The one important clarification is that these are my favorite books I read in 2010, not the top 5 published in 2010. I wouldn't dare read only books from the past year...or past fifty years for that matter!
After you've read, let me know what you think, and please share some of your favorite books from the past year.
5. Purgatory (translated by Dorothy Sayers) - Dante AligheriC.S. Lewis would be proud of me: avoiding "chronological snobbery" by reading something old, and something so important to Western and Christian culture. Technically, this is 1/3 of the complete book, The Divine Comedy, but no matter. As Dante makes his way out of Hell and up to Paradise, you can't help but rise with him. Take passages like this:
"This water that thou see'st wells from no spring
By condensation of cold cloud supplied,
Like streams that have their spate and slackening,
But from a fount whose sure and constant tide
Ever by God's good grace will regain at source
Whate'er it freely spends on either side.
With twofold powers it runs a twofold course:
This side blots all man's sins from memory;
That side to memory all good deed's restores." (Canto XXVIII, lns. 121-129)
(Make sure you get Dorothy Sayers' translation. She writes in 20th-century English, but maintains the poetic form and structure of 14th-century Dante)
4. This Momentary Marriage - John Piper
There are a million books on marriage, but I doubt many better than this. I liked this book because:
4. This Momentary Marriage - John Piper
There are a million books on marriage, but I doubt many better than this. I liked this book because:
- It focuses on the theological and spiritual centers of marriage, rather than dwelling only on practical issues (those books can be helpful too).
- It features the sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on marriage. Those are a treasure in themselves.
- It considers the issue of marriage more broadly, highlighting how the church should approach subjects like singleness, hospitality, and divorce.
Some beautiful words, and some hard words, but all good words.
3. Counterfeit Gods - Tim Keller
Tim Keller has been preaching from Manhattan for more than twenty years, but his writing career has only really taken off in the last three. And what a flurry it has been - five books in three years, and counting.
Tim Keller has been preaching from Manhattan for more than twenty years, but his writing career has only really taken off in the last three. And what a flurry it has been - five books in three years, and counting.
The subtitle says it all: The Empty Promises of Sex, Money, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters. Keller takes a look at how these things have become idols in our present-day society, and argues why Jesus is the solution. This guy is a committed Christian, a voracious reader, and he loves New York City. He is likely to quote ancient-near-eastern academic works, biblical commentaries, and The New Yorker on the same page. And I think that's cool.
2. One of Ours - Willa Cather
If I read a Willa Cather book, chances are, it's going to be on my "Top 5" List. I don't think anyone creates such realistic, such human characters as Willa Cather. When I finish her books, I feel like I've known the characters all my life.Although this novel begins in Nebraska (like My Antonia and O Pioneers!), it follows Claude Wheeler as he makes his way to Europe to participate in World War I. An honest portrait of a young midwestern man, who constantly struggles between his love for home, and his desire to know the wider world around him.
1. The Book of the Dun Cow - Walter Wangerin, Jr.
Don't let the odd title turn you off - The Book of the Dun Cow won the American Book Award in 1978, and is my greatest discovery of 2010. The story is an allegory, in which all the characters are animals - Chauntecleer the rooster, Pertelote the hen, Mundo Cani the dog, and many others. But the story is anything but a simple farm tale.
It's an epic tragedy, a story about how a community, in the bonds of faith and love, can overcome the most painful disasters, and the greatest of evils. I won't command you to get this as a must-read, but you should strongly consider picking it up.
Please share some of your favorite books in the Comments Section. I'd love to hear about them!
Here are links to my favorite books of the past few years:
6 comments:
Love Dotty Sayers! Glad you came upon (and are recommending) her translation. It really is a very good one. For my Perspectives on Early Modern Women course this semester I reread Sayers's collection of essays Are Women Human? in which Ms Sayers discusses the many disturbing ways in which women are considered primarily in terms of femina and in terms of homo an afterthought if at all. Quite excellent. And it's been super fun for me to bring Sayers to the table through my final project for the class. Even my prof (whom I have enjoyed very much) didn't know Sayers outside of her Lord Peter Whimsy series.
Love Dotty Sayers! Glad you came upon (and are recommending) her translation. It really is a very good one. For my Perspectives on Early Modern Women course this semester I reread Sayers's collection of essays Are Women Human? in which Ms Sayers discusses the many disturbing ways in which women are considered primarily in terms of femina and in terms of homo an afterthought if at all. Quite excellent. And it's been super fun for me to bring Sayers to the table through my final project for the class. Even my prof (whom I have enjoyed very much) didn't know Sayers outside of her Lord Peter Whimsy series.
Brian, thanks for the tips. Nice list to add to my Chrismas suggestions. -Alex
I've got Wangerin's book on my "to read" list. Here are my top five:
1. Calvin, by Bruce Gordon. A really large and really good biography of John Calvin, which will probably remain the standard scholarly biography of Calvin for some time to come. It is even handed, a pleasure to read, and provides all the sorts of theological, historical, and personal (though there are so few of these with Calvin) details you could want.
2. The Unaccommodated Calvin, by Richard Muller. This book is a collection of essays on Calvin written by Muller. Each one is either correcting poor or biased scholarship on Calvin, or advancing a really interesting thesis about Calvin's work--especially his work in relation the the Scholasticism out of which he came and the Scholasticism that followed upon Calvin in the Puritans who took up his ideas.
3. Against Christianity, by Peter Leithart. Love him, or hate him, Peter Leithart is a really good writer who knows how to both please and push the reader into a reaction with ideas that he might otherwise gloss over. The tone of the book is polemical, and so its value may be less than a more balanced book, but for what it is aiming at, it is a really fine work.
4. Resurrection & Redemption, by Richard Gaffin. A book that developed out of Gaffin's ThD dissertation, this book is an excellent exposition of Paul's view of the ordo solutis (the logical order of salvation for the individual). The emphasis is upon the teleology of salvation--that the resurrection is the assurance of glorification, which is itself the end for which God has made us.
5. The Religious Affections, by Jonathan Edwards. I enjoyed this book the most of any this year, and it is easy to see why it has such a great reputation. Edwards is a brilliant and original thinker, capable of making distinctions that others miss, but turn out to be indispensable for understanding the subject under consideration. Edwards shows that godly affections flow out from the renewed will of man--not from the emotions, which may or may not accompany religious affections, and which fluctuate in intensity. I think many still misunderstand Edward's definition of "affections," but for those who get it, it is a truly revolutionary viewpoint for contemporary thought.
I wrote a really long reply that got zapped. So here is the short, unadorned list:
1. Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards.
2. Calvin, Bruce Gordon.
3. The Unaccommodated Calvin, Richard Muller.
4. Resurrection & Redemption, Richard Gaffin.
5. Against Christianity, Peter Leithart
Fiction: Brother K. (About 200 pages in and loving it). Other than that I enjoyed my rereading of the Dark Tower series by King but I don’t think you would be interested in it. Also, the Borges short stories I read were amazing.
Nonfiction: Though I haven’t got much further than the introduction – “The Beauty and the Infinite” (by David Bentley Heart) has been awesome.
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