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Chris​Hubbs​.com

Avionics software fellow by day, tech and theology nerd by night.

year in review

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    My 2023 Reading in Review

    Another year full of books! (Previous summaries: 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007…

    I read 72 books for the year, which feels like a nice even number. There’s still a lot of theology and science fiction in the list, but I read more science this year, along with several memoirs.

    Here’s the full list of reading, with particular standouts noted in bold:

    Theology

    • Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction by Bradley Jersak
    • On the Soul and the Resurrection by St. Gregory of Nyssa
    • Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke L. Kwon
    • Sanctifying Interpretation: Vocation, Holiness, and Scripture by Chris E. W. Green
    • The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics by Stanley Hauerwas
    • Art and Faith: A Theology of Making by Makoto Fujimura
    • Not All Who Wander (Spiritually) Are Lost by Traci Rhodes
    • A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer
    • Trauma-Informed Evangelism: Cultivating Communities of Wounded Healers by Charles Kiser
    • Christ in Evolution by Ilia Delio
    • Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps by Richard Rohr
    • The Phenomenon of Man by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
    • The New Being by Paul Tillich

    Green is wonderful here. I posted a few excerpts while reading it that would be a good introduction.

    Science and History

    • The Evolution of Knowledge: Rethinking Science for the Anthropocene by Jurgen Renn
    • Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price
    • Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards
    • Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel
    • The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation by Carl Benedikt Frey
    • Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics in the Age of Crisis by George Monbiot
    • The Book of Genesis: A Biography by Ronald Hendel
    • Digging Up Armageddon: The Search for the Lost City of Solomon by Eric H. Cline
    • Secular Faith: How Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics by Mark Alan Smith
    • Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Greene
    • The Book of Job: A Biography by Mark Larrimore
    • On the Origina of Time: Stephen Hawking’s Final Theory by Thomas Hertog
    • Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert
    • The Talmud: A Biography by Barry Scott Wimpfheimer
    • The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes by Donald D. Hoffman

    Memoir and Biography

    • Every Good Boy Does Fine: A Love Story, in Music Lessons by Jeremy Denk
    • Still Just a Geek: An Annotated Memoir by Wil Wheaton
    • Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis
    • Heretic: A Memoir by Jeanna Kadlec
    • Joel on Software by Joel Spolsky
    • God on the Rocks: Distilling Religion, Savoring Faith by Phil Madeira
    • All My Knotted-Up Life: A Memoir by Beth Moore
    • Mystics and Zen Masters by Thomas Merton
    • Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian by Ilia Delio
    • How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler
    • Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann
    • Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart

    I posted some appreciation for Stewart before I got my hands on his memoir. The memoir did not disappoint. He’s an imperfect, lovely man. The book was a pleasure to read. Also, he’s a great example of why we need funding for arts and arts education. But I digress.

    Other Miscellaneous Non-Fiction

    • My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman
    • Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears by Michael Schulman
    • The Ultimate Quest: A Geek’s Gude to (The Episcopal) Church by Jordan Haynie Ware
    • Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes by William Bridges

    Fiction

    • The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (re-read)
    • A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers (re-read)
    • Dead Lions by Mick Herron
    • Don’t Cry for Me by Daniel Black
    • The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy
    • The Bayern Agenda by Dan Moren
    • Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
    • Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
    • Hunting Time by Jeffrey Deaver
    • Ordinary Monsters by J. M. Miro
    • The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
    • The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgard
    • Babel by R. F. Kuang
    • Translation State by Ann Leckie
    • Average Jones by Samuel Hopkins Adams
    • The Odyssey by Homer, trans. Emily Wilson
    • Red Queen by Juan Gomez-Jurado
    • The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
    • The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
    • Blackouts by Justin Torres
    • Starter Villain by John Scalzi
    • The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin
    • Girl One by Sara Flannery Murphy
    • Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
    • My Old Home: A Novel of Exile by Orville Schell
    • The Helsinki Affair by Anna Pitoniak
    • Time’s Mouth by Edan Lepucki
    • The Collector by Daniel Silva

    Schell’s epic story following a young man’s life growing up in 20th century China is beautiful and tragic and very worth the read.

    Summary

    One of my goals from previous years was to read fewer books written by white guys. By my count, 24 of this year’s books meet that goal… which isn’t as good as I’d hoped it would be. That science section didn’t help in that regard. I made a stronger shift this year, though, away from theology and to science. That wasn’t super-intentional, but just where my interest was at the time.

    On to 2024! I’m nearly halfway through my first book of the year.

    ∞

    My 2022 Reading in Review

    Another year full of books! (Previous summaries: 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007… argh, how did I miss some of those years?)

    I got through 61 books this year, which feels like a bit of a down year. My “one book at a time” practice got me bogged down in some slow theology books, and then I got sucked into a cross-stitch project and a couple web projects at the end of the year which stole some of my reading time. (I finally came to grips with breaking up the long theology slogs with some fiction, and that helps a lot.)

