Top Ten Reads of 2009

Around this time last year I spent some time reviewing the most interesting, engaging or challenging reads of 2008. What with moving to a new province, starting a new ministry role, uprooting, re-rooting, transplanting and all, there weren't nearly as many titles to choose from this year as last, but I thought I'd spend some time looking back over the best reads of 2009.

10. Straight Talk, Daniel Wackman et. al.
Though I tend to be sceptical of books that claim the power to revolutionize relationships through simple steps, this guide to assertive communication is actually quite helpful. Concepts like "understanding control talk," "using the awareness wheel," "making I statements," and "using active listening," are poignant and effective, and when I take the time to actually employ them in my communication, I often find myself speaking the truth in love.

9. Paradise Lost, John Milton

The first time I read Paradise Lost it was as a high school AP English student; the second as a University English Major; the third as a student in a Milton seminar; the fourth as a High School English teacher; the fifth this year as a student of theology. It's interesting to see how my experience of the poem has evolved over the years: from confusion to admiration to love to frustration. I still think it's a master-piece of English literature, but somehow it left me spiritually hollow this fifth time around.

8. John Wesley: A Biography, Stephen Tomkins

When I realized I was going to be a Methodist pastor, I figured I should start exploring the story of the movement's founder. What I liked about Tomkin's biography of Wesley is that he avoids empty hagiography like the plague. The sometimes overly-honest portrait he paints of Wesley is very human and dynamic and complex, though sometimes I felt like he might have given Wesley the benefit of the doubt a bit more often.

7. The Way To Heaven: The Gospel According to John Wesley, J. Steven Harper

My second step in exploring Wesley's story. Where #8 avoided hagiography, this book revelled in it, though self-consciously so. At the same time, though, it does provide a helpful overview of the major tenets of Wesleyan soteriology, and challenges us to reflect on how his theology of Grace still speaks to the deepest needs of the human heart.

6. Confessions of an Amateur Believer, Patty Kirk

This was a edifying collection of meditations on Christian Spirituality. To be honest, I found Patty Kirk less "confessional" and less "amateur" in her belief than the title led me to expect, but as an English Professor, her style is thoughtful and lyrical and really illuminated that old Shakespearean proverb, "it is not enough to speak but to speak true." She takes good writing spiritually, and in that, at least, she's a believer after my own heart.

5. Satan and the Problem of Evil, Greg Boyd

Another read to help me explore the burgeoning Wesleyan in me, this theological/philosophical defence of a "Trinitarian Warfare Theodicy" was often compelling and always engaging. Though I found much of his work helpful, by the end I was left wondering if he hadn't proved too much, and attributed more risk to God than the scriptures ever dare to do.

4. Collected Short Stories, Flannery O’Conner

Fred Craddock, the well-known teacher of preachers once said that the best thing preachers can do to develop their skills and hone their craft (outside of the obvious theological, spiritual and exegetical disciplines) is to read a lot, especially fiction, particularly short stories. If this is true, I'd suggest O'Conner as a good starting place, and if it's not, I'd suggest her anyways. I'm not sure how I missed O'Conner in 5 years studying English Lit. and 7 years teaching it, but I'm glad I finally met her. Some of her stories left my heart gaping wide in their wake. Truly beautiful fiction.

3. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, Michael Pollan

I'm surprised to rate this book as high as I have- it's not the kind of book I expected to like. However, Pollan's thesis, that nutritionism is actually a made-up, ideologically-driven science that has done more to confuse us than help us in our food choices, and his other thesis, that the modern food industry is deeply flawed and if it isn't killing us it's certainly wringing the soul out of our diets, seemed to strike chords with me. For a while there my family talked quite a bit about the Michael Pollan diet: "Eat food. Mostly Plants. Not too much." Lots of wisdom there.

2. From the Holy Mountain, William Dalrymple

Another unexpected gem of a read, From the Holy Mountain is the travelogue of William Dalrymple, who travels the Holy Land retracing the journey of an ancient Christian monk who wandered the Byzantine Empire back in the 7th Century. Beautiful prose, Church history, adventurous travel, politics, wry humour, art, hermits, monks (modern and ancient), sylites; this book had it all. I closed it with a deeper appreciation of the history of the Orthodox Church, the plight of Christians in the Muslim world, and the convoluted politics of the Middle East.

1. Violence, Hospitality and the Cross, Hans Boersma

Every once in a while you read a book that takes a bunch of threads already waving about loose in your mind and weaves them together into the tapestry you always knew they could form, but just didn't know how to do it. That's what this book was like for me as it invited me to think through the meaning of the cross all over again. Boersma develops the ancient idea of hospitality as a framework for discussing the Atonement, and then fleshes out the Pauline concept of the recapitulation as the dominant Atonement motif , drawing on Irenaeus and N. T. Wright for theological resources. He shows how each of the traditional models of the Atonement can be read as sub-themes of this over-arching motif. It was like one long "Ah-ha" moment to read.