Could These Be The BEST Books of 2024? | Room For Nuance

Room For Nuance

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:10

All right, we are back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm here with Will Stevenson.

00:16

Hi, Will. Hi, Sean. Will, true or false, you knew you were recording this episode 10 minutes ago.

00:22

That is true. 11 minutes ago? Yeah, probably close. Yeah. 15 minutes ago.

00:28

No. You did not know. No. And why are you here again? That's a deep question. It really is, actually.

00:36

Yeah. Let me ask you this. Do you want to be here? Oh yeah, I want to be here. I love my pastor and Sean DeMars, and I'm really excited to talk about books with you.

00:46

Books, okay. Because that's what we're talking about. That's what we're doing. This is the Sean's favorite books of 2024 episode.

00:52

And again, you're here because... Because I want to talk to you about the books you've been reading. Oh, and you really want that?

00:57

Yeah, and you allowed me to. Wow, man, this is really great. Okay, well, let's get started. So, Will, how many books do you read a year, do you think?

01:07

Oh, I'm going to guess, on average, probably three a month. So, 36.

01:13

Yeah. That sounds probably about right. Three is the math. Okay. Three times 12. Yeah, yeah. And are you a fast reader, slow reader, medium reader?

01:20

Probably medium towards the slow end. I'm not in a rush. But good depth, good comprehension, I think, with your reading.

01:26

I hope so. You're the kind of guy, when I've given you stuff to read, and you come back and sort of regurgitate it back to me,

01:32

I'm like, oh, you actually really understand. Right. Even when it's some pretty complex stuff. Good.

01:37

I process out loud, so that's probably me figuring it out on the spot. Oh, okay. I'm the opposite.

01:43

I read a lot, but nothing really sticks. When something does stick, it sticks really well.

01:51

Yeah. Abraham Lincoln said this. He said that his mind was like steel, in the sense that it was really hard to etch something onto the metal, but once it was there, it was there for good.

02:01

Yeah. I make up for lack of comprehension with volume. Something good might stick.

02:08

Throw all the noodles against the wall, kind of a thing. Now, I was asking you how many books you read, so I could dunk on you with my answer.

02:15

Sean, how many books do you think you read a year? A few more than what you read. A few. Yeah. So what

02:21

I do is I have a list. Every book that I read goes on the list, and then it receives a ranking.

02:28

And this is not like, I'm not a lit major. This is not some super complicated algorithm.

02:35

How clear was the prose? How succinct were the arguments? It's really just how the book affected me.

02:41

Did I like the book? Did I not like the book? It's a little more complicated than that. So my best books are out of the many books that I read this year.

02:54

You got to tell us how many. I don't have to. I think now it's even better that I don't tell you. So the thousands of books you read this year.

03:01

That's right. Or the dozen. Okay. Yeah. What was

03:06

I saying? Oh, yeah. So the system is very simple. If I liked the book a lot, like if I really liked it or really found it useful, it gets a bold and an underline in my

03:17

Word document. If I liked the book, fine. It was good. It was useful, but I didn't love it.

03:23

I'm not over the moon. I'm not going to recommend it to someone. I'm not going to come back to it. It's just a bold.

03:29

Not just an underline. There's no underline. Just a bold. Right. And if I don't particularly care for the book, it's just kind of whatever.

03:36

It's just, I just put in the list. No bold. Right. Or no underline. No underline. Yeah. And there's actually another category.

03:43

Okay. If the book was bad enough that I didn't finish it, a

03:49

DNF, if you will, I put two asterisks. Did I say that right?

03:54

Yeah. Are there some that you don't finish that are still good that you would bold and or bold underline?

03:59

Oh, good question. No. Yeah. If it's good, I'm finishing it. Yeah. These are books that like, there's something in me that says, if I start a book,

04:07

I need to finish it. But life is short of the reading of books. There is no end. So like, it may even be like,

04:15

I'll get a third of the way through the book, but I won't put it on the list. Yeah. I just spit on you. No. For the viewers at home,

04:20

I totally just talked to Lugia and Will's face. If I don't read at least half of it, it's not going to go on the list.

04:27

But these are the books that like, okay, I know I should read this, or I should want to read this, or there's just enough helpful stuff in here that I'm going to keep going, or it's just intriguing enough that I'm going to keep going.

04:37

But if I get past the halfway point and I'm just dying on the vine, trying to read this book, I'm just going to stop it because there's so many other good books.

04:45

I'm just going to move on. But I read at least half of it. So it's going on the list. Yeah. Now of the books that I read this year.

04:51

Yes. How many? Thousands. Thousands. I would say that there were probably between three and five double asterisk books, did not finish books that made their way onto the list.

05:01

That was only three or five. Only three to five. Yeah. I try to, in my reading habits, which

05:08

I think includes figuring out which books to read, I try to be a little more discerning.

05:13

So I'm not just wasting time and talent and treasure, very little talent, but time and treasure on bad books.

05:19

So like the chess puzzle book that you're working through, you went ahead and double asterisked that one? Is that a thing?

05:25

Oh yeah. Okay. They publish them. Okay. Now this list also does not include all the reading and commentaries that I do for sermon prep.

05:35

Although it has in the past, if I've made my way all the way through a commentary, it's going to go there.

05:41

But like, I've been looking at Tom Schreiner's commentary on Romans as I'm preaching through it. That's not, it's not going to be on the list.

05:48

Some of these, maybe even many of these are audible. Is that right? That's right. Yes. That counts. I think it counts.

05:54

Do you think it counts? I think it counts. Are you being honest? I'm being honest. You're not just saying that because I'm your boss. Yeah. After we leave here,

06:00

I'm going to say it doesn't count, but no, it totally counts. You're obviously sitting there. You're listening to someone's thoughts. You're thinking through it.

06:06

That's the whole point. I mean, media matters. It's not irrelevant at all. Thanks, Neil Postman. Yeah, that's right.

06:12

But yeah, you're reading the book. Yeah. I actually think some books have been brought to life in a very fantastic way that makes them even better on Audible.

06:19

Yeah. I'm reading this book, listening actually, by Doris Kearns Goodwin on three different leaders.

06:27

And what's interesting is that they're all readers, but Franklin Roosevelt was, he said like he had to read a book out loud and he liked to have books read to him.

06:38

And he liked to read books to other people. And like reading a book without hearing it at all, he just found it incomprehensible.

06:45

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So I'm about half and half. Yeah. Okay. These days. Yeah. Sitting down reading versus Audible.

06:50

There are certain books. I just don't think you can do on Audible. Right. Maybe you can. Maybe Luke can. I'm not a good

06:56

Audible guy. Luke is for sure. Fiction is good on Audible. Yeah. If you have a really high quality narrator, books can be brought to life.

07:04

But like, I just can't do John Piper on Audible. Right. You know, I got to look at the book.

07:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to listen to him preach it. You know what I'm saying? No pun intended. Look at the book. Hey, I see what you did there. Yeah. If he would read his own books.

07:16

Just preach on him. Oh, dude. Yeah, just go to, yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like the, you know, the 21 servants of joy.

07:24

Well, I've listened to all those. I can't go back and read the book now. I just need to go listen to him do that.

07:29

And I'm just in one again, you know? Yeah. Okay. So let's get into the books. These books that we're going to talk about.

07:35

I don't know how many there are. Can I count them very quickly? There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven per row.

07:42

Seven, 14, 21, 28, 35. Great.

07:48

There's like 42, maybe a little bit less. 40 books. I'm going to guess these are bold and underlined.

07:53

These are the bold and underlined ones. These are the ones that were my favorite of the year. Okay. Let's start with Ben Sass.

07:59

Do you know who Ben Sass is? Man, I know the name. So Ben Sass is a

08:06

US Senator. Yes. He's from like Nebraska or something like that. He's been featured on like the gospel coalition and stuff.

08:11

Right. I don't know if he's actually writing these books. I think he is. He's an intellectual. Oh, wait. He actually went to go be like the provost of a college or president of a college or something.

08:19

Yeah. So he can write books. Yeah. Is what you're trying to, yeah. That's right. I don't think he needs a ghostwriter to write this book.

08:26

The title of this book is, being pulled up as we speak, The Vanishing American Adult.

08:32

Okay. Very good. He's just talking about, you know, how we live in this prolonged adolescence.