    Here’s the full list of reading, with particular standouts noted in bold:

    Theology

    • Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church - Bridget Eileen Rivera
    • Happiness and Contemplation - Josef Pieper
    • The Aryan Jesus - Susannah Heschel
    • The Joy of Being Wrong - James Alison
    • Attached to God: A Practical Guide to Deeper Spiritual Experience - Krispin Mayfield
    • The Emergent Christ - Ilia Delio
    • The Beatitudes Through the Ages - Rebekah Ann Eklund
    • Let the Light In: Healing from Distorted Images of God - Colin McCartney
    • In: Incarnation and Inclusion, Abba and Lamb - Brad Jersak
    • Having the Mind of Christ - Matt Tebbe and Ben Sternke
    • The Dark Interval - John Dominic Crossan
    • Love Over Fear - Dan White, Jr.
    • Faith Victorious - Lennart Pinomaa
    • History and Eschatology - N. T. Wright
    • Destined for Joy - Alvin F. Kimel
    • A Thicker Jesus - Glen Harold Stassen
    • Changing Our Mind - David P. Gushee

    Dr. Ilia Delio’s The Emergent Christ is the one that had me thinking the most this year, and that will stick with me longer than any of the others. Her approach to thinking about God, evolution, and universal progress within a Christian framework blew my mind, and consistently challenges me to think about God and the universe differently.

    Other Non-Fiction

    • Maximum City - Suketu Mehta
    • Music is History - Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
    • The Argonauts - Maggie Nelson
    • How the Word Is Passed - Clint Smith
    • The New Abolition - Gary Dorrien
    • Reading Evangelicals - Daniel Silliman
    • Fearful Symmetry - A. Zee
    • The Joshua Generation - Rachel Havrelock
    • Belabored - Lyz Lenz
    • The Method - Isaac Butler
    • The Dead Sea Scrolls - John J. Collins
    • Strange Rites - Tara Isabella Burton
    • A Different Kind of Animal - Robert Boyd
    • The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber and David Wengrow
    • Bible Nation - Candida R. Moss and Joel S. Baden
    • Protestants Abroad - David A. Hollinger
    • Do I Make Myself Clear? - Harold Evans
    • White Flight - Kevin M. Kruse
    • How God Becomes Real - T. M. Luhrmann
    • Salty - Alissa Wilkinson
    • Blood In The Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks - Chris Herring
    • Searching for the Oldest Stars - Anna Frebel
    • This Here Flesh - Cole Arthur Riley
    • The Invention of Religion - Jan Assmann
    • The Phoenix Project - Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr
    • The Late Medieval English Church - G. W. Bernard
    • The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila - Carlos Eire
    • Strangers in Their Own Land - Arlie Russell Hochschild

    Three women’s books stand out here: Tara Isabella Burton’s Strange Rites, looking at how the current generation of young people are looking for religious experiences in places other than traditional religion; Cole Arthur Riley’s spiritual memoir This Here Flesh, and Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, describing a sociologist’s quest to understand Louisianans who have been devastatingly impacted by environmental destruction and yet persistently support the businesses and political causes behind that destruction.

    Fiction

    • Unthinkable - Brad Parks
    • Lent - Jo Walton
    • The Last Commandment - Scott Shepherd
    • When We Cease To Understand the World - Benjamin Labatut
    • Everything Sad Is Untrue - Daniel Nayeri
    • Once A Thief - Christopher Reich
    • A Deadly Education - Naomi Novik
    • The Blue Diamond - Leonard Goldberg
    • A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers
    • The Coffin Dancer - Jeffery Deaver
    • Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel
    • Small Things Like These - Claire Keegan
    • A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - Becky Chambers
    • A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers (re-read)
    • Slow Horses - Mick Herron
    • The Last Agent - Robert Dugoni

    Here the standout was author Becky Chambers. Her little Monk & Robot novellas sucked me in and made me happy. That prompted me to purchase her Small Angry Planet series and start in on a re-read. Chambers works in the best tradition of science fiction pushing for inclusion and acceptance of The Other and in using the exploration of a very different universe to make you think about how our own could be improved.

    Coming Up…

    I’ve continued to log on Goodreads this past year but I get the feeling it’s spooling down as it gets absorbed by Amazon. I’m working on a self-hosted book logging site - it’s actually live online right now if you know where to look but I’m going to do some cleanup on it before I publicize it. I’ll post here about it when I do!

    ∞

    My 2021 Reading in Review

    With 2022 well underway (for the past 10 hours or so) it’s time to review my reading in 2021. As usual, my entire reading log for last year is over on Goodreads. This year my reading was influenced by a reading group I joined that focused on books by black, indigenous, and queer authors. (It was a fantastic group, and I’m sad to see it end.)

    Running the numbers

    I finished 79 books this year, which is in my usual neighborhood. Of those, 34/78 were written by women, but only 17/78 were written by non-white people. As a friend put it when posting his reading lists yesterday, let’s just say that leaves lots of opportunity for reading in 2022!

    Top Non-Fiction

    Hard to rank these, but some very good ones:

    1. All About Love, bell hooks (RIP)
    2. The Order of Time, Carlo Rovelli
    3. The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Ilia Delio
    4. Redeeming Power, Diane Langberg

    Of these, hooks spoke about love in beautiful ways, Langberg spoke truth about the mess in the evangelical church, and Rovelli and Delio made my mind hurt in the best ways talking about time and quantum theory and evolution.

