It is always fun to compile a list of favorite books at the end of a year. These aren’t books that were published this year, only books I read this year.

This year, I’m going to section my favorites into different categories.

Devotional

1. Enjoying God in Everything by Steve DeWitt
   Quote: “A Christian’s experience of beauty should be a kind of apologetic for the gospel.” Likely my favorite book I read all year—and incredibly short!
2. The Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal
   Quote: “Behold on what sure foundation his happiness is built whose soul is possessed with divine love, whose will is transformed into the will of God, and whose greatest desire is, that his Maker should be pleased! Oh! the peace, the rest, the satisfaction that attendeth such a temper of mind!”
3. The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
   Quote: “We need never shout across the spaces to an absent God. He is nearer than our own soul, closer than our most secret thoughts.”

Christian Non-Fiction

1. The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener
   A book that takes our modern values of freedom, kindness, progress, equality, and science—values that often are portrayed as being at odds with Christianity—and demonstrates that their historical roots grow explicitly from Christianity. This is shorter, and more overtly Christian version of Tom Holland’s large Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World.
2. Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
   What Lewis considered to be his best piece of non-fiction. Originally given as a series of three lectures, The Abolition of Man, demonstrates how the erasure of objective morality is both illogical and the doom of human society. I have long heard of this work, but finally tackled it this year and found it so insightful and multi-layered that I read it four times over the year.
3. The Imperfect Pastor by Zack Eswine
   A beautiful meditation on the ordinary, humble role of pastoral ministry—a role that is loaded with a thousand serpents of temptation: to know everything, to be everywhere, to fix every problem…to, in fact, be God ourselves. Eswine poetically pushes back with the gentle reminder that we were never meant to repent for failing to do everything, we are to repent for trying to. This was a wonderfully refreshing reminder to trust the Lord to do His work.

Memoir

1. Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri
   A hilarious and heartbreaking true story of an Iranian immigrant arriving in America as a young boy and growing up straddling two different cultures. Nayeri writes for a younger audience, but anyone would find this story captivating, especially Nayeri’s vision of the difference between a God who speaks and a God who listens and how Jesus Christ is uniquely both. While it may seem trite to say it, his writing is irreducibly real.
2. The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken
   The story of a missionary who suffered tremendous loss overseas, struggles with continuing to believe, and then finds new vigor in his faith through interviewing other Christians suffering around the world—a kind of book that stokes a desire to live radically for the Lord.
3. How to Stay Married by Harrison Scott Key
   One of the strangest, funniest, and most moving books I have ever read. Key tells the story of his wife’s own (repeated) infidelity, and how he fought for their marriage and retaining his own faith amidst it all. Key isn’t writing to a Christian audience, but he makes a beautiful case for the value of marriage in a culture that often views it as disposable.

Fiction

1. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
   Quote: “Be careful whom you choose to hate. The small and the vulnerable own a protection great enough, if you could but see it, to melt you into jelly.” A beautifully written story of family, faith, and the arrival of the miraculous in the muck of human suffering. Reminiscent of the writing of Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson.
2. That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
   This is the fictional equivalent of Lewis’ Abolition, taking the philosophical ideas and clothing them in story. I first read this a few years ago and found it rather dull compared to the other two series in Lewis’ Space Trilogy, but reading it back through this year it struck me as an overwhelmingly powerful warning of the hollowing out of men’s virtue and the rise of the technocratic elite. Reading through Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia last year likely helped.
3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
   I have read this novella several times and always find it evergreen. It is not only a great meditation on the inevitability of death, but also a great depiction of the banality of living for wealth and status.

Non-Fiction

1. Generations by Jean Twenge
   One of the leading sociologists on generations writes a summary of every modern generation, what shaped them, characterizes them, and how they differ from one another. Loaded with lots of fascinating details and info. For instance, the next time a millennial complains that Boomers ruined the economy for them, grab this book; there is gobs of data in here that definitively proves that untrue.
2. The Case Against the Sexual Revolution by Louise Perry
   Phenomenal. A secular liberal feminist argument for why the sexual revolution has hurt society far, far more than helped it. And I, a conservative, Reformed Christian pastor, loved just about everything in it. Warning: this book describes many sexual perversions very frankly.
3. Bad Religion by Ross Douthat
   If you are interested in 20th century history in America, you’ll enjoy this book. If you are particularly interested in how institutional trust has bottomed out and narcissism has skyrocketed, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this book. I’ve read Douthat in the NYT and First Things for awhile and have always appreciated his voice. This was the most theological and (dare I say) evangelical of his I have encountered.

Honorable Mention:

1. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
2. Against All Odds by Alex Kershaw
3. The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham with Ryan Burge