08:39

And he's a good, clear writer. He has theological convictions as he writes. He's writing from a

08:44

Christian worldview. Yeah. All around good, easy read. Great. Enjoyable.

08:49

You don't have to have anything to say about this. Yeah. And if you do end up having something to say, you jump right in. Yeah. Now this one's interesting.

08:56

This is a little novella. You know what the difference between a novel and a novella is? A little novel. I think so.

09:01

Yeah. Maybe is that like Italian or something? Sure. Sure. By Michael, I hope

09:07

I'm pronouncing his name right, Spiegel. It's like S -V -I -G -E -L. Okay.

09:13

It's called the AI Theist. Okay. You see what he's doing there? I do.

09:18

It's a play on the word. AI and theist and atheist. There it is.

09:24

This is a book about what happens if an AI machine, supercomputer, whatever, through its high level learning, comes to the conclusion that actually

09:37

Christianity is true. Which sounds like the kitschiest, like evangelical.

09:43

But if it is truly a logical machine. You know, this book I think was my biggest surprise of 2024.

09:50

I don't even remember why I decided to check it out. Maybe it was because it was like $2 on Kindle or something like that.

09:57

But other than like a few editorial things that I didn't, I kind of struggle with, and I tried not to throw the baby out with the bath water in the first chapter.

10:08

Yeah. The writing is very good. It's clear. It's persuasive. It's engaging.

10:13

It's entertaining. And it just ended up being a really fun read. Yeah. Is it not technical much?

10:19

It's just technical enough to let you know that this author actually knows a lot about AI, and he knows a lot about philosophy and a lot about apologetics.

10:28

And it's character driven, good protagonists, good antagonists, you know. And it's not so long that he's beaten a dead horse, you know.

10:36

He kind of gets it done and gets you out of there. When I got it done, I thought, oh, that was like one of the funnest reads that I just,

10:43

I didn't see coming. Yeah, very cool. Later in the year, he came out with AI Theist 2 .0.

10:50

Wow. Self -published, by the way. Sequels are always better, so. Now, for our viewers at home,

10:57

Will is employing a rhetorical device called sarcasm. Right. Because they're usually not. Because they're usually not.

11:03

Yeah. That's right. Uh, and that is also true in this case. Okay. It is not better, and it is not as good.

11:13

Right. But it is still very good. Still bold and underlined. Still bold and underlined.

11:18

That's how much I enjoyed it. If he came out with an AI Theist 3 .0, you know what it reminds me of?

11:24

What's that? The Quiet Place. Yeah. The Quiet Place came out that movie. It was very original.

11:30

Yeah. Very powerful, very well done. The second one was also good, but less good by about 15%.

11:36

Shouldn't have made it, but it was great. Yeah. I mean, the money's there, brother. You gotta do it. And that's probably what Michael's thinking.

11:41

The money's there. Self -publishing. Yeah. But it was good.

11:47

Less good by like maybe 15%. And then the next one probably will not be anywhere near as good.

11:54

But I'm a chump, and I'm gonna do it. What was the difference between the two of them? You know, I haven't really put a lot of thought into it.

12:00

So I don't know that I can answer that. Yeah. Okay. Next one on the list.

12:06

John Krakauer wrote this book, Under the Banner of Heaven, about a violent

12:12

Mormon cult. Okay. And I'll leave it there. What's next?

12:18

It is very well written. I think I did that one on Audible. It's very well narrated.

12:23

The story is fascinating. And I'm assuming that's nonfiction, right? Nonfiction. Yeah, that's right.

12:29

Anytime somebody can tell like a good cult story, I'm in. Is it contemporary? I think it was from like the 90s.

12:37

Okay. I think. Wow. Next one, a New York Times bestseller, Endurance, by Alfred Lansing.

12:44

Do you know what this is about? Endurance. I don't. Running very far. It's about Ernest Shackleton's endeavor to the

12:54

Antarctic. Oh, okay. And they get stranded on the ice and they have to fight for their survival.

13:00

And it's a story of heroism and leadership and all things impossible.

13:08

All right. Give us one good takeaway about leadership from that book. I can't.

13:14

I can't. Hey, you gotta be able to do it. Yeah. We gotta read it.

13:20

In case anyone's wondering, it's not like I take notes on these things and then come in here. I compiled the list.

13:27

I remember what I remember. Yeah. All right. Okay. I'll ask the last question.

13:33

No, no, no. This is good. I think. Like, actually, no, I have nothing.

13:39

I was gonna try to come up with something. The book was. Quick intermission. The book was so good though.

13:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good. Storytelling was great. Intense, I'm sure. The thing that I took away from it was like, man, these are the kinds of books that we want our sons to read.

13:53

Yeah. Men who are doing big, hard things and encountering massive obstacles and they come out by the skin of their teeth.

14:03

I'm like, yeah, go be like that for Jesus. Endurance. Yeah, there it is. The next thing I actually recommended this book to you.

14:09

I don't remember if you ended up reading or not. The God of all things by Andrew Wilson. No. God of all things.

14:17

This one here, recovering the sacred in an everyday world. It looks like a book I would enjoy. So I'm glad you recommended it.

14:23

Yeah, it's one of those books. Yeah. It's one of those books that because everyone was on it for a while,

14:31

I just was like, I don't want to read it. Right. And then I finally did. And it was very good. He just looks at all these things in the world and just goes, do you see

14:40

God in this? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you don't, like, let me help you see God in this. That's great. And yeah,

14:45

I really thought you would appreciate it. But thanks for bringing it back up. Yeah, that's right. The next one, Words That Work by Dr.

14:53

Frank Luntz. This one was a bit of a slog. I read it a couple pages at a time. He was a speechwriter and then a political consultant.

15:01

And his whole thing is like, let me help you understand the way people hear what you're saying.

15:07

Because what you're trying to say and what people hear you saying are two different things very often.

15:13

And so the best communicators are the ones who understand how, not only what they want to say, but how they will be heard.

15:21

And listen, he says in 300 pages what could be said in 150 pages. But it's because it's so full of example after example.

15:29

And he's a little bit selling himself. And I told this guy this thing and he didn't listen to me. But I had to help him hear it.

15:37

As a pastor, I was intrigued to read this book because I have so often found it to be the case that I've communicated something and somebody's heard the exact opposite of what

15:48

I intend to communicate. And so I thought, okay, this could be like a good common grace resource that will help me do better at that.

15:54

I mean, you speak for a living. You're communicating ideas for a living. Constantly. All the time. And usually if I get in trouble, it's because I've said something poorly.

16:00

Yeah. All right. Dare I ask? Dude, I was about to say, go ahead. I'll lengthen this question out.

16:06

You just think, I haven't asked you yet. Right, wheels are turning. But if I were going to ask you a question,

16:12

I'd ask this. What was your main takeaway? Or maybe not main takeaway, but what was like one thing that you're like, that still sits in your mind.

16:18

You're employing that whenever you're preaching. It's what I just told you. What sticks in my mind is, it's not enough to have an idea of what

16:24

I want to say. Yeah. You have to be exegeting your listeners. Just mindful in general. Of yeah, how this might be heard.

16:31

Yeah. Which is why I value things like sermon previews so much. You know, before I preach a sermon, I'll sit down with someone and I'll read it out loud.

16:37

And very often someone will say, well, it sounds like you're saying this. And I'm like, what? No. It gives you a chance to -

16:43

Yeah, to do that. But it's interesting that you ask that same question again, knowing that I'll fail.

16:49

I think this can be one of the bigger hindrances for people reading is they'll say,

16:55

I have poor recall. Like I read that book and I don't even know that I could tell you X, Y, or Z about it.

17:01

And this is, we talk about this a lot. Reading is more about formation than information.

17:07

Even if you can't recall, you know, bullet point one, two, or three from the book. If you're sitting in these ideas, they are shaping you.

17:15

Right. They're forming you. You don't remember any one particular workout, but working out over years obviously has had an effect.

17:21

That's right. Yeah. The next one, this one was a book I did with my kids, an

17:27

American classic, Where the Red Fern Grows. Oh yeah. An American classic that I didn't read growing up.

17:33

Right. I probably was supposed to, but I'm sure I didn't. It was so good, man. Okay. It felt like just a good old dose of Americana.

17:40

You know, really enjoyed it. You like that. You like that kind of genre in general, the Americana stuff. Yeah. I do.