    Top Religion / Theology

    This is a big enough chunk of reading to be its own category. Recommended here:

    1. A More Christlike Word, Bradley Jersak
    2. Jesus of the East, Phuc Luu
    3. Latina Evangelicas, Loida I. Martell, Zaida Maldonado Perez, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier
    4. The Making of Biblical Womanhood, Beth Allison Barr

    The gentle Canadian Jersak again focuses us on Jesus; Luu explores the similarities between a Jesus-centered Christianity and the tenets of Eastern spirituality; Martell, Perez, and Conde-Frazier write a short systematic theology from a Latina perspective, and Barr writes a challenging history of “Biblical womanhood”.

    Top Fiction

    This is fiction that I read this year, not necessarily published this year. I always have catching up to do…

    1. The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
    2. Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi
    3. The Just City, Jo Walton

    I could order the first two either way. The Sparrow is broadly about Jesuits sending missionaries to an alien planet and more directly about outsiders assuming they know best and wrestling with what God really wants. Transcendent Kingdom is a stunning exploration of race, depression, addiction, and immigration. And The Just City explores what would happen if a city were set up based on the principles of Plato’s Republic. So much creativity and imagination, so little reading time.

    Books that you probably won’t entirely agree with but will challenge you

    How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi — Is there a more controversial topic the past couple years in this country than race? Kendi speaks strongly about the need to be actively anti-racist, in a “if you’re not actively with us then you’re against us” sort of way. Challenging.

    The Inescapable Love of God, Thomas Talbott — Talbott (an ethics professor and theologian) makes his case for universal reconciliation in Christ. I found his arguments compelling. I read through the back-and-forth that he and John Piper had after the fact; I found Piper’s arguments much less compelling.

    The Right to Sex, Amia Srinivasan — Sharp, wonderfully-written essays by a young woman exploring the dynamics and ethics of sex and power in the 21st century.

    Queer Theology, Linn Marie Tonstad — I’m sorry to confess that I would’ve been highly unlikely to pick up a book titled “Queer Theology” if my book club hadn’t pushed me to do so. Boy am I glad I did, though. I hope that I have grown enough this year that I would not be put off again.

    So that’s my 2021 reading sorted. Pretty sure I could read 80 books in 2022 and still not have my to-read shelf cleared off. Happy reading, friends!

    ∞

    2020 Reading in Review

    Another year, another review of my annual reading. The mess that was 2020 definitely affected my reading - there were a couple months in there where I simply didn’t have the mental energy for anything challenging. Nevertheless, I completed 60+ books, logged as usual over on Goodreads.

    Last year in my roundup I said I should try to read some more engaging fiction in 2020. I wasn’t very successful there - only 23 novels (out of 64 books) this year. I did read a few very good ones, though, so I guess that’s something. I only read 13 female authors all year… I could get more rounded there.

    Fiction

    Some of my favorite fiction of the year:

    • Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jemsyn Ward
    • A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet
    • Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

    Non-Fiction

    • Caste: The Origin of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
    • Jesus and John Wayne by Kristen Kobes Du Mez
    • The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power
    • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Horst

    It’s not lost on me as I list these out that many of my favorites of the year were written by women. That could be a clue to me that a well-rounded reading list will also be an engaging reading list.

    Really Long Books

    It’s entirely possible my book count would’ve gone up if I’d not read some really long books… but then I would’ve also missed some really good books. Notable really long books this year:

    • A Secular Age by Charles Taylor (896 pages)
    • Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (1181 pages)
    • The New Testament in its World by. N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird (992 pages)
    • Crucifixion of the Warrior God by Gregory Boyd (1492 pages)
    • Dominion by Tom Holland (a paltry 624 pages)

    Maybe my goal for 2021 should be some shorter books…

    ∞

    2019 Reading in Review

    The beginning of a new year means a quick look back first at last year’s reading in review. (Some people put these lists out at the end of the year… I’m still adding books to the list until the very end, so New Year’s Day it is!) I’ve posted a few compendiums (compendia?) through the year and highlighted some favorites as I went, so I’ll just do a brief wrap-up here.

    My 2019 reading is all logged over on Goodreads (as is everything I’ve read since 2007!). Somehow I got through 82 books in 2019 - the most I’ve ever read in a year. 33 of those were fiction… which left a lot of non-fiction, mostly theology and history. I read 23 by female authors this year, which is more than previous years, though not quite as many as I had hoped to get to.

    Favorite fiction of the year:

    • Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
    • Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
    • Wanderers by Chuck Wendig
    • Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin

    Favorite non-fiction of the year:

    • A Song for Nagasaki by Paul Glynn
    • In The Shelter: Finding a Home in the World by Padraig O Tuama
    • Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America by Chris Arnade
    • What Is A Girl Worth? by Rachael Denhollander
    • God in the Rainforest: A Tale of Martyrdom and Redemption in Amazonian Ecuador by Kathryn T. Long
    • Paul and Gender: Reclaiming the Apostle’s Vision for Men and Women in Christ by Cynthia Long Westfall 
    • Hannah’s Child: A Theologian’s Memoir by Stanley Hauerwas

    For 2020 I’d really like to find a little more fiction that engages me. I’ve picked up several novels this year only to have them completely fail to capture my interest enough to go on with them. I have a plenty big pile of unread books next to my bed and on my Kindle to work through.

    Alternately, I could probably spend the whole year just reading Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest… and chase it with something really long from N. T. Wright. 

    Here’s to another year of reading!

    ∞

    My 2018 Reading in Review

    Time for a quick recap of my 2018 reading. I’ve done several reading posts through the year so this can just be a summary.

