100 Books Read in 2018

I read 100 books in 2018.

That’s crazy. Although my reading rates have been slowly going up over the years (40 in 2013, 47 in 2014, 71 in 2015, 73 in 2016, and 84 in 2017), completing 100 seems like an achievement that I doubt I’ll beat any time soon. While 34 of the books were read for school plenty of time that would have normally been given to reading given instead to people. This number is a result of the habit of reading being firmly rooted into the rhythms and priorities of my life. It’s a good habit. I plan on keeping it.

Another satisfying sign of a year well spent in books is going back and noting just how many good books I read last year. Friends have asked if I recall everything I read. But I think that question misses the point. I read good books not primarily to recall details, but because being immersed in a book allows me to see the world through other, and hopefully wiser, eyes.

To give you some good books to read in 2019, I’ll describe my 8 favourite books I read in 2018, and then list the 26 other books I especially recommend. They are listed in chronological order, based on when I read them.

Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality by Wesley Hill

Our era is obsessed over sexuality. Debates over the place for LGBT+ in society and in the church are everywhere and are exhausting. How we understand our sexuality affects so much of our lives and self-worth. I spent much of 2018 talking about sexuality with my friend Kyle on our podcast and then talking about those discussions with pastors and friends. It was exhausting.

Into this climate, Wesley’s book was the most helpful that I’ve read. You probably won’t agree with all of it. His approach is costly and vulnerable and gutsy. It’s imaginative, rigorous, and poetic. But above all, it takes seriously the claims of Christ, and for that reason I wish everyone, regardless of their sexuality, would read it.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

This rigorously researched epic is classified as a history book, but it is so masterfully told with such attention to the details of individuals that it feels more like a narrative. Indeed, it tells a narrative of the 20th century so seldom told it felt brand new. Yet knowing this story has reshaped the way I understand American geography, culture, politics, and (perhaps most importantly) the evangelical church. It’s heartbreaking and hopeful. I do believe it is essential reading. Thankfully, it’s been beautifully and engagingly narrated as an audiobook, which is how I enjoyed it.

The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon

This is a cookbook. It contains recipes. But the bulk of its pages are filled with marvellous prose. It’s a narrative that teaches you, with passionate detail, how to cook and how to enjoy the specifics of flour, water, meat, broth, and wine. Yet its concerns are higher. Without loosing the grasp of those details, it becomes a treatise on appreciating the shocking specificity of the world and the abundant goodness of our Lord. I read this for Christmas last year and loved it so much I reread it again. I plan on returning to it yet again in the years ahead.

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Many know Gaiman for his storytelling. What many of those readers don’t know is that he is one of the best audiobook narrators that I’ve heard. Listening to him retell the stories of norse mythology was a pure delight. I was captivated by the humour, detail, characters and atmosphere of these ancient stories. This was the most enjoyable audiobook I listened to last year.

Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

This book is an effortless mixture of beauty and logic. I covered its pages with my pencil. A life lived amongst words was already a priority for me, but this book made me value and aspire to it even more. What a delight this book was!

Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard has long been one of my favourite writers. Her prose is poetry. This slim collection of essays, concerned with the intersection of the natural and the spiritual, is one of my favourite books of hers. I certainly plan on returning to the wisdom, humour, and strangeness of this collection.

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton

This elegantly argued, effortlessly written book is an illustrated guide to architecture and to the ways that physical spaces shape us. It’s also a guide to understanding how our understanding of beauty affects us. This book’s prose was so clear, reading it was like bathing in a refreshing mountain stream. I enjoyed it so much.

Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane

I was introduced to Robert MacFarlane’s work last year when I got my hands on The Lost Words. I was impressed then, but Landmarks was my first proper introduction to his prose. He’s now one of my favourite contemporary writers. Robert is a rare modern writer who understands that nature is more than just matter and that it impacts the individual in mysterious ways unique to that area’s specific landscape.This book is an exploration of how our articulation of nature through language affects us. It is alive to wonder and the unique power of words. It expanded my imagination.

Honourable Mentions

Ronald Dahl’s two memoirs, Boy and Going Solo are filled with crazy storytelling. I read plenty of Greek plays, including Sophocles, for a course and learned how to appreciate that art form. I’m a sucker for a comprehensive history textbook and Perry’s Western Civilization was especially helpful. Malcolm Guite’s Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a fascinating and enjoyable guide to both Coleridge’s life and his most famous poem. I was introduced to the complicated, brilliant word of Andre Dubus by reading some of his short stories and his book of essays, Meditations from a Movable Chair. Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk is another stunning example of nature affecting humans. I read three P.G. Wodehouse books this year and Leave It to Psmith was my favourite. Leon Kass’s The Hungry Soul: Eating and the Perfecting of Our Nature was fascinating and fun. I finally finished Flannery O’Conner’s brilliant Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose and I will certainly be returning. Robert Hilburn’s splendid biography of my favorite songwriter, Paul Simon: The Life, was a treat. Eugene Peterson’s essays on certain psalms, Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms That Summon You from Self to Community, was rather impactful. In a year with a lot of chatter on the role of justice, Tim Keller’s Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just was refreshingly biblical and challengingly so. This year I converted to Anglicanism. Alan Jacob’s elegant biography The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography was a helpful guide to a book that will shape me in the years to come. Lorna Crozier poetry, The Blue Hour of the Day: Selected Poems, and memoir, Small Beneath the Sky: (A Prairie Memoir), were a treat. Robert MacFarlane’s little essay The Gifts of Reading was a delight. Within the Barbed Wire Fence, Takeo Ujo Nakano account of his internment in Ontario in WWII, was poetic and personal, while Mark Sakamoto’s account of his family’s history in that war, Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, was brutal and stunning. Halfbreed, Maria Campbell’s account of growing up métis was eye-opening and Tomboy Survival Guide, Ivan Coyote’s account of being transgender, was broad in its generosity to others. Andy Crouch’s The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place is the best and most encouraging book on living with technology. Leif Enger’s latest novel, Virgil Wander, has some of the best sentences I’ve read all year and is a gift. And Tim Keller’s book of devotions on Proverbs, God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Book of Proverbs, was so helpful in many ways.

A Life Amongst Books in 2017

I love reading. I love lists of books. I love looking back and making a record of the books that provided a texture of ideas and words to my life over the last year. My goal is always to finish each month with 5 books completed. This year I read 83, my record since high school. (I suppose that this rise in volumes could be attributed to the books I read for university.)

As usual, the following will include, in chronological order, the books that made the best impression, followed by a longer list of the other books I really enjoyed reading this year.

Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation

After being influenced by James K. A. Smith’s thinking for several years and with the release of his final volume in the Cultural Liturgies Trilogy this Autumn, it was finally time to tackle the series itself. I read this book in January and it’s insights have shaped me ever since. I think its concepts are key for understanding how the human heart and society works. Later in the year, I read the second volume (Imagining the Kingdom) and I’ve just started the final book: Awaiting the King.

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

I’ve enjoyed Michael Chabon’s fiction, but this book of essays on the imagination turned me, head-over-heels, into a fan. Being immersed in his active approach to such a diverse range of subjects is like taking a sniff of cayenne pepper to your imaginative senses – it reminds you of what wonders are possible in this world and then has you looking for what other concepts you might have missed in your previously your humdrum existence.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood

This was doubtless the most entertaining audiobook I’ve listened to. Trever Noah narrates his experiences growing up in the dying embers of apartheid South Africa. It is simultaneously fascinating, side-splittingly hilarious, and harrowing. I don’t expect that I’ll soon forget the stories, accents, and insights of  this book.

Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties

As I’ve shared elsewhere, this was the year I made my way though everything Beatles. An online friend recommended this guide to every track they recorded, and I’m so glad I had it. It’s an insightful analysis into the brilliance and shortcomings of the band, while tracing the cultural forces of that indelible era that both shaped and was shaped by the lads from Liverpool. The story of The Beatles is a story of both the stunning potential of humanity and it’s irredeemable shortcomings. This book shows both of these traits.

Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical

Tim Keller’s books are always insightful. In this volume, he sets out to provide a sort of prequel to his debut classic The Reason for God: an argument for the validity of belief in an age of skepticism. But the book becomes much more: a systematic, carefully researched understanding of our current era and the system of belief that undergirds it. It’s a heady book. It’s an important book. I want to reread it.

Holy the Firm

This slim volume is Annie Dillard at her most distilled. It is both simple and approachable, and complex and layered. It’s an age old narrative of why so much evil can exist amongst such vast goodness, but it is told in a simple story that is narrowly focused but encompasses so much. I read it twice in a row, and then wrote about it for school.

