Ok, you're right, that title is a bit melodramatic. Point taken. But here are a few books that meant a great deal to me this year. In among all the other books that I get to read because of what I do, these books were special:
Wendell Berry, Stand By Me - I read other books by Berry this year, too, and loved each of them but the short stories in Stand By Me (some of which I'd read before) were so absorbing, like oceans of calm. Often bittersweet, never less than humane and earthed in God's good but now fractured creation, these stories wove their magic in my soul on many an evening.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Faith on Trial - sermons on Psalm 73. It's almost getting to the point where a book like this feels like it's from a bygone age, such is the whirling speed of life. But it was so timely, so completely poised with deep spiritual wisdom. Like gulping fresh air when you've been under water too long.
CS Lewis, Perelandra and Till We Have Faces - ok, this is not one book, it's two. But I read them almost simultaneously (which could have been complicated and confusing but somehow I managed to pull it off). TWHF was intriguing, being so well loved and held by many to be CSL's finest fiction. I thoroughly enjoyed it, too. Perelandra, the second of the sci-fi trilogy I've read this year, was by turns achingly beautiful and deeply distressing, on occasion opening up worlds of meaning and shockingly humbling.
J Todd Billings, The End of the Christian Life - written by a man with terminal cancer, this is elegant, thoughtful, pastoral wisdom at its finest. Reading it seemed to both slow time down and make it seem smaller, in light of eternal realities.
Alan Jacobs, Breaking Bread with the Dead - anything Jacobs writes is a joy to read but this was also timely (as in, for our times) and offers to help shift your perspective a few degrees. I'm so glad for it.
Marilynne Robinson, Jack and When I Was a Child I Read Books - another double A-side! It was inevitable that Jack would be in this list - such beauty and longing and sorrow - but I'm adding a book of essays, too, because they force you to slow down. They're not light reading but slowing down the mind to grapple with more than present crises was such a necessity.
Richard F Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life - this is now an older book (I'm suggesting 1979 is old only because Lovelace was writing from and for that moment in time) but remains so relevant. I don't really know enough in detail about the church history he deals with to make any informed assessment of his conclusions, and some of his predictions or hopes for the immediate future certainly don't seem to have transpired. But this is deservedly considered a classic. It rebalances thought even while pushing it further, embedding core realities more deeply and demanding they be reckoned with.
Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana - this is more by way of honourable mention, just because it made me laugh so much. I first read it when I was 17 and had a distant, 40-years-ago memory that it was enjoyable. For once, that kind of memory didn't let me down. A necessary means of escape.
There were probably more but these remain in my mind. Poetry by Christina Rossetti and Mary Oliver also figure highly but some things go without saying. And now they've been said.
