Here is my follow up to my previous post called What I’ve Read. This is what is on my wish list at amazon.com
and so this is what I will be reading. If you notice any that aren’t
worth the time or recommendations for some that are, please let me know.
This post will be constantly updated as I finish books and start new
ones. This list is in the order in which I will be purchasing and
reading it starting with what's left to read in the year followed by a
batch of books that come highly recommended in four categories that I
alternate between.
The On Deck Circle...
1. The Jewish War by Josephus
2. Commentary on Genesis by Gerhard Von Rad
3. The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
4. The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry
5. What are People For? by Wendell Berry
6. Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community by Wendell Berry
7. The Art of the Commonplace by Wendell Berry
8. Ancient-Future Time by Robert Webber
9. Defending Constantine by Peter Leithart
10. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin
11. The End of Evangelicalism by David Fitch
12. Godric by Fredrick Buechner
13. Politics by Aristotle
14. After Virtue by Alasdair Macintyre
15. A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
16. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
17. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
18. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers by Benedicta Ward
Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris
St. Thomas by McInerny
Augustine by Brown
Anselm
The World of Late Antiquity by Brown
The Beauty of the Infinite by Hart
Gulliver's Travels by Swift
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Collected Stores by Wallace Stegner
The Stranger by Albert Camus
Home by Marilynne Robinson
Leisure, the Basis of Culture by Josef Pieper
Special Interest/History/Biography
Michael Pollan
John Rawls
Thomas Jefferson
Michael Oakeshott
John Scheurholz
Martin Luther King Jr.
Russel KirkReinhold Niebuhr
The Federalist Papers
Alexis de Tocqueville
Elinor Ostrom
Classics
Marcus Aurelius
Virgil
Tacitus
Dante Aligheri
Nicolo Machiavelli
Thomas Hobbes
Michel Montaigne
Fiction
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Robert Penn Warren
William Shakespeare
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ralph Ellison
Willa Cather
Albert Camus
Aldous Huxley
Joseph Heller
Marilynne Robinson
Leo Tolstoy
John Irving
James Joyce
Jack Kerouac
Kurt Vonnegut
Victor Hugo
Alice Walker
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Toni Morrison
Daniel Defoe
Henry Fielding
Maile Meloy
Shusaku Endo
David Foster Wallance
Evelyn Waugh
Thomas Pynchon
Arthur Koestler
T.S. Eliot
George Herbert
William H. Gass
Walker Percy
Theology
Gordon Fee
John Goldingay
Augustine
Wolfhart Pannenberg
Kevin Vanhoozer
Alexander Schmemann
R.T. France
John Sailhammer
William J. Abraham
Charles T. Mathewes
Richard Hays
Kathryn Tanner
I. Howard Marshall
Robert Farrar Capon
John D. Zizioulas
Miroslav Volf
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Martin Luther
Gustavo Gutierrez
George Lindbeck
G.E. Ladd
BoethiusPeter Lombard
Walter Brueggmann
Jacques Ellul
6 comments:
The whole Summa and the 23 other books in a year? That's ambitious! I have to go ahead and officially warn you against The Grapes of Wrath... perhaps you could read something British instead. Jane Austen or Tolkein.
Great list! You're definitely OCD though, as you say!
Thanks for putting it mildly by saying ambitious. It is closer to insane! I'd say the average book I read is about 350 pages so the ST is like reading 8 or 9 in addition to the 23. It might end up being a year-long project in the midst of my other reading. But from what I hear, it's an important read so I don't feel like I can miss out.
Basically I've tried to put together a plan based on the top recommended books in theology, fiction, classics, and areas of special interest to me. Grapes happened to be at the top of many lists, but I'll definitely consider your advice. My wife has read both Austen and Tolkein and loves them both.
Thanks for stopping by! I enjoyed browsing through your blog. It looks like we have a lot of the same interests. I also noticed you were from Louisiana. I was born in Shreveport and still have a lot of family there.