No Great Mischief

Some novels are page turners, but the writing itself is quickly forgotten (hello Ms. Rowling...). Others are beautifully written but take a fair bit of concentration to pick away at. This book is one of those rare combinations of being ripping yarn, while continuing beautiful writing on every page. It’s a perennial novel; one that I’m sure I will return to repeatedly, a novel for the ages that remains remarkably tied to a specific place.

Born to Run

Bruce Springsteen narrates his highly acclaimed memoir. The Boss’s voice is in your ears for 18 hours. What more can I say? Bruce Springsteen’s voice is a gift for the people. This audiobook is no different. It was fascinating, insightful, and through it, I’ve developed a great affection for The Boss. He is a gift we do not deserve, and so is this book.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

This vast book, tracing an alternative history where magic is the lost inheritance of the English, feels like it was written in the 18th century, a cross between Austin and Dickens. Ms Clarke has written a terrific yarn, with an ending that verges upon the eschatological. But what I appreciated most about this book was how the plot, while important, was not the main point. This is a story that loves its characters and its textures and wants us to enjoy them too. It’s a marvel that I’m almost ashamed I’ve missed up until now.

Honourable Mentions

This year the Book of Psalms was once again my guide and nourishment. I’ve thought back to C.S. Lewis’ small book of essays, The Weight of Glory, often, and enjoyed a recording by Malcolm Guite of Chesterton’s Ballad of the White Horse. Francis Spufford’s A Child That Books Built was splendid. On Writing Well gets to the heart of good writing habits, and does so in a manner far more enjoyable (a sign itself of good writing) than any other I have read. Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage left a thread in my head that would later be picked up and Wesley Hill’s Spiritual Friendship was both well written and insightful. Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction was terrific and the novel Station Eleven wove an interweaving story that I throughly enjoyed. I can’t wait to reread Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, even as I read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf yet again and loved it all the more. I would have been haunted by Benjamin Hertwig’s book of poetry, Slow War, even if he wasn’t my cousin and friend. Michael Chabon’s Moonglow is, I think, my favorite novel of his. Mike Cosper’s Recapturing the Wonder was insightful and convicting. Before We Get Started is Bret Lott being again incredibly human and humble. I fell in love again with The Wind in the Willows and with Tolkien’s best short stories – Farmer Giles of Ham, Smith of Wootton Major and Leaf by Niggle. And Alan Jacob’s little How to Think was thought provoking in a year when I reflected a good deal on how to talk to those I disagree with.

I Read an Astonishing Number of Books in 2015

At the start of 2015, I set out with the goal to read five books by the end of each month. This goal was achieved, but the extra time several months of sickness gave me, boosted the total number of books read up to 72. 72 books! That’s my record since I left school. 

It’s March, long past the respectable window in which one can publish such lists. But several have asked for a list, and several more have asked for reading suggestions, so here at last is something. Before I dive in, I have three reflections on this year of reading:

1. Our reading time is precious. So there is nothing worse than looking back over several months of reading and realizing that nothing from that list was worth my time. How do you ensure the books you choose to read are worth reading? Some books fall into my life, others I seek out after receiving a recommendation. Coming to end of a year and having such a long list of memorable titles is a gift I can’t take for granted. 

2. Douglas Wilson has a great article with tips on how to read more books. I was surprised by how many of these tricks I’ve already used to great effect. Keeping a list of books I finish was an early incentive for me to finish books. Having many different types of books on the go at once is also a big help. (I currently have 15 titles on my “actively reading” list.) Are there any tricks you deploy?

3. But with all this rapid reading, is there a place for settling into and slowly reading just a single book? Both a friend and my pastor have recently challenged me with this suggestion. How do you find a balance between reading many books and integrating what you read into your life?  

Here then, is my list, my favourite titles followed by honourable mentions.

Cry, the Beloved Country
I listened to the Michael York’s audiobook narration of Alan Paton’s novel Cry, the Beloved Country. I had started this story while sick and looking for a story to listen that might help me fall asleep. As the narration began, I slowly started to sit up in bed, intently listening to every word. My eyes grew wide in the darkness. This was truly something different. The story, of an Anglican priest from a Zulu tribe on his way to Johannesburg in search of his lost son, is both gut wrenching and life affirming. The prose is laced with poetry that will make your heart break. And Michael York’s narration exceeds the quality of ever other audiobook I’ve listened to. This book shows Christ at work with an honesty that’s rarely seen.

