)
A Call to Contentment: Pursuing Godly Satisfaction in a Restless World by David Kaywood (176 pages)
Everything Sad Is Untrue: (a true story) by Daniel Nayeri (368 pages)
The Chosen by Chaim Potok (272 pages)
The Bible: Isaiah to Malachi, Part 4 of 6 by God (300 pages)
Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith by Russ Ramsey (272 pages)
Creationland (a currently unpublished play) by Stuart Reese (150 pages)
Christmas Uncut: What Really Happened and Why It Really Matters by Carl Laferton (80 pages)
The Bible: Matthew to Acts, Part 5 of 6 by God (300 pages)