This week, I want to help fill your bookshelf.
Every non-fiction book has an argument for you to engage with. Sociologists, historians, biographers, and the like all set out to persuade readers of a particular way of seeing the world. I think it’s fun to let the arguments talk to and inform each other as you go, which moves you from popcorn to protein in your reading.
I used to run a year-long church program with a reading list purposed for argument interaction. Our conversation built throughout the year, and students got to see how the themes and conclusions of each book informed the other. Each year, I approached the class thinking, “If I could build my friend’s library, what would I choose?”
I want to do the same for you this week—here are four works to consider for the rest of the year:
1. How to think through opinions:
Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind
(Alan Jacobs)
To become a person of density is to push yourself to engage with things that require you to grow in perspective. Jacobs teaches us how to engage with historical arguments by learning to see the context in which the original question was asked. Putting the argument in place and context helps us learn how to appreciate and interact with nuance. Learning the discipline of thoughtful engagement helps us build resilience. Every chapter helps you learn the discipline with a different thinker. It’s a different type of work, I think of it as a toolbox builder.
2. How to embrace life as God’s given it:
A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ
(John Bryant)
We all have to make sense of life as it has been given versus life as we would have it. In the in-between, we all have ways of consolation and coping. John Bryant’s work is the book I didn’t know I needed until I felt the truth within shift tumblers into place, and unlock spaces that needed healing. This is a book about living in God’s world and trusting God with your days. It is a book about letting the reality that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again bring healing to your days. It’s beautifully written, and one that brought me to tears of sadness, joy, and gratitude time and again.
3. How to fight for time:
The Congregation in a Secular Age: Keeping Sacred Time against the Speed of Modern Life (Andrew Root)
Root does a great job of taking top shelf thinkers and bringing their work down to the bottom shelf for the rest of us. In this work, he engages with Hartmut Rosa, the German philosopher you didn’t know you needed until now. Root walks through the time sickness we all feel, how things feel like they’re moving faster and we’ve got nausea trying to keep up. I presented a summary of this work at a conference a few years back, and the room lamented how keeping a human pace in the modern world feels impossible yet incredibly needed.
4. How to anchor your attention in God’s Truth: Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader's Edition
We hold a line of teaching from the time of Christ. It is up to each generation to teach the next, and ours is inundated with more information, words, and distractions than any before. Our hearts and the hearts of our children must be formed more by the teaching of the Church than anything else, which takes vision and intention. These historical summaries and confessions of Christian teaching are an anchor and a signpost, they hold the line of our heritage and point our hearts north.
I encourage you to treat your bookshelf as a toolkit. Read widely, read discerningly, and then keep the books that are the tools you need to move forward. There are a couple shelves of works that I hold onto because they changed the way I think, and I revisit them often to test them and myself as I grow.
What are those books that have earned their space on your shelf?
Thanks for reading!
If someone forwarded this to you, I write two weekly emails: one on Tuesdays for paid subscribers and the other on Fridays for everyone. If you’d like to subscribe but can’t afford it, email me, and I’ll take care of it.
I live in Flower Mound, TX, with my wife Carly, our three kids, and our chocolate lab. I pastor, teach, and lead at The Village Church, serving as the Executive Director of Discipleship. In my spare time, I’m working on a Ph.D. program in Church History, studying Jonathan Edwards and character formation.
I’ve written A Short Guide to Spiritual Disciplines: How to Become a Healthy Christian. If you read it, I’d love to hear what resonated or was encouraging.
Talk soon,
Mason