The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment
Every month my pastor recommends a book for our church to read. The month of May was one of the toughest in my life, and this book, by the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs arrived at exactly the right moment. I wrote elsewhere about it’s impact. I doubt its cordial of medicine will remain bottled up on my shelf forever. I will need its council and wisdom again.

Culture Care: Reconnecting with Beauty for Our Common Life
Makoto Fujumura is walking a path faithful to both the community of Christ and the professional art world. In this book, he outlines the theology and philosophy behind this balance, a new paradigm that seeks to care for what is good in the culture, rather than simply combatting what we don’t like. In a year of political division in both Canada and the US, this book is especially needed. It is theology and it is art, it is doctrine laced with imagination and example, both personal and historical. Seek it out. 

Jayber Crow
I spent many happy hours on my summer vacation wandering the forests and sea cliffs of Hornby Island, taking pictures while listening to this book by Wendall Berry. Its story of a small-town barber, his private spiritual journey, and the public life of the community he lives amongst is a story to nestle amongst. Paul Michael’s recording gets the Kentucky accents just right.

Music at Midnight: The Life and Poetry of George Herbert
I’ve always wanted to understand and appreciate the poetry of George Herbert, but it insisted on eluding my grasp. John Drury’s own Cambridge roots makes him the perfect biographer, but what I didn’t expect was also an illuminating guide to understanding Herbert’s poetry, which I now treasure.  His story was also personally affecting, giving me much to ponder about the visible fruits of a man’s ministry.

The Book of the Dun Cow
A blurb on the book’s cover describes it as “ belonging on the same shelf as Animal Farm, Lord of the Rings, and Watership Down”. Walter Wangerin wove a terrifying and memorable fable filled with very real characters I won’t be forgetting soon. The audiobook recording is worth seeking out.

Ambition: Essays By Members of the Chrysostom Society
This year I wrestled with how to reckon with my ambitions as a humble and content Christ-follower. These essays by the members of the Chrysostom Society, gave me hope, reframing my perceptions, comforting me with their experiences, and challenging me in my contentment.

To Kill A Mockingbird
This is my sister’s favourite book. After confessing that I had never read it, I came home one night to find it on my pillow with a hand written note: “READ ME!”. My sister was right.

The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ
Another Calvary Grace Church “book of the month”, this volume by Ray Ortlund was as clarifying and refreshing as stumbling upon fresh spring of water amid a dry and weary land.

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
Tim Keller’s guide to prayer gave me a guideline and a handbook to what’s gradually changing from a mysterious to achievable process.

The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis
This collection of essays from one of the final Desiring God conferences contained a sentence that continues to direct my thoughts to this day. It came to mind even as I typed this blog post.

Honourable Mentions:

U2's Achtung Baby: Meditations on Love in the Shadow of the Fall by Stephen Catanzarite
Brendan by Frederick Buechner
Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S. Whitney
The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay by Scott F. Crider
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel by Matt Zoller Seitz
Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Revised Edition, 2011) by John Piper
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs
Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God by Dane C. Ortlund

Here's a stack of my favourite books from last year, at least the books I could find around the house. The rest I had leant out, some I had borrowed, a few had been returned to the library. It was a lot of work putting all these books back on the shelf. 

Travels 2015: A Hornby Island Reader

Travels 2015 is a series of updates I originally posted on Facebook while on vacation. What started as a quick update and a couple photos transformed into a series of mini-essays that I would have posted on this website had it been up and running at the time. This one was written on August 7th, 2015.

As I shared my summer reading list with my family, I was asked "how much time are you actually planning on spending with us?" (Which isn't fair. They spent just as much time reading as I did. You should see the stack of booksIlona brought!) But true to form, the books along the left ('Select Letters of John Newton', a largely wishy-washy book by Annie Dillard, and 'A Brief History of Thought' [which Tim Keller calls "the one book to read to understand culture"]) have all been untouched. I'll probably get started on one or two of them as I travel.

On my iPhone you'll see an audiobook of Wendell Barry's 'Jayber Crow'. It's been a delightful listen, a story of a small town barber that's full of very real characters, well turned phrases, and an understanding of the human heart that progresses along with the story. It's accompanied many an ocean walk these past weeks.