17:46

Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of a life I never knew. Yeah. Which you just can't forget. Yeah, that's right.

17:52

But it's also just really well -written. It's a compelling story. Yeah. Fun times all around. Right. Next on the list,

17:58

Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods. I think this may be like the third time I've read it. There are certain books

18:03

I reread because I have to. Some books I reread because I want to. Sometimes it's a combination thereof.

18:09

I think Keller's work on a thick, deep understanding of sin through the lens of idolatry is just something that I'm always just going to go back to.

18:21

He's just so helpful in that regard. It's a good book.

18:27

It's clearly written. Every time I go back into it, I'm like, I'm glad I read that. Am I right that since he passed away, you've really made a point to go like catch yourself up or reread a lot of Tim Keller, a lot of sermons.

18:40

Like you really spent some time with Tim Keller over the last couple of years. Yeah, the same thing happened with R .C. Sproul. Yeah. You know, it's the classic, like, you don't appreciate your heroes while you have them.

18:49

I say hero with an asterisk next to it. Yeah. Tim Keller has some ecclesiology stuff and some evangelism stuff that I'm not necessarily on board with.

18:57

And I've critiqued him publicly in episodes of Defend and Confirm and things like that. But yeah, after Keller passed away,

19:04

I was like, OK, let me dive back into his preaching. They made all of his sermons available for free. Finally, they should have done that while he was alive.

19:11

That's neither here nor there. And I think my appreciation for Keller has actually grown the more

19:16

I've sat in his writing. What is the impetus there? Like, OK, like they just passed away and it's like, you know, no,

19:23

I really do need to go, like, really listen to what they've said. Like, let's drive that. I mean, it almost seems like, oh, yeah, we should all do that.

19:30

Most people aren't. Right. You are. So I'm just curious. Yeah. I think for me, it was just the reality of death.

19:36

Like, I was like, dang, like, he's really gone. Yeah. Like, there's really, like, whenever Keller's coming out with a new book, it's like, or whenever he would come out with a new book, he'd always be like, oh, forgiveness.

19:48

I wonder how he's going to do his Keller thing on this. Right. Same thing with Piper. Piper comes out with the book on learning.

19:54

You're like, how is he going to do Christian hedonism on lifelong learning? How do you know that he's going to do that?

20:01

And, you know, you know what this guy is going to do with this, how the angle he's going to take. And when

20:06

Keller was gone, I was like, oh, there's no more of that. You know, so let me just go back and dig in. And I think he,

20:13

I'm inclined towards fundamentalism. I'm inclined towards black and white thinking.

20:19

I'm inclined to be less nuanced. If I'm going to swing, I'm probably going to punch to the left.

20:26

So I just think Keller balances me out. Yeah. And I'm not really worried about being influenced by some of the problematic is too strong of a word, maybe, but some of the more problematic elements.

20:37

You're not going to be caught off guard. I don't think so. Yeah. Moving on. This is a book that we both read.

20:43

So now I want you to tell me three main takeaways that you say. I'm ready. Abigail Shryer, Shryer, Shryer.

20:50

Shryer, I think. Shryer is where the tokens live. Yeah. Yeah. Bad therapy.

20:56

Yeah. What'd you think? Dude, that's a great book. Yeah. Talking about common grace. That book is just full of common grace.

21:03

So much good parental advice. Got her finger on the culture. Just like really understands the, the therapeutizing of our world and how it's dangerous.

21:12

And even as a non -believer, she sees just like, it's not good for our kids. And like, we see doctrination happening with our kids.

21:19

We see like prolonged therapy, kids kind of involuntarily being put in a room with an adult that they're going to spend the rest of their life with being told how to live.

21:27

Yeah. Kind of like a pastor. Yeah. It's really good. Yeah. I think I would put her in the same category as like Jonathan Haidt.

21:36

Yeah. Just doing a lot of good common grace stuff. Yeah. They say, you know, she's a classical feminist, hair on fire feminist.

21:43

And Jonathan Haidt is like an evolutionary biologist. So, you know, read discerningly.

21:49

If you give it out, give it out discerningly. But yeah, this book, I think I put it in a trio.

21:55

The Coddling of the American Mind, The Anxious Generation and Abigail Shire's book all together are like what

22:01

I would give to people. If you want to hear like a secular critique of the modern therapeutic world that we live in.

22:08

Next one, The End of Race Politics by Coleman Hughes. You know who that is? Yes, he is.

22:14

I guess he just like speaks in his podcast sort of stuff, right? I don't know like on that, but like speaks to this stuff a lot.

22:20

Yeah. He kind of got put on by John McHorter. Yeah, that's right. A classic liberal, he's a

22:27

Democrat. He's very anti -religion, by the way, anti -Christianity.

22:33

But he's also in many ways, just a careful thinker. And he and Coleman Hughes during some of the craziness that has happened over the last several years started talking about the way critical race theory has damaged the way people talk about race.

22:49

And they're two black guys talking about this stuff. And they're two black guys who aren't conservatives. So if you're inclined to write off Thomas Sowell, because he's an

23:00

Uncle Tom, he's a black, and I'm saying that because I've heard black guys call

23:05

Thomas Sowell an Uncle Tom. Well, these guys are two black dudes who are liberals. They're Democrats.

23:11

They voted for Obama, they'd vote for him again, that kind of thing. And they're just, but in this book in particular, The End of Race Politics, he's trying to promote a classical vision, the classic civil rights kind of vision for the way we should think about race, as opposed to critical race theory and identity politics.

23:30

Martin Luther King Jr. might've been onto something. I think so. Very well -written, very clear, not overly long.

23:38

You don't have to agree with every conclusion to appreciate and to profit from the book. The next one, this one got me,

23:45

The Long Gray Line. This is a story of young men who were cadets at West Point, and who then went off to war, and it kind of traces their lives.

23:58

The first third, I was like, ooh, this is interesting, and oh, this is boring, and ooh, this is interesting, and ooh, this is boring.

24:05

But by the time I kind of got to the middle of the book, I was really actually invested in their stories, and I just kept going.

24:14

I think books like this are one of the more interesting ways to study history. So instead of going in 1776, blah, blah, blah, you're actually experiencing history as you live it out through the lives of these characters.

24:27

You said this one got you, what do you mean by that? Yeah, good question. It got me in the sense that I thought

24:33

I was getting ready to turn it off, but then it snagged me and kept me the rest of the way. Yeah, that's right. Sean, what would you say to someone like me who reads virtually no history, biography, that sort of stuff?

24:44

Wants to, probably thinks it's wise, but that's kind of as far as I've thought about it. I mean, it's so complicated, man.

24:50

I mean, your time is limited. You've already said you're not a fast reader. You're not the most enthusiastic reader.

24:58

I'm not an audible guy. Not an audible guy, although I've seen you try. I try. Okay. Yeah. And then you're also in a position where I'm constantly throwing stuff at you to read.

25:09

Right. And so you're a man under authority, and there's some, like a lot of the reading you do, you kind of just have to do.

25:17

Elders training reading. Yeah, Sunday school. Sunday school. So I would say it's okay, but I mean,

25:23

I would try to squeeze it in, man. If you don't want to be ignorant of history.

25:28

Right. If you have to find like the most fascinating history books, like dude,

25:33

Candace Millard, she does these little vignettes of history. So you could read like a

25:40

Churchill biography and learn about his whole life. Okay, fine, whatever. That may be profitable. It may not. But Candace Millard wrote a book about his escape from a

25:48

POW camp in the Boer War. And dude, it is a gripping page turner. So I think my advice to you would be to find books like that.

25:56

Good history that's like genuinely exciting and a fun read. And that way it won't feel like a burden.

26:02

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cool, thanks. And good job with that question, Will. You bet. Next, why do we feel lonely at church?

26:10

By Jeremy Lineman. This is one of TGC's little hard questions booklets that they give out.

26:16

Kind of like the nine marks questions and answers. TGC started doing that. Very good, very good.

26:22

I just bought it, gave away a bunch of copies. If you want to know what it's about, buy a copy, read it.

26:27

It'll take you like 30 minutes. Yeah, why do we feel lonely at church? Handed out a lot too, I'm sure.

26:33

Yeah, I think I got like, after I read it, we bought like 10 copies and I gave them all away. Next, your

26:38

Old Testament sermon needs to get saved by Dave King. We did an episode with him.

