As most of those who know me know, I find much delight in good books. Each year, I post my reading list along with those I personally enjoyed or was challenged by the most. This year, in addition to reading some outstanding books, I was also able to write two more of my own – both being published by The Good Book Company: ‘Truly, Truly, I Say to You’ releasing January 2023 and ‘Faithfully Present: Embracing the Limits of Where and When God Has You’ releasing September 2023 (that is, assuming I actually finish it by my Dec 31st deadline…! 😬)
That said, here are my Top 10 Non-Fiction and Top 10 Novels from 2022, along with a full reading list from this past year below.
TOP 10 NON-FICTION BOOKS
- Everything Sad is Untrue (Daniel Nayeri) I can’t explain how much I enjoyed this book. It is a biographical story told with stories, history, philosophy, insights, and humour. Nayeri – a devastatingly gifted writer – recounts what it was like moving to the Midwestern USA during his middle school years as a refugee from Iran. While I wouldn’t dream of comparing my life to the hardships that refugees like Daniel have faced, I resonated with his stories of being the poor kid, with an accent, in a foreign country, learning to navigate the alien world of affluent American middle-school and high-school kids. This book did more than just make me feel; it made sift through forgotten memories. Stories and emotions and conversations and prayers that I hadn’t considered in over 25 years. Not just because of where I could relate at a personal level to his story, but because Nayeri writes in such a way that you are forced to recall your own stories that have shaped you. Hands down one of the best books I’ve ever come across.
- Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (Dane Ortlund) A follow-up of sorts to his wonderful book, “Gentle and Lowly” that shows us what the Christian life looks like by exploring the question, “How do Christians grow?” Dane is one of my favourite writers alive right now; I highly recommend this book.
- You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (Alan Noble)
- Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Alex Soojung-Kim Pang)
- A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders (Mark Sayers)
- On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Stephen King)
- The Sabbath (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
- The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting up a Generation for Failure (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt)
- The Anglo-Saxons: A History of the Beginnings of England (Marc Morris)
- Will (Will Smith and Mark Manson)
Honourable Mention: Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Carl Trueman)
Honourable Mention: The World Next Door: A Short Guide to the Christian Faith (Peter Orr & Rory Shiner)
TOP 10 NOVELS
- Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy). I officially dove into Leo Tolstoy this year – the very gifted and verbose Russian – and was not disappointed. Tolstoy has brilliant insights into the complexity of human beings. His ability to develop characters who you can love, loathe, empathise with, and see yourself in, is genuinely exceptional. Like all Russian novelists, you’ve got to work to keep up with the huge cast of characters and buckle in for a whole lot of words (350,000+ for Anna Karenina; 587,000+ for War & Peace), but the reward is well-worth the effort.
- Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan) A short, stunning Christmas story that really pulled the heart-strings in the right way. Really beautiful.
- Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
- Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
- Persuasion (Jane Austen)
- War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
- HMS Ulysses (Alistair Maclean)
- The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro)
- Gathering Clouds – 2 Volumes (F.W Farrar)
- The Silence (Shūsaku Endō)
Honourable Mention: The Maid (Nita Prose)
Honourable Mention: The Mistborn Saga – 7 volumes (Brandon Sanderson)
See below for full reading list.
Novels
War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)
The Lost Metal (Mistborn, #7) (Sanderson, Brandon)
*The Arabian Nights (Andrew Lang)
Mistborn: Secret History (Brandon Sanderson)
The Bands of Mourning (Mistborn, #6) (Brandon Sanderson)
Shadows of Self (Mistborn, #5) (Brandon Sanderson)
The Alloy of Law (Mistborn, #4) (Brandon Sanderson)
The Winners (Beartown, #3) (Fredrik Backman)
Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan)
*Life and Fate (Vasily Grossman)
Once There Were Wolves (Charlotte McConaghy)
The Hero of Ages (Mistborn, #3) (Brandon Sanderson)
The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2) (Brandon Sanderson)
The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1) (Brandon Sanderson)
The Monster in the Hollows (The Wingfeather Saga, #3) (Andrew Peterson)
The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro)
Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina (Robert Graves)
Gathering Clouds (Volume 2); A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom (Frederic W. Farrar)
Gathering Clouds (Volume 1); A Tale of the Days of St. Chrysostom (Frederic W. Farrar)
*North! or Be Eaten (The Wingfeather Saga, #2) (Andrew Peterson)
The Maid (Nita Prose)
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
Foundation (Foundation, #1) (Isaac Asimov)
*The Return of the King (The Lord of the Rings, #3) (J.R.R Tolkien)
*The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2) (J.R.R Tolkien)
*The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1) (J.R.R Tolkien)
*Perelandra (The Space Trilogy, #2) (C.S Lewis)
Lonesome Dove (Larry McMurtry)
Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen)
I, Claudius (Robert Graves)
Child of God (Cormac McCarthy)
Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)
Silence (Shūsaku Endō)
*The Eagle of the Ninth (Rosemary Sutcliff)
*On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness (The Wingfeather Saga, #1) (Andrew Peterson)
Pembrick’s Creaturepedia (Andrew Peterson)
Normal People (Sally Rooney)
Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy)
HMS Ulysses (Alistair MacLean)
