A wise man once wrote, “It is not the reading of many books which is necessary to make a man wise or good; but the well reading of a few, could he be sure to have the best… Good books are a very great mercy to the world” (151). These are the best books that I read in 2024. There are 36 selections and I thoroughly enjoyed every last one of them.
My Top 12:
1. The Marrow of Modern Divinity / Edward Fisher
We live in an age fascinated with self. We need help to become increasingly fascinated by God– the God of all grace. I’m often helped in this regard by breaking bread with the dead through the reading of old books. And I can honestly say that I have never encountered a book quite like The Marrow. We know very little about the man who allegedly wrote it. But the book itself proved to be a wonderful blessing to the great Thomas Boston during the Marrow Controversy in Scotland in the 1700s and he provides many helpful marginal notes and comments throughout.
The book is organized around a simple idea: a pastor (Evangelista) expounds and explains the grace of God, the law of God, and the gospel of God, through several Pilgrim’s Progress-like dialogues with a young Christian (Neophytus), a legalist (Nomista), and an antinomian (Antinomista). More than anything, The Marrow forces the reader to ask, “Do I believe in the unconditional grace of God? Or do I believe in a conditional gospel?” Sinclair Ferguson said it beautifully many years ago:
“Beloved, men who have only a conditional offer of the gospel, will have only a conditional gospel. The man who has only a conditional gospel knows only conditional grace. And the man who knows only conditional grace knows only a conditional God. And the man who has only a conditional God will have a conditional ministry to his fellow men. And at end of the day, he will only be able to give his heart, and his life, and his time, and his devotion to his people… on condition. And he will love and master the truth of the great doctrines of grace, but until grace in God Himself masters him, the grace that has mastered him will never flow from him to his people. And he will become a Jonah in the 20th century, sitting under his tree with a heart that is shut up against sinners in need of grace, because he thinks of God in conditional terms.
And that, you see, was the blight upon the ministry in the Church of Scotland of those days, men who were thoroughly Reformed in their confessional subscription, but whose bowels, whose hearts, were closed up to God’s people and to the lost in all the nations. Wasn’t it Alexander Whyte of Freesen Georges that used to say there was such a thing as sanctification by vinegar that makes men accurate and hard? And that’s what they were.
When your people come and have been broken by sin, and have been tempted by Satan, and are ashamed to confess the awful mess they have made of their life, it is not a Calvinistic pastor who has been sanctified by vinegar that they need. It is a pastor who has been mastered by the unconditional grace of God, from whom ironclad orthodoxy has been torn away, and the whole armor of a gracious God has been placed upon his soul— the armor of One who would not break the bruised reed or quench the dimly burning wick: the God of free grace.”
The Marrow helps us to recognize a godly pastor. A godly pastor is a pastor who is like God, who has a heart of free grace running after sinners. The godly pastor is the one who sees the prodigal returning, and runs and falls on his neck and weeps and kisses him; and says, ‘This my son was dead; he was lost and now he is alive and found.’
Friend, hear and heed these words from Evangelista:
“I beseech you consider, that God the Father, as He is in His Son Jesus Christ, moved with nothing but with His free love to mankind lost, hath made a deed of gift and grant unto them all, that whosoever of them all shall believe in this His Son, shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (144)
2. The Transfiguration of Christ / Patrick Schreiner
I loved this book so much that when I finished reading it, I read it again. It’s phenomenal. Schreiner unpacks the wonders of Christ’s transfiguration by helping his readers see the glorious intertextual tapestry that displays the radiance of the Savior. And as we behold by faith Christ’s own transfiguration in His Word, we ourselves are transformed by His Spirit into His glorious image.
“For Christians, ‘metamorphosis‘ refers both to the physical unveiling of Jesus on the mountain (Matt. 17:2; Mark 9:2) and to the change that progressively occurs in Christians (Rom. 12:2; 2 Cor. 3:18) as we behold ‘God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ‘ (2 Cor. 4:6) and eventually ‘see Him as He is‘ (1 John 3:2).” (xiv)
What are you waiting for? ‘Come, let’s go up to the mountain of the LORD.‘ (Isaiah 2:3)
“Shining atop the mountain is our future, for ‘we will all be changed‘ (1 Cor. 15:51). The transfigured Christ is the hope of the church.” (xvi)
p.s. If you want some incredible Patristic sermons on the transfiguration check out Light on the Mountain.
3. Reformed Systematic Theology, Vol. 4 / Beeke and Smalley
Over the past five years, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading this 4-part systematic theology series by Joel Beeke and Paul Smalley. This final volume covers ecclesiology and eschatology, and like its predecessors, readers will find it scriptural, thoughtful, historical, pastoral, and devotional. Spicy quotes abound from the fathers, the Reformers, and the Puritans. The authors include a variety of helpful digressions including a Reformed Baptist perspective on the subjects and mode of baptism (1153-1183), a critique of prosperity theology (752-775), and a balanced section on millennial views (924-934). After advocating for presbyterianism (Beeke) and elder-led congregationalism (Smalley), the authors also highlight other forms of church polity (237-256). Yet even amidst these nuances of church government, the authors lovingly keep the focus where it belongs: on the Lord of glory. After all, as the heavenly Dr. Sibbes reminds us, “Where is the church’s treasure but in Christ?” (6: 547)
“The gathered church is God’s house, where He manifests His special presence on earth. God Himself appears in our midst, and His voice is heard in the preaching of the Word. The church is like a portal between heaven and earth, a Beth-el, or ‘house of God,’ because it is joined by faith to Christ (Gen. 28:10–19; John 1:51). When we draw near to God in the church’s worship while exercising faith in Christ, we enter the holy places (Heb. 10:19–22). In the offering of worship, the exaltation of Christ, the pursuit of holiness, and the fellowship of saints, the church is an earthly expression of heaven. What an immense privilege it is to approach heaven while on earth! We should treasure every opportunity to participate in the church’s worship services and prayer meetings. God created all things for the sake of His Son (Col. 1:16; Heb. 1:2). He sent the Lord Jesus to redeem His people (Gal. 1:4–5; Titus 2:14). He exalted Christ to the highest place and ‘gave Him to be the head over all things to the church’ (Eph. 1:22). Therefore, the church stands at the center of God’s purpose for the universe. God’s mysterious plan, ‘which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ,’ is to make known ‘by the church the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Eph. 3:9–11). It is God’s intent to display His ‘glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages’ (Eph. 3:21). Therefore, God’s purpose for creating the world can be summarized as follows: to display His glory in Christ through the church. This thought should fill our minds with wonder: the purpose of the Creator in making all the universe revolves around the church of Jesus Christ. Since God is sovereign, all things are working together to make Christ the preeminent Son among many redeemed brothers and sisters who bear His image in God’s family (Rom. 8:28–29). If you desire to have a part in God’s great purpose for the universe, be part of His church.” (4: 51–52)
Amen.
4. The Atonement / Jeremy Treat
Jeremy Treat consistently pens theology that sings. This introduction to the atonement is full of exegetical theology that leads to doxology. According to Treat, “The doctrine of atonement is the church’s faith seeking understanding of the way in which Christ, through all of His work but primarily His death, has dealt with sin and its effects to reconcile sinners and renew creation.” (9-10)
Treat unpacks the heart of the atonement like this:
“In short, the means of atonement is substitution: Christ died in our place for our sins. Substitution, therefore, is not another dimension of the atonement but rather undergirds all the dimensions of the atonement. As the heart pumps blood throughout the body, the substitutionary work of Christ gives meaning and coherence to every aspect of what God has accomplished through His Son. The heart of the atonement—the means by which Christ accomplishes His multidimensional work—is that Christ died in our place for our sins. The Messiah took on all the consequences of our rebellion so that we can experience all the blessings of His kingdom. This is the great exchange:
- He died so that we can live.
- He was cursed so that we can be blessed.
- He was wounded so that we can be healed.
- He went into exile so that we can be at home.
- He was crushed so that we can be made whole.
- He carried our guilt so that we can be forgiven.
- He bore our shame so that we can receive honor.
- He experienced defeat so that we can have victory.
- He was condemned so that we can be declared innocent.
- He took our moral stains so that we can be washed clean.
- He was plunged into darkness so that we can walk in the light.