26:44

Did you end up reading that book? I have not. Went to his talk, listened to the episode, some of the episode. Would you commend it based off of what you heard?

26:51

Based off what I've heard, yes. We got to learn how to preach Christ from the Old Testament. Yes, and if you're not a preacher, just to see

26:56

Christ in the Old Testament. Next on the list, A Hobbit by J .R .R. Tolkien.

27:03

Or Tolkien. A Hobbit. Is it, what is it, Hobbit? No, A Hobbit, yeah. It's The Hobbit.

27:10

Yeah, The Hobbit. Okay. You're the first person I've ever heard say A Hobbit. Oh, I thought you were talking about a different book.

27:17

Oh, a hobbit walks into a bar and the bartender says, Tolkien sucks, get out of here. So, Will, you have, you know,

27:26

I don't like Lord of the Rings. You've tried to get in Lord of the Rings. Did you succeed this last go -around? No. Okay, all right.

27:33

Yeah, Lord of the Rings is objectively bad and not very good, but The Hobbit is fantastic.

27:40

Yeah. It's fantastic. It's very good. So I did the audio book read by Andy Serkis.

27:47

Phenomenal performance. Yeah. And it just captured me and it helped me to love the book. Tried to do his version of Lord of the

27:52

Rings, couldn't do it. But anyways, on my sabbatical this year, we had a very long road trip.

27:58

So I downloaded The Hobbit and listened to it with my family and they loved it. And so now

28:03

The Hobbit has made its way into the DeMars family canon. Do you know what the DeMars family canon is? No.

28:09

Okay, so you know what a canon is. I do. Shoots people. So a closed set of books.

28:15

I actually got this from Ben Sasse's book, The Vanishing American Adult or something like that.

28:22

What he suggests is that it can be 12 books, it can be 10 books, it can be 50 books.

28:27

You have a family canon, books that you feel like really encapsulate your family. Right. Right. So for us, it's

28:33

Unbroken by Laura Hildebrand. The Bible, obviously.

28:39

I was gonna say, I have one that's 66 books. There it is. Yeah. That's my family canon. Right. Yeah. But The Hobbit was so good.

28:46

Our whole family enjoyed it so much. It's in the family canon. Great. Yeah. Next on the list,

28:52

Taming the Tongue by Jeff Robinson. Will, have you read this book? I have.

28:57

And? Very, very good. Because? So practical. It helps you to be more holy.

29:04

I mean, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, and it helps you identify why you're saying what you're saying, and how you need to examine your heart, and what you need to do about it, and taking it to the cross.

29:14

It's just really good. I've read it. I read it personally, and then I've read it with a couple of other members.

29:20

And it's one that I go back to and reference a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I read it the first time, like three years ago.

29:28

Physical copy. Very good. Well -written. Enjoyed reading it that way. Some members recently were like, we really need to read this.

29:36

Will you read it with us? They didn't end up reading it. No, I think one of them did. I did

29:42

Audible because I was like, man, I have a lot to read, but I really do need to get back in this book. I say that because of what

29:48

I said earlier. If I'm going to be in trouble, it's probably going to be my tongue. So this is the kind of book that I just imagine every couple of years,

29:54

I'm just going to come back to. It takes, it's like a four -hour audio book. Four hours of my time to help me reign in my tongue so I don't set the world on fire with it.

30:02

Thank you, James. Yeah, I think I'm going to reread this book every few years. Yeah, so well -organized, even just like as an easy reference.

30:09

It's very good. And it was written by a pastor who was inspired to write it because this is what he struggles with.

30:15

You know, somebody in his church came to him and lovingly confronted him on his tongue. Yeah. And when I read that, I was like, oh, that's like me.

30:21

That's my church members do that often. Plug for going to your brothers and sisters and telling them how to follow Jesus.

30:27

If they didn't do that, there wouldn't be this book that we're so helped by. Yeah, that's right. Christian Ethics by Wayne Grudem.

30:34

You read this book. I did. Every last page. Pretty close. Pretty close.

30:39

And we had to read it because? Because we're doing elders training. We're trying to entrust the gospel to other men who can entrust the gospel to other men.

30:45

So it takes training and intentionality. So I read the book. Yeah, so we've done systematic theology. We've done historical church history, or I think we've historical theology.

30:56

You know, we've done, have we done our biblical counseling time yet? No. We're coming up on elders training, so that'll be there.

31:03

Yeah, actually I have different plans. We'll talk about that later. But I think elders just need to spend more time thinking through complicated ethical questions than they probably often do.

31:16

And so this was for our elders and our prospective elders. We worked through all thousand something pages of Wayne Grudem's ethics textbook.

31:24

The nice thing about Grudem is that he is just such an easy writer to read. Yes, so well organized.

31:30

Of note in particular, I think, was his section on the way we, as New Testament Christians, should interact with the law and how the law informs our ethics and a good little refutation of theonomy while we're at it.

31:44

Yeah. Any highlights from you? That was actually a big one for me too. Yeah, for sure. Just the idea that we need this today, especially.

31:53

Christians always need to do ethics, but in a world where like the culture is so, like God isn't good and like there's all these moral problems and the

32:00

Bible is insufficient to answer them. Pastors have to be ready to talk about it. Yeah. Would you ever recommend a member read this?

32:08

Sure, yeah. I'm actually pretty quick to recommend Grudem to people because he's so easy to read. Yeah, it's a big book and it's super scary, but even if you just referenced it, like you're gonna be glad you read this.

32:18

Like we were doing a Priscilla Project thing and we're trying to find all these books to read for our ladies to learn how to do biblical theology.

32:26

And I'm like, hey, like Grudem's kind of done this, like his systematic theology. Yeah, that's right. I know it's scary, but you can read it.

32:33

So yeah, yes is the answer. I would very quickly hand this out to people. Nice. If Nazis knocked on your door and you were hiding

32:41

Jews, what would you do? Would you lie to them well? Depends if it's verbal or not. You just invite them in for tea?

32:47

You have to, yeah. Okay. This one might surprise you, buddy. Okay. Next on the list, Bill O 'Reilly,

32:53

Killing the Legends. Do you know that Bill O 'Reilly has a series of history and biography books?

33:00

No. Well, okay, here's the thing. Martin Duggard is probably the guy who does most of the research and writing.

33:08

Okay. Bill O 'Reilly is the name. Right. Duggard is the brain. So I'm not saying

33:13

Bill O 'Reilly is not a brain. My grandparents love him. Your grandparents love him. You know, Fox News people, yes,

33:19

Bill O 'Reilly. This series that he does, this is the kind of thing that I think would get you into reading more history and biography.

33:27

They're just so well done. And he is surprisingly, or they are surprisingly even -handed in this book.

33:33

You would expect it to be like a political and ideological book wrapped in history.

33:41

It's really not that. It's just they excel at finding the coolest details about certain historical events and bringing them to the fore.

33:49

Yes. Very good, yeah. Next, Springfield Confidential.

33:54

Did you ever watch The Simpsons, Will? No. Okay. I grew up watching The Simpsons. You didn't because you grew up in a

34:00

Christian household. Yeah. Probably weren't allowed to. My parents were, they love me, you know. Yeah, that's right. Well, my mom didn't love me and my dad wasn't around.

34:09

So I grew up watching The Simpsons. And Springfield Confidential is a book written by Mike Reese with Matthew Klickstein, which sounds like it has to be fake, but it's not.

34:19

It's real and it's Jewish. And do you know that a lot of comedy writers are

34:24

Jewish, Will? I didn't. It's, okay, well, there you go. Now you know. And he's just telling stories from being a writer on The Simpsons and giving you a lot of background info on it.

34:33

I recommended Grant Miller, one of our elders. Who loves The Simpsons. I recommended that he check it out on vacation.

34:39

He said he loved it. Yeah. It was great. If you're into like books that are humorous, which it seems like a lot of people in our circles aren't, you know, it's theology, history, biography, ethics, you know, these kinds of things.

34:52

But if you're just looking for a light, fun, breezy read, it has some inappropriate humor, as you might expect.

34:59

The Simpsons. But it's nothing like overt or egregious. Probably not from the perspective of God in heaven.

35:06

I'm thinking in relation to the culture we live in. Your standard. My standard, which is the worst.