I simultaneously applaud and question your ambition to read books that you will most likely not enjoy or agree with. As I went through your list of books that you have read and rated it became obvious what type of authors you favor and what kind of theology you hold. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm stereotyping you, that is not my intention.
What I'm wondering is do you read the books so you can fairly say, "well I have read that" when you critique them, instead of like so many other people (myself included) who often speak poorly about a book or an author with having never read them. Or do you read them knowing that you are going to disagree and not like it so you can say, "well I have (in italics) read that" sort of smugly so you can be "more educated" than others and so you can have more fodder for your cannon?
I truly do not mean this in an offensive way although I am quite aware of how this could be offensive. I guess I am just asking you to genuinely ask yourself and give me an answer because I am thoroughly intrigued.
Hi Queue,
No offense taken. The best comments are the ones that help me to check myself and get back on track. Furthermore, I think anybody's reading list stereotypes them and this is what I'm hoping for as one of the reasons I write this blog is so that my ancestors can find it one day and get a good picture of who I was.
The answer to your question is, in a way, both. First and foremost, I have chosen as much as possible to read the truly seminal, classic works whether I presuppose I am going to agree with them or not in addition to reading books that I am particularly interested in or am in general agreement with from the outset.
What I was getting tired of was people name dropping without ever having read the authors. Two of the biggest names that are frequently dropped are Calvin & Darwin and so I read Calvin and am in the process of reading Darwin. I think we can't truly engage in a dialogue or critique until we have heard it from the horses mouth. I don't want to ever speak highly or poorly of a person without having gotten the story straight from them. The same goes for books. At the same time, cannon fodder is always nice and for the sake of full disclosure I do feel a certain upper hand (read: arrogance) when I am better educated on a certain topic than others. So both a good motive and a bad motive drive my reading.
Now I have a question for you. Since I have read books as diverse as Calvin & Packer on the one hand and Wright & McLaren on the other, I feel I gave an honest opinion on each rating. Does your question arise from seeing the former rated so low and the latter rated so high? If so, it's important to know that I grew up in the tradition of the former and went in to them really excited about what I would find given the hype about Calvin and Packer. I personally didn't find myself disagreeing with Calvin and Packer all that often, if at all. In fact, I can't remember an instance when I outright disagreed with them. But I don't feel like they expanded my mind, personally. Perhaps that is because I grew up learning their tradition. Calvin is for grownups while I feel that Packer's Knowing God I had heard a thousand times in Sunday School, Christian school, church, etc. That is why I rated him so low. I didn't feel like they added anything, but merely summarized what was already out there, at least out there in my mind, which is what is what matters for me.
Also, I genuinely want to know what all the fuss is about. What's so amazing about Calvin, Aquinas, Barth, Darwin, or whoever? Why are so many people enamored by these individuals? They must be really great, and I feel that I am missing out on something important if I don't read them.
Thanks and please come again!
I've thoroughly enjoyed bumping into and reading your blogs. Looks like you've got a terrific book list going. I don't think you'd regret adding Tolkein to your list.
I read your brief bio and, based solely on that, have to recommend that you look up Ted Tripp's - Shepherding Your Child's Heart. It probably falls under someone's "self help" list of books. I generally avoid those like the plague. But... if I had to choose one book that has most impacted my life as a parent (outside of the Bible) this is it. I'm about half way through his brother's book, Age of Opportunity, which is proving to be just as challenging, heartfelt, encouraging and profound in the simplest way possible.
I hope to see them appear on your list someday. I'll be surprised if they don't rate an 8 or higher.
Thanks for the comment Terry. I guess I should add Tolkein since I've heard so many recommendations of him.
The most influential book I've ever read (also outside of the Bible) has been a self-help type book called Bold Love by Dan Allender, so I'm definitely not biased necessarily against the genre.
And my son is now 18 months old and growing up fast, so this is a timely recommendation, and needs to move near the top of my list. There are a lot of child rearing books out there so it's helpful to have a recommendation for where to find the needle in the haystack.
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