I love to read, and I want to share with you the books I spent time reading this past year. On this list are novels, books on ministry and leadership, culture and travel and personal growth. As always, some are better than others. I list the ones that stood out to me first, then you can peruse the rest.
Happy reading for 2019!
Go Do Say Give – Keith Bubalo – Four ways to live out a commitment to following Jesus.
The Self-Aware Leader – Terry Linhart – Helps you discover your gifts and your blindspots as a leader. Most of all, it reminds you that you have blindspots that need to be discovered.
Can You See Anything Now? – Katherine James – Complex, intriguing, real, this novel gives a glimpse of the tragedy of the world and the grace of God.
The Invention of Wings – Sue Monk Kidd – A novel following the lives of two women, one a slave and one a white woman and the abolitionist cause she takes up.
Atheist Delusions – David Bentley Hart – The author skewers atheistic thought and worldview. Fun to read a really smart guy give the atheists hell (which they don’t believe in anyway).
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow – Fantastic novel following a young man who enters the world of Depression era gangsters in New York City.
Little Big Man – Thomas Berger – A wild, crazy, fun novel of the American West.
White Awake – Daniel Hill – A book that’s aimed toward white folk, like me, on how to understand and move forward into the racial issues that plague our nation and our churches. Highly recommended.
Union With Christ – Rankin Wilbourne – Highly readable, a fresh way to return our union with Christ into the heart of the Christian life.
The Power of Moments – Heath & Heath – The value of creating quality surprises in the lives of those you serve. A book on giving something unexpected and how that influences those on the receiving end.
Portrait of a Spy – Daniel Silva – One of a series of novels featuring an Israeli art-restorer who also doubles as – wait for it – an assassin. You’ll see several on the list, all good for keeping you up late turning pages.
On Truth and Untruth – Friedrich Nietzsche – This is a compilation of a few of Nietzsche’s writings on truth. When he told us, “without truth, all things are possible,” Nietzsche tilled the soil for many of the evils of the past century to take root.
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque – Likely the best book written on warfare from the soldier’s perspective, a German soldier in this case. Banned by the Nazi’s as being anti-war, you get a picture of the futility of World War I from the trenches.
The Winter Fortress – Neal Bascomb – A true story that should be a movie. Norwegian freedom fighters blow up a factory integral to the Nazi’s development of an atomic bomb.
The Shallows – Nicholas Carr – While a few years old, this book on the changes the internet is doing to our brains will make you put down your phone or tablet or computer and pick up a physical book. Or go and learn a hobby like woodworking or gardening. Unless you’re so far gone it’s too late.
NIV Integrated Study Bible – Holy Spirit – The best chronological Bible I’ve ever used. It goes chapter-by-chapter and even verse-by-verse in the sections of chronological overlap and makes it easy to compare the parallel passages. I especially liked reading the book of Acts in parallel with the letters from Paul, and the books on the Old Testament kings in parallel with the prophets.
And the Rest. Many of them I really like, just didn’t make my top 16…
Ministry Mantras – Briggs & Hyatt
Beartown – Fredrick Backman
Two Kinds of Truth – Michael Connelly
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
Don Quixote – Cervantes
The Black Echo – Michael Connelly
The Eagle of the Ninth – Rosemary Sutcliff
The Inferno – Dante Alighieri
Empathy For The Devil – JR Forasteros
After the Passion – Gary Stanley
Fascinating Stories of Forgotten Lives – Chuck Swindoll
The Servant – James Hunter
Shogun – James Clavell
Church Refugees – Packard & Hope
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Creating Customer Evangelists – Huba & McConnell
Flags of Our Fathers – James Bradley
Predictable Success – Les McKeown
The Rembrandt Affair – Daniel Silva
Bridge of Spies – Giles Whittell
After the Funeral – Agatha Christie
The Beautiful Struggle – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Creativity, Inc. – Ed Catmull
Daily Rituals, How Artists Work – Mason Curry
Slade House – David Mitchell
Making Ideas Happen – Scott Belsky
At Play in the Fields of the Lord – Peter Matthiessen
Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk
Gospel Patrons – John Rinehart
Dear Client – Bonnie Siegler
The Camino Way – Victor Prince
Call of the Camino – Robert Mullen
Grape, Olive, Pig – Matt Goulding
Bunker Hill – Nathaniel Philbrick
The Return – Hisham Matar
The Fallen Angel – Daniel Silva
The Child – Fiona Barton
Leap Over a Wall – Eugene Peterson
The Gargoyle – Andrew Davidson
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers
Christianity and Manhood – Art of Manliness
Tulipomania – Mike Dash
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Writing Without Bullsh*t – Bernoff
At Day’s Close – Roger Ekirch
The English Girl – Daniel Silva
Our habits matter, we all know that. We strive to feed our good habits and we struggle to starve our bad ones. In the book You Are What You Love, the author, James K.A. Smith, explores how habits influence us spiritually.