35:12

How are you doing? Are you hanging in there? I'm doing great. Do I feel like I'm not? No, you feel like you're doing great. Great.

35:17

Okay. I'm actually worried that I already have to pee again. So let me just... I ran this morning.

35:25

Three miles, not that you asked. No. And then when I get done running, I just chug fluid. You got to stay hydrated.

35:31

Yep. Okay. American Kingpin.

35:37

This one was in my wishlist for a very long time. I'd heard good things about it.

35:43

But for some reason, I'll get excited about it a book, a book, put it in my wishlist. And then it'll just get lost in there forever.

35:49

And then eventually one day I'll go back through my wishlist and I'll be like, oh yeah, there's that book. Should I do it or should

35:54

I not? You just described what wishlists are. Yeah. That's why they exist.

35:59

That's exactly right. Like I don't want this now, but I might want it later. Yes. And I might look at it later and get it. But I also might not.

36:04

And then you did. That's awesome. I recently went through and cleared out my wishlist and I was like,

36:09

I'm not going to read that. I'm not going to read that. I'm not going to read that. Yeah, that's a good practice. This one though. Yes. I was like, it's time to finally do it.

36:16

I could not believe how good this book was. I can't believe I let it linger for so long. Should have been in your wishlist.

36:22

It should have been an immediate purchase, but you never know. American Kingpin by Nick Bolton.

36:28

The epic hunt for the criminal mastermind behind the Silk Road. Do you know what the Silk Road is? Yeah, something in China moving silk around.

36:36

Historically, that's a very accurate statement. That's what I was looking for. In these modern times, the Silk Road was a website on the dark web.

36:43

Do you know what the dark web is? I mean, nobody does, but yes. And do you use the dark web?

36:50

Okay. The dark web is, it's like on the internet, you have to have a special browser to get onto it.

36:56

And that's where you do illegal things. You buy drugs. You hire people to kill your wife. Right. You only...

37:04

If Amber disappears in the next month. Well, the

37:09

Silk Road was started by this libertarian college kid who said, it's not right that the government tells us we can't kill ourselves with drugs.

37:19

We should be able to buy and sell drugs freely. Well, the internet has made it possible for us to do that. I'll create this website called the

37:25

Silk Road. And it kind of immediately blew up and it became this like multi -billion dollar thing.

37:34

And he was basically just like him in his bedroom.

37:39

Like a one bedroom apartment. Products around? Is that what you're saying? No, it's like a Craigslist almost.

37:46

Like you can sell your drugs on the Silk Road. You trade in like, not Bitcoin, but you know, whatever. It's a marketplace where people come together.

37:52

It's a marketplace. Yeah. And, but then, you know, it got away from him and people started selling guns on there.

37:58

And then people started, Hitman started selling the services on there. Doesn't sound surprising. Right. And so, and then he ends up having people killed in order to like protect it.

38:08

Even though he was like, I'm a harmless libertarian. All I want is for people to smoke weed without being persecuted.

38:14

This is interesting though, yeah. And then I won't tell you how it ends. Yeah. But one of the few books where like,

38:21

I would be at a place where I needed to stop and I would want to like move stuff around so I didn't have to do my other obligations.

38:27

So I could just keep reading this book. Very rare to have a book that, that engrossing. Interesting. And it's, it's real life.

38:35

Right. That's the best, you know, it's like. Would you say this is a book like you need to give to libertarians who are just like a little too optimistic about all of that, you know?

38:43

I would not have, but I think, I think yes. As you're saying it, I'm like, this sounds like an argument. Yeah. That's interesting.

38:49

Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. Next, Charlotte's Web by E .B. White. Man, Americana, here we go.

38:56

Yeah, dude. You know. I don't know what it is about Americana. Just hearing the title, I'm like. Yeah, so you're the opposite.

39:02

You're like, get it away from me. Yeah, yeah. Well, you had a good upbringing. Yeah. You know. Yeah, that's what it is.

39:08

They made us read them in school and I just. Okay. So I was just had a bad attitude. I didn't want to read them. So now I have to hate it kind of thing.

39:14

But anyways, yeah, Charlotte's Web. Can't you go ahead. Well, a little known fact about E .B. White for those who are like outside of the circle of like people who think about writing is that E .B.

39:23

White is kind of like the godfather of like high quality American prose.

39:30

Okay. Like he's this strunk white, like these are people that writers look to to learn how to be better writers.

39:36

And he wrote a children's book. When did you write that? Do you know? I don't know. No. Many moons ago. Okay. But did the audio book with my kids and our whole family loved it.

39:46

I think it's going in the family canon. It holds up, man. It's one of those things that you go back and you're like, ah,

39:52

Charlotte's White. Please let this be good. Charlotte's Web, excuse me. A little Freudian racism sneaking in there.

39:59

Yeah. She is white. She is white. Is the spider white? I don't know. Okay. You have to read to find out.

40:05

Next, how to read a book by Andy Naselli.

40:10

Advice for Christian readers. So are you familiar with the book that this came from?

40:16

Yes. I've referenced it, picked through it. Help me remember. Mortimer Adler wrote a book called

40:22

How to Read a Book. And the main thing I took away from that book when I read it many moons ago was start with the preface and introduction, then go to the last chapter, read the table of contents, and then read the book.

40:34

That way you have a frame. Yeah, and you always have like an off ramp at any point in that as you're like, ah,

40:39

I don't think I need this, right? Yeah. I kind of got the gist. Now, what I just said to you is a summary of a very long, dense academic book.

40:47

It's not super accessible. I might've overstated it, but it's just not the most accessible book. So Andy Naselli comes along and he says,

40:54

I want to do a more accessible Christian version of that book. And boy, did he succeed.

41:00

Okay. I mean, what a fantastic read. I mean, this is the kind of book that I think if you're like doing homeschool for your freshman in high school, like they have to read this book.

41:09

It's also just such a clear thinker, great writer, easy to pick up anything from Naselli. It really is true. Now, a little insider baseball.

41:16

I am bitter with Andy at the moment. I've been trying to get him on Room for Nuance, particularly to talk about this book because I'm most excited to do interviews about resources that I love and that I want to promote.

41:26

Right. And we haven't been able to make it work. And then I just saw that he did the interview with Douglas Wilson. Wow. On this book.

41:35

He's like, I can't Thursday, I'm busy. What are you doing? Now, Canon Press did publish it.

41:41

So maybe there is some obligation there. You know. Contractually obligated. Contractually obligated.

41:48

That's what I'll tell myself to make myself feel better. Maybe you can publish his next book and then make him do an interview. I can publish it?

41:54

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Will, Luke, are you going to start a publishing company? Yeah. Okay. Next on the list,

42:01

Papillon by Henri Charrier. How's my French?

42:07

It's great. Papillon means butterfly. This is a story about a man who was supposedly falsely convicted of a murder in France and then was sent away to the prison islands in Africa that France operated.

42:22

Okay. And, you know, you go to these islands, you may never come back. It's all very harsh and stuff like that.

42:28

Very good book. Very intriguing, engaging. What's really interesting about it is when

42:33

I got done, I was so compelled by the book that I did a little research because it's supposed to be a true story, you know. Well, a lot of the details about this are highly suspect.

42:43

Yeah. So it seems like there's a germ of a story here that was taken and blown up.

42:49

So I was a little discouraged when I found that out. Either way, it's a very good book. Very fun.

42:54

Yeah, that's right. Uh, next on the book list is Steve Martin, born standing up.

43:01

Will, do you know who Steve Martin is? Yeah. Do you really? Yeah. Okay. Was it cheaper by the dozen or was that right?

43:08

He's the guy who looked like he was 50 when he was 30. He, yeah, he's always been old.

43:13

And then when he turned 50, he looked 50 and now he's 70 and he looks 50. Okay. So now he looks young.

43:19

Somehow not though. Okay. Uh, I've never been a big fan of his comedy.

43:26

Uh, he was good in the jerk. Do you even know what that movie is? Uh, this book surprised me.

43:31

It was a little book about his coming up in the standup world. And that is something that I am interested in.

43:37

And he's a good writer and the audio version is narrated by him. He did a good job.

43:43

Yeah. Good read. Is Steve Martin Jewish? It feels like he has to be. Yeah. You were saying that earlier.

43:48

Yeah. He plays the banjo. Does that help? Yeah, for sure. Okay, good. We figured it out.