Non-Fiction
*Unwrapping the Greatest Gift: A Family Celebration of Christmas (Ann Voskamp)
*On Death (Timothy Keller)
Gifts of Grace: 25 Advent Devotions (Jared C. Wilson)
The Ultimate Christmas Wishlist: What If You Could Get What You’re Really Hoping For? (Rico Tice)
The Power of Place: Choosing Stability in a Rootless Age (Daniel Grothe)
*Truth on Fire: Gazing at God Until Your Heart Sings (Adam Ramsey)
Redeeming Memory: How God Transforms Memories from a Heavy Burden to a Blessed Hope (Matt Rehrer)
Truly, Truly, I Say to You: Meditations on the Words of Jesus from the Gospel of John (Adam Ramsey)
You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (Alan O. Noble)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong)
The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath (Mark Buchanan)
The Sabbath (Abraham Joshua Heschel)
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Tom Holland)
Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Carl R. Trueman)
The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality (Glen Scrivener)
Three Mile an Hour God (Kosuke Koyama)
The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century (Thomas Merton)
Belong: Loving Your Church by Reflecting Christ to One Another (Barnabas Piper)
The Gospel of John: Volume 3: Those Who Received Him, John 9-12 (James Montgomery Boice)
The Emotional Life of Our Lord (B.B Warfield)
*The Intentional Father: A Practical Guide to Raise Sons of Courage and Character (Jon Tyson)
Becoming You: Becoming the person God made you to be (Peter Sondergeld)
The Unwavering Pastor: Leading the Church with Grace in Divisive Times (Jonathan Dodson)
The Democratization of American Christianity (Nathan O. Hatch)
Hitler and Stalin: The Tyrants and the Second World War (Laurence Rees)
Reformed Resurgence: The New Calvinist Movement and the Battle Over American Evangelicalism (Brad Vermurlen)
Latin for Children, Primer C (Aaron Larsen)
Men and Women in the Church: A Short, Biblical, Practical Introduction (Kevin DeYoung)
A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (Edwin Friedman)
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (Stanley McChrystal)
Everything Sad Is Untrue (Daniel Nayeri)
Barbarians to Bureaucrats: Corporate Life Cycle Strategies (Lawrence M. Miller)
*Latin for Children Primer B; Classical or Ecclesiastical Pronunciation (Aaron Larsen)
You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News (Kelly Kapic)
The 5am Club (Robin S. Sharma)
The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage (Mel Robbins)
The Art of War (Sun Tzu)
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Jordan B. Peterson)
The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music (Dave Grohl)
Biblical Spirituality (Christopher W. Morgan)
Footprints of the Italian Reformers (John Stoughton)
*The Pursuit of God: The Human Thirst for the Divine (A.W Tozer)
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt)
Moving In The Spirit (Phil Pringle)
A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders (Mark Sayers)
*Latin for Children, Primer A (Aaron Larsen)
*The Imitation of Christ (Thomas à Kempis)
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Stephen King)
WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of (Ann Voskamp)
Kingdom Come: The Amillennial Alternative (Sam Storms)
*Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Neil Postman)
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones (James Clear)
Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics (Tim Marshall)
The Anglo-Saxons A History of the Beginnings of England: 400–1066 (Marc Morris)
Compassionate Leadership: How to Do Hard Things in a Human Way (Rasmus Hougaard)
Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less (Alex Soojung-Kim Pang)
Exposition of the Gospel of John: Vol. 3 (Arthur W. Pink)
Exposition of the Gospel of John: Vol. 2 (Arthur W. Pink)
Exposition of the Gospel of John: Vol. 1 (Arthur W. Pink)
Expositions Of Holy Scripture St. John Chapters I To Xiv (Volume 10) (Alexander MacLaren)
Spurgeon’s Sermons – Vol. XIII: The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (Charles Spurgeon)
John: That You May Believe (R. Kent Hughes)
The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Frederick Dale Bruner)
Exalting Jesus in John (Matt Carter)
On the Road (Jack Kerouac)
The World Next Door (Peter Orr & Rory Shiner)
Will (Will Smith and Mark Manson)
Don’t Waste Your Life (John Piper)
Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media (Chris Martin)
*The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century: Including The Church Before the Watching World (Francis Schaeffer)
*Escape from Reason: A Penetrating Analysis of Trends in Modern Thought (Francis Schaeffer)
Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian: A Kingdom Corrective to the Evangelical Gender Debate (Michelle Lee-Barnewall)
The Book Your Pastor Wishes You Would Read: But Is Too Embarrassed to Ask (Christopher Ash)
The Gospel of John: Volume 1: The Coming of the Light, John 1-4 (James Montgomery Boice)
The Death Of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (Thomas M. Nichols)
Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony (Stanley Hauerwas)
Destroyer of the Gods: Early Christian Distinctiveness in the Roman World (Larry Hurtado)
*Victory in the Wilderness: Understanding God’s Season of Preparation (John Bevere)
Why Can’t We Be Friends?: Avoidance Is Not Purity (Aimee Byrd)
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Beth Allison Barr)
*The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Henri Nouwen)
Persuasion (Jane Austen)
Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation (Kristen Kobes Du Mez)
Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose (Aimee Byrd)
Grace, Grit & Gumption: Spirtual Revival in South Wales (Geraint Fielder)
Read This First- A simple guide to getting the most from the Bible (Gary Millar)
Bullies and Saints: An Honest Look at the Good and Evil of Christian History (John Dickson)
The Barefoot Investor: The Only Money Guide You’ll Ever Need (Scott Pape)
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (Dane C. Ortlund)
Every Moment Holy (Douglas McKelvey)
(* indicates a re-read)
