Adam Shields

Favorite books of the year lists are the ultimate in subjectivity. Yes, there is a thing that is called a good book. But I tend to think that the book that lots of people like is worth picking over one that is technically excellent, but many did not actually like (The Magician trilogy is a good example.) And more variable than anything, books often speak (or not) to the place we are in life. One person’s amazing books isn’t amazing to the next person because they have experienced the world (or at least that particular time) differently.

So my list of books here are just the ones that at the end of the year, on the day I wrote out this list, the ones that I picked. (My list of non-fiction books will be tomorrow.) Also if you missed it, Bookwi.se Contributor Emily Flury posted her list of her favorite books and their companion movies yesterday.

The links below are to the full reviews

Lila: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson

I was really reluctant to read the companion book Gilead. It took me forever to actually pick it up. But when I did, I liked it. Gilead as an old preacher telling his life story to a young son that will never know him because was touching. But I thought it was a little slow and plodding.

Lila, telling the story from a different person’s perspective, was anything but plodding. It was a the best fictional story of grace that I have read. It was a bit old fashioned and definitely a literary book. But it was excellently written and well worth reading. I am planning on starting a second reading of it this week.

The Martian by Andy Weir

I have not been kept on the edge of my seat listening to an audiobook for a while. Although I am not completely sure why I was so entranced. It was well written, with characters I liked. I wanted to figure out how the astronaut was going to survive life on Mars, but I never really seriously thought he wasn’t going to survive. It wasn’t the ending that was in question, it was the process. As there was all kinds of great science and MacGuyver ingenuity going on.

A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle

There have been a few years when most of my favorite fiction books have been young adult. This year I read a lot less young adult books than in recent years and much of what I did read, I wasn’t really impressed with. But A Ring of Endless Light was proof to me that serious literary young adult fiction is not only possible, but important. One of the reasons I have been such a fan of John Green is that I just did not read really good young adult fiction that took the reader seriously when I was a teen. But A Ring of Endless Light is proof that high quality young adult fiction existed (whether I would have been prepared to read it as a teen or not.)

Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker (and the rest of the series 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

Over the past couple years, I have been enjoying more mystery books. It was not a genre that I really liked much prior to the last few years. Being introduced to Dorothy Sayers, J Mark Bertrand, and Martin Walker have changed my view of the potential of mysteries. The Bruno series especially is enjoyable, but it is more about the characters and the setting than the mystery. Bruno is the chief of police (and only police officer) of a small french village. He sees his job as more about preventing crime and mediating between people than arresting people. Because of this he cares about the people and the people care about him, Walker creates a story that I want to read. Also I love all of the descriptions of French culture, food and wine. Every book in the series made me want to go visit France.

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Summary: A decent (quick) book on the Christian understanding of marriage without a lot of Christian language.

I generally don’t like reviewing books that have a lot of controversy. So I have not reviewed many of Rob Bell’s books (but I liked Velvet Elvis and Sex God). I went to college with Rob and Kristen (they were a year in front of me) so I have paid attention to Rob’s ministry. (I didn’t really know Kristen, but Rob is one of those people that it is hard not to know who he was at college.)

I originally did not have any interest in picking up The Zimzum of Love. There are a ton of marriage books being jointly written by well known pastor couples recently. I tend to avoid book trends because they are often following the trend, not writing good books.

Books and Culture’s parody review of Zimzum of Love did not help my desire to read the book, although I don’t think that the parody was all that helpful and after reading the book I didn’t think it was all that accurate either. (Although it does have a few good points.)

Then I read Richard Beck’s review on his blog Experimental Theology (I am a regular reader). As you might expect, it is like Beck and Jason Hood (the Books and Culture reviewer) had read two very different books. But mostly it felt like Hood was taking issue with Rob as a persona than really dealing with the book as a book.

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Summary: The history of how and why this Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison spread so widely and became so influential.

At this point I have read far more about Bonhoeffer than by Bonhoeffer. That is not to say I haven’t read Bonhoeffer, but to say I have read a lot about Bonhoeffer, especially over the past several years since writing on him seems to have exploded.

I read Letters and Papers from Prison in college soon after I first read Cost of Discipleship and somewhat before I read Love Letters from Cell 92.

It is actually the now out of print Love Letters from Cell 92 that really humanized Bonhoeffer for me and moved him from abstract theologian to real live human person. About the same time as I was reading Love Letters from Cell 92, I started University of Chicago Divinity School and had Martin Marty as a professor.

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