43:54

Next on the list. The book is titled Pontius Pilate, a novel by Paul L Meyer.

44:03

So what this guy does is he does historical fiction and he tries to help you understand the socio -economic, political world of Pontius Pilate.

44:15

And Jesus is only a peripheral figure for most of the book. Man, it was really good.

44:21

I actually got the recommendation from Andy Naselli in his book. Oh. How to read a book.

44:27

I don't remember where it was in there, but. You're going to ask him about it, but it's going to be great. In the interview that we're definitely going to do soon.

44:33

I'll ask him about it. It was very, very good. Any, any, any, uh, let me just do one more.

44:40

Any, any, any book where I feel like you can really help me understand the historical context of stuff in the

44:50

Bible. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just a fan of. Yeah. That's, that's going to help you like preach better. I'm sure you can get all kinds of pictures out of that.

44:56

Yeah. And if you can do it in narrative form and really like keep me, that's, yeah, that's going to be great. Yeah. Yeah.

45:02

All right. The next book on the list, if anyone's still paying attention, if anyone's still watching or listening to this,

45:10

The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy. You've heard of it?

45:17

No, this book was amazing. It's the story, a fictional story of boys at a military institute, a military school.

45:31

And it's the kind of book that you can tell the author knows the subject matter intimately.

45:36

And he weaves the story in such a way that you go, okay, this isn't true, but it could be true.

45:43

You know, I think anybody who's been to military school would read this book and go, the details are different, but this was my experience.

45:52

You know, I was on sabbatical and I read this book right before I started sabbatical and it inspired me to write a novel, which

45:59

I did. Right. And I tried to do the same thing that he did. Or is it a novella? Oh, it's a novella. Thank you.

46:04

Good catch. Anyways, very well done. I don't know that I would do it on Audible.

46:10

I did it the physical, but I don't know why I would even say that. Right. Yeah.

46:16

So when are you publishing your novella? Probably never.

46:21

Nobody wants it. I was going to put it on my list and hold it and underline it. Have you read it? Your novella?

46:27

Yeah. No. And I sent you a copy. No. I did. No, you didn't. I did. Well, resend it,

46:32

I guess. I don't think so. I did. Oh, trust me. I loved it. It burns.

46:38

It burns very much that you have not read it yet. I am sure that I haven't seen it. Next on the list, trust.

46:44

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Will. Do you know what that is? A prize given to book writers.

46:51

Yep. Authors even. Authors even. By Hernan Diaz.

46:57

This is his second book. His first one, he got published on a lark, on a whim, if you will.

47:04

Okay. Couldn't get published, got it published. And then boom, book number two, winner of the

47:09

Pulitzer Prize. It tells the story of a financier, somebody in like the banking world, but it tells the story from four different angles.

47:20

It tells the story from his journal, from the perspective of his wife, and then from a couple other people in the story.

47:28

Very fascinating to have the same story, but told from four different angles. And his writing is so good.

47:35

It's so lucid. It's so clear. It's so elegant. I think sometimes I read books and the writing is so good.

47:42

It feels like just another character in the story. That's what it felt like in this book. Yeah. Yeah. Anything?

47:49

Yeah. Like, I guess, what is he exploring in the book from those four different perspectives?

47:56

Is it like some kind of moral problem? Okay. Yeah, it is. But there's a lot going on there.

48:02

Yeah, yeah. So you, yeah, I couldn't, I don't know. Can't say too much. I quite literally can't say. I was trying to help.

48:08

Yeah. This one I saw, I just went into like a

48:15

Barnes and Noble. Do you know what that is? Yeah. And I was just like, oh, let me poke.

48:20

I had 15 minutes before an appointment. Let me just look around. I saw this on like the recommended thing. It seemed interesting.

48:26

I checked it out. It was fascinating. An Immense World by Ed Young, also won the

48:31

Pulitzer Prize. There you go. Back to back. Pulitzer Prize winning books. How Animal Senses Reveal the

48:37

Hidden Realms Around Us. So Will, how many senses do humans have? Five.

48:43

Incorrect. There are more than five. Like proprioception is a sense. Your awareness of your own body in space.

48:50

But we're kind of taught the big five. Yeah, somebody made that up. So what this author does is he just goes, hey, all these animals have all these other senses that humans don't have.

49:02

And that affects the way that they perceive the world. And we can't fully understand it because we don't have those senses. So for example, would be moles.

49:12

Moles have electromagnetic sensors in their nose. They sense the electromagnetic field of the earth.

49:19

Smells funny, we would say. And they're blind, right? But they have this other sense that we don't have.

49:27

How do they know up from down? I guess, whatever that is. And he does that with like everything from rattlesnakes who can sense heat with their nose and all this other stuff.

49:36

And by the end, I was like a little bit like, yeah, I get it. Animals are different. But the first,

49:42

I think, half was good enough that it earned itself a bold and an underline.

49:49

We can see seven colors, but then there's other animals out there can see like 20. He does highlight that as well.

49:55

That's cool. He talks about that, yeah. That's cool. And it's interesting to think how much of the world exists around us that we cannot perceive.

50:06

Nevertheless, it is. Yeah, it's there. Yeah. And there's really creative experiments that we can come up with to find out ways that animals do understand these parts of the world that we don't.

50:19

Right. There's things that we can learn from the senses of animals is what you're saying. That's right. And the title of the book is

50:26

An Immense World by Ed Yong. I thought you said it was something to do with what we can learn from animal senses.

50:32

You thought you were really doing it there, didn't you? I really did. Next on the list, Spurgeon the Pastor by Jeffrey Chang, aka

50:39

Jeff Chang, spelled G -E -O -F -F. Classic.

50:45

Yeah. This is one of the books that I kind of didn't want to read because I just don't want to read another book about Spurgeon.

50:56

Yeah. Well, people are writing them because they're just as good as they've always been. I mean, for me, what was most enlightening, fascinating, enjoyable about this book was

51:09

I was reading it through the lens of my time at Capitol Hill Baptist and through the lens of the man who mentored me in his ministry,

51:15

Mark Dever, and how very similar they were to the point where like, the next time

51:20

I talked to Mark, I asked him, are you Charles Spurgeon? Are you self -consciously trying to do all the things that Spurgeon did at the

51:28

Metropolitan Tabernacle and his response was, I'm sure there's some of that. I'm sure some of it was copying, but unintentional.

51:35

And then a lot of it's just, we're reading the same book together. Right. Separated by, you know, life and death in a couple of centuries.

51:41

But Jeff did such a good job with this book. This is definitely a book for pastors.

51:49

Maybe a church member will read it and appreciate it as much as I did, but I doubt it. This is a book for pastors.

51:54

We have an episode of Room for Nuance coming out that we've recorded with Jeff. We just need to, it's backlogged. We're going to get it out there.

52:00

There's no rush. This book has been out forever. Yeah. It's very good. Next on the list, live from New York, the complete uncensored history of Saturday Night Live.

52:11

They say that to sell. There's not much to be censored in this book. Yeah. I thought this was, I grew up watching Saturday Night Live.

52:18

You didn't. No, but I mean, I've seen several. Yeah. You watch clips on YouTube. I also have done that.

52:24

Yeah. You know, I don't like the new Saturday Night Live, but it was a big part of my childhood.

52:30

And what they do is they basically just tell the story of SNL from the actual testimonies of the people who were on the show.

52:39

And so it's just a little insider baseball. Good, fun, easy, light read. A refresher, if you will.

52:46

Next on the list, Will, you'll appreciate this one. Evil has a name. The untold story of the

52:52

Golden State Killer. I would appreciate that one. I think so. Okay. Why?

52:58

You just strike me as someone who likes to read books about evil murderers. You think I watch

53:03

Dateline? This was an Audible production. So I don't think there's actually an author.

53:10

I'm sure that it was produced and put together by a bunch of really talented people. Somebody wrote it. I've tried like four or five of these from Audible.

53:17

They're pretty hit or miss. Like I did one on Putin. It didn't make the list because I stopped. I didn't even get halfway. Yeah. This one was just very good.

53:25

If you like true crime, but you don't want anything that's like too gruesome.

53:31

Yeah, that's what this is. All right. Next on the list, we have What It Means to be Protestant by Gavin Ortland.