To say that Christ is our substitute means that He takes our place and that we take his. We do not merely receive a blank slate or a fresh start. We are given the righteousness of Christ and the deposit of the Holy Spirit. Far from being a cold transaction, this is a covenantal exchange where orphans are made sons and daughters. The cross is not an exacting commercial negotiation but rather an exchange that creates a superabundant atonement.” (38-39)
How is this superabundant atonement applied to believers? Through Spirit-wrought faith union with Christ:
“According to Ephesians, the entire story of the world will come to a head in Christ, the Savior who is not only reconciling sinners to God but is also uniting heaven and earth (Eph. 1:9–10). Once again, it all depends on whether or not one is in Christ.
Apart from Christ, we are:
- guilty in sin (Rom. 5:16);
- covered in shame (Jer. 17:13);
- deserving of God’s judgment (Rom. 1:18);
- under the sway of the devil (Eph. 2:2);
- enemies of God (James 4:4);
- separated from God (Isa. 59:2);
- enslaved to sin (John 8:34);
- dead in transgressions (Eph. 2:1).
In Christ, we are:
- forgiven of sin (Eph. 1:7);
- cleansed of shame (Heb. 12:2);
- declared righteous (Rom. 4:5);
- victorious over the devil (Rom. 16:20);
- adopted into God’s family (John 1:12);
- reconciled to God (2 Cor. 5:18–19);
- free from slavery to sin (Rom. 6:18);
- risen with eternal life (Rom. 8:11).
Everything hinges on union with Christ.” (141-142)
Hallelujah, what a Savior!
5. The Fundamentals of Sacred Theology / Campegius Vitringa Sr.
Imagine if some dude you’ve never heard of before just so happened to be like a Rosetta-Stone-level polyglot with the biblical languages (let’s say he read through the Greek New Testament four times while in middle school!), and also an incredibly gifted biblical exegete, and biblical theologian, and biblical systematician, and church historian, and he also just happened to be discipled by Herman Witsius, and then imagine he wrote an introduction to the basics of knowing God, a stupendous synopsis of celestial truth, all in the form of 1,000 longish-tweets of pure theological 🔥. That’s Vitringa and that’s The Fundamentals of Sacred Theology.
6. Mere Christian Hermeneutics / Kevin Vanhoozer
Reading books on hermeneutics is often like chewing on husks and ashes. But few living theologians are wiser wordsmiths than KJV: Kevin J. Vanhoozer. His latest is tasty as tiramisu. What is KJV proposing with his “grammatical-eschatalogical” exegetical approach?
“I have proposed that the Christian life is largely a response to the divine address in Scripture, and that Christians ought to read the Bible to see therein the face of Christ and, in so seeing, to become more like Him, knowing God as their Father… The chief purpose of reading the Bible theologically is to learn Christ… For it becomes clear on the Mount of Transfiguration that the true disciple is the one who listens to Jesus only. Those who attend to Jesus only behold the glory of the Lord and are themselves transfigured into His glorious likeness… The voice from heaven directs reader-disciples to listen to the one who is the light of the world. Christ Jesus’ shining face speaks volumes, far more than any single interpreter can comprehend. We are mastered, not the masters, of this shining face. It is His manifest presence, His speaking voice, who addresses us in and through the Scriptures.” (360-361)
“The voice and face of Christ that speak and shine from the biblical texts are the bright focus of the triune economy of light, the locus and fulcrum where and by which the Father has shone and continues to shine the Son’s knowledge of God into readers’ hearts by the Spirit.” (362)
“Apprehending the glory of God in the face of Christ, whatever this may involve, is the true end of transfiguring biblical interpretation. To read theologically is therefore to aim for a beatific lection: a beholding, through reading, of the radiant face of Christ in the letter of the text and, in the human face of Christ, the very face of God.” (363)
Here’s a wonderful goal for your Bible reading in 2025: look for the glory and grace of Jesus by reading all of the Bible theologically, bearing witness to the light of Christ in the letter of the text.
(NOTE: Doesn’t KJV’s approach seem to dovetail beautifully with Schreiner’s Transfiguration volume mentioned above?)
7. Delighting in the Old Testament / Jason DeRouchie
What does the righteous man delight in? God’s Word. “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.” (Psalm 1:1–2) Dr. DeRouchie faithfully guides his readers into the glorious joy found in the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. You won’t remember everything he says in this book, but you’ll remember how he reveres and relishes Christ from all the Scriptures.
“Three-fourths of our Christian Bible is Old Testament, which was written ‘for our instruction‘ and to serve us (Rom. 15:4; 1 Cor. 10:11; 1 Pet. 1:12). Indeed, ‘all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness‘ (2 Tim. 3:16). This volume seeks to equip Christian laypeople and leaders to delight in the reality that the Old Testament is Christian Scripture. Jesus stands at the center of God’s purposes in creation and salvation. All the Old Testament’s laws, history, prophecy, and wisdom point to Jesus in various ways, and through Him God fulfills all that the Old Testament anticipates (Matt. 5:17–18; Mark 1:15; Acts 3:18; 1 Cor. 1:23–24). ‘Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes‘ (Rom. 10:4), and ‘all the promises of God find their Yes in Him” (2 Cor. 1:20). The old covenant regulations regarding ‘food and drink . . . festival or a new moon or a Sabbath‘ were all ‘a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ‘ (Col. 2:16–17). ‘He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.‘ (Col. 1:17)” (xix-xx)
Speaking of delighting in the OT Scriptures…
8. The Psalms (Vol. 1) / Christopher Ash
The Psalms are wonderful. They’ve been read, prayed, sung, preached, chanted, studied, memorized, wept over, rejoiced in, and cherished by God’s people for millennia. We are married and buried with the Psalms. They are precious beyond all conveyance. Martin Luther loved the Book of Psalms:
“The Psalter ought to be a precious and beloved book, if for no other reason than this: it promises Christ’s death and resurrection so clearly— and pictures His kingdom and the condition and nature of all Christendom— that it might well be called a little Bible. In it is comprehended most beautifully and briefly everything that is in the entire Bible.” (Works, 35: 254)
Christopher Ash loves the Psalms too. He wrote a 4-volume, 1,500-page, commentary on every Psalm with the aim to help Christians see and savor the glory and grace of Jesus in the Psalter. His introductory volume lays out his “Christ-centered” methodological approach. When we read, pray, and sing the Psalms, according to Ash, we join Christ’s choir and He leads our worship in the midst of the assembly (Hebrews 2:12):
“The choir is the church of Christ throughout all generations. It includes old covenant believers who trusted the covenant promises that would be fulfilled in Christ. It includes Moses and David and the sons of Korah and all the psalmists. It includes the prophets and the apostles. It includes the new covenant church of Christ to the end of time. Jesus Christ is the lead singer and leader of the choir (cf. the “Choirmaster” of a number of psalm superscriptions). He is our king who leads us, our prophet who instructs us, and our priest who takes us, with our prayers and praises, into the presence of the Father. In John Calvin’s words, ‘Christ leads our songs, and is the chief composer of our hymns.’ Before coming to faith in Christ, you and I are like people sitting in the audience in a great concert hall; we listen, but we do not participate. By God’s grace we begin to understand these songs; we begin to hear and feel the tune; we begin to grasp what commitment is asked of us to join in. And then, by a supernatural work of the Spirit of God, we hear Jesus’s invitation ‘Get up out of your seats’ (to borrow a phrase from Billy Graham [1918–2018]), we walk to the front, and we join Jesus’s choir. The Psalms open for us a window into a world of praise and prayer. They invite us not simply to look through the window, to observe and perhaps admire, but to enter through this window into this world and to live in it. Or, to change the analogy, they call us not simply to listen with admiration to a solo performance but to join the choir. There is all the difference in the world between studying a psalm as a student and joining in singing it as a worshiper.” (1: 280–282)
When we read the Psalms in Christ, we hear an echo of eternity:
“It is worth reflecting again here on the divine nature of Jesus Christ and His human nature. In His full humanity, He learned the Psalms. He sat in the temple as a twelve-year-old boy sitting under the Scriptures. Sabbath by Sabbath, He sat under the Scriptures in the synagogue. In His human incarnate life, He fulfilled those Scriptures; He, as it were, echoed them. And yet in His eternal divine nature as God the Son, He—the eternal Word— was the source of those Scriptures. In them we hear the echoes of eternity. In a most moving moment near the end of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn rubs together some medicinal leaves for healing, and Tolkien writes, “The fragrance that came to each [i.e., in the room] was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in Spring is itself but a fleeting memory.” It points beyond; it is an arrow to the future and to the transcendent. In a slightly similar way, not only do Jesus and the New Testament echo the Psalms, but in a deeper sense, the Psalms are like that rubbing together of leaves, for in the Psalms we hear an echo, we sense a fragrance, of an unshadowed land found only in Christ, the eternal Son of God.” (1: 101-102)
Beautiful.
