If you are like me, this quote from Samuel D. James’s Digital Liturgies resonates: “We demand shorter and shorter books that will accommodate our diminished focus and present to us more like what we read online.” Reading requires diligence in habit and God’s grace. Here are ten favorite books from 2024.
1. Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, J.I. Packer – Well reasoned, tightly argued, and incredibly thorough. Packer anticipates arguments against the idea that if God is sovereign over election, then our works and testimony are useless. Evangelism requires boldness, patience, and prayerfulness.
2. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien – Tolkien displays genius for description, endearing characters, setting, and plot advancement foreboding both trial and triumph. Gandalf summarizes the danger and peril of their incessant battle against evil: “There are no safe paths in this part of the world.”
3. The Making of C.S. Lewis, Harry Lee Poe – Poe plumbs the depths of Lewis’s voluminous letters and early corpus and captures Lewis’s burgeoning influence between 1918 and 1945. This is the second in a detailed and impressive Lewis biographical trilogy.
4. The Anxious Generation, Jonathan Haidt – Haidt says his book is for “anyone who wants to understand how the most rapid rewiring of human relationships and consciousness in human history” has affected our lives. He advocates four things: no smartphones before high school; no social media before 16; phone-free schools; far more unsupervised play and childhood independence.
5. Rhetoric, Aristotle – Aristotle focuses on different types of rhetoric: political, legal, and ceremonial. Such categories may be a bit dated, though the principles are still helpful. The second portion of the book explores techniques for persuasion as well as refutation in the classic sense.
6. The Elements of Style, William Struck and E.B. White – Terse volume of helpful writing and grammar tips easier to read than apply: omit needless words, use the active voice, choose concrete language over abstract, use orthodox spelling. Worth reading every few years.
7. John G. Paton: The Autobiography of the Pioneering Missionary to the New Hebrides – Paton lived an extraordinary life that makes Paul’s survival (2 Corinthians 11) seem mundane. The bulk of the book is focused on his mission work in a small village in Tanna Tanna among cannibals.
8. How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor – James K.A. Smith – Smith helps readers unpack the roots of the secular mindset and ideas outlined in Charles Taylor’s challenging book, A Secular Age. Writes, Smith, “What passes for atheism is a mode of worship, a kind of anti-religious religion, which worships reason, skepticism, intellect, empirical proof, human autonomy, and self-determination.”
9. On the Banks of Plum Creek, Laura Ingalls Wilder – The family establishes their new place in the ground, with continuing daily challenges and adventures of frontier life: locusts eradicating the entire wheat crop, the impending famine, meeting new animals (badger and crab); the impossibly petulant Nellie Olesen.
10. The Psychology of Totalitarianism, Mattias Desmet – Desmet deftly analyzes the worldviews behind the worldviews using a historical approach to dissect how dictatorships are formed, and how in turn they shape mass movements. Not all his conclusions are self-evident, and bear contemplation and reflection.