53:38

Interview coming soon. We're interviewing at the time of this recording. We're interviewing

53:43

Gavin tomorrow on this book. But let me just say, what a fantastic book. Irenic, clear, forceful, biblical, historically situated.

53:55

Interacting both with the East and the West. Not just confronting Roman Catholicism, but also

54:01

Eastern Orthodoxy, which is necessary because Eastern Orthodoxy is on the ascendancy in the post -Christian

54:09

West. Looking forward to that interview. Do you pay attention to Gavin Ortland at all?

54:15

Only sometimes. I've watched some of his YouTube stuff. Irenic and clear and biblical makes sense.

54:20

Yeah. You hate him though. No. Oh, sorry. I thought you said that. Next, A Promised Land by Barack Obama.

54:29

What do you think about that, Will? Go on. So I want to read a biography or an autobiography of every president.

54:39

Okay. Gotta do one on Obama. Right. A significant figure.

54:46

I don't need to read a book by a conservative about Obama and his presidency to tell me how much it sucked.

54:54

Yeah. I know it sucked. Yeah. I know he was in many ways a horrific president. He made a lot of poor decisions that are still negatively impacting us today.

55:03

So I wanted to, yeah, I wanted to hear maybe a different perspective on his presidency.

55:09

And if it's going to be biased to the left, why not hear it from his own voice? Yeah. He wrote it.

55:15

Really? Yep. No ghostwriter. He wrote it. He actually fancies him, like he's proud of himself as a writer.

55:20

Yeah. He did a lot of his own speech writing when he was president. Not exclusively, but he did a lot of it.

55:26

And he's known for being a strong communicator. Yeah, that's right. It's part one of, I think a part two, a two -part thing.

55:34

It was long. I did it on Audible. He narrated it. His voice, you know, buttery.

55:41

Right. Easy to listen to. Yeah. And it was a fascinating and fascinatingly frustrating book.

55:48

Okay. Yeah. I mean, there were certain parts where I was just like, I'm just here for the ride.

55:54

This is good writing, good storytelling. I'm enjoying it. And then there were times where I was like, that's why so many people loved him when he first came out.

56:03

I mean, he just makes you feel inspired. He makes you feel hopeful. He makes you feel like, wow, we really are all on the same team.

56:10

And even with the way he interacted with his critics at certain points and his opponents, he was, it feels like it's from a different world.

56:18

Yeah. He's interacting with them so charitably. Not a lot of that these days. Not a lot of that. So I really enjoyed all that.

56:24

Yeah. And then I did, I was particularly frustrated by the way he tried to spin so many of his stuff, so many of his decisions and his policies and to make it sound, to make them sound better than they are.

56:37

And I was at some point, like getting ready to rip the steering wheel off of the column.

56:42

But other than that, it was, yeah, good. So if you want to feel that way. Only sometimes.

56:48

I think it's helpful to know what you're getting into. Yeah. So I knew what I was going into and I was able to enjoy it in that sense.

56:58

I should be a literary critic. Don't you think the way I'm talking about these books? You're doing a great job. Yeah. Oh, it was so good.

57:06

This art is bad. You think the New York Times would pay me to publish a column where I'm just like, dude, trust me.

57:13

You got to read it for yourself. It was so good. All right. Next one. This one,

57:19

My Last Name by Eric Schumacher. I think Eric Schumacher used to be a pastor or still is a pastor.

57:26

Jonathan Lehman went to seminary with him. I think he's doing some like abuse advocacy stuff now.

57:32

I don't know. All I know is that this was a very good little novella. Another one.

57:39

It's written from the perspective of someone with dementia. Within the first three minutes,

57:46

I had to close the book and stop reading. I just, I think the kids call it an empath, but I rate very high on like empathy, which means like I have a lot of secondhand embarrassment.

58:01

I feel it helps me tremendously as a pastor to just enter into people's pain with them. But reading a book like this was so hard, dude.

58:10

And that's, I think, a credit to his writing. I mean, he wrote it so well that there were a couple of times where I just had to stop reading.

58:15

I was like, oh, what am I? I think like significant life fears is something like dementia.

58:22

But I try to like look those fears in the eye, which is why I kept reading. And it was a very good book, so it wasn't that hard.

58:28

But when I had to stop, I think it was because I got a little close to the edge on that fear stuff. Next on the list,

58:36

George Orwell, 1984. You read any Orwell? I was one of the first audibles

58:41

I tried to get into a few years ago. I'm like, I got to do this. This one's free. I've heard it's good.

58:48

I couldn't do it, man. I'm sure it's because I already know what 1984 is about. So I'm like, you know, someone had to have heard it for the first time.

58:56

And they're like, this is amazing. Go ahead, Sean, tell us why this - No, I don't want to.

59:02

You asked me, you shouldn't have asked me. There's a proverb about not speaking to fools when they won't listen to what you have to say.

59:08

That's right. Audible has a new production that I think you could actually make it through.

59:17

It is phenomenally well done. Yeah. Phenomenally. Russell Berger has a hat that says, make

59:22

Orwell fiction again. Yeah. That's why I decided to read it. Okay, here's a new genre of reading for me.

59:32

Jack Carr, Red Sky Morning. A book about an ex -Navy

59:38

SEAL. Who his enemies are trying to kill him, but somehow he survives.

59:43

Michael Scarn. Yes, Agent Michael Scarn. Dude, somebody recommended this to me and I was like, what's next?

59:53

John Grisham novels? Like, dude, come on, I'm not reading this. And I say that I've not actually read,

59:58

I'm sure John Grisham's great. You're well on your way. It was a very good read. It was a very good read.

01:00:05

And what I appreciate about it in particular is that actually I think the author's name, what is the author's name?

01:00:11

No, Jack Carr is the, that's the name of the author? No, who's the name of the protagonist? I'd like to think it was

01:00:16

Jack Carr. I was enjoying that. No, no, okay. Jack Carr is the author.

01:00:22

Oh, okay. I don't remember the name of the protagonist. So don't, I mean, how memorable was this book?

01:00:28

I can't remember the name of the main character. He really identified with him when he was traveling. Oh yeah.

01:00:34

What, so he really was a Navy SEAL. And he's also like a really sharp guy.

01:00:39

He's really smart. He's actually written some like history as well on like Beirut and the conflict and terrorism that took place there.

01:00:46

And the way that he writes about the intersection between technology and geopolitics and business interests and all that, it just was really good, man.

01:00:58

It was really high level. I think if there's gonna be like a novel about a

01:01:04

Navy SEAL guy whose enemies from China are trying to kill him over AI stuff, you know, that kind of thing.

01:01:09

This was the most like close to factual you can get something like that.

01:01:14

Like you read it and I think you, oh, I am actually learning things about like China and their missile defense system.

01:01:21

And so that stuff matters to me. I don't wanna feel like I'm wasting my time. So when I got done with that book,

01:01:26

I thought, okay, obviously I'm not gonna like try to learn about geopolitics from Jack Carr novels, but I do feel like I walked away learning things.

01:01:34

So it was great, yeah. Next, this is a book that Albert Muller said in our interview was his all -time favorite novel.

01:01:43

And he said, I had to read it, Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

01:01:49

Did I say that right? Kazuo Ishiguro, I'm trying to - No, that's saying like that.

01:01:54

Oh, well, I say jalapeno. You can do that. Okay, I can do that.

01:02:00

I can do the Spanish one. Right. Can do the Japanese one. Yep. Are you sure? Those are the rules. Okay. Man, winner of the

01:02:08

Booker Prize. Booker? Yeah, that's what it says, B -O -O -K -E -R.

01:02:14

What do you do? I'm a Booker. More importantly, winner of the Nobel Prize. You've heard of that? I have. The guy -

01:02:20

Isn't Obama also a Nobel Prize winner? Yeah, and in his book, he's like, I don't know why I won. Okay, credit to him.

01:02:26

He didn't want to accept it. His advisors were like, you have to accept it. Yeah, all right. It's like, okay. What a sweet, elegant, beautiful novel.

01:02:39

It's about this guy who's a butler in one of the, like a house of the Lord in England.

01:02:46

And I really don't want to say any more about it than that. But I was really caught off guard by how much this book impacted me.

01:02:55

Yeah. How much it moved me emotionally. So you see how Al Mohler got there? Oh, yeah.

01:03:02

If I had Al's number, I'd call him Al after the interview. What do you call him, Dr. Mohler? If I had

01:03:08

Al's number, which I don't, I would have called him up and been like, dude. Yeah.

