Gathering the fruit, August 6: What we’re reading

If you’re like me, you pick your books to read in one of only three ways: while idly walking around a bookstore (intentionally or accidentally), via recommendations from friends, or through consulting lists from sources you already read, like newspapers, magazines, or blogs.

At Covenant, we get a lot of questions about what we’re reading, or books that we would recommend on particular topics, so it seemed useful to provide a list from a number of our authors. Warning: This is long! But there may be something here for everyone.

John Bauerschmidt

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• L.S. Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ (1950)

Jeff Boldt

• L.S. Thornton, Richard Hooker: A Study in His Theology (1924)
• L.S. Thornton, The Incarnate Lord: An Essay Concerning the Doctrine of the Incarnation in Its Relation to Organic Conceptions (1928)
• “Since I’m a new father, my personal reading is sporadic. But I do watch a lot of YouTube lectures. Do these count?”

Dane Boston

• Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1879)
• Trading and Thriving in Godliness: The Piety of George Swinnock, ed. by J. Stephen Yuille (2008)

Will Brown

• Alexander Boob, Alchemy and Mysticism (1997)
• Donald Leal & Vishwanie Maharaj, Evolving Approaches to Managing Marine Recreational Fisheries (2009)
• Walker Percy, Signposts in a Strange Land (1992)

Mark Clavier

• Rob Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (2005)
• Pope Francis, Laudato Sí (2015)
• Rowan Williams, On Augustine (2016)

Tony Clavier

• Paul Avis, The Search for Authority: Anglican Theological Methods from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (2014)
• Candle Robb, the Owen Archer series
• Linda Woodhead and Andrew Brown, That Was the Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People (2016)

Charlie Clauss

• George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons: A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 5 (2011)
• Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (2007)

Caleb Congrove

• Plato’s Phaedrus (and some academic works on it; see my recent post)
• Edward Oakes, A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies (2015)

Zachary Guiliano

• Andrew Davison et al., Amazing Love: Theology for Understanding Discipleship, Sexuality and Mission (2016)
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth is Symphonic (1987)
• John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (2008), and some lesser works on Vatican II’s reception and 20th-century Roman Catholicism more broadly.
• Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy (1963)
• Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality (2010)
• Comic books: I’m enjoying 1990s stuff, after a recent rummage through my old collection; things like Superboy, spinoffs like Young Justice, occult/supernatural comics like Ghost Rider, Dr. Strange, and Morbius the Living Vampire

Benjamin Guyer

• Michael Houellebecq, Submission (2015)
• Thomas Piketty, The Economics of Inequality (2015)
• Thomas R. Martin, Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times (2013)
• Comic book: Batman Vol. 8: Superheavy

Wesley Hill

• Christopher Bollas, When the Sun Bursts (2016)
• Garrard Conley, Boy Erased: A Memoir (2016)
• The monks of New Skete, The Art of Raising a Puppy (2011)
• Thomas Joseph White, OP, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (2015)
• Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535)

Jody Howard

• Helen Cameron and Catherine Duce, Research Practice in Ministry and Mission (2013)
• John Swinton and Helen Mowat, Practical Theology and Qualitative Research (2006)
• John Chrysostom on Galatians (and other Church Fathers on the same)

Jordan Hylden

• Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond(1956), which I reviewed recently.

Sam Keyes

• Susan Howatch, Glittering Images (1987)
• Susan Howatch, Glamorous Powers (1988)
• Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (1956)
• Anonymous 12th-century treatise, Speculum de mysteriis ecclesiae

Richard Kew

• Diana Gabaldon, Voyager, Volume 3 in the Outlander series (1993)
• Jean Edward Smith, FDR (2007)
• Joseph L. Mangina, Revelation, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (2010)

Jean Meade

• Armstrong Sperry, Call It Courage (1940)

Mark Michael

• Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire (1968)
• Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job

Mother Miriam, CSM

• Emma Donoghue, Room (2010). Recently reviewed on Covenant by Hannah Matis.
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor (First English edition: 2003)
• Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua
• Victor Lyle Dowdell, Aristotle and Anglican Religious Thought (1942)

Neal Michell

• Bernard Cornwell, Waterloo (2015)
• F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (1988)
• Dev Patnaik, Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy (2008)

Jonathan Mitchican

• Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
• Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (ca. 1427)
• Comic books: Red Sonja, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman
• Blogs: Mockingbird

Bryan Owen

• Thom Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church (2016)

Andrew Petiprin

• Yuval Levin, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in an Age of Individualism

Sarah Puryear

• Rosamunde Pilcher, September (1990)
• John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864)

Bruce Robison

• Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom (2006). Recently serialized.
• Iain M. Duguid and Richard B. Gaffin, Seeing Christ in All of Scripture: Hermeneutics at Westminster Theological Seminary (2016)
• John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Christopher Wells

• Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies (2013)

Paul Wheatley

• Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi (1958)
• T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (2013)
• Eugene Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (1991)

Clint Wilson

• Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden, Laurus (2015)
• Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays (1997)

Christopher Yoder

• Austin Farrer, A Faith of Our Own (1960)
• Jan Morris, The Oxford Book of Oxford (1978)

The featured image comes via Rachel Leow’s collection “Bookporn.”