Sunday, December 24, 2006

Book of the Year

Thinking back over the year I'm not sure I've read any books that were actually written this year. This is disgraceful and I must go check.

Wanders off.

Back now. I was wrong. In non-fiction:

Peter Rollins How (Not) To Speak of God
James Smith Who's Afraid of Post-Modernisim

...were both written this year but I enjoyed...

Rob Bell Velvet Elvis (2005)
Brian McLaren A new kind of Christian trilogy (2001, 2003, 2005)

more.

Best works of fiction I finished this year were :

Joanne Harris Gentlemen and Players (2005)
Rupert Thomson Divided Kingdom (2005)
Philip Roth The Human Stain (2001)
Carl Hiaasen Flush (2005)

I need to read some books sooner rather than leave them on a shelf to be read if I am to get a grip of current writing at all. Must let some important books queue jump.

Finally, I've owned my New International Version Hebrew/Greek key-word study Bible for only four weeks but it is excellent. Quite expensive (£42) but worth it I reckon.

4 comments:

Ali said...

As a 'sometimes' visitor to your blog, just wanted to wish you a happy Christmas and a prosperous and healthy New Year :-)

Steve Tilley said...

Many thanks.

St

Anonymous said...

I'll second most of those non-fiction books - particularly "Velvet Elvis" which I thought was ace.

Also the last McLaren book (The Last word, and the word after that) has shaped my thinking rather a lot, and nudged me in the direction of some other writers/thinkers too (NT Wright, Walter Brueggemann etc.)

Great stuff!

(also, bit late on the Christmas wish - but have a superb new year!)

Mike Peatman said...

Arthur & George by Julian Barnes was a good read