a year of words

Let’s be clear from the outset: this is Andy writing (shocker!) and Robin’s booklist would look far different. A friend recently shared with me his “Best of 2007” in music, so I’d thought I’d release on you my best of 2007 in reading. The books below were my reading list for the year: remember I was heavily in school for the first 6 months – so not much time to read.

Oskar Skarsaune - In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity.
James Nieman and Thomas Rogers - Preaching to Every Pew
Barbara Brown Taylor - Bread of Angels
Ian Pitt-Watson - a Primer for Preachers
Fleming Rutledge - the Bible and the New York Times
Joanna Wijk-boos - Making Wise the Simple
Ulrich Luz - the Theology of the Gospel of Matthew
John Muir - My First Summer in the Sierra
JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
JK Rowling - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Alan Jacobs - The Narnian
Norton Juster - the Phantom Tollbooth
Wallace Stegner - Beyond the 100th Meridian
John Steinbeck - the Grapes of Wrath
John Goldingay - Israel's Gospel
Mark Twain - Huckleberry Finn
Art Beals – When the Saints Go Marching Out
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Michael Chabon - Gentlemen of the Road
James K.A. Smith - Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church (fantastic book)
Erwin McManus - the Barbarian Way
C.S. Lewis – On Stories
Steven Ozment - the Age of Reform (1200-1550)
Francis Oakley - the Medieval Experience
Alister McGrath - Reformation Thought
Marcus Buckingham - First Break all the Rules
Jeffrey Sachs - The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for our Time
Friedrich Schleiermacher - On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers
some more (not much) theology: Wesley, Lessing, Barth, Harnack, Luther, Calvin, others ...

So let me pick three of my favorites this year:

• Stegner’s Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the second opening of the West. I’ve wanted to read this ever since Stegner’s prize-winning Angle of Repose. This gifted writer’s account of a remarkable individual and moment in history is both a beautiful blend of biography and essay and a glimpse into just how short-sighted and self-interested we can be as a country.
• Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road. (ok, so I finished it in 2008.) While I tried to go back to the classics a bit this year (and close some gaps in my literary education), I’ve got to give it to Chabon: this little book is a satisfying, and yet subtle, adventure. The vocabulary and syntax are gorgeous.
• Alan Jacob’s the Narnian. Dr. J was a favorite teacher of mine in college, and I now think he’s one of the best essayists we have. This book was an illuminating look into the mind and imagination of C.S. Lewis, and did much to help me tie together the thoughts that Lewis leaves strewn across the many genres through which he so easily moved.
• Honorable mention goes the Skarsaune book on the Jewish roots of Christianity and Ozment’s major work of medieval church history. Gotta love it when a text book grips you so you keep turning the pages … both are fantastic.

As for 2008, who knows? But I’ve toying with reading the1500+ pages of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. I’ve wanted to read it for years but am afraid I’ll never do it. So the thought came to me yesterday: how about 5 pages of the maligned and mysterious JC a day? 15 minutes a day ought to do it. Maybe I’ll write about it as I go (but then I don’t suspect any of you would want to read it …)

Love to you all – Andy.