Books in 2023.

I appreciate the people who can curate lists of the 10 best books they’ve read in a particular year. Or people who set reading goals and keep them. I am not one of those people.

On the other hand, this year, I revised a preaching course, prepared a pastoral care course, and did a bunch of other reading.

So here is a (growing, annotated) list of some of the books I’ve read in 2023.

L.S. Dugdale. The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom. (2020) She starts by talking about death manuals in the middle ages. However, the point of this book by a physician is to help us think about living well.

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Those books from the Middle Ages are also the inspiration for this book I used in one of my courses:

Rob Moll, The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into The Life To Come (2010, afterword by Clarissa Moll, 2021.)

Since all of us will encounter death, this text is a clear explanation. It’s told from the perspective of books written in the middle ages that were intended to help people die well.

Rob Moll was a journalist for Christianity Today. He started writing this book, as he says, “at a time when end-of-life ethics was being hotly debated in the press.” There were conversations, court cases, and demonstrations about what kinds of care were ethically, morally, medically appropriate when someone was in a persistent vegetative state.

Moll writes, “I was unsatisfied with Christian responses that either requires the prolonging of life—no matter the physical, mental, relational, or financial suffering involved—or that pinpointed what treatments might be appropriate under what circumstances. Instead, I wanted to find a Christian response that would be useful under any medical circumstance, that upheld the value of life and the dignity of the person. What I discovered was the Christian tradition of the good death.”

To research the book, he worked as a hospice volunteer and overnight at a funeral home. He interviewed and cared, he saw death and life. And he wrote this book.

And then, in 2019, he fell off a cliff and died.

His wife, Clarissa, who had edited the book, wrote an afterword for it two years after he died.

I thought about including her book about grief. I decided that we needed this book about death.

1. It’s a helpful book in identifying the core questions about dying and Christian death. Though other books dig deeper into some of the topics, this book gives us an overview to understand the questions.
2. Both of my parents were cared for by the funeral home he worked at, though not while he was there. It is a good funeral home.

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Matthew Kim. Preaching to People in Pain: How Suffering Can Shape Your Sermons and Connect with Your Congregation 

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In March, I found a book I’d heard of while shopping at a thrift store. (It’s what Nancy and I do for fun). Paul Kalanithi was finishing his neurosurgery training when he discovered he had lung cancer and switched from physician to patient. I read it last night. I seldom mark books. I noted this: “the physician’s duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face, and make sense of, their own existence.” (p 166). That felt like work for you and me, too. When Breath Becomes Air

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Dr. Lee Warren. Hope is the First Dose: A Treatment Plan for Recovering from Trauma, Tragedy, and Other Massive Things.  Lee walks us through the inside of the journey he and Lisa took to understand how to choose to recover hope following the traumatic death of a son and their own career challenges. The details feel desolate, unless you have walked through your own massive loss. For those people, the honesty is oddly comforting, as a reminder that we are not the only ones who feel lost in loss. Here’s a longer review.

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Eric Peterson and Eugene Peterson. Letters to a Young Pastor: Timothy Conversations between Father and Son. A sweet collection of letters from a father-pastor to a son-pastor.

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I reread Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit this fall. I read it first more than a decade ago. His model of habits and change is simple (Cue, response, reward) and I want to apply it to a couple situations when I get the time. Which illustrates why I might need it. 

I’m unpacking a grief model right now, and realized that maybe, as we work on coping (not moving on), there are some behaviors that might become habits and then require less intention and attention. For example, in the first months after the death of a spouse, someone might move from having to think about every step of going to the grocery. In time, going alone becomes more habitual. And so is less emotional. Until, of course, walking down a particular aisle or making a particular seasonal purchase. Then it comes back. 

But there is a habit factor that may be working. 

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Esau McCaulley. How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family’s Story of Hope and Survival in the American South (2023)

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Matthew Kim. A little book for new preachers: why and how to study homiletics

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Nijay Gupta. Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church

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Martin Duggard. Taking Berlin. Taking Paris

I read two World War 2 history narratives by Martin Duggard. I’ve been reading his newsletter about writing and running for a year or two. I finally read Taking Berlin and Taking Paris. They were fast to read, told me some things about that era that I didn’t know. (I’ve read Churchill’s history of the war, and the William Manchester biography of Churchill, and a couple Stephen Ambrose histories). 

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Wendy Dean. If I betray these words. Moral Injury in Medicine and why it is so hard for clinicians to put patients first.

This was part of my research into moral injury.

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Adam Grant. Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

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Amy Kenny. My Body is not a prayer request. Disability Justice in the church

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Jon Acuff. All It Takes Is a Goal: The 3-Step Plan to Ditch Regret and Tap Into Your Massive Potential

All it takes is a goal is a good book, and one that isn’t resonating at the moment. I’ve listened to Jon Acuff’s podcast by the same name since it started. I’ve learned. And it’s often been a good running buddy. The book, which stands alone from the podcast, gave me a great exercise for a course I’m teaching. But I’m not in a goal creating window right now. However, as my 2023 load wraps up, I think that 2024 will involve some of what Jon is describing. 

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Andrew Ford. Pretzels: Reflections on the Bible for Every Other Day. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.

This is a series of devotionals that our friend Andy wrote and Nancy and I proofed and published for him. They follow the calendar and church year, a bit.