    Thanks to Goodreads I can report I read 71 books in 2018. 33 of those were fiction, the remaining 38 were mostly history and theology, with a few biographies thrown in. Though I have a large virtual stack of unread books in my Kindle app, most of my reading this year was still dead tree books. (Maybe this year I can start plowing through the electronic ones…)

    A few notable favorites for the year:

    Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hell, Hope, and the New Jerusalem by Bradley Jersak
    Meeting Brad Jersak and hearing him teach this past summer at the Water to Wine Gathering was a highlight of my year. In this book Brad sketches a truly hopeful view of final things, of an eternal city whose gates are always open and inviting. I need to go re-read this one.

    The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James H. Cone
    I’m sure I wasn’t ready to read this one when it was published back in 2011. But to pick it up in late 2018 and read Dr. Cone’s insightful parallels between the cross on which Jesus suffered and the trees on which so many black people were lynched throughout American history was a powerful thing. I was struct by how the Bible is adaptable and interpretable (a more palatable word to some might be “relevant”) to such diverse swaths of the human experience.

    The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal
    This one is a sort of alt-history crossed with Hidden Figures written from a strongly feminist viewpoint. Loved it. Next to pass it on to my daughters.

    They weren’t all awesome.

    Generally if I start in and after 40-50 pages I’m significantly unimpressed, I just put the book back on the return-to-library pile and pick up another one. Life’s too short to stick it out through bad books. There were a few clunkers, though, that I did manage to get all the way through and wouldn’t recommend. Two that stick out are Street Freaks by Terry Brooks (sci-fi writer trying cyber-punk and abusing every cliche in the genre) and The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey, which I wrote about earlier.

    On to 2019!

    I started the year thinking that I needed to burn through my Kindle and purchased book backlog. Then a week later I went to the library and borrwed four more books. Maybe I have a problem… but I guess it’s a good sort of problem to have.

    ∞

    Finished reading: where has 2018 gone already?

    I start each year with the intent of writing up Finished Reading posts on a book-by-book basis. Then I find myself in the first week of February and realize I’m nine books behind already. So it’s compendium time. Here’s what I’ve ready in 2018 so far:

    ∞

    My 2017 reading in review

    Just a quick post to summarize my reading and a few favorites this year. I read a total of 71 books in 2017, which I’ll split up into fiction, non-fiction, and theology. I’ll highlight no more than two in each category as particular favorites.

    Fiction

    • Broken Trust - W.E.B. Griffin
    • Bounty - Michael Byrnes
    • The Whistler - John Grisham
    • The Believer - Joakim Zander
    • Last Year - Robert Charles Wilson
    • Dune - Frank Herbert
    • Before the Fall - Noah Hawley
    • The Girl Who Drank the Moon - Kelly Barnhill
    • The Shadow Land - Elizabeth Kostova
    • Walkaway - Cory Doctorow
    • The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers
    • A Closed and Common Orbit - Becky Chambers
    • Parable of the Sower - Octavia E. Butler
    • Till We Have Faces - C. S. Lewis (re-read)
    • The Switch - Joseph Finder
    • Price of Duty - Dale Brown
    • Point of Contact - Mike Maden
    • The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. - Neal Stephenson
    • City of Stairs - Robert Jackson Bennett
    • Boneshaker - Cherie Priest
    • Autonomous - Annalee Newitz
    • The Berlin Project - Gregory Benford
    • Over Sea, Under Stone - Susan Cooper
    • The Force - Don Winslow
    • The Quantum Spy - David Ignatius
    • The Dark Net - Benjamin Percy
    • The Punch Escrow - Tal M. Klein

    The Force is a well-written crime story featuring a flawed detective. A really engaging page-turner where I didn’t know where the story was going when I was half-way through.

    The Punch Escrow is a sci-fi thriller that takes one reasonable conceit and runs with it to great effect. A really fun novel to close out the year.

    Non-Fiction

    • Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America - Ibram X. Kendi
    • A People’s History of the United States - Howard Zinn
    • Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the Obama White House about the Future of Faith in America - Michael Wear
    • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt
    • Instrumental: A memoir of Madness, Medication, and Music - James Rhodes
    • A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier - David Welky
    • Now - The Physics of Time - Richard A. Muller
    • The Big Screen: The Story of the Movies - and What They Have Done to Us - David Thomson
    • City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York - Tyler Anbinder
    • A Natural History of the Piano - Stuart Isacoff
    • The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science - Julie Des Jardins
    • The Silk Roads: A New History of the World - Peter Frankopan
    • Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen
    • The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of Dorothy Day - Kate Hennessy
    • Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business - John Newhouse
    • Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich - Norman Ohler
    • The Givenness of Things - Marilynne Robinson
    • Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption - Bryan Stevenson
    • The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America - Richard Rothstein
    • Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic - Sam Quinones
    • The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris - David McCullough
    • Movies are Prayers: How Films Voice Our Deepest Longings - Josh Larsen
    • The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II - Svetlana Alexievich
    • A Colony in a Nation - Chris Hayes
    • Getting Religion: Faith, Culture & Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama - Kenneth L. Woodward
    • Khrushchev: The Man and His Era - William Taubman
    • Abraham Joshua Heschel: Prophetic Witness - Edward K. Kaplan
    • A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples - Ilan Pappe
    • Spiritial Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, 1940-1972 - Edward K. Kaplan
    • How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds - Alan Jacobs
    • The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency - Chris Whipple
    • Nevertheless: A Memoir - Alec Baldwin

    I started off the year with a bang reading Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning. Stunning writing about the history of racism in America. So much that we as middle-class white Americans aren’t familiar with. But the one that will likely stick with me even more and provoke some re-reads came late in the year: Alan Jacobs' How to Think. In this time of “fake news” and incessant online argument, Jacobs provides some much-needed sanity and advice.

