A Year’s Worth of Reading

I try, for sundry reasons, to annually record and report what the past year held for me in terms of reading. Of these many reasons, two are very significant to me. First, it is my way of holding myself to account. I want to be a reader…a literary person as C. S. Lewis would say. Keeping track of the pages I have turned and the volumes I have finished is a way for me to take stock of my reading. Secondly, I hope it is an encouragement to you. An encouragement to read more, and to read more often.

I read less this year than I have in the past few. The main reason for less reading and less books was more preaching and more preparing to preach. I preached far more in 2014 than I anticipated. And this preaching took a toll on my free time and was a regular intellectual withdraw that left the mental reserves lower than they might have been otherwise. Note, however, that this was a trade I gladly made and one I would gladly make again. But between duties at home, duties in the classroom, and duties at the church, I just didn’t read like I had in years past.

Nevertheless, I still flipped plenty of pages and find myself contentedly reminiscing over the list of books I share below.

The first list, in no particular order, are the non-fiction books I greedily grappled with last year. A substantial amount of my reading was either preaching related or ordination related. There are a lot of good ones below, most of which I would gladly recommend. Again, here they are in no particular order:

Edwards on the Christian Life by Dane Ortlund

A Brief Theology of Sport by Lincoln Harvey

Surprised by Hope by N. T. Wright

Shakespeare's Hamlet by Leland Ryke

The Self Life and the Christ Life by A. B. Simpson

The Fourfold Gospel by A. B. Simpson

The Cross of Christ by A. B. Simpson

Church Elders: How to Shepherd God's People Like Jesus by Jeramie Rinne

Sound Doctrine: How a Church Grows in the Love and Holiness of God by Bobby Jamieson

Expositional Preaching: How We Speak God's Word Today by David Helm

Evangelism: How the Whole Church Speaks of Jesus by J. Mack Stiles

The Gospel: How the Church Portrays the Beauty of Christ by Ray Ortlund

The Cross and Christian Ministry by D. A. Carson

The Deliberate Church by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander

Joshua: No Falling Words by Dale Ralph Davis

God in the Whirlwind by David Wells

Five Points by John Piper

Victorious Christian Living by Alan Redpath

Jesus on Every Page by David Murray

Is Jesus in the Old Testament? By Ian M. Duguid

Preaching the Word - Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon by R. Kent Hughes

Taking God at His Word by Kevin DeYoung

The Final Days of Jesus by Andreas Kostenberger and Justin Taylor

It Is Well by Mark Dever and Michael Lawrence

Christianity and Liberalism by J. Gresham Machen

PNTC - The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon by Douglas Moo

The Godly Man's Picture by Thomas Watson

Gospel-Centered Teaching by Trevin Wax

Creature of the Word by Chandler, Geiger, and Patterson

What’s Your Worldview by James Anderson

How People Change by Lane and Tripp

Death by Living by N. D. Wilson

Though I do not read near as much fiction, I still found time to read several of the Bard’s plays as well as a couple novels by McCarthy and Faulkner. I had set the goal to read a Shakespearean play a month, but fell short as you can see:

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

King Lear by William Shakespeare

Othello by William Shakespeare

Henry V by William Shakespeare

Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Overall, I consider it a gracious gift of God that I have both the opportunity to read books and the availability of books to read. I’m looking forward to another year with my nose buried in a bunch of books.