01:03:14

You were so right. Right. Do you get the bit that I'm doing? Because you wouldn't say dude to Al Mohler.

01:03:20

No, no, no. Well, you would. I probably would. Because it's Al. Yeah. Next on the list, and we're almost done.

01:03:25

We're getting there. All right. Outlive the Science and Art of Longevity by Peter Atiyah.

01:03:31

People have been recommending this book to me for a while. And I put it off and put it off and put it off and put it off.

01:03:38

First of all, it's long. Second of all, I'm just not really interested in like the longevity conversation.

01:03:46

I assume I'm going to die younger than a lot of people just because of the life I've lived and how hard my body. And you don't like green tea.

01:03:54

That's a big part of it. Well, it's funny you say that because that's actually what finally persuaded me to check this out is

01:03:59

I was seeing clips of him. And he was always reasoning so well that he intrigued me.

01:04:07

Like people would, you know, the snake oil salesman. Yeah, I was going to say that's kind of that word. And he goes, well, actually, that's ridiculous.

01:04:14

And here's why. And then he would just lay out this really clear, logical, empirical argument. And I was like, oh, this guy's actually really sharp.

01:04:24

And so I ended up reading the book and it was worth it. It was very, very, very good. I'm still not the guy who's going to like completely change the way my life is structured to try to get an extra 10 years on the back end.

01:04:35

Right. I'm probably still going to eat too many Reese's cups. So what are you going to implement from that book? You know,

01:04:42

I think the main takeaway was a lot of the stuff he thinks you need to do for longevity. I'm already doing.

01:04:48

Okay. You know, yeah, he says that the two, the two main factors for longevity are baseline strength and VO2 max.

01:05:00

He says you can take those two and compare them. I forget how he says it. All the things that might work against you for the sake of longevity.

01:05:08

If you rank high in those, they will outweigh all those other bad things. Like if you're a smoker who eats 10 slices of bacon a day for lunch, if you have a high

01:05:17

VO2 max and strength in your thirties, forties, and fifties, you'll probably outlive someone who lives clean and doesn't have those things.

01:05:25

What is baseline strength and what is VO max? He elaborates on VO2 max. It's your body's ability to take in and utilize oxygen.

01:05:33

Okay. Yeah. It's like runners and other athletes, they get their VO2 max tested. Got it. I don't want to get too deep into the weeds.

01:05:41

One of the things that I think I might disagree with him on this book about in this book is that he talks about improving

01:05:48

VO2 max, but most of the literature that I've seen seems to suggest that it's more genetic and there's really not much you can do beyond a certain point to increase your

01:05:57

VO2 max. Anyways, he talks about the four horsemen of death, diabetes, heart disease, neurological diseases like Alzheimer's.

01:06:09

Probably cancer. Cancer. Yeah, that's right. And another main takeaway was how much they're all really bound up with one another.

01:06:18

And if you're doing good, like if you're doing the right things to try to combat like neurological stuff, you're probably also doing the right things to combat heart stuff, cancer stuff.

01:06:28

Yeah. It really, you get done with the book and you're like, oh, it really isn't that complicated. Like get good sleep, try to have an emotionally and we would say spiritually healthy life.

01:06:39

Try not to eat like a crazy person and have good genetics.

01:06:44

Well, you can't do anything about that. Yeah. But it's not just nature versus nurture. Like he lays out this triad.

01:06:52

It's genetics, environment, and habits. And so you may not have the genetics and there's some sense in which you may not be able to control your environment, but you can control your habits.

01:07:01

And those habits can influence the other two. Yeah. You know. Great. Yeah. Good stuff. Let's keep going so I can go to Zaxby's.

01:07:09

We have two more, dude. We have two more. Second to last one. And I'm sorry to have to tell you it's the second to last one.

01:07:17

For the five people who are still listening. The Transfiguration of Christ by Patrick Schreiner.

01:07:25

This is one of those books that was so good just because I was like, oh yeah, I haven't really thought much about the transfiguration.

01:07:34

And as I was reading, I was like, it's the kind of book that made me want to do a sermon series on it. I'm not going to.

01:07:40

I have to finish Romans and finish Exodus. There's no time, you know. But it was very, very good.

01:07:48

He does fantastic biblical theology. So he does a biblical theology of why it's on a mountain and why is

01:07:55

Jesus's face shining? And why are there three people up there? You know, why? And why does

01:08:00

Peter say, let's build a tent? And let's, yeah, erect a tent. And with each of those why questions, he goes, well, maybe it's this, maybe it's that.

01:08:10

But let me show you actually why I think it's this. And by and large, I walked away convinced with most of his arguments.

01:08:16

He also has an interesting little section at the beginning where he talks about his hermeneutical method.

01:08:22

I think that's probably the most controversial part of the book. And we're getting ready to interview him on this book.

01:08:30

And so I'm going to give him a chance to address that. Yeah, about like how he does biblical theology in particular,

01:08:35

I'm sure. No, no, this is more the hermeneutical method that he employs, which is connected to biblical theology, but it's not the biblical theology question.

01:08:44

It's a very clearly well -written engaging book. And it's one of the few theology books.

01:08:50

I shouldn't say it that way. That's too strong. Sometimes theology books just aren't fun. This book was fun.

01:08:55

I enjoyed every second of it. And then finally, we're ending on Tim Keller again.

01:09:01

This is the one Tim Keller book that I have not read. I've put it off. Every Good Endeavor.

01:09:08

It's, let's see what the subtitle is here. Connecting your work to God's work. And again, it's just Tim Keller doing what he does best and applying it to vocation.

01:09:19

He's helping you look at sin multidirectionally, not just to the left, but also to the right.

01:09:26

He's helping you understand how idolatry may negatively inform your work. How replacing that with the gospel will help your work.

01:09:36

He's doing a very good job of interacting with common grace resources. All the things that Tim Keller does good, but just about vocation.

01:09:45

And halfway through the book, I thought, oh, this is going on the list. Bold, underlined. But why?

01:09:51

Because I just don't know, like, can you think of offhand just like a Protestant book that you would give to a church member says, hey,

01:09:59

I'm really trying to think about how to glorify God at work. What book would you give them? Yeah, no, that's a good question. I know

01:10:04

Grant did a Sunday school on this. He probably has one or two, but if I remember correctly, they were sort of only adjacent to the topic. Yeah, like in my mind, until something else comes out, this is now going to be my go -to book.

01:10:14

This is how, and when I got done with it, I immediately recommended several members of our congregation. Yeah, that's right.

01:10:21

He also has a really good section in there on work and rest. And that's why I recommended to you. I thought you would really appreciate that.

01:10:27

I am very interested in this topic. Yeah. I wonder if it's the weak spot for Protestants. Yeah, add it to the list of Protestant weak spots.

01:10:34

Yeah, right. So are you thinking about crossing the Tiber or going over to Rome? Yeah, that's no.

01:10:40

You just have a thing for guys with big pointy hats. Are there problems with capitalism potentially in the way it affects

01:10:45

Christians and their view of work? Nope, maybe that's true. Capitalism, first of all, slander of capitalism will not be tolerated.

01:10:55

No, okay. Going back to the multi -directional thing, right? He does a very good job of showing how leftist worldviews corrupt our view of work and how even capitalism and -

01:11:08

I would be very interested in that. Yeah, that's right. But you can tell he's not like a, to go back again in the other direction.

01:11:15

Yeah. He's not like a closeted liberal. Right. And he's not just like trying to like get you hooked onto his liberal view of economics.

01:11:22

Sneak in some Marxism. Yeah, that's right. Well, Will, how long have we been recording now,

01:11:27

Luke? Odd way to phrase that. An hour 10.

01:11:34

Yeah. And aren't you thankful that we did this together? I'm really thankful that I got to do this for you, brother. No, no, that's not what

01:11:40

I asked. Oh, what'd you ask? Well, signing off, I hope that our listeners and viewers pick up some of these books.

01:11:51

If not for yourself, maybe you heard a book that you could give to someone else as a gift. Take up and read,

01:11:57

Tole Léger. That's probably not how you say it, but take up and read, Paul tells Timothy, bring the books.

01:12:03

Visit many good books, but live in the Bible as we go into 2025. Yes and amen? Amen. All right.