9. From the Finger of God / Philip S. Ross
Is there any biblical and theological basis for the classical tripartite division of God’s law into moral, civil, and ceremonial? Philip Ross ransacks the Bible and church history to answer in the affirmative. He concludes that:
“Scripture as a whole develops the Pentateuch’s categorization of some laws as a pattern, others as statutes to be obeyed ‘in the land,’ and the Decalogue as universally binding moral law. This embryonic form of the threefold division makes it mark throughout Scripture… in the Gospels’ proclamation of Jesus, not as the abolisher of the law, but as the one who provides eschatological, moral, and soteriological fulfillment of the law. The apostolic writings confirm those basic categories: pattern laws were ‘copies and shadows’, the laws of the ‘land’ give way to the decrees of earthly kings, and the Decalogue still spells out what it means to love God and neighbor.” (352)
This is a learned book, well researched, and carefully argued. Even if you are someone who prefers, for example, the wonderful work of Brian Rosner on this topic, you would be helped in reading this volume. It’s worth all the time you can give it. And even if you remain unpersuaded, you should still teach your kids how to memorize the Ten Commandments using your fingers. :)
10. Redemption Accomplished and Applied / John Murray
I have enjoyed this classic by Dr. Murray for many years. It was this book that first taught me that “Nothing is more central or basic than union and communion with Christ.” (171) But my paperback copy is falling apart. So, I was overjoyed that Westminster Seminary Press printed a new beautiful hardcover edition. What’s this book about? It’s about the Redeemer, the wondrous majesty of what the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ, has achieved for His beloved people.
“It is the spectacle of Gethsemane and Calvary that opens to us the folds of unspeakable love. The Father did not spare His own Son. He spared nothing that the dictates of unrelenting rectitude demanded. And it is the undercurrent of the Son’s acquiescence that we hear when He says, “Nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). But why? It was in order that eternal and invincible love might find the full realization of its urge and purpose in redemption by price and by power. Of Calvary the spirit is eternal love and the basis eternal justice. It is the same love manifested in the mystery of Gethsemane’s agony and of Calvary’s accursed tree that wraps eternal security around the people of God. “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32). “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Rom. 8:35). “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38, 39). That is the security which a perfect atonement secures and it is the perfection of the atonement that secures it.” (77-78)
My favorite pastor, John Newton, once gave this wise counsel: “I advise you to take a lodging as near as you can to Gethsemane, and to walk daily to Mount Golgotha.” (100) Get yourself a copy (or a new copy!) of Redemption Accomplished and Applied and take a walk with Dr. Murray. You won’t regret it.
11. The Pastor as Leader / John Currie
“Preaching is leadership in Christ’s cause.” (1) That’s the gist of this gem of a book. Currie connects pastoral leadership and vision to the shepherding task of feeding Christ’s flock from the Word of God and guiding them to green pastures.
“A congregation needs leadership to be faithful and fruitful in its Christ-appointed mission, and in Christ’s kingdom that leadership must come through His word preached. If a pastor doesn’t understand his identity and calling as a leader, that will disable not only his leadership but also his preaching, because he will lack holy zeal to take anyone anywhere with what he says.” (2-3)
Most Christian leadership books are mid and often seem to twist Scripture. But Currie shows us a more excellent way. He helped me see pastoral leadership lessons by helping me read my Bible better.
“The disconnect between preaching and leadership is both biblically unnecessary and unhealthy for the mission of Christ’s church. This book will present what I believe is a biblical and therefore better model: pastoral leadership by appointment of Christ and in union with Christ that prioritizes preaching the word of Christ on the mission of Christ.” (4-5)
Chapter 8, on clearly communicating biblical vision is gold. Highly recommended!
12. What it Means to be Protestant / Gavin Ortlund
I thank God for Gavin Ortlund. His books have helped me to seek growth in humility and have equipped me to be better prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks me for a reason for the hope that is in me and yet to do it with gentleness and respect (1 Peter 3:15). His latest book, a brief explanation and defense of the Protestant tradition, is clear, humble, accessible, charitable, and wise. Protestantism is best understood “as a renewal movement within the one true church.” (4) I found Gavin’s chapters on the recovery of Sola Fide (ch. 4), the case for and objections to Sola Scriptura (chs. 5-6), the Papacy (ch. 7), apostolic succession (ch. 8), and the case study on the bodily assumption of Mary (ch. 10) to be the most edifying.
“The great, shining glory of Protestantism– that which stands out above all else, perhaps– is its radical focus on the simplicity of the gospel. Protestantism is relentlessly and structurally focused on the all-sufficiency of the person and work of Christ Himself.” (221)
David Wells once noted: “It takes no courage to sign up as a Protestant. After all, millions have done so throughout the West. They are not in any peril. To live by the truths of historic Protestantism, however, is an entirely different matter. That takes courage.” (1) May God grant such courage for the global glory of Christ.
My Next 12:
13. Suttree / Cormac McCarthy
In McCarthy’s The Passenger, we find this spot-on back and forth:
“Does Knoxville produce crazy people or does it just attract them? Interesting question. Nature nurture. Actually the more deranged of them seem to hail from the neighboring hinterlands. Good question though. Let me get back to you on that.” (32)
In Suttree, we meet a complicated man named Cornelius Suttree, who hails from those ‘neighboring hinterlands’ of Knoxville, and lives in a rat-infested houseboat on the Tennessee River. (Imagine Huckleberry Finn but hideous.) This tall tale is full of macabre misfits and miserable misadventures. It’s a masterpiece of muck. All hopes wrecked, all loves sundered, all monologues drenched in a melancholic mood and an Appalachian twang. McCarthy paints a world within the world with yet another world beneath. Next to Blood Meridian, Suttree may be the pinnacle of his prose:
“In an older part of the cemetery he saw some people strolling. Elderly gent with a cane, his wife on his arm. They did not see him. They went on among the tilted stones and rough grass, the wind coming from the woods cold in the sunlight. A stone angel in her weathered marble robes, the downcast eyes. The old people’s voices drift across the lonely space, murmurous above these places of the dead. The lichens on the crumbling stones like a strange green light. The voices fade. Beyond the gentle clash of weeds. He sees them stoop to read some quaint inscription and he pauses by an old vault that a tree has half dismantled with its growing. Inside there is nothing. No bones, no dust. How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory.” (152-153)
“Remember her hair in the morning before it was pinned, black, rampant, savage with loveliness. As if she slept in perpetual storm.” (153)
“Suttree sat in the moss and rested. The woods looked too green for the season. Before two days more had gone he hardly knew if he dreamt or not. Lying on a gravel bar with the tips of his fingers in the icy water he could see his face above the sandy creek floor, a shifting visage hard by its own dark shadow. He stretched himself and bowed his lips and sucked from the passing water. Taste of iron and moss and a silken weight on his tongue. A newt, small, olive, paintspattered, arrowed off downside a rock toward the bubbled green of the deeper pool. The water sang in his head like wine. He sat up. A green and reeling wall of laurel and the stark trees rising. Articulating in the slight lift of the forest wind some arboreal mute’s alphabet. Pins of light near blue were coming off the stones. Suttree felt a deep and chilling lassitude go by nape and shoulderblades. He slumped and crossed his wrists in his lap. He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt’s blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead. Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his back in the gravel, the earth’s core sucking his bones, a moment’s giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet, hurtling through the high thin cirrus. His fingers clutched up wet handfuls from the bar, polished lozenges of slate, small cold and mascled granite teardrops. He let them fall through his fingers in a smooth clatter. He could feel the oilless turning of the earth beneath him and the cup of water lay in his stomach as cold as when he drank it.” (285-286)
“That night he did not even make a fire. He crouched like an ape in the dark under the eaves of a slate bluff and watched the lightning. Down there in the wood the birchtrunks shone palely and troops of ghost cavalry clashed in an outraged sky, old spectral revenants armed with rusted tools of war colliding parallactically upon each other like figures from a mass grave shorn up and girdled and cast with dread import across the clanging night and down remoter slopes between the dark and darkness yet to come. A vision in lightning and smoke more palpable than wortled bone or plate or pauldron shelled with rot. The storm moved off to the north. Suttree heard laughter and sounds of carnival. He saw with a madman’s clarity the perishability of his flesh. Illbedowered harlots were calling from small porches in the night, in their gaudy rags like dolls panoplied out of a dirty dream. And along the little ways in the rain and lightning came a troupe of squalid merrymakers bearing a caged wivern on shoulderpoles and other alchemical game, chimeras and cacodemons skewered up on boarspears and a pharmacopoeia of hellish condiments adorning a trestle and toted by trolls with an eldern gnome for guidon who shouted foul oaths from his mouthhole and a piper who piped a pipe of ploverbone and wore on his hip a glass flasket of some smoking fuel that yawed within viscid as quicksilver. A mesosaur followed above on a string like a fourlegged garfish heliumfilled. A tattered gonfalon embroidered with stars now extinct. Nemoral halfworld inhabitants, figures in buffoon’s motley, a gross and blueblack foetus clopping along in brogues and toga. Attendants attend. Suttree watched these puckish revelers pass with a half grin of wry doubt. Dark closed about him. The lightning lapsed away and he could hear the grass kneeling in the wind. He raked leaves to him in his arms and struck a match with fingers stiff and fumblesome. They crackled along the edges and small hot sparks went singing down the wind.” (287-288)
“On a wild night he went through the dark of the apple orchards downriver while a storm swept in and lightning marked him out with his empty sack. The trees reared like horses all about him in the wind and the fruit fell hard to the ground like the disordered clop of hooves. Suttree stood among the screaming leaves and called the lightning down. It cracked and boomed about and he pointed out the darkened heart within him and cried for light. If there be any art in the weathers of this earth. Or char these bones to coal. If you can, if you can. A blackened rag in the rain. He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me?” (366)
McCarthy ain’t for everyone. He’s an acquired taste. Another reviewer put it best: “The book comes at us like a horrifying flood. The language licks, batters, wounds– a poetic, troubled rush of debris. Mr. McCarthy won’t soothe us with a quiet song. Suttree is like a good, long scream in the ear.”