    Theology

    • How to Survive a Shipwreck - Jonathan Martin
    • Introduction to the Old Testament - J. Alberto Soggin
    • The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’s Crucifixion - N.T. Wright
    • Faithful Presence: Seven Disciplines that Shape the Church for Mission - David E. Fitch
    • Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life - Tish Harrison Warren
    • The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together - Jared C. Wilson
    • People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue - Preston Sprinkle
    • The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? - David Bentley Hart
    • Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony - Richard Bauckham
    • A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story - Diana Butler Bass
    • The Art of Curating Worship: Reshaping the Role of Worship Leader - Mark Pierson
    • Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News - Brian Zahnd

    Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham will permanently change how I read the Gospels. His case that most people named by name in the Gospels were specifically named because they were known eyewitnesses puts the accounts in a new light.

    And I had heard good stuff about D.B. Hart’s little volume The Doors of the Sea for a long time but just never gotten to it. In it he uses the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 to frame his response to the age-old question of how a good, omnipotent God can allow such evil and suffering. My theological upbringing has been pretty Calvinist, but Hart’s very non-Calvinist approach (he’s Orthodox) provided a more compelling and beautiful explanation than anything I’ve previously read.

    Summary

    On the whole, I feel like I got a lot of variety this year and read a lot of interesting books. I do have a handful that I started and for some reason bogged down in and need to come back to - Greg Boyd’s Crucifixion of the Warrior God is on that list… to be picked up sometime soon.

    ∞

    Books I Read in 2016

    Another year, another book list. I think this year I can at least say that the unread book pile gathering dust by my bed is a little smaller than it has been in previous year.

    My reading list for 2016 is on Goodreads. To summarize my year in reading:

    • I read 76 books in total. (This is the most for any year since I started logging in 2007.)
    • 40 were non-fiction - primarily biography, history, and theology
    • 36 were fiction - pretty heavily sci-fi and fantasy this year.

    My favorite non-fiction:

    My favorite fiction:

    • The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett. I found this on a pre-teen recommended reading list and read it along with my oldest daughter. We enjoyed it so much we decided to make it a read-aloud book for the whole family. Crivens!
    • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Lots of people have written better about this than I can. A beautiful story, beautifully told.
    • Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry. Berry has a unique voice and his stories of Port William, Kentucky, are treasures.
    • Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters. Imagine, if you will, that slavery was still legal in the US South, and that Underground Railroad-type activities were still happening. Interested in what happens next? Go get this book.

    I don’t know if I’ll get to 76 books again this year - I know I already have a few really thick ones on the to-read list that might slow me down - but as always it’s fun to read, fun to review at end-of-year, and fun to have books to recommend and give to others.

    ∞

    My 2015 Reading Year in Review

    2015 was another enjoyable year of reading for me, and with books tracked as usual on Goodreads, here’s a short summary:

    Total books read: 62. That’s less than last year, but more than each of the three years before that. Fairly average for me.

    Fiction/non-fiction: 36 / 26.

    Fiction:

    • Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter #6) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
    • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter #7) (Rowling, J.K.) re-read w/ the kids
    • Kristin Lavransdatter (Kristin Lavransdatter, #1-3) (Undset, Sigrid) Epic. Long. Mostly worth it.
    • Station Eleven (Mandel, Emily St. John) excellent
    • Spark (Hawks, John Twelve)
    • Empire (The Chronicles of the Invaders, #2) (Connolly, John)
    • Satin Island (McCarthy, Tom)
    • City of Savages (Kelly, Lee)
    • The Great Zoo of China (Reilly, Matthew)
    • Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1) (Follett, Ken)
    • Winter of the World (The Century Trilogy #2) (Follett, Ken)
    • Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3) (Follett, Ken)
    • No Fortunate Son (Pike Logan, #7) (Taylor, Brad)
    • Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles, #5) (Archer, Jeffrey)
    • Seveneves (Stephenson, Neal)
    • The Goblin Emperor (Addison, Katherine) an unanticipated favorite
    • Tin Men (Golden, Christopher)
    • Iron Wolf (Brown, Dale)
    • Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War (Singer, P.W.)
    • The Three-Body Problem (Three-Body, #1) (Cixin, Liu)
    • The Dark Forest (Three-Body, #2) (Cixin, Liu) dense but really enjoyable sci-fi
    • The Martian (Weir, Andy) fine but don’t buy all the hype
    • The Name of the Wind (The Kingkiller Chronicle, #1) (Rothfuss, Patrick)
    • Invasion of Privacy (Reich, Christopher)
    • The Water Knife (Bacigalupi, Paolo)
    • The Library at Mount Char (Hawkins, Scott)
    • The Governor’s Wife: A novel (Harvey, Michael)
    • My Struggle: Book 1 (Knausgård, Karl Ove) strangely fascinating
    • Without Remorse (John Clark, #1) (Clancy, Tom) re-read for the first time in 20 years
    • Neverwhere (Gaiman, Neil)
    • Zero World (Hough, Jason M.)
    • Tenacity: A Thriller (Law, J.S.)
    • Dark Corners (Rendell, Ruth)
    • Werewolf Cop (Klavan, Andrew)
    • Saturn Run (Sandford, John)

