My 2023 Reading

 Those in bold are this year's top ten: 

January

1. Jocelyn Brooke, The Orchid Trilogy
2. Ocean Yuong, On Earth We're Briefly Beautiful
3. Katherine May, The Electricity of Every Living Thing
4. Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera, The Awakening of Miss Prim 
5. Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such 
6. Valentine Low, Courtiers: The hidden power behind the crown 
7. Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine 
8. Tom Crewe, The New Life 

February

1. Sean Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide
2. Tim Chester, Truth We Can Touch: How Baptism and Communion Shape Our Lives 
3. John Moore, The Water Under the Earth
4. James Salter, Last Night: Stories
5. DA Carson (Ed.), Worship by the Book

March 

1. Wendell Berry, How It Went: Thirteen more stories of the Port William Membership 
2. Christine Barnabas, Consecrated Celibacy: A Fresh Look at an Ancient Calling 
3. Mary Renault, The King Must Die 
4. Patrick Ness, Different for Boys 
5. Frederick Buechner, Speak What We Feel (Not What We Ought to Say): Four Who Wrote in Blood
6. Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea
7. Gregg A Ten Elshof, I Told Me So: self-deception and the Christian life

April 

1. John Mark Comer, Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace 
2. Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died 

May 

1. Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
2. Arnold Bennett, Clayhanger 
3. John Carey, A Little History of Poetry 
4. Collin Hansen, Timothy Keller: His Spiritual and Intellectual Formation 
5. Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn 
6. Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life
7. Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost 
8. David Gibson, Radically Whole: Gospel healing for the divided heart 
9. Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow 
10. Sean O'Nan, Ocean State 
11. Philippe Besson, In the Absence of Men
12. Mary Renault, The Praise Singer

June

1. Matthew P W Roberts, Pride: Identity and the worship of self 
2. Jonathan Rauch, Denial: My 25 years without a soul 
3. David McCullough, 1776: America and Britain at War 
4. Douglas Stuart, Young Mungo 
5. David Haynes, Right By My Side 
6. Ronald Blythe, Next to Nature: A Lifetime in the English Countryside 

July

1. Claire Keegan, Foster
2. Eve Tushnet, Tenderness: A Gay Christian's Guide to Unlearning Rejection and Experiencing God's Extravagant Love 
3. Ted Sorensen, Counselor: A life at the edge of history
4. Niamh Campbell, We Were Young
5. Elizabeth Strout, Lucy by the Sea

August 

1. Tony Horsfall, Spiritual Growth in a Time of Change: Following God in midlife
2. Christopher Landau, Loving Disagreement: The problem is the solution  
3. Roger Preece, Understanding and Using Power: Leadership without Corrupting Your Soul 
4. Adrian Bell, The Cherry Tree
5. Peter F Drucker, Managing Oneself 
6. Maggie O'Farrell, I am, I am, I am
7. Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles
8. Rachel Cusk, Outline

September

1. CS Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2. CS Lewis, Prince Caspian 
3. CS Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
4. CS Lewis, The Horse and His Boy
5. CS Lewis, The Silver Chair
6. CS Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
7. CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 
8. CS Lewis, The Last Battle 
9. Hua Hsu, Stay True: A Memoir
10. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life 
11. Margaret Laurence, A Jest of God
12. Tim Chester, Enjoying God: Experience the power and love of God in everyday life
13. Dominic Sandbrook, Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982
14. Alistair Gordon, Why Art Matters
15. Penelope Fitzgerald, The Beginning of Spring

October 

1. Gregory E Ganssle, Our Deepest Desires: How the Christian Story Fulfills Human Aspirations
2. Malcolm Guite, Lifting the Veil: Imagination and the Kingdom of God  
3. Brandon Taylor, The Late Americans [Audiobook]
4. Annie Dillard, The Living: A Novel 
5. Karen Swallow Prior, The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images & Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis 

