For the last few years I’ve been keeping a record of my reading and making note of the most important books that I read that year. To be honest, I’m feeling a bit burnt out on reading at the moment, and have felt that way for a few months. Fortunately, I was pretty far ahead in the pace and was able to hit my goal of reading 60 books, which makes 10 years in a row with at least that many.
Reading has always been an important part of my life and is now a part of my job. I read to cultivate my imagination, to broaden and deepen my perspective, and of course for pure enjoyment. So without further ado, here is a record of what I read in 2024. Below I list my top ten, with a representative quotation.
Books I read for the In All Things Podcast or to write a blurb:
Favorite book in this category: Becoming by Beholding by Lanta Davis
I blurbed this book! Here’s the full blurb: “The ‘attention economy’ is exhausting. Overstimulated, we fall captive to fear, cynicism, and despair. In this book, Lanta Davis offers a way of escape: not from reality, but to it. With the wisdom of a master guide, she takes us on a pilgrimage, excavating the riches of the Christian imaginative tradition. The journey is illuminating and surprising, marked by encounters with holiness, the only thing that can heal the eyes of the heart.”
Runner up: The Genesis of Gender by Abigail Favale
I also had the privilege to write one other blurb this year, for Ashley Lande’s memoir The Thing That Would Make Everything Okay Forever. Here’s the full blurb I wrote for it: “Reading Ashley Lande’s journey from the world of psychedelics to Christian faith felt like passing through a foreign country: fascinating and disorienting. And yet, the story enveloped my attention in ways that felt so familiar, exposing my hubris and desperation, hope and fear, longing and loss. Lande’s memoir is a story about the ways we try to find and flee from God, and what it looks like, finally, to fall into His arms.”
Books in the George MacDonald category:
I spent the summer reading George MacDonald in celebration of his 200th birthday and for the sake of a chapter in a forthcoming Cambridge Companion to George MacDonald.
Favorite book in the category: David Elginbrod by George MacDonald
Of the MacDonald novels I read this year, this was the one that stuck with me the most, not least because of the namesake of the book (David Elginbrod) who leaves the stage early in the story but continues to exert his gravity long after he is gone.
Runner up: The Hope of the Gospel and the Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald (sermons)
These two collections of MacDonald’s sermons were vintage MacDonald. Provocative, insightful, hopeful, and above all centered on obedience to the God revealed in Jesus Christ.
Books for research and scholarship:
Favorite book in this category: Calvin’s Ladder by Julie Canlis
Reformed Christians have been historically allergic to the idea of contemplative ascent, casting it as too Pelagian, Platonic, or medieval, a matter of human effort rather than divine grace. But in this masterful reading of Calvin, Canlis shows how Christ’s ascent binds us to himself and brings our human lives right into the heart of God’s love.
Runner Up: Divine Generosity by Richard Mouw
I love everything that Rich writes. His latest gave me a lot of food for thought about the “wideness of God’s mercy,” especially during a year that I spent a lot of time reading George MacDonald.
Books for personal interest or just for the heaven of it:
Favorite book in this category: James by Percival Everett
Have you ever read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn? Here is a riveting and devastating book written from the perspective of Jim.
Runner up: The Inquisitor’s Tale by Adam Gidwitz
This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of three young heroes and their “holy dog” with surprising historical resonance and theological insight. It also contains a moment of eucatastrophe that brought tears to my eyes.
Top ten books I read in 2024:
10. The Wandering Mind: What Medieval Monks Tell Us About Distraction by Jamie Kreiner
“John Climacus shared the same strategy with his readers after visiting a monastery near Alexandria, where he noticed that one monk was especially engaged in prayer. When John pressed him to explain how he could concentrate so deeply, the monk admitted that “it is my custom at the very start to gather my thoughts, my mind and my soul. I call to them and cry out, ‘Come! Let us worship and fall down before Christ, our King and God.'”
9. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
“In every crowd there are Diminishers and there are Illuminators. Diminishers make people feel small and unseen. They see other people as things to be used, not as persons to be befriended. They stereotype and ignore. They are so involved with themselves that other people are just not on their radar screen. Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know what to look for and how to ask the right questions at the right time.”
8. The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory by Abigail Favale
“Feminism rightly recognizes that something is amiss, that the relationship between men and women has been too often characterized by domination. However, blind to the dimension of grace, the solutions offered by its theories are themselves caught in the fallen forces of conflict, in the continual grasping for power over others.”
7. The Inquisitor’s Tale: Or, The Three Magical Children and Their Holy Dog by Adam Gidwitz
“Sometimes, it turns out, the most important decisions in life are made by your dog.”
6. The Hope of the Gospel and the Miracles of Our Lord by George MacDonald
“If you will not be pure, you will grow more and more impure; and instead of seeing God, will at length find yourself face to face with a vast inane – a vast inane, yet filled full of one inhabitant, that devouring monster, your own false self.”
5. James by Percival Everett
“My interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”
4. Becoming by Beholding by Lanta Davis
“Naming signifies relationship. Naming a child, for instance, communicates a sense of responsibility and love and is, therefore, less about ownership than it is a pledge to take care of, to know…. Naming thus suggests a sustained, intimate relationship. If I bother to learn someone’s name, it means I believe that person is important, is worth the effort to identify and remember…. It is troubling that we have largely stopped learning the names of things.”
3. Divine Generosity: The Scope of Salvation in Reformed Theology by Richard Mouw
“When God chooses to save a person, that bond cannot be broken by anything in the whole creation.”
2. David Elginbrod by George MacDonald
“It is a happy thing for us that this is really all we have to concern ourselves about—what to do next.”
1. Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension by Julie Canlis
“Thus, a mystical encounter is not the goal… rather, the process itself is the mystical encounter… The mystical ascent is this deeper and deeper burrowing into Christ (always pneumatologically conceived), not our effort to do so. His ascent is our path and goal. His narrative has become our own.”
Note: I recently met Julie in person and she was kind enough to give me her short book Theology of the Ordinary, which also is remarkable. I will be getting a handful of copies to give out to others.
That’s my report for 2024. I’d love to hear what books you loved most this year!