    Non-Fiction:

    • The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Fukuyama, Francis)

    • Alan Turing: The Enigma (Hodges, Andrew)

    • Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (Armstrong, Karen)

    • Words Without Music: A Memoir (Glass, Philip)

    • The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Lewis, Michael)

    • 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Mann, Charles C.)

    • Einstein’s Dice and Schrödinger’s Cat: How Two Great Minds Battled Quantum Randomness to Create a Unified Theory of Physics (Halpern, Paul)

    • Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA (Weiner, Tim)

    • Between the World and Me (Coates, Ta-Nehisi) deserves every accolade it gets

    • The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (Bryson, Bill)

    • Leaders Ought to Know: 11 Ground Rules for Common Sense Leadership (Hooser, Phillip Van)

    • Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America (Haygood, Will)

    • The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams (Zaleski, Philip) a good warts-and-all history of the Inklings.

    • The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities (Breyer, Stephen G.)

    • Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators, Fading Empires, and the Coming Collision of the World’s Superpowers (Winchester, Simon)

    • The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics (Swaim, Barton)

    • Alexander Hamilton (Chernow, Ron) Because Hamilton, obviously.

    • Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace (Volf, Miroslav)

    • Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Palmer, Parker J.)

    • The Lion’s World: A journey into the heart of Narnia (Williams, Rowan)

    • Secondhand Jesus: Trading Rumors of God for a Firsthand Faith (Packiam, Glenn)

    • Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Smith, James K.A.)

    • Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (Rohr, Richard)

    • Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (Rohr, Richard)

    • The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective (Rohr, Richard)

    • Malestrom: Manhood Swept into the Currents of a Changing World (James, Carolyn Custis)

    • Spiritual Friendship (Hill, Wesley) Worth reading, and then reading again.

    Worked on, but didn’t finish yet:

    • Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Wright, N.T.) I’m about half-way through volume one. Slow going.

    Miscellaneous thoughts:

    • Won the “buy it for Dad for Christmas” award: Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith.
    • I’m honestly surprised by how little theology I read this year. Seems like a lot less than previous years. Guess maybe I was ready for a break.
    • Size of my unread book pile at the moment: embarrassingly large. Got 4 new books for Christmas. Added them to the pile. It’s possible that by spring I’ll need to go on another “no books from the library until the pile goes down” pledge. We’ll see.

    Do you have any recommendations for 2016 reading?

    ∞

    My 2014 reading in review

    Well, with 2014 in the books it’s time for my annual little review of my reading. This was a busy reading year for me - 74 books equals the most I’ve read in a year since I started logging my reading back in 2007.

    My fiction/non-fiction split was pretty heavily weighted in the non-fiction direction - 45 non to 29 fiction. That non-fiction was pretty well distributed, too, still a lot of theology, but a good bit of history, biography, and economics. (And economics was more than just Piketty. Go me!)

    The full list is on Goodreads but here are some of the highlights:

    The Best

    The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson

    This is a beautifully-written memoir by a much beloved pastor and author. Peterson tells stories from his years of ministry, emphasizing the call to a simple, faithful pastoral ministry. (Such a breath of fresh air in the days of celebrity megachurch pastors!) This was the volume I gave away as Christmas gifts this year. Really good.

    From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism by Darren Dochuk

    A detailed history of the roots of American Evangelicalism, from the Oklahoma radio evangelists of the 1930s, through the migration to Southern California, through the rise of Billy Graham, and all the way to the Moral Majority of Jerry Fallwell. Dochuk’s history is quite readable and fascinating for a guy like me who grew up in evangelicalism but didn’t really know its roots.

    The Anglican Way: A Guidebook by Fr. Thomas Mackenzie

    I chipped in on the Kickstarter campaign for this book back in 2013, and boy was it ever worth it. Thomas, pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Nashville, wrote an introduction to Anglicanism for those Christians who may not be familiar with the tradition. Fr. Thomas: almost thou persuadest me to become an Anglican.

    The Rook: A Novel by Daniel O’Malley

    This was my last book of the year, so hopefully I’m not just biased because it’s fresh in my memory. This was a great read, though, if you’re into the sort of supernatural spy mystery/thriller sort of thing. Funny, moves quick, keeps things interesting. Looking forward to the second book in the series sometime next year.

    That’s Not All

    In addition to those titles I also gave five star ratings to some classics that I re-read (several of the Harry Potter novels, read out loud with the family) or read for the first time (To Kill A Mockingbird was a notable gap in my experience.)

    A vast majority of the books I read this year garnered either four or five stars. I hope this is because I did a better job of not wasting my time on books that never captured my interest. The (100 pages - your age) formula has been effective this year. If, 60-ish pages in I’m not engaged and enjoying the read, I’m not going to feel compelled to keep reading it.

