Thanks to a winter semester sabbatical, I was on pace to complete more than a book per week in 2025, but non-teaching-related reading took a nose dive when classes resumed, and I ended the year at 49 books—just shy of my goal of 52. Maybe next year?
Of the 49, I count 23 audiobooks and approximately 12 works of fiction, including such weighty tomes as E.B. White’s Stuart Little. As usual, my lightly annotated list is below.
Reading Highlights
Perhaps because it is the last thing I listened to in 2025, Alan Noble’s excellent short theological reflection On Getting Out of Bed stands out as a general interest highlight.
Another book I can’t commend highly enough is the Librivox recording of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History. Eusebius was one of those “I should really have read this by now” books. Completely fascinating, not least because it is a primary source compendium for many of the critical “introductory” questions that still occupy biblical scholars. Why did I wait so long?
My own reading highlight was (finally) finishing the Hebrew Bible / Protestant Old Testament in Hebrew and Greek. I wrote about it here.
Current Events / History / Memoir
Ali, Ayaan Hirsi. Infidel. New York: Atria Books, 2008. (Audiobook)
Fascinating for many reasons, including the overlap with my own more limited memories of Kenya and Somalia in the 1980’s.
Arnold, John. History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford : New York: Oxford Paperbacks, 2000.
Beinart, Peter. Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. New York: Knopf, 2025. (Audiobook)
Recommended. See this post for more reflections.
Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2020. (Audiobook)
A Palestinian perspective that pairs nicely with Beinart.
Kirsch, Adam. On Settler Colonialism: Ideology, Violence, and Justice. Norton, 2024. (Audiobook)
Made some good points, but not against Khalidi.
Plokhy, Serhii. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History. Norton, 2024. (Audiobook)
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2024. (Audiobook)
Wacker, Grant. One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2024. (Audiobook)
Reads like a history of 20th-century North American evangelicalism
Biblical Studies
Anderson, Gary A. Sin: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. (Audiobook)
Blogged here
Barton, John. A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths. Penguin Books, 2020. (Audiobook)
Davis, Ellen F. Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament. Cambridge, Mass: Bloomsbury Academic, 2001. (Audiobook)
Eusebius of Caesarea. History of the Christian Church. Translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, 1890. Librivox recording, 2009. (Audiobook)
One of those “I should really have read this by now” books. Why did I wait so long?
Fee, Gordon D., and Douglas Stuart. How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. 3d ed. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003.
Frei, Hans W. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.
Recommended by the proprietor of Crux Books at Wycliffe College in 1999; I finally read it 26 years later. I wasn’t ready for it then; not sure I’m ready for it now. But now that I have read it, I notice its influence everywhere. Takes the prize for worst academic writing.
Gaventa, Beverly Roberts. Romans: A Commentary. NTL. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2024.
Gaventa’s major commentary has a high new idea to page ratio. The comparison with Karl Barth’s commentary on Romans is apt; it suffers from the same weaknesses. Well worth reading, but I won’t be assigning it as an undergraduate textbook again.
Hays, Richard B. Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Witness. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2014.
The man at the desk next to mine at Tyndale House kept telling me I should read it. “It will do your soul good,” he said. I did. It did.
Lentz, John Clayton. Luke’s Portrait of Paul. SNTSMS 77. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Moffitt, David. Rethinking the Atonement: New Perspectives on Jesus’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022.
Nongbri, Brent. God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018.
Takes the prize for the most exciting (modern) academic book this year ... in a bittersweet way: Nongbri fills in the picture of the manuscripts behind our critical Greek New Testaments and makes you wonder about what has been lost.
Novenson, Matthew V. Paul, Then and Now. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022.
Smith, David Andrew. Luke and the Jewish Other: Politics of Identity in the Third Gospel. New York: Routledge, 2023.
Stulac, Daniel J. D. Gift of the Grotesque: A Christological Companion to the Book of Judges. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2022.
Vanhoozer, Kevin J. Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2024. (Audiobook)
So substantial the audiobook left me with impressions only. Purchased a paper copy.
Witherington, Ben. A Week in the Life of Corinth. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2012.
Fiction, but not literature
Wright, N. T. Into the Heart of Romans: A Deep Dive into Paul’s Greatest Letter. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Academic, 2023. (Audiobook)
Helpful to think with, but not finally compelling
Fiction / English Literature
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. London: Egerton, 1817. (reread)
Caldwell, Bo. City of Tranquil Light. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2010. (Audiobook)
Forster, E. M. A Room with a View. London: Penguin, 1908. (reread)
Heaney, Seumus. The Burial at Thebes: A Version of Sophocles’ Antigone. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
Hilton, James. Random Harvest. New York: Pocket Books, 1941.
Leacock, Stephen. Literary Lapses. New Canadian Library. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1957.
McCall Smith, Alexander. The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2005.
———. The Kalahari Typing School for Men. No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2002.
O’Dell, Scott. Island of the Blue Dolphins. Newbery Medal Winner. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960. (reread)
Powers, Richard. Bewilderment. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2021. (Audiobook)
Rattigan, Terence. The Winslow Boy. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1946.
White, E. B. Stuart Little. New York: HarperCollins, 1973. (reread)
Other Languages
Martínez, Santiago Carbonell. ΛΟΓΟΣ : ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΓΛΩΣΣΑ ΑΥΤΟΕΙΚΟΝΟΓΡΑΦΗΜΕΝΗ (Logos. Lingua Graeca Per Se Illustrata). Cultura Clásica, 2023.
Meyer, Erika. Ein Briefwechsel. German Graded Readers Alternate Series Book 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1954. (I wish I had more of these to keep my rusty German on life support.)
Self-Help, etc.
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Students Do. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012.
Good ideas; condescending tone. The attempt to package research on learning as stories about exemplary learners seemed forced.
Brooks, David. How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. New York: Random House, 2023. (Audiobook)
Comer, John Mark. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2019. (Audiobook)
Hurried through at 1.5+ speed.
Haidt, Jonathan. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. New York: Penguin Press, 2024. (Audiobook)
Lang, James M. Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. 1st edition. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2016. (Audiobook)
Miller, Neil. Agents of Healing: Learning To Do What Jesus Did. North York, Ontario: Swordfish Publishing, 2024.
Newport, Cal. Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout. New York, NY: Portfolio, 2024. (Audiobook)
Hurried through at 2x speed.
Noble, Alan. On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living. Westmont: IVP, 2023. (Audiobook)
Volf, Miroslav. The Cost of Ambition: How Striving to Be Better Than Others Makes Us Worse. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2025. (Audiobook)
Walker, Matthew. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. New York: Scribner, 2017. (Audiobook)
For previous Reading Retrospectives, see this post and follow the links back.
No comments:
Post a Comment