14. Nuclear War: A Scenario / Annie Jacobsen
This is the most frightening book I have read in a very long time. I can still remember the visceral shock of reading John Hersey’s Hiroshima in the eighth grade. His description of an atomic blast and its aftermath is horrifying. And yet the largest nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, the B83, is 80 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Annie Jacobsen follows in Hersey’s footsteps. She doesn’t describe what did happen, but rather foretells what would happen. In vivid detail, Jacobsen envisions a world engulfed in the flames of nuclear war. In her “scenario,” it takes 72 minutes for the world as we know it to come to an end. Having lived in the Washington D.C. area for over a decade, this scene hit hard:
“A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature that occurs at the center of the Earth’s sun. In the first fraction of a millisecond after this thermonuclear bomb strikes the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C., there is light. Soft X- ray light with a very short wavelength. The light superheats the surrounding air to millions of degrees, creating a massive fireball that expands at millions of miles per hour. Within a few seconds, this fireball increases to a diameter of a little more than a mile (5,700 feet across), its light and heat so intense that concrete surfaces explode, metal objects melt or evaporate, stone shatters, humans instantaneously convert into combusting carbon. The five-story, five-sided structure of the Pentagon and everything inside its 6.5 million square feet of office space explodes into superheated dust from the initial flash of light and heat, all the walls shattering with the near-simultaneous arrival of the shock wave, all 27,000 employees perishing instantly. Not a single thing in the fireball remains. Nothing. Ground zero is zeroed. Traveling at the speed of light, the radiating heat from the fireball ignites everything flammable within its line of sight several miles out in every direction. Curtains, paper, books, wood fences, people’s clothing, dry leaves explode into flames and become kindling for a great firestorm that begins to consume a 100-or-more-square-mile area that, prior to this flash of light, was the beating heart of American governance and home to some 6 million people.” (xvii-xviii)
Readers must look elsewhere (here and here and here for starters) for thoughtful engagement on US nuclear strategy, deterrence, and nonproliferation. Jacobsen offers nothing but handwringing in this regard. But she did remind me afresh to give myself to prayer: “First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.” (1 Timothy 2:1–2)
15. This Is Happiness / Niall Williams
I’m grateful to have discovered the books of Niall Williams in 2024. Somehow I had missed him. It was a joy to spend many hours in the small Irish parish of Faha, where one day something incredible happened. It stopped raining:
“Nobody in Faha could remember when it started. Rain there on the western seaboard was a condition of living. It came straight-down and sideways, frontwards, backwards and any other wards God could think of. It came in sweeps, in waves, sometimes in veils. It came dressed as drizzle, as mizzle, as mist, as showers, frequent and widespread, as a wet fog, as a damp day, a drop, a dreeping, and an out-and-out downpour. It came the fine day, the bright day, and the day promised dry. It came at any time of the day and night, and in all seasons, regardless of calendar and forecast, until in Faha your clothes were rain and your skin was rain and your house was rain with a fireplace. It came off the grey vastness of an Atlantic that threw itself against the land like a lover once spurned and resolved not to be so again. It came accompanied by seagulls and smells of salt and seaweed. It came with cold air and curtained light. It came like a judgement, or, in benign version, like a blessing God had forgotten he had left on. It came for a handkerchief of blue sky, came on westerlies, sometimes – why not? – on easterlies, came in clouds that broke their backs on the mountains in Kerry and fell into Clare, making mud the ground and blind the air. It came disguised as hail, as sleet, but never as snow. It came softly sometimes, tenderly sometimes, its spears turned to kisses, in rain that pretended it was not rain, that had come down to be closer to the fields whose green it loved and fostered, until it drowned them. All of which, to attest to the one truth: in Faha, it rained. But now, it had stopped.” (2-3)
My favorite scenes in this novel involve simple interactions between family and friends, life lyrically drawn, that helped me to look for God’s wondrous grace in the ordinary:
“Once the train had left, I got off the crate and marched down the platform into what we’ll call soft rain. Short pants, white socks and sandals, a quiff, and my blue cardboard case containing my guns and six weeks of the Hotspur, I walked out on to the Kilkee road. I’m not sure where I thought I was going, but I was definitely going there. My grandfather delighted that, despite my father’s carefulness, here was the latest demonstration of the waywardness of the family genetic. I suppose in all childhoods there are pockets where you discover freedom. I kept walking towards the grey sea of the sky. I don’t remember having the slightest anxiety. I had walked a long way it seemed when a bicycle bell jingled behind me. ‘Young gentleman, could I offer you a lift?’ As though it were the open door of a Rolls-Royce, Ganga (my grandfather) gestured the bar of his bicycle. Joe was standing beside him. Ganga had no carrier and so took my case in his left hand and I climbed on to the bar. For balance I leaned back into the brown smells of his chest and there I left the world, not only because my feet were no longer on the ground but because when you’re a boy your grandfather’s chest has a peculiar and profound allure, like a spawn pool for salmon, wherein mysteries are resolved. His yellow-laced boot pushed us off. The bicycle ticked minutely, like a hundred tiny clocks, and with the weave and waver of one-handed cycling we sailed not back along the estuary road towards Faha, but west to the coast, because, with heart-wisdom, Ganga understood that the ageless remedy for a boy whose mother was ill was to bring him to see the ocean.” (28)
Praise God for bicycles. Praise Him for grandfathers. Praise Him for coastlines and for oceans. A life of praise is happiness indeed.
16. Vipers’ Tangle / François Mauriac
The title of this brief epistolary novel is an echo of the words of Christ:
“You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil.” (Matthew 12:34-35)
The main character is a dying, greedy, miserable, vindictive lawyer, Monsieur Louis, who pens a poisonous letter intending to disinherit his wife and two children from receiving any of his vast fortune and his large vineyard in the Bordeaux region of France. His life is infected with envy, that green-eyed monster, and his relationships have been ravaged by his placing the love of money before all other loves. (1 Timothy 6:9-10) But while Louis walks through the valley of the shadow of death as his physical heart fails, through lettered introspection he begins to see the true tangle of vipers is not his wife and two children, but rather his own heart of stone within.
“Don’t please think that I am painting too pretty a picture of myself. I know my heart— it is a knot of vipers. They have almost squeezed the life out of it. They have beslavered it with their poison, but, underneath their squirming, it still beats. Impossible now to loosen the knot, I can fight free only by cutting it with a knife, by slashing it with a sword: I am come to bring not peace but a sword.” (104-105)
“The setting sun pierced through with difficulty to light that buried world. I could feel, I could see, I could touch my guilt. It was not only that my heart had become a nest of vipers, that it had been filled with hatred for my children, with a lust for vengeance and a grasping love of money. What was worse than that was that I had refused to look beyond the tangle of vile snakes. I had treasured their knotted hideousness as though it had been the central reality of my being—as though the beating of the life blood in my veins had been the pulse of all those swarming reptiles. Not content with knowing, through half a century, only of myself what was not truly me at all, I had carried the same ignorance into my dealing with others. That was the discovery I ought to have made when I was thirty or forty…. But now I am an old man. The movement of my heart is too sluggish. I am watching the last autumn of my life as it puts the vines to sleep and stupefies them with its fumes and sunlight. Those whom I should have loved are dead, and dead, too, those whom I could have loved. I have neither the time now, nor the strength, to embark upon a voyage of exploration with the object of finding the reality of others.” (175-176)
How can a heart of stone be changed into a heart of flesh? Only by the loving might of the God of all grace.