    Up Next

    I still have a pile (though not as sizable as it once was) next to my bed that will keep my reading well into 2015. Most likely I will be reading:

    • Prayer by Tim Keller. (It’s Keller. Duh.)
    • Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Unset. (A historical novel written in the early 1920s by a Norwegian author who won the Nobel Prize for literature. Obscure but highly recommended by those in the know.)
    • Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris. The next volume of his Theodore Roosevelt biography. The last one was excellent.
    • Paul and the Faithfulness of God by N. T. Wright. I got this one for Christmas last year and didn’t get very far. I think I’m ready to give it a go here sometime soon.
    • Lila by Marilynne Robinson. Her follow-up to the excellent Gilead.

    Happy 2015, everybody!

    ∞

    Books I read in 2013

    Here’s my one year-end post: a little summary of what I read this year. I’m not gonna list ‘em all - you can go check out the list on Goodreads if you’re really interested - but I’ll include some highlights.

    I finished 57 books this year - about average for me over the past several years - and 27 of them were non-fiction, which is as close to fiction/non-fiction parity as I’ve ever gotten before. My non-fiction was mostly theology this year, which reminds me I need to pick up some more history, biographies, and the like in 2014.

    Top Non-Fiction

    I really need to write a full review post on Playing God. It was probably my favorite of the year, and the one that I then bought two copies of to give as Christmas gifts. I’m feeling a little bit better about my theological variety, too - it isn’t just all Anglicans on my list this year!

    Top Fiction

    It feels like a cheat to list Robinson’s book here, since she uses the fictional narrative to drive home a bunch of theological and philosophical points, but hey, it’s good stuff.

    The worst I’ve gotten better at just putting books down if they seem like clunkers, so I have just a single one-star reviewed book on my list this year: The Panther by Nelson DeMille. Here’s what I wrote on Goodreads:

    Plot is thinner than thin. Hundreds of pages and nothing happens except we get a tour of Yemen and page after page of insufferable narrative. It’s as if Mr DeMille had a quota of smart-ass internal dialog per page that he had to fill. If you cut out half of it, the book would shorten by 20% and still be just as boring.

    I’m ashamed I wasted as much time on this one as I did. Avoid.

    Plans for 2014 I’m likely to always be a theology, politics, and sci-fi geek, but I really would like to read some more history, some classic literature, and maybe even a little poetry. Hit me up if you have recommendations!

    ∞

    My 2012 reading

    Time for my annual roundup of what I read over the past year. While I’m often lousy at cataloging things, this list is easy enough thanks to Goodreads and their nice little iPhone app.

    (If you just want to look at the list, go check it out over on Goodreads.)

    I read 59 books this year. 36 were fiction, 23 were non-fiction. Most of that non-fiction was theology, with just a couple of biographies / histories thrown in. (I need to read some more history. I don’t read enough of it anymore.)

    I rated far more things with five stars this year than I have in previous years. (15 books got 5 stars! That’s more than a quarter of everything I read!) I don’t know whether that means my rating standards are slipping or that my book selection standards are improving, but at least it means I have some good books to recommend.

    There are five novels I gave five stars this year:

    • The Fiddler’s Gun by A. S. Peterson - a fun Revolutionary War novel focused on the adventures of a teenage girl. (I’ve got the sequel, The Fiddler’s Green, sitting in my to-read pile… should get it read in 2013 sometime.)
    • The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - a short Young Adult novel focused on two teenagers who are dying of cancer. It’s not as painful as it sounds, but it’s challenging and insightful.
    • Redshirts, by John Scalzi - an odd sort of meta sci-fi romp that otherwise defies comparison
    • The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr. - a fascinating fantasy story which I’m indebted to the Rabbit Room folks for recommending.
    • Gathering String, by Mimi Johnson - a top-notch suspense/mystery novel whose author is a lovely lade I met once at a tweetup in Cedar Rapids.

    On the non-fiction side, there were more 5-star books, but a few among those that particularly stood out:

    I’m back at the reading for 2013, trying to finish up some Thomas Merton that I started back in December. If you’re so inclined, add me as a friend on Goodreads so we can interact about our reading throughout the year!

    ∞

    My 2011 Reading

    The end of the year means it’s time for a summary of my last year’s reading. Thankfully Goodreads keeps it easy for me to track things; I don’t have to remember to do much more than log my books when I’m done with them (on the handy Android app) and at the end of the year I have this nifty list.

    By the Numbers I finished 51 books this year, which made it an average year for me. 19 of those were non-fiction, leaving 32 as fiction. (You can see the whole list on Goodreads if you really want to.) As usual, my non-fiction is basically theology, with a little bit of science and history thrown in. The fiction is essentially scifi, fantasy, and legal/political thrillers.

    Best fiction I gave 5-star ratings to 3 novels this year that were first-time reads. They were:

    • Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. This is a futurist masterpiece of a novel that reads really fresh even though it was written back in 2000. Really good stuff.
    • The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. A fantasy novel that doesn’t get so lost in the fantasy world that it forgets to have a plot. This is basically your favorite con-man story set in a fascinating fantasy world. I understand that the second book in the series is out now, so I need to get on it.
    • Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. This one has been at the top of a lot of year-end lists, and while it may not deserve that, it was very entertaining. Set in the future, but full of 1980’s nostalgia, this was a fun, engaging read. (Stephen Granade has a good post outlining some ways that Ready Player One could’ve been changed to be a much better novel.)

