Reading List 2011

In the next couple of days I hope to write about my own reading habits, why I read, how I choose what I read, and so forth.  For now I'll just list what I've read so far this year in the order in which I finished them.  The links take you to Amazon.

William Raymond Manchester, The Last Lion:  Winston Spencer Churchill:  Visions of Glory, 1874-1932.  Part one of a superbly written biography of a man I find endlessly fascinating.  I began this book towards the end of 2010 and finished it just a few days into the new year.

Michael Horton, Beyond Culture Wars:  Is America a Mission Field or Battlefield?  Typically Horton-esque in its relentless condemnation of contemporary American evangelicalism and its call to return to Reformed confessionalism.  Very helpful corrective to those who tend to see the church's mission as making America return to its supposed Christian roots, although it seems these themes pop up quite often in Horton's other books and radio show The White Horse Inn.

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer:  Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.  Thorough biography on the German pastor executed by the Nazis for his part in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.  I learned a ton but the long block quotes were a bit wearisome.  Others have said that Metaxas glosses over Bonhoeffer's Lutheran-Barthianism (or vice versa) and makes him look like a fairly typical evangelical.  This may be a fair criticism.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay).  Depicts a future North America in which twelve impoverished districts are enslaved to a totalitarian Capitol.  Each year each district has to send a boy and a girl to fight to the death in a gladiatorial match called the Hunger Games.  The one remaining survivor's district gets extra food for that year.  Crisply written, compelling characters, and a page-turning plot.  And yes, it is as violent as it sounds.

Otis and Roberts, A Road More or Less Traveled:  Madcap Adventures Along the Appalachian Trail.  Two friends set out to hike the entire Appalachian trail from Maine to Georgia.  Along the way they meet the most outrageous characters.  Much more well written than I was expecting (I guess the book's cover might suggest otherwise).

D. A. Carson, The God Who is There:  Finding Your Place in God's Story.  Very good overview of Scripture with an eye to a biblically illiterate audience.  I would read anything Carson so much as doodles on a scratch piece of paper.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings.  The third reading of my favorite book.  I love it so much I plan to read it every year in February (everyone has their own ways of battling seasonal depression).

William P. Farley, Gospel-Powered Parenting:  How the Gospel Shapes and Transforms Parenting.  Very helpful book on how the gospel of grace lies at the very center of raising kids.  I especially enjoyed the sections on discipline, fatherly affection, and teaching your children biblical truth.  Reformed:  my kind of theology.

John Owen, The Mortification of Sin.  Part one in the compiled and modernized volume Overcoming Sin and Temptation.  I read this off and on in conjunction with my personal Bible study.  This book makes you take both your sin and God's grace much more seriously.

John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War:  The Threshold of Middle-Earth.  Only for the most avid Tolkien fans.  Garth argues that Tolkien's service in World War I, particularly the terrible Battle of the Somme, greatly influenced Tolkien's mythology.  Moreover, Tolkien's optimistic fantasy should be seen as a strain of post-war literature in direct contrast to the pessimistic modernism of writers such as Hemingway, Ezra Pound, and Wilfred Owen (the latter group enjoying the status of Orthodoxy in English Departments).  I saw how Tolkien's mythology developed over the course of the war, but Garth never convinced me that the war actually dramatically influenced it in significant ways.