A decent year for reading, didn’t finish as strong as I had hoped, but I was busy writing!
LIKED ENOUGH TO RE-READ
Fantastic Mr. Fox
Looking for Alaska
A Wrinkle in Time
Compassion, Justice & the Christian Life
Stuart Little
The Book Thief
FAVORITE FEW
How Children Raise Parents
Leaving Egypt
The Fault in our Stars
The Meaning of Marriage
Wonder
BEST OF THE REST
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Song of the Lark
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
The Starboard Sea
The Triumph of the City
The End of the Affair
The Exact Place
Bird by Bird
In the Garden of Beasts
The Abolition of Man
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction
Julius Caesar
Jesus + Nothing = Everything
Rabbit, Run
Salvage the Bones
Handful of Dust
A Curtain of Green & Other Stories
The Importance of Being Earnest
Breath
Mike and Psmith
Creation Regained
How to Save a Life
Story of a Girl
GOOD READS
Gold
The Hunger Games trilogy
Ginger Pye
How to Talk to Your Child About Sex
Give Them Grace
The Seven Laws of Teaching
The Circle of Seasons
The Paris Wife
Bonhoeffer
We Sinners
The God of the Mundane
Sign of the Beaver
Small Things with Great Love
All-of-a-Kind Family
Glorius Ruin
The Shaping of a Life
Surprised by Oxford
The Underdog
NOT MY CUP OF TEA
Most Talkative
Love Does
Every Day
Hippie Boy
I love Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and Wodehouse’s Mike and Psmith (although I’ve really only read the second half, which was re-issued as Enter Psmith). Then again, I love just about everything I’ve read from Wodehouse and Lewis.
For me, the two most important books I read in 2012 are Darrell Johnson’s Discipleship on the Edge: an Expository Journey through the Book of Revelation and Karen Swallow Prior’s Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me.
Johnson is a gifted communicator (I’ve heard him speak at conferences and listened to classroom audios too) and it comes across in his writing. He is very scholarly, as might be expected from someone who was on faculty at Regent in Vancouver, but also quite pastoral (which makes sense since he’s pastored a few churches). He brings sound scripture hermeneutics to bear, with insights from the history, politics, culture, religions, geography and geology of the times and places John wrote about in revelation. This work makes sense of a part of the Bible most people (including me) have been confounded by.
Prior’s literary memoir is one of the most compelling reads I’ve come across. She speaks of the impact that several great works (some familiar, some not so much) have had on her life. Yet it’s not only a literary memoir, but also a spiritual journey. This literature has truly affected her spiritual formation, as she discovered the Holy Spirit using it all to guide her in her relationship with God. It’s a testament to her superb writing that even the works I was unfamiliar with came alive as she spoke of their affect on her life. It’s like they were affecting mine as well.
Cheers,
Tim