    Best non-fiction

    There are two books that deserve mentions here.

    The Stinker

    There was only one book that I gave just one star to this year, and I won’t even give it the honor of linking to it on Amazon: Abyss by Paul Hagberg. I can do no better than to quote my review from goodreads:

    I should’ve known just from the cover and flyleaf that this particular bit if genre fiction was going to be a train wreck. And yet, like a train wreck, once I started I couldn’t look away.

    Ridiculous plot premise, unbelievable protagonist (former CIA director turned bodyguard?!?), uninspired prose and underdeveloped characters fill the 400+ pages of this tome. The author seems contractually obligated to describe each female character in terms of breast size, but mishandles the interpersonal scenes so badly that you wonder if he’s actually ever had an interpersonal relationship.

    The cover of the book proclaims it to be “A Kirk McGarvey Novel”, leading me to believe that there are more books out there starring this ridiculous character. My advice: avoid them. Avoid this one, too.

    So that’s my 2011. Here’s hoping that 2012 finds me reading the best of books new and old. (Leave any recommendations in the comments below!)

    ∞

    2008: A Year of Reading in Review

    This the only year-end post I’ll write; just a summary of my book reading list from 2008.

    Some quick details:

    Total Books Read: 78. This is down a bit from 86 last year.

    Fiction: 57. Non-fiction: 21.

    That ratio is still weighted a little heavily toward fiction, I think, but when I know how shallow and quick some of those novels were and how long and think some of the non-fiction was… well, it evens out.

    Favorite novel of the year: A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffery Archer. This was far and away the best, most enjoyable story I read all year. It’s essentially a modern-day retelling of Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo. What sold me on it, though, was that there were characters you could really root for. Good guys that were really good. Honorable supporting characters who remained honorable. Such a good story. I should put it on reserve at the library again.

    Runner up: The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

    Favorite non-fiction of the year: This is tough because non-fiction spans such a range of subjects. Some high points, though:

    Worst book of the year: How Would Jesus Vote? by the late D. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe. I thought my blog review of it was bad until I read Ron’s review. He said, in short:

    The book is awful. Simply awful. I can’t stress to you how amazingly awful this book is. Do not buy, read, or borrow this book. I will likely use my copy for kindling in the fireplace this winter.

    I love Ron.

    OK, that’s enough book wrap-up for this year. I’m contemplating a change in format for book reviews next year, doing a full post on each book and cross-posting them to Amazon to build a little bit of reviewing credibility there. Dunno, it’s just a thought. [No, Geof, I’m not doing it entirely because you changed the format of GNM.]

    Next year’s list will still exist in some format. First book on it will be an old one by Stephen Baxter. Almost finished it for 2008, but not quite.

    ∞

    2007 in Books: Chris's Reading in Review

    One year ago I decided that my blog was the must useful place to keep my reading list, and that proved to be a good choice. I’ve tried keeping reading lists in the past, but was never consistent in recording. This year, though, I managed to record each book and a couple sentences of synopsis and review. I don’t do much in the way of Top 10 lists, but this seems like one place where I have enough data at hand to make a year-end summary. So here goes.

    Total books read: 85. Total fiction: 68. Total non-fiction: 17. Total re-reads: 1.

    The one notable series for this year was Harry Potter. I managed to resist the series until this year, but finally decided it was time to give them a try. I was glad I did; they were some very entertaining reads. I started Book 1 on July 11 and finished Book 7 on August 23, and managed to sneak six other books in during that six weeks as well!

    A look at my non-fiction stuff betrays my interest in history and science, with a dabbling in music. No real surprises, I guess.

    My Top 5 non-fiction reads of the year, in no particular order:

    My top 8 fiction reads, again in no particular order (I was going to list 10, but couldn’t find two more that lived up to the standards of these 8):

    • Variable Star - Robert Heinlein & Spider Robinson. The title character goes on a “galactic bender”… yeah, and it’s a great story.
    • Sun of Suns (Virga, Book 1) - Karl Schroeder. Schroeder manages to create a very believable, imaginative world for his story. I’ve got book 2 sitting in my to-read pile right now. Can’t wait.
    • In War Times - Kathleen Ann Goonan. Goonan combines time travel, jazz, and World War II in a way that blows my mind. Easily my favorite non-series book of the year.
    • The Children of Húrin - J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien does the classic epic better than anyone else.
    • Magic Street - Orson Scott Card. Card has a gift for storytelling and imagination. This novel weaves some of the plot and ideas of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream into a delightful modern fantasy.
    • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7) - J. K. Rowling. I promised myself I’d only include one HP book in this list, and it had to be this one. It caps off the series brilliantly.
    • Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present - Cory Doctorow. Most of the sci-fi short stories I’ve read up to this point have been older; it’s fun to read something written recently - the current-ness of the technology and ideas makes them even more believable and frightening.
    • The Road - Cormac McCarthy. No, I didn’t read this one because Oprah recommended it. Andrew Peterson recommended it, too! :-) Chilling, spare, and yet ultimately hopeful.

    Apparently I am a sci-fi nerd. It’s not that all I read is sci-fi… I guess those just stick out the most to me.

    I’ll start a new list for 2008 once I finish my first book. Gotta see how my reading preferences change from year to year.