“I doubt whether, even in my youth, I could have broken the spell. Some especial strength was needed, I said to myself. Yes, but what strength? The aid of some person, of someone in whom we might all have been reunited, of someone who would, in the eyes of my family, have guaranteed the victory that I had won over myself, of someone who would stand my witness, who might relieve me of my hideous burden, and bear it on his own shoulders…. Even the genuinely good cannot, unaided, learn to love. To penetrate beyond the absurdities, the vices, and, above all, the stupidities of human creatures, one must possess the secret of a love that the world has now forgotten. Until that secret shall have been rediscovered, all betterment in conditions of life will be in vain. I have been a monster of solitude and indifference. Still, I had a feeling, an obscure certainty, that what was needed was the power to reach the world through the medium of the heart. Him whom I seek can alone achieve that victory, and He must needs be the heart of all hearts, the burning center of all love.” (179-181)
17. Time’s Echo / Jeremy Eichler
I’m unsure if I’ll ever get over this heartrending book. It’s the best non-fiction writing I’ve read in years. The author is a music historian but he writes like a poet. The subtitle captures the substance of the book: “The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance.” Eichler explains:
“From Hiroshima, to Nanjing, to Pearl Harbor, to the killing fields of the eastern front, the Second World War was a global catastrophe—and a tear in the fabric of humanity. Somewhere near the center of this darkness was the Holocaust itself, an event that continues to haunt Western society’s historical memory just as experiences of trauma may haunt individual memory. It has been likened to an earthquake that shattered all the instruments designed to record it. One of those instruments was art, and in the postwar years it lay shattered too… The role of music in particular as an unconscious chronicle—as a witness to history and as a carrier of memory for a post-Holocaust world—is the subject of this book.” (6-7)
Eichler examines four towering twentieth-century composers (Arnold Schoenberg, Richard Strauss, Benjamin Britten, and Dmitri Shostakovich) and their respective pieces (Schoenberg’s Survivor from Warsaw, Strauss’s Metamorphosen, Shostakovich’s “Babi Yar” Symphony, and Britten’s War Requiem) with a particular aim:
“Their histories are linked to some of the century’s darkest moments of war, genocide, exile, and cultural destruction. But their prehistories, which this book will explore, open onto worlds of possibility, fantasies of emancipation, genealogies of hope. This book seeks to reinscribe all of these musical works with some of the histories, lives, and landscapes they are capable of illuminating. My hope is that these stories—moments drawn from the cultural history and memory of music—will then become part of what we come to hear in the works themselves. In this sense, music can preserve for the future an extraordinary gateway to the past.” (8)
Eichler’s project is an urgent one:
“More than seventy-five years after the end of the war, the last generation that lived through the era directly and remains capable of telling its own stories is rapidly disappearing. Soon our contact with those works of art that outlived their times will be among the few ways left to encounter this increasingly distant past, to grapple with its legacies, to find new ways of living with its ghosts. In this context, these musical works may be seen as vital repositories of cultural memory, objects in which the living past still resides. They become, borrowing an image from the French historian Pierre Nora, ‘like shells on the shore when the sea of living memory has receded.’ Ultimately, it is my hope that this present collection of shells and sounds and stories can gesture toward new ways of knowing the past, new ways of hearing history. This book is also implicitly an argument for what I call deep listening—that is, listening with an understanding of music as time’s echo.” (15-16)
Eichler serves his readers by warning us afresh that those who fail to hear time’s echo from the past are in danger of repeating it in the present:
“The generation that experienced the catastrophes at the heart of the twentieth century continues fading away, taking with them a living link to the past. But we remain in possession of other means of developing the negatives, of burning through the frozen layers, of turning information into knowledge. Art, as Proust tried to convey, allows us to live with history’s ghosts, to live with the presence of the past, and every art form does this differently. When it comes to attaining a genuine felt contact with these multiple pasts, music indeed possesses a special relationship to memory. Through a performer’s rendering of notes set down on a page decades or centuries ago, we listen to moments of lost time, summoning from the ether glimmers of what another era has written, heard, dreamed, hoped, and mourned. The music may also recall visions of a more fair and just world that remain no less vital today for having not yet come to pass. I have attempted here to capture some of the myriad ways in which music carries forward the past, the still-glowing embers of possibility, the buried visions of alternative futures.” (289-290)
There are beauties here which pierce like swords. This is a book that will break your heart. I cannot commend it more highly.
NOTE: Unless you are a classical music expert, I highly recommend listening to the author’s enriching audio guide while reading the book.
18. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy / John Mearsheimer
When family and friends came to visit us while we were living on Capitol Hill they’d often want “to go see our government.” But instead of walking a few blocks to the Capitol, or heading over to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I had half a cynical mind to take them on a stroll down K Street. (NOTE: What Wall Street is for finance, K Street is for lobbying and special interest groups seeking to influence the federal government.) The two authors of this book— University of Chicago political science professor John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt, former academic dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government— describe a particularly influential lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel:
“The lobby is not a single, unified movement with a central leadership, and it is certainly not a cabal or conspiracy that ‘controls’ U.S. foreign policy. It is simply a powerful interest group, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, whose acknowledged purpose is to press Israel’s case within the United States and influence American foreign policy in ways that its members believe will benefit the Jewish state. The various groups that make up the lobby do not agree on every issue, although they share the desire to promote a special relationship between the United States and Israel. Like the efforts of other ethnic lobbies and interest groups, the activities of the Israel lobby’s various elements are legitimate forms of democratic political participation, and they are for the most part consistent with America’s long tradition of interest group activity. Because the Israel lobby has gradually become one of the most powerful interest groups in the United States, candidates for high office pay close attention to its wishes. The individuals and groups in the United States that make up the lobby care deeply about Israel, and they do not want American politicians to criticize it, even when criticism might be warranted and might even be in Israel’s own interest. Instead, these groups want U.S. leaders to treat Israel as if it were the fifty-first state.” (5-6)
In the book’s introduction, the authors describe why discussing this sensitive topic is fraught with danger and breeds opportunities for misunderstanding, especially in light of the reality of the vile specter of anti-Semitism:
“An examination of Israel’s policies and the efforts of its American supporters does not imply an anti-Israel bias, just as an examination of the political activities of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) does not imply bias against older citizens. We are not challenging Israel’s right to exist or questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish state. There are those who maintain that Israel should never have been created, or who want to see Israel transformed from a Jewish state into a binational democracy. We do not. On the contrary, we believe the history of the Jewish people and the norm of national self-determination provide ample justification for a Jewish state. We think the United States should stand willing to come to Israel’s assistance if its survival were in jeopardy.” (11-12)
When America’s generous and unconditional support for Israel is questioned, a firestorm usually erupts, as evidenced when the working paper version of this book was published in March 2006. (The authors responded to their many critics here). I am not persuaded by many of the arguments in this book. For example, I found that their section on the Iraq War (ch. 8) woefully failed to prove their thesis. I often found myself wondering if their real focus of critique was not the “Israel Lobby,” but rather hawkish war-mongering neocons instead. But Mearsheimer and Walt do highlight several historical examples of how America’s unconditional support of Israel was not in U.S. national interest and was, in fact, harmful to Israel’s long-term interests as well. Other special interest groups, like the military industrial complex, have been critically questioned for decades. I don’t think this is a bad thing. As Bertrand Russell once said, “In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.”
