My 2011 Book List

I spent most of 2011 reading, but you wouldn’t know it from my book list. Six months of the year I read short entries for a devotional book—640 of them—written by Compassion International staff from around the world. Here are quick reviews of the books I managed to finish the rest of the year:

My older kids and I finished the fourth and fifth Harry Potter books, The Goblet of Fire and The Order of the Phoenix. Five down, two to go, and my kids are still bribing me with snacks and neck massages so I’ll keep reading to them. Also finished the last three books of the Narnia series with the older kids and can’t wait to start again at the beginning with the younger ones in a year or two. Though I swore my allegiance to The Magician’s Nephew, it doesn’t get any better than The Last Battle’s description of the afterlife. I will read it again and again. I also started Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, but it’s so mind-boggling that I can only read about a page at a time. Was there ever anyone more brilliant than C.S. Lewis? I think not.

Although if anyone could come close to filling Lewis’s creative-genius shoes (at least in the Christian arena), I vote for Eugene Peterson. I know I’m biased because he published The Message with The Navigators, but listen to this, from A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, which I finally read this year:

“Every day I put love on the line. There is nothing I am less good at than love. I am far better in competition than in love. I am far better at responding to my instincts and ambitions to get ahead and make my mark than I am at figuring out how to love another. I am schooled and trained in acquisitive skills, in getting my own way. And yet I decide, every day, to set aside what I can do best and attempt what I do very clumsily—open myself to the frustrations and failures of loving, daring to believe that failing in love is better than succeeding in pride.”

That one’s a must-read, along with another book I should’ve read a long time ago, unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons. The chapter on homosexuality is worth the price of the book. I’ll go ahead and call this one my favorite of the year.

But also in contention were Nicholas Carr’s two books, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains and The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. Though the former has gotten loads of press (deservedly), I actually found The Big Switch even more fascinating. If you’ve ever wondered if the internet is held together with nothing more than paperclips and chewing gum, this is the book for you.

On the recommendation of Carr, I read The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age. Written in 1994, this book was not so much out-of-date as it was eerie at predicting the future technology to come and how it would affect our reading. (And no, I don’t have a Kindle.)

So I’ll now read anything Nicholas Carr writes, just as I’m committed to anything Francis Chan writes. This year he wrote on hell. Umm, OK. Erasing Hell was definitely not the feel-good book of the year, but it did challenge me deeply in my view of God. And if Francis writes a book on geology, I’m gonna buy it. I just am.

Predictably enough, I added some new parenting books to my arsenal:

• Spiritual Parenting by Michelle Anthony (which equipped me with the go-to question, “What needs to be done here?”),

• Five Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter by Vicki Courtney,

• Six Ways to Keep the ‘Little’ in Your Girl by Dannah Gresh, and

• Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids by Kara Powell and Chap Clark.

All were worth reading, though none was as helpful as Sticky Faith. I highly recommend this one to parents who are looking for practical ways to pass down lasting faith to their children. More on this in future blog posts.

And finally, in the “just-for-fun” category, I picked up Heaven Is for Real by Todd Burpo, not at all intending to read it, but I finished it in one night. I’m a believer. And last, and least, actually, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy was mildly interesting in places, but really not worth the time it took to get from the inter-library loan. More than anything, it was eye-opening to see how much things have changed in 50 years.

On my list for 2012:

The Hunger Games (We’ll see if I make it through the whole series)

The Search for Significance

Unbroken

More C.S. Lewis

More The History of the Ancient World (Will I ever find out why Rome fell?!)