My Favorite Books - 2024

As I reflect on my reading over this last year, I am struck by how recent many of the books I read were written and published. On this list, only two were written before I was born. (Though a few others are compilations of writings which were written long before me.) Let this be a resolution for 2025: More Old Books!

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (2023) and O Sacred Head, Now Wounded (2024)by Jonathan Gibson

With Be Thou My Vision, Gibson put together something that I had been attempting to create for years: a personal liturgy utilizing Scripture, the prayers and practices of church history, free prayer, and catechesis. These two are the same, except they correspond with the liturgical seasons of the church calendar, Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter respectively. If you are looking for ways to kickstart your devotional life in 2025, this is a great resource to use.

Rembrandt Is in the Wind: Learning to Love Art through the Eyes of Faith (2022) by Russ Ramsey

This work is a wonder. The artwork itself, included in many photographs within the book, are beautiful. The stories behind them are, in turns, encouraging, heartbreaking, and infuriating. As a result of reading this book, you will learn to think more deeply about life. As Roxanna wrote to me when she gave me this as a Christmas present last year, the book points to so much beauty.

Festal Orations (4th c.; 2008) by Gregory of Nazianzus

It’s a battle between Augustine, Luther, and Gregory for most influential theologian in my life. Gregory might be number one. I mean, just read this:

“Let us become like Christ, since Christ also became like us; let us become gods because of him, since he also because of us became human. He assumed what is worse that he might give what is better. He became poor that we through his poverty might become rich. He took the form of a slave, that we might regain freedom. He descended that we might be lifted up, he was tempted that we might be victorious, he was dishonored to glorify us, he died to save us, he ascended to draw to himself us who lay below in the Fall of sin. Let us give everything, offer everything, to the one who gave himself as a ransom and an exchange for us.”

Amen!

Everything Sad Is Untrue (2020) by Daniel Nayeri

A profound book, the profundity of which sneaks up on you amid childhood memories, cultural issues, and discourses on the best way to relieve oneself. It inspires.

The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (2024) by Jonathan Haidt

People are lonelier, more depressed, and more anxious than they have been in a very long time, and Haidt persuasively argues that it is a result of the dependence on smart phones, particularly among the youngest generations. Throw this in with Postman and Putnam as some of the best explanations for why modern life feels so unsatisfying, despite our fabulous wealth and comfort.

The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era (2021) by Jesse Curtis

There are times that Curtis slides into some of the, for lack of a better word, “woke-speech” that was particularly prominent around the time of this book’s publication. However, what Curtis lays out in this book cannot be denied. Too many white evangelicals have been willing to use (perhaps co-opt is the better word) the language of colorblindness, famously and inspirationally advanced by Martin Luther King, Jr., in an effort, knowingly or not, to make “whiteness” normative.

Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture (1988) by Lesslie Newbigin

Newbigin:

“Neither at the beginning, nor at any subsequent time, is there or can there be a gospel that is not embodied in a culturally conditioned form of words. The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the gospel, for the gospel is about the word made flesh. Every statement of the gospel in words is conditioned by the culture of which those words are a part, and every style of life that claims to embody the truth of the gospel is a culturally conditioned style of life. There can never be a culture-free gospel. Yet the gospel, which is from the beginning to the end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was originally embodied.”

The gospel embodies and critiques every single culture. Amen.

The Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee Book (2022) by Jerry Seinfeld

The book is good, especially if you enjoyed the show, but what is really good is the audiobook, which includes a ton of stuff from the show that ended up on the cutting-room floor. It is utterly fascinating. (If you have a library card, you can use Libby to listen for free.)

Paul's Letter to the Philippians (1995) by Gordon D. Fee

Fee is among the greatest of biblical scholars, and his commentary on Philippians is an astounding feat.

Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock (2019) by Steven Hyden

Hyden is the best rock critic around, and if you like classic rock, you must read this book.

Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers (2024) by Ian O’Connor

So, this book re-opened a few scars from Packer playoff history past. Nevertheless, it is an engrossing read about one of the most interesting football players of our time, who, at his peak, was the greatest quarterback I have ever seen.

Listen to This (2011) by Alex Ross

I love classical music—my favorites are Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner—but my knowledge of it is not very broad. So I turned to Ross, The New Yorker’s music critic. What a pleasant surprise. Yes, he looks at classical music I did not know, and helped me as I listened along with the music as I read. But he writes about music of all kinds, too. This was a very entertaining and learned read.

The Soul in Paraphrase: A Treasury of Classic Devotional Poems (2018) edited by Leland Ryken

My favorite poems from this collection: William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 29”; John Donne, “Holy Sonnet 15”; George Herbert, “Love”; John Milton, “When I Consider How My Light Is Spent”; Christina Rossetti, “In the Bleak Midwinter”; Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”; T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi”; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the end of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church (2024) by Gavin Ortlund

I read a number of Ortlund’s books this year: Finding the Right Hills to Die On and Retrieving Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation were particularly good. But this one is the culmination of a lot of work he has been doing, particularly on YouTube. And it is a great service. No one who reads this work can come away thinking that “to be steeped in history is to cease to be Protestant.” Rather, I am even more convinced, as Ortlund argues, that Protestantism is actually the most catholic Christian option out there.

Radicals & Reformers: A Survey of Global Anabaptist History (2024) by Troy Osborne

As we prepare to celebrate 500 years of Anabaptism, I don’t think there is a better book on its history than this one. There are others I would probably agree with more theologically. But Osborne strikes a very good balance between showing what Anabaptism is in its ideals, and what it has been in practice (which is very often in opposition to those purported Anabaptist ideals!).

What did you read this year?