November 

1. Michael Green, Baptism: Its purpose, practice and power 
2. Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
3. Winifred Peck, House-Bound
4. Tom Wright, The Meal Jesus Gave Us: Understanding Holy Communion  
5. John Mark Comer, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world 
6. Rory Stewart, Politics On the Edge [Audiobook] 

December

1. Mary Renault, The Mask of Apollo
2. Victor Heringer, The Love of Singular Men
3. Julia Strachey, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
4. Zachary Wagner, Non-Toxic Masculinity: Recovering healthy male sexuality 
5. Tim Chester, Fixated: Advent meditations from the book of Hebrews 
6. David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen
7. JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring [Audiobook] 
8. Arnold Bennett, Anna of the Five Towns

THE GREAT FAIRY-STORY

'The Gospels contain a fairy-story, a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful and moving; 'mythical' in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfilment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. The story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the 'inner consistency of reality'. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of the Primary Art, that is Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.'

JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in The Monster and the Critics, p.155.

THE HOPE IN FAIRY STORIES

'The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous 'turn' (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale - or otherworld - setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.

It is the mark of a good fairy story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to the child or man that hears it, when the 'turn' comes, a catch of breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given my any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.'

JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, p.153.

SUCCESSFUL FRIENDSHIP

'Successful friendship, like successful therapy, is a balance of deference and defiance. It involves showing positive regard, but also calling people on their self-deceptions.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.257.

WRITING IS ACTUALLY READING

'The writer David Lodge once noted that 90 percent of what we call writing is actually reading. It's going back over your work so you can change and improve it.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.167.

DEPRESSION DEFINED

'..malfunction of the instrument we use to determine reality...'

Michael Gerson in David Brooks, How to Know People, p.128.

POWER DYNAMICS

'Remember that the person who is lower in any power structure than you has a greater awareness of the situation than you do. A servant knows more about his master than the master knows about the servant. Someone who is being sat on knows a lot more about the sitter - the way he shifts his weight and moves - whereas the sitter may not be aware that the sat-on person is even there.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.115.

EACH PERSON IS A MYSTERY

'Each person is a mystery. And when you are surrounded by mysteries, as the saying goes, it's best to live life in the from of a question.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.93.

A GOOD CONVERSATION

'A good conversation is an act of joint exploration. Somebody floats a half-formed idea. Somebody else seizes on the nub of the idea, plays with it, offers her own perspective based on her memories, and floats it back so the other person can respond. A good conversation sparks yo to have thoughts you have never had before. A good conversation starts in one place and ends up in another.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.73.

EVERY PERSON AN ARTIST

'Every person you meet is an artist who takes the events of life and, over time, creates a very personal way of seeing the world.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.64.

SIMPLISTIC DESCRIPTIONS

One of the commonest and most generally accepted delusions is that every man can be qualified in some a particular way - said to be kind, wicked, stupid, energetic, apathetic and so on. People are not like that. We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but very river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy, or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently he is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.'

Leo Tolstoy in David Brooks, How to Know a Person, p.36.

LIFE SKILLS

'The real act of, say, building a friendship or creating a community involves performing a series of small, concrete social actions well: disagreeing without poisoning the relationship; revealing vulnerability at the appropriate pace; being a good listener; knowing how to end a conversation gracefully; knowing how to ask for and offer forgiveness; knowing how to sit with someone who is suffering; knowing how to host a gathering where everyone feels embraced; knowing how to see things from another's point of view.

These are some of the most important skills a human being can possess, and yet we don't teach them in school. Some days it seems like we have intentionally built a society that gives people little guidance of how to perform the most important activities of life.'

David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, p.8.

TRUE COMPLEMENTARIANISM?

'Any human endeavor done without the input, support, and cooperation of both sexes is not a fully human endeavor.'

Zachary Wagner, Non-Toxic Masculinity: recovering healthy male sexuality, p.180.