19. The Achilles Trap / Steve Coll
It’s been 21 long years since the US invaded Iraq in March 2003. This comprehensive accounting by a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and academic lays the blame for this unnecessary war on a toxic cocktail consisting of catastrophic US intelligence failures, Saddam Hussein’s secretive and highly compartmentalized regime, and delusional unforced errors spanning four presidential administrations beginning with Ronald Reagan. Coll is an intrepid investigator. His book is based on more than 100 interviews with several individuals who had first-hand involvement in the invasion as well as transcripts of tape recordings from Saddam’s regime. Coll concludes that while the Bush administration did not intentionally mislead the American public, it did exaggerate available evidence about Iraqi WMD and Baghdad’s ties to al-Qa‘ida, and engaged in “unabashed fearmongering.” (449) One can only hope that Coll’s tragic history of the origins of the Iraq war serves as a cautionary tale to those in positions of power today, especially those who, like the seemingly invincible Achilles, share the fatal flaw of hubris. Unfortunately, the consoling words of Achilles to the grieving mother of his friend have echoed throughout this land as well as in the Middle East for two decades:
“Now you too will have measureless grief, you for the death of your son, whom you never again will welcome home.” (The Iliad, 18.88-89)
So, if you want to know what happened and especially what went wrong in Afghanistan read Coll’s Ghost Wars and Directorate S. And if you want to know what happened and especially what went wrong in Iraq read Coll’s The Achilles Trap. And continue to pray for the people of Iraq.
20. Lake of Darkness / Adam Roberts
Nothing can escape a black hole. They are the deepest mineshafts in the universe. Gravity acts as a one-way street, such that nothing can return, no data can come back up across the event horizon into our universe. So, why is it that travelers aboard the Sα Niro and the Sβ Oubliette approach a massive black hole, “QV Tel,” claim to hear a voice? An impossible voice. An alien voice. A persuasive voice. A voice urging them to kill. This is the setup for Lake of Darkness, a fiendishly clever banger of a hard sci-fi story penned by the under-appreciated Adam Roberts. It’s a wild read, a novella-version of Event Horizon on steroids, full of speculative black hole physics, philosophy, and here’s the kicker: Christianity is central to the plot.
Roberts admits the starting point for his novel was the black hole information paradox. If black holes “eventually evaporate through Hawking radiation then all the information they have captured will simply disappear. But such a hypothesis violates the idea of information conservation.” (305) In other words, is the information in black holes truly lost or could it be re-emitted? Could the information serve as fuel for an intelligent entity within the black hole itself? If so, what being could exist inside a black hole? What creature could possibly survive the immense gravitational shear and pressure of that place? The novel’s title is a clue to solving that riddle, an allusion to a line in Lear:
“Frateretto calls me and tells me Nero is an angler in the lake of darkness. Pray, innocent, and beware the foul fiend.” (King Lear, 3.6.6)
Frateretto is the name of a devil, and the Nero reference points back to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, where the Roman Emperor is found fishing in Hell. How is this significant for the story? Well, the entity trapped inside QV Tel and communicating with murderous intent calls himself Mr. Modo, but he’s better known as The Gentleman. He goes by many names. But he says that he is definitely NOT the Devil. (SPOILER ALERT: He is, in fact, definitely the Devil.)
“For the actual existence of the devil entails the actual existence of God, and not a God standing, as we have been speculating, at the end of some via negative outside material reality, but a God engaged in the cosmos – more than that, a jailer God, who has constructed prisons called black holes, all across holy territory, and populated them with criminals. Locking-up all those sinful devils, those fallen angels of monotheistic imagining, in oubliettes, inescapable prison cells, well-shafts deeper than even light can ascend. But this jailer God, flying from star to star with his keys, casting rebel angels into myriad pits and locking their heavy doors… what would that say about the nature of reality? How many black holes have been detected – forty trillion? So many devils! If each is a prison, in which is cached a different devil, perhaps the minor devils are distributed amongst the smaller-mass black holes, and the higher-ranking demons are locked up in the bigger black holes at the centres of spiral galaxies? Perhaps there is one super-massive black hole, somewhere, in which the actual prince of darkness is imprisoned!’” (140-141)
The Gentleman even claims to have met God:
“I have met Him, you know. He and I used to be close. Not any more, of course. He thrust me in this prison shaft – the one outside this room, this ship – and left me to my own devices long long ago now. Doesn’t visit. Not a Christmas card, nothing. But I know Him and have known Him more intimately, more directly, than any mortal. Aren’t you interested in what I can tell you of Him? Time is something into which we fall as we… slow… down. So here we are. We’re all in our various prisons. It’s just that mine is a little deeper than most. A little hotter. A prison whose locks are that bit harder to pick.” (245, 250)
Pray, innocent, and beware that foul fiend and avoid the lake of darkness.
21. You Like It Darker: Stories / Stephen King
Stephen King writes a lot of novels. Sixty-five at last count! But “Constant Readers” know that his 200+ short stories are not to be ignored. Without them, we’d never have The Shawshank Redemption or Stand By Me. Reading this latest collection was an absolute blast. “The Turbulence Expert” and “Rattlesnakes” are awesome but “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream” is worth the price of the book. Just remember to leave the lights on.
22. Comeback / Richard Stark
Confession is good for the soul. I confess my addiction to this noir crime series starring Parker, a professional super-thief. The twenty-four Parker novels all follow a four-part structure, with prose as orderly as a classical symphony, and most of them begin in medias res with a sentence that starts with the word “when.” For me and Parker, it was love at first line:
The Man With the Getaway Face (1963): “When the bandages came off, Parker looked in the mirror at a stranger.”
The Mourner (1963): “When the guy with the asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away.”
The Jugger (1965): “When the knock came at the door, Parker was just turning to the obituary page.”
The Seventh (1966): “When he didn’t get any answer the second time he knocked, Parker kicked the door in.”
Backflash (1998): “When the car stopped rolling, Parker kicked out the rest of the windshield and crawled through onto the wrinkled hood, Glock first.”
Firebreak (2001): “When the phone rang, Parker was in the garage, killing a man.”
Ask the Parrot (2006): “When the helicopter swept northward and lifted out of sight over the top of the hill, Parker stepped away from the tree he’d waited beside and continued his climb.”
In Comeback, Parker returns after a 25-year literary hiatus and robs at gunpoint a hypocritical prosperity gospel preacher who fleeces stadium-full crowds with sermons of false promises and the saccharine siren sounds of angelic-robed choirs:
“When the angel opened the door, Parker stepped first past the threshold into the darkness of the cinder block corridor beneath the stage. A hymn filtered discordantly through the rough walls; thousands of voices, raggedly together. The angel said, ‘I’m not sure about this…’ ‘We are,’ Parker told him.” (1)
What follows is 300 pages of total mayhem. But the message is clear. Not all criminals wear ski masks— some prefer to hide behind the wings of angels.
23. The Anxious Generation / Jonathan Haidt
This book was so extremely insightful and troubling that I apparently loaned it to someone. If you’re reading this and you’re finished with it, can you please return to me? Thanks! :)
24. The Extinction of Experience / Christine Rosen
Max Frisch once said that technology has “the knack of so arranging the world so that we need not experience it.” He said this in 1957! This devastating book laments the disappearance of experience due to living in a technologically-mediated world. Rosen isn’t anti-technology. But like many of us who are Gen-Xers, we vividly remember a childhood lived in the pre-digital era. What’s Rosen’s aim?
