Top 8 Reads of 2015

I'm not very good/experienced at writing book reviews, but I would like to post a list with some of my favorite reads of the year. In lieu of writing short reviews (and pretending like I'm more of an authority on the subject than I am), I'm including a quote or so from each book that have stuck with me.

1. Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson

Interesting people are interested people. Interesting writers are interested writers...As a writer, you should want to be interesting. The way to do this is by being interested.

Read like someone who can afford to forget most of what you read. It does not matter because you are still going to be shaped by it.

Real life duties should be preferred over real life tourism. Taking care of your preschoolers or being deployed with the Seventh Fleet is far to be preferred over purchasing a backpack and heading off to find America, or even worse, yourself...This kind of life experience is not distracting you from your appointed task of writing. It is, rather, the roundabout blessing of giving you something to say.

2.  Rejoicing in Lament by J. Todd Billings

In giving this kind of testimony of God's providence, we should not rush in and victoriously shout "This is God's will!" in a way that suggests that this calamity was what God intended at the foundations of creation. The Triune God is King, but Christ's kingdom is not yet uncontested. On the other hand, one is not left with the impotent response of saying, "God understands your pain, but couldn't do anything about it." With the psalmist, this approach thanks God for blessing, and also puts the lack of blessing at the door of the Almighty. Suffering and calamity are still under the rule of God, the sovereign King. The sufferer is not subject simply to whims of "chance," yet on the other hand God is not capricious or the author of evil. Instead the sufferer is in the hands of a good and powerful God. 

3. Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

She had come into her beauty.

I wanted, as I would say to myself, to be in her presence, as if her presence were a fragrance, or a light that was within her and shone around her.

You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time.

The brief, laughing look that she had given me made me feel extraordinarily seen, as if after that I might be visible in the dark.

4. Letters to an American Lady by C.S. Lewis

One never has been "independent". Always, in some mode or other, one has lived on others, economically, intellectually, spiritually. Who, after all, is less independent than someone with "a private income"--every penny of which has been earned by the skill and labour of others? Poverty merely reveals the helpless dependence which has all the time been our real condition. We are members of one another whether we choose to recognize the fact or not.

5. Creation Regained by Albert Wolters 

Earthly creation preceding the events recorded in Genesis 3 is like a healthy newborn child. In every respect it can be pronounced "very good"; but  this does not mean that change is not required. There is something seriously wrong if the baby remains in  its infancy: it is meant to grow, develop, mature into adulthood. Suppose now that while the child is still an infant it contracts a serious chronic disease for which there is no known cure, and that it grows up an invalid, the disease wasting its body away. It is clear that there are two clearly distinguishable process going on its body as it approaches adolescence: one is the process of maturation and growth, which continues in spite of sickness and which is natural, normal, and good; the other is the progress of the disease, which distorts and impairs the healthy functioning of the body...There are weaknesses to every analogy...Nevertheless, it can serve to make a significant point: the ravages of sin do not annihilate the normative creational development of civilization, but rather are parasitical upon it...the Lord does not forsake the work of his hands. In faithfulness he upholds his creation order.

6. Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community by Wendell Berry

The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous. 

...if you are dependent on people who do not know you, who control the value of your necessities, you are not free, and you are not safe.

But there is a higher, juster love of which the sign is the meeting of the eyes.

She is speaking joyfully and fearfully of the self's suddenly irresistible wish to be given away. And this is an unconditional giving, on which, she knows, time and mortality will impose their inescapable conditions; she will have remembered the marriage ceremony with its warnings of difficulty, poverty, sickness, and death. There is no "safe" about this. This love has no place to happen except in this world, where it cannot be made safe.

7. Being Human by Ronald MacAulay

The confusion here arises from forgetting the distinction between true knowledge and exhaustive knowledge, true language and exhaustive language. In saying we can know or say certain things about God, we do not claim that we have said everything about God which can be said, or that we know all that can be known. This is true not only of our knowledge of God but even of our knowledge of other people or of the material world. Though incomplete, our knowledge of God is accurate because he has made himself known to us in the Bible and there described himself for us.

The great value God gives to the body is best shown by the physical resurrection. We will be physical for eternity...We long...not to be "unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." Paul longs not for a less physical experience but for a better physical experience--one unmarred by sickness and decay.

8. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Of course the children's eyes turned to follow the lion; but the sight they saw was so wonderful that they soon forgot about him. Everywhere the statues were coming to life. The courtyard looked no longer like a museum; it looked more like a zoo. Creatures were running after Aslan and dancing around him till he was almost hidden in the crowd. *

(My favorite part of this book was the whole scene where Aslan brings all of the animals who had been turned into statues to life. It is a wonderful picture of the ressurection.)