Tim Keller's book on prayer is almost a compilation of thinking and advice on prayer from throughout church history. Very practical. And every vacation for the last six years has included at least one P. G. Wodehouse. They are the perfect summer combination of witty brilliance and mindless fun.

But my true Honby companion has been 'Music at Midnight', John Drury's fine biography of the English poet-priest George Herbert. It's a guide to bot his life and his poetry. Herbert's richly Reformed Anglican faith was actualized through struggle that resulted in some of the finest poetry in the English language. It was a joy to unpack its depth. It was also fascinating to uncover his life; he has an ambitious and successful academic career in Cambridge before poor health and inner turmoil brought him to lead a humble life as a village parson. I was struck by the way his struggles found their purpose through his writings, which tooka life of their own after Herbert's death, encouraging and building up many, many readers. It was a reminder to persevere in faithfulness, trusting that through Christ we will bear fruit, despite what we may or may not see today.

I hope you enjoy the series of pictures of the various vantages I viewed with this volume in hand.

P. S. Coffee Update: My aunt, who came up by car to visit us for the week, was kind enough to purchase a Moka espresso pot on my behalf, as well as pick up a bag of Fernwood decaf. How kind! My coffee drinking is restored.

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Books of Influence in 2013

This post was originally published in January 2014. Images are from the books and are not my own.

It’s that time of year, where bloggers everywhere turn to their logbooks of entertainment from the previous year and offer up their favoirtes. As one who loves lists, I too offer my selections. Today we will discuss books, with films to follow. 

First, a word on “the best of 2013”. I think I read three or four books this year that were actually published in 2013, so if I stuck to that categorization, this would be a short and easy list. But of the 38 books I read this year, I’m bound to be influenced by much more then just the passing fancies of our age. It’s perhaps slightly unfair, since I could just read a stack of classics and accurately call them the “best” books I read that year. But nevertheless, in chronological order, I offer the books that most shaped me this past year, followed by list of honourable mentions.

A hefty 500 page anthology, The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Imagination features contributions, both short and long, from 50 authors, living and dead, assembled by the venerable authorty of the topic, Leland Ryken. It set a trajectory and was a travelguide for what would become a year of art exploration. The book explores, from many angles, the “realationship between imagination, belief, and words” and taught me to demand a quality in writing that reflects the author’s Creator, to confront the “aesthetic poverty of evangelicalism”, and to recognize the worldview of an author while learning from the way that author represents it.

A Good Man is Hard To Find and The Children of Men were read shortly after or at the same time as the previous volume. They both illustrated the principles Ryken’s book set out. Here are two Christian women who write well and by their writing challenge both believers and the world at large. Flannery O’Conner’s work particularly stands out for its dark short stories depiciting ordinary characters in a weary world, in which you can almost feel the eternal weight of their desicions. Much has been said about how Ms. O’Conner used violence to shock her characters and her sleepy audience into the realization of eternal truths. I find her short stores a cousin of sorts to the music of Sufjan Stevens.

The moment I heard about Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work I knew it was for me. It was so helpful I plan on rereading it every year that I find myself in the workforce. Unlike so many other evangelical perspectives on the working world, this is a wholestic, hopeful, biblical, and practical look at the culture of the workforce and how it interesects with the Christian’s calling. I want to buy a box of copies and hand them to friends and colleagues.

Seldom have I enjoyed a book more than Planet Narnia. Like a real life literary detective novel, this book adds so much to the beloved series I grew up with and to the study of Lewis. Not only is it an example of how a Christian should bring both literary and theological depth to his writing, but it also opened my eyes to the the world of Lewis scholarship  something I am now itching to one day contribute to.

I slowly worked my way through The Four Holy Gospels, savouring the way the depth of its images paired to the eternal depth of its words. My Name is Asher Lev painted with words the way the author sees the world along with his internal struggle. Death By Living was enjoyable and moving, well written and entertaining. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert was an encouraging reminder to never give up on the unlikely people God throws in your path. Finally, Winter’s Tale, although convoluted at times and prehaps too long, was a book full of wisdom and beauty and is the work of fiction which I have underlined the most.

Stay tuned! Next I’ll be posting my favourite films from 2013.