“This book is a modest effort to encourage us to cultivate and, in some cases, recover ways of thinking, knowing, and being in the world that we are losing or have lost through our embrace of mediating technologies.” (7)
I have so many pages of quotes to share but this post has already reached War and Peace-levels of wordcountage so here’s a sampling that I trust gives you the vibe:
“Today, many of us choose to live in a form of pseudo-reality governed by algorithmically-enabled individual experiences. Much of what passes for authentic experience today is vicarious and virtual.” (3-4)
“What kind of person is formed in an increasingly digitized, mediated, hyperconnected, surveilled, and algorithmically governed world? What do we gain and what do we lose when we no longer talk about the Human Condition, but rather the User Experience?” (5)
“Thanks to the now ubiquitous smartphone, we feel as if we can be anywhere. We can vicariously witness countless things and experience, not merely imagine, the lives of others. We immerse ourselves in sophisticated simulations and even engage in lengthy relationships with avatars. We can see street views of homes thousands of miles away and zoom in on the world’s greatest artistic masterpieces. How are these mediated ways of ‘being there’ changing our understanding of experience? For one thing, we now spend as much time consuming the experiences of others as we do having experiences of our own.” (13)
“What even counts as an “experience” today? Is it the physical act of going to a place, the act of digitally memorializing it, or some combination of both?” (16)
“More and more, we relate to our world through information about it rather than direct experience with it.” (17)
“The Delphic oracle’s guidance was “Know thyself.” Today, in the world of social networks, the oracle’s advice might be ‘Show thyself.’” (24)
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” French philosopher Simone Weil wrote. Attention to one another as embodied creatures is central to what makes us human—breathing the same air, sensing one another’s unspoken feelings, seeing one another’s faces, and being attuned to one another’s gestures—and to give attention to others we must spend time in their physical presence. Our technologies, as brilliant as they are, cannot satisfy all of those needs.” (53)
“We live lives of relentless self-documentation, but this has failed to produce an increase in self-awareness or a deepening of cultural memory. In fact, we now outsource our individual and collective memory to technology. Google Photos can create sophisticated montages from people’s vast collections of images. The story of your life, curated by Google, might not be the story you want to tell. Soon, even assuming we can win the battle against the deterioration of digital material known as bit rot, the only tangible memories that people who lived their lives online will leave behind will be owned by companies like Meta—a reminder that recording an experience is a much easier task than preserving it. Children growing up today won’t experience their memories as physical things in the way that earlier generations did. No photo albums or VHS cassettes; no letters. They will leave behind a more ephemeral inheritance—a digital mausoleum in the form of defunct Instagram posts and dormant TikTok accounts. Is there a place for memory in such a world? When the artifacts that preserve memory, from photographs to letters to print books, migrate to the digital ether, we gain new powers for searching and making connections (and, with AI-enabled techniques, new powers of creation). But we also lose something. We lose control over those artifacts if they are on platforms owned by large corporations like Meta or Google; we lose the tactile experience of holding in our hands something touched by an ancestor or made by another human being for us; we lose those many physical prompts of memory. We lose a sense of our fragility and limits and, as a result, an understanding of what it means to be an embodied human being.” (216-217)
My Final 12:
25. Remaking the World / Andrew Wilson
What a book! Wilson’s big idea is that “1776, more than any other year in the last millennium, is the year that made us who we are.” (7) He makes a compelling case that our society…
“…relative to others past and present, is WEIRDER: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic, Ex-Christian, and Romantic. Those seven features make us outliers. The vast majority of people in human history have not shared our views of work, family, government, religion, sex, identity, or morality, no matter how universal or self-evident we may think they are. We are the WEIRDER ones.” (8)
I love charts and this chart is a thumbnail sketch of the argument of the entire book:
I love the way the book ends:
“For all the ways in which 1776 remade the world, there is nothing new under the sun. That is not to say that we have no need of breakthrough, transformation, or revival. It is simply to say that when those things happen, as they surely will, they will not come under the sun from the One enthroned above it, who is committed to making all things new. The words of Augustus Toplady, written at the start of 1776, still hold true: ‘Providence, unerring providence, governs all events. And grace, unchangeable grace, is faithful to its purpose. May we live by faith in both.’” (289)
26. When the Sea Came Alive / Garrett Graff
In military terminology, “D-Day,” is the start of any major operation. But history remembers only one D-Day.
“June 6, 1944, is one of the most famous single days in all of human history. The official launch of Operation OVERLORD, the long-anticipated invasion of western Europe, it marks a feat of unprecedented human audacity, a mission more ambitious and complex than anything ever seen, before or since, and a key turning point in the fight for a cause among the most noble humans have ever fought. Though there have been other days over the course of the last century that have re-routed our collective historical trajectory, one could argue that none has had more of an impact than the day 160,000 troops stormed the beaches of Normandy. When we say “D-Day,” there’s no doubt what day we mean.” (xiii)
Graff collected over 5,000 personal stories, memoirs, and oral recordings from combatants and participants to paint a fuller portrait of D-Day, an oral history of a day unlike any other. You’ll find the stories of men whose names you already know: Dwight Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, and George Marshall. But far and away the most moving parts of this book for me are the words of unknown men whose courage changed the world.
Capt. Henry Seitzler, Army Air Forces, 6th Engineer Special Beach Brigade: “Pardon me if I stop every once in a while. These things are so very real. Even after all these years I can see it in my mind, just like it was happening right now.” (xxi)
T/5 Bayer Noen Ross, combat medic, 3rd Batallion, 16th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, writing in his diary, September 1, 1944: “I’m not the same fellow who went in the Army two years ago. I never thought one person could see this much horror in a lifetime. I feel like I’m 76 instead of 26.” (496)
Pvt. Waylen “Pete” Lamb, Headquarters Division, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne: “I don’t remember names too well, but sometimes when I’m alone with my memories, I can still see the faces of those wonderful guys, and I get a lump in my throat remembering how I was a part of their team.” (499)
Reading about that greatest of generations reminded me “that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” (785)
27. How to Read a Book / Andy Naselli
Dr. Naselli has written a helpful book on how to read books with four clear goals:
“As Ecclesiastes 10:10 says, “If the ax is dull, and one does not sharpen its edge, then one must exert more strength” (CSB). If your metaphorical ax is your reading skill, then this book is a whetstone to sharpen your ax. In this book I want to help you sharpen your ax by accomplishing four goals:
1. Inform. I aim to help you better understand reading.
2. Advise. I aim to give you detailed and practical advice. That’s what a ‘how-to book’ is supposed to do.
3. Motivate. I aim to inspire you to read better. That may involve reading more, reading less but in a more careful way, reading better books, reading a more diverse selection of books, reading with a better mindset, or reading in a more skillful way.
4. Encourage. I aim to help you become a more joyful, enthusiastic, and confident reader. I don’t want to discourage or dishearten you. I don’t expect a busy mom to read like a research professor. I don’t expect a full-time student to read for pleasure way beyond what demanding classes require.
Rather than make you feel false guilt, I want to encourage you to think through how you can become a better reader as you faithfully and fruitfully do what God has called you to do at this stage in your life. And I want to inspire you to read for life.” (12-13)
Take up and read!
28. Lord Jesus Christ / Daniel Treier
No offense, but this is a dense book. The prose is not quite to Beale-levels of opaqueness, but let’s just say that Treier’s turgidness reached such hyperventilated levels that it did make me open to having a conversation. Nevertheless, I did find some wonderfully rich theological nuggets in this volume. My favorite chapter was on Isaiah 7:14 and Treier helped me to treasure Immanuel, God with us. Here’s a sketch of the other chapters:
29. The Abiding Presence / Hugh Martin
Some books cover lots of things and only scratch the surface. Other books, like this one, model how to go deep down and mine much fine gold from the deepest of truths. The Abiding Presence is a devotional exposition of one verse of Scripture: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) What does it mean for the risen Lord Jesus to be with His people always? Martin’s meditative answer will help you read the Gospels all the while keeping your eyes (and your heart) fixed upon the Friend of Sinners.
“Let me by faith realize that He of whom the biography testifies is Himself actually with me while I peruse it. Let me, in and with the biography, possess and enjoy the presence of Jesus, and then the biography is no dead history. Instead, we have the very Christ Himself– the living Savior– still speaking to us as never man spoke, still going about doing good.” (18)
“Let me hear this Savior, present with me, saying to Peter and James and John, ‘What I say to you I say to all,’ so that I am entitled to hear it as said to me. Let the ever-present Christ make His presence with me definite, intelligible, and most distinct, by proffering to me– as still full of life, of grace, and of glory– the very words He uttered and the works He did in the days of His flesh. His own blessed voice speaks with me in lively oracles. His own blessed face looks forth upon me from the now living picture of His biography. The Lord Himself is with me– present with me– to cleanse my leprosy, to cure my blindness, to save me in the storm, to rebuke me when my vigilance slumbers, to reprove me with His silent glance if I deny Him, to restore me in love when I repent, restoring to me, also, the responsibility and privilege of feeding His lambs and sheep.” (20)
30. Calvin on the Christian Life / Michael Horton
What kind of spiritual life fuels a man to write something like this?
