Favorite Books

Øystein encouraged me last week to write my personal list of lifetime favorite books. It's Friday afternoon, spring has come back to our corner of the country, and it's a pleasant time to think about this enjoyable topic. The only hard part is not letting the list grow too long.

I'm thinking in terms of several categories here. I'm going to let you do the Amazon work, though if I get ambitious I may come back and edit it in later.

Christian Growth

• Knowing God by J.I. Packer: the best I know of on what God is like.

• Waiting on God by Andrew Murray: the one book I can most heartily say I wish I actually practiced.

• Desiring God by John Piper. Someday soon I think I'll blog on this. Piper presents a thoroughly Biblical, immensely God-honoring "gospel of Christian hedonism." He says Christians should be the ultimate pleasure-seekers! (I'll bet you never thought you'd hear that said!)

• Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

• The Transferable Concepts by Bill Bright: the basics of Christian faith and practice, set forth so that almost anyone can not only practice them but also pass them along.

Christian Apologetics

• Evidence That Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. He is not fashionable in philosophical circles; I think it's because they think he's trying to accomplish one thing--provide proof--when he's really trying to do another: to show that Christians can have confidence in our beliefs. (This is not the place to go into that in depth.) His work has always encouraged me regarding the historical validity of the Christian faith.

• Francis Schaeffer's Trilogy: The God Who is There, Escape From Reason, and He Is There and He Is Not Silent. Schaeffer was amazingly prescient regarding the effects of the erosion of truth; and more than that, he showed that he cared.

• The Everlasting Man and Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton. You must read Chesterton! He was even more prescient than Schaeffer, more clear-thinking even that C.S. Lewis, more cuttingly witty than anyone I've read. If nothing else, reading him is a lesson in how to think.

• And everything C.S. Lewis wrote. To say that Chesterton was more clear-thinking than Lewis does nothing to disparage Lewis's incredibly powerful example : he wrote so clearly that the reader thinks, "Well, sure, that's easy"--when it is anything but.

Philosophy
Some of this overlaps with Apologetics.

• Christianity and the Nature of Science by J.P. Moreland. He set the stage for most of my thinking on the relationship between these two.

• Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by Moreland and Craig: a great starter textbook.

• Warranted Christian Belief by Alvin Plantinga: a great example of how to think, and a clear exposition of some difficult topics regarding Christian foundations.
I've read some of the older greats, though not enough, from Greeks through Hume and beyond. They have to be mentioned; but for me they have served more as mind-sharpening exercises than as suppliers of new insights. That's probably because I haven't studied them the right way.

Leadership

• Integrity by Henry Cloud: leadership starts with the leader.

• Good to Great by Jim Collins.

• The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge.

• Leading Change by John Kotter.

• The Balanced Scorecard books, one of which I'm blogging on elsewhere.

Other Views
Of books I have disagreed with in the end, the most memorable have been:

• The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. If there ever was a great exposition of evolution for everybody, this is it.

• The Plague by Albert Camus: trying to find meaning where its source is far from obvious.

• Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill. This represents several books on ethics, actually, in which I've searched diligently to see whether there is an adequate basis for ethical thinking outside of revealed religion. I haven't found one yet that holds up.
I try regularly to read books that I expect I'll disagree with. I wish that I could include more of them--Dennett, Ehrman, Harris, etc.--on my list, but they just didn't impress me much.

I'm not sure where to categorize this one:

• Fear and Trembling by Søren Kierkegaard. One section in this book affected me in particular: his extended treatment of what Abraham must have been thinking when preparing for the sacrifice of Isaac. It may be the most emotionally powerful piece of literature I've ever encountered, except maybe the last page of Dickens's Tale of Two Cities.

Fiction
I was on a long visit in Asia when someone there who was studying English asked me who my favorite American authors were. It was embarrassing: all I could think of were from Britain and Russia:

• The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was once dismissed as fantasy; now many agree that it's an epic of courage and goodness in the face of evil.

• Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevski.

• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy.

• The novels of C.S. Lewis: Narnia and the Space Trilogy.

For lighter reading, I usually go for mysteries:

• All of the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L. Sayers.

• The Adam Dalgliesh mysteries by P.D. James. I'm about six chapters into Devices and Desires right now.

I don't choose all Russian and British authors anymore:

• I enjoy John Grisham's legal novels a lot.

• It's a real treat to view the Navajo culture and religion through Tony Hillerman's eyes, in his Jim Chee mysteries.

And not all mysteries:

• I found Jeff and Michael Shaara's historical novels on the American Revolution and Civil War to be captivating.

I should pause a moment and take this back into the distant past, pre-teen years: I really loved the Hardy Boys mysteries! I've re-read a few since my son started picking up copies for himself. The books' formulas are more apparent to me now than they were then, but I can't forget or ignore how they helped kindle my love for reading.

Well, I was afraid it was going to grow too long! I guarantee that 15 minutes from now I'll think of something else, though.

Your turn now: What have you most enjoyed reading?

Posted: Fri - April 20, 2007 at 05:10 PM |

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Favorite Books

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson