This year was a big year for reading and listening to books. I made my way through 160 books in 2022. Yep. A lot. Everything from Shakespeare to Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. So of those books, here are the ones that stand out to me.
Some are new. Some are old. I picked my reading list almost randomly in 2022, ranging back hundreds of years and picking up brand new books. I believe this was the best way for me to take in books this year. So here they are (with the date I finished each in parentheses before the title and author):
(1/7) Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner In this food-saturated memoir, the genius behind the band Japanese Breakfast writes of how eating Korean food and grief tie a daughter to her mother.
(1/19) Pastoral Song: A Farmer’s Journey by James Rebanks In his reflections on the state of the environment viewed through his efforts to reclaim the farm he grew up on, Rebanks tells hard truths while avoiding the pessimism rank within so much of the environmental community.
(1/28) The Apostle’s Creed: A Guide to the Ancient Catechism by Ben Myers This slender volume is easy to blast through but was made better by reading it with two good friends. Our theology begins with a reality unexpected by most American Christians: We are the baptized. Everything else emerges from this.
(2/5) The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World 1490-1530 by Patrick Wyman The last 500 years didn’t need to turn out the way they did. Other cultures seemed stronger than Europe. But this retelling of key changes that took place during this 40 years explain why Europe took over the world, saving and ruining it at the same time.
(2/6) Raymie Nightingale by Kate DiCamillo My third read through cements this little juvenile novel as one of my all-time favorites. With exquisite prose, DiCamillo tells a tale of three girls from broken homes intent on learning to twirl a baton who find healing by becoming friends.
(2/8) Tolkien and the West: Reclaiming Europe’s Lost Literary Tradition by Michael D.C. Drout I read a lot of Tolkien and about him this year. In this volume, we reenter the Medieval mind/world through the span of all of Tolkiens works and not just Lord of the Rings. And we discover an ancient way of perceiving reality which Tolkien valued so highly and which we’ve sadly lost.
(2/19) Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead Lawhead has written numerous novels in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. But this historical novel tops every other effort from his pen. In it, pious Aidan loses his faith. But he comes to discover that suffering doesn’t disprove God’s love. Rather, it is the venue of God’s love as shown by the cross.
(3/30) The Sexual Reformation: Restoring the Dignity and Personhood of Man and Woman by Aimee Byrd In this unique approach to the Song of Songs, Byrd shows how bad practices surrounding sexuality arise from missing the place of sexuality in biblical theology. By using the Song as the center of the Bible through which to understand the rest (instead of marginalizing it like most — have you ever heard a sermon from it?), she offers a much needed hermeneutic.
(4/11) Misreading Scripture With Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien Western cultural preconceptions such as individualism warp our reading of what is essentially an Eastern text. There are some over-stated points, but my Western eyes were opened. I consider myself a pretty good Bible reader, but this exposed the biblical scholars I’ve relied on as far more culturally blindered than I’d realized.
(4/19) Anthem: Rush in the 1970s by Martin Popoff I’ve been a huge Rush fan for most of my life. But there’s so much about the band I’d never known. Two kids of Eastern European immigrants drop out of school to pursue the dream of being a virtuosic rock band and succeed.
(5/3) Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson The subtitle here is misleading. This book is more memoir than anything else. And yet it’s an immersion into Peterson’s personal creative process, primarily focused on songwriting and book writing. Even so, there’s much here for other creatives to draw from.
(5/13) Postcards From Babylon: The Church in American Exile by Brian Zahnd Contra those who think in terms of American exceptionalism (i.e. the United States has a unique role to play in God’s unfolding plan for the world), Zahnd suggests America is the new Babylon. He’s right. Because of this, Christians need to learn how to live in Empire without being coopted by it.
(5/24) Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the World by Atul Gawande This concise and engaging exploration of human mortality and how to face it well is essential reading for being human. Really. As a hospital chaplain I’ve been scandalized by how unprepared people are for death. And even more than that, how not in touch we are with the aging process and the continual decline of our bodies. We can only live well and die well if we face the reality head on.
(6/11) The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker We gather all the time. Work meetings. Church services. Parties of all kinds. But we suck at them. Really. We’re terrible at gathering because we don’t know the basic elements of what makes a good gathering. For everyone who hosts any kind of gathering at all, Parker offers truly essential practices for making every kind of gathering better.
(6/15) Theology As a Way of Life: On Teaching and Learning the Christian Faith by Adam Neder This slim volume is so good! Drawing from Barth and Kierkegaard on the act of teaching theology, one of my college-aged kids read it after I did and then a high school student friend did so as well and loved it. Neder matches depth with readability in a way that has me wanting to read everything he writes.
(7/26) The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry I have an abiding love for all things Wendell Berry. In this career-spanning collection of his essays, he writes with such clarity of mind and prophetic zeal over 60+ years. In these essays, Berry exposes our infatuation with technology and shows how our greed threatens our relationship with the land and thereby our very existence.
(8/8) Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan In this novel, Jack Lewis tells his own story to a young Oxford student whose little brother is dying. In it, Callahan shows that the story is the answer and lives don’t have to be long to be complete.
(8/17) Single, Gay, Christian by Gregory Coles Some will love this. Some will hate it. In either case, this is a powerful memoir of a man striving to be all three (single, gay, and Christian) at the same time.
(8/31) God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by James Weldon Johnson I first heard these short sermons on scratched up vinyl when I was a little kid. I’ve come back to them in every decade of my life and found new depth in these exquisitely creative black sermons/retellings of biblical stories.
(10/17) The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abigail Favale Favale has been a scholar of gender theory for the decades and offers an engaging exploration of gender theory, four waves of feminism, and the current chaotic culture we find ourselves in. Essential for understanding the zeitgeist our culture has wandered into.
(10/18) The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis I’ve long since lost count of how many times I’ve read this compact yet rich story of a magical world where good triumphs through self-sacrifice. I fell in love with Narnia and Aslan all over again.
(11/1) The End of Christendom by Malcolm Muggeridge Written in the ’70s and offering a scathing critique of Western culture in its abandonment of Christianity, Muggeridge couldn’t have been more relevant almost half a century later.
(11/10) With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God by Skye Jethani How we approach God determines everything about our relationship with him. And “with” him is what it’s all about.
(12/31) How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now by James K. A. Smith I finished this book on the last day of the year, which is appropriate as Jamie Smith helps us rethink how we approach time and how the Scriptures (and particularly Ecclesiastes) provide a vastly better approach. Of particular significance for me was his reflections on the positives of an ephemeral life: It is the fleeting things of life — the end of a visit, of a life, of a vacation, of a great novel — that are the most precious things. The fact that we can’t hold on to them and will lose them to time makes them that much more valuable to us.