“We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in Christ. We should therefore take care not to derive the least portion of it anywhere else. If we seek salvation, we are taught by the very name of Jesus that it is ‘of Him.’ If we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in His anointing. If we seek strength, it lies in His dominion; if purity, in His conception; if gentleness, it appears in His birth. For by His birth He was made like us in all respects that He might learn to feel our pain. If we seek redemption, it lies in His passion; if acquittal, in His condemnation; if remission of the curse, in His cross; if satisfaction, in His sacrifice; if purification, in His blood; if reconciliation, in His descent into Hades; if mortification of the flesh, in His tomb; if newness of life, in His resurrection; if immortality, in the same; if inheritance of the Heavenly Kingdom, in His entrance into heaven; if protection, if security, if abundant supply of all blessings, in His Kingdom; if untroubled expectation of judgment, in the power given to Him to judge. In short, since rich store of every kind of good abounds in Him, let us drink our fill from this fountain, and from no other.” (Institutes, 2.16.19)
Read this exceptional book by Dr. Horton to find out. And along the way, you’ll be reminded afresh that “the Christian life is a struggle, but it is also a lavish banquet with a generous Father, a faithful elder Brother, and an active and indwelling Holy Spirit who binds us to Christ and therefore to each other.” (108)
31. The Honourable Schoolboy / John le Carré
Book two of the “Karla” spy trilogy didn’t disappoint. Like Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, it’s a very slow burn. But it’s John le Carré, so you know what to expect. You get classic Cold-War espionage and an eloquent omniscient narrator. You get George Smiley, the bespeckled and tweeded anti-James Bond intelligence officer in all his glory– a cerebral man with the unenviable task of rebuilding the Circus, a troubled man of infinite compassion, a calculating man of single-minded ruthlessness with one goal: the destruction of his Russian counterpart, the mysterious Karla of Moscow Centre. Best of all, along the way, you get sentences as smooth as silk:
“It was a smile definitely worth working for; her bony little face lit up like an urchin’s through the grime.” (36)
“The music and the hammering stopped, but a din of church bells had started– he supposed for evensong. The valley was never quiet, but the bells sounded heavier because of the dew.” (38)
“At night they slept together and it was worse than being alone.” (39)
“Smiley had actually buried him, they said; for the very secret, like the very rich, have a tendency to die unmourned.” (44)
“Peter Guillam, who was at Smiley’s shoulder when he took the call, swore later that Smiley showed no particular reaction; and Guillam knew him well. Nevertheless, ten minutes later, unobserved by anybody, he was gone, and his voluminous mackintosh was missing from its peg. He returned after dawn, drenched to the skin, still carrying the mackintosh over his arm. Having changed, he returned to his desk, but when Guillam, unbidden, tiptoed in to him with tea, he found his master, to his embarrassment, sitting rigidly before an old volume of German poetry, fists clenched either side of it, while he silently wept.” (50)
“There were those who seriously believed– inside the Circus, as well as out– that they had heard the last beat of the secret English heart.” (51)
“Connie’s mind, said Control once, in a kind of despair, was like the back of one enormous envelop.” (58)
“We’ve got him, George, darling,” Connie kept saying under her breath. “Sure as boots we’ve got the beastly toad.” (62)
“A desk is a dangerous place from which to watch the world.” (64)
“You know how it is at times like this. Clutching at straws, listening to the wind.” (66)
“In Jerry, despite his preoccupation, the old Adam briefly stirred.” (117)
“Relax, he thought. You’re thinking too much. Don’t think. Do. In the beginning was the deed. Who had said that to him once? Old George, quoting Goethe. Coming from him, of all people!” (119)
“A pall of tobacco smoke hung like a rain cloud across the room and there was the usual stink of rank tea from the samovar.” (136)
“Brown Italian shoes, white shirt, open neck. No props, not even binoculars: but a marvelous half-million-dollar smile, ear to ear, partly gold, that seemed to relish everyone’s good fortune as well as his own.” (155)
“If you buy people,” old Sambo used to say, “buy them thoroughly.” (155)
“Life’s byways, I always maintain, are even stranger than life’s highways.” (209)
“But we progress, Your Graces. Inexorably we progress. Albeit at the blind man’s speed, as we tap-tap along in the dark.” (214)
“Talking of others, old men talk about themselves, studying their image in vanished mirrors.” (243)
“He tugged off his drenched jacket and opened his shirt to the waist, but still the air wouldn’t cool him and he wondered again whether he had a fever and whether, like last night in Bangkok, he would wake up in his bedroom crouching in the darkness waiting to brain someone with a table-lamp. The moon appeared, lapped by the foam of the rain clouds. By its light his hotel resembled a locked fortress. He reached the garden wall and followed it leftwards along the trees until it turned again. He threw his jacket over the wall and with difficulty climbed after it. He crossed the lawn to the steps, pushed open the door to the Lobby, and stepped back with a surge of disgust. The lobby was in pitch blackness except for a single moonbeam, which shone like a spotlight on a huge luminous chrysalis spun around the naked brown larva of a human body. It was the night watchman in his hammock, asleep under a mosquito net.” (355)
“The plane was two-thirds empty, and the bullet-holes in the wings wept dew like undressed wounds.” (358)
“His master plan was already dead, as his master plans usually were.” (367)
Next stop: Smiley’s People.
32. Red Sky Mourning / Jack Carr
There’s a quite vibe change between le Carré and Carr. This firecracker of a book is the opposite of a slow burn. It’s a ripping good yarn, with non-stop action just like the entire Terminal List series. Navy SEAL sniper James Reece and his motley crew of friends once again battle foes both foreign and domestic. When will the bad guys learn to simply leave Reece alone?
“I say all that because had you left me alone, I wouldn’t even be here. But you didn’t. You hurt someone I care about so now I’m invested. You know what comes next as part of this little experiment.” (335)
33. How to Study the Bible’s Use of the Bible / Schnittjer & Harmon
This book is like a hermeneutical workshop on inter-biblical exegesis led by our brother Moses. Let’s let the authors explain what I mean:
“The authors of the New Testament who exegete Scripture work along an already ancient and well-worn path, namely, the exegesis of Scripture within the Old Testament. This exegesis– the Old Testament’s use of the Old Testament– provides a model and a guide for the use of Scripture in the New Testament… The authors of the New Testament did not invent a new hermeneutic. They followed the well-worn interpretive path used by prophets, psalmists, narrators, visionaries, and sages of Israel’s Scriptures. These Old Testament authors did not invent this way of interpretation either. They interpret Torah in the same ways Torah interprets Torah.” (xx, xxiv)
In other words, the Bible is full of itself. And that’s a beautiful thing.
34. 3 Shades of Blue / James Kaplan
The only great difficulty with the Jazz band is that you never know what it is going to do next, but you can always tell what those who hear it are going to do— they’re going to shake a leg. In 3 Shades of Blue, Kaplan tells the cool story of jazz through the lens of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans, and how these legends came together to create the most iconic jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue.
“Jazz today, when it isn’t utterly ignored, is widely disliked for different reasons: because it is old, or anodyne, or hard to understand. Jazz is passé. Jazz is niche. Jazz is the smooth soundtrack to polite brunches in restaurants with potted ferns and bananas Foster and clever young servers. Or it is just loudly squeaking and honking saxophones—noise. I speak of jazz as an awesome thing. An imperative, an empire. As America’s only native art form, one that boiled forth from a gumbo of ethnic musics in late-nineteenth-century New Orleans and coursed up rivers and railroads and blue highways to Oklahoma City and Kansas City and St. Louis and Chicago and New York City, irresistibly, as young men and women, Black then (very quickly) white, became transfixed by its power and seized on it as an unprecedented form of artistic expression.” (7)
35. Classical English Rhetoric / Ward Farnsworth
Epizeuxis, epimone, anaphora, epistrophe, symploce, polyptoton, isocolon, anastrophe, polysyndeton, asyndeton, præteritio, aposiopesis, metanoia, hypophora, prolepsis are not deadly diseases one contracts in the Amazon rain forest. They are all various figures of speech that help you persuade an audience. And there’s no better guide to the English language than Ward Farnsworth. All of his books are simply delicious and his book’s covers all belong in the Louvre:
36. 150 Most Famous Poems / Poetry House
I read some wonderful works of poetry this year including a bunch of translation work by Heaney and a lovely collection by Popa, but, to my surprise, my favorite was this simple collection of favorites. I kept company with them all year.
“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”
(William Shakespeare, Sonnet 29)
I love you, sweet Allison. On all the kings of earth, with pity I look down.
Now may the God of peace grant you perfect peace, and living hope, and glorious grace, and steadfast love with faith, through Jesus Christ our Lord, until the day breaks and the shadows flee away.
As always, happy reading and Happy New Year!
–Nick Roark
ps. I can’t help myself. Here are twelve more books that I’m planning to devour in 2025 DV. Let me know what you’ve enjoyed this year and what you’re looking forward to reading in the comments.
My Future 12:
- From Eden to Egypt: A Guided Tour of Genesis / Alex Duke
- Things Unseen / Sinclair Ferguson
- Everything is Never Enough / Bobby Jamieson
- The Steadfast Love of the Lord / Sam Storms
- In These Last Days / Graeme Goldsworthy
- On Classical Trinitarianism / Ed. Matthew Barrett
- Habakkuk (ITC) / Steven Duby
- Songs of the Son / Daniel Stevens
- Wind and Truth / Brandon Sanderson
- Never Flinch / Stephen King
- The Barn / Wright Thompson
- Mark Twain / Ron Chernow
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