Sean's Favorite Books - 2023

Room For Nuance

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We're back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. This time it's just me, no guest, just me and you.

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The friends, the fans, the followers, dare I say the family members of the

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Room for Nuance podcast. Here's what we're going to do in this episode. I'm just going to walk you through my favorite books from 2023.

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I have 19 of them, which is an odd number, but the reason why I have 19 is just because these are my favorite books of the year.

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They may not even be the best books of the year. Some of them are not even from this year.

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I think maybe most of them are not from this year, but these are the books that I read this year that I enjoyed the most.

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Let's jump right into it, starting with number 19, The Biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

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Isaacson has done biographies of Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, and Steve Jobs, but this one has been my favorite.

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I think it's just because Elon Musk is this infinitely fascinating individual.

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The way he brought SpaceX and Tesla into existence by sheer will of force is just this incredible story and you'd really just have to be a bad writer to mess it up.

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Isaacson is certainly not that. I really enjoyed this book. It's also on Audible. I did it on Audible.

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It's one of the few books on my list that I did on Audible this year. It's a good list.

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Not all audiobooks have good narration. Sometimes you try to do a book on Audible and you're like,

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I can't do this, but this one is very friendly to the audiobook format. Number 18,

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All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I put Cormac McCarthy right up there with Ernest Hemingway as far as some of my favorite

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American authors. This book is fantastic. It's one of the few books that makes my reread list.

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Life is so short. There are so many books to read. I don't want to reread books if I don't have to.

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The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Tolstoy is on that list. All the

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Pretty Horses by McCarthy is on this list. Absolutely fantastic. I try to come back and reread it maybe every three or four years.

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Number 17, A Peculiar Glory by John Piper. Piper has an interesting take on the self -attestation of Scripture, how its glory speaks to its own divine authorship.

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It's fantastic. Listen, I'll go on a Piper tear for a while and then I'll be like, yeah,

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I get it. Christian hedonism. I've been there, done that. I've seen you do the thing so many times.

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Every book you write is some variation on that. And then I will just pick up a Piper book randomly one day or I'll watch a sermon.

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I'll be like, oh man, it's just as good as I remember. And that's how I felt with this book this year.

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It was so good that I actually kind of went on another Piper tear and I'm glad that I did because two more of his books made it onto my list this year.

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We'll get to those in a minute. Next number 16, The World's Largest Man by Harrison Scott Key.

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Here's what I'll tell you about this book. I was on a plane with my

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PA and he was concerned about me because I was laughing.

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I was wheezing. I was crying. I mean, I just, this book was an experience.

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It's very rare for a book to make you belly laugh, to sweat with laughter. But Harrison Scott Key manages to do that with this book.

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It is absolutely fantastic. Some of my church members recommended it to me and I am so glad they did, so I heartily recommend it to you.

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Number 15, True Grit by Charles Portis. I was hesitant. I was hesitant.

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I've been putting off True Grit for a long time. I love the Coen Brothers movie. It's so good.

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I thought there's no way that I'm going to enjoy the book because I love, I mean, Jeff Daniels.

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No, not Jeff Daniels. Whoever plays Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Brothers movie, I mean, it is just a sight to behold.

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So I put off, I also tried to read No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy after watching the

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Coen Brothers movie and it was just ruined for me. So I was just really hesitant to do True Grit by Charles Portis, the book.

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Man, I'm so glad that I did. It was fantastic. If you have not read it, if you're a reader of fiction, check it out.

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Plus you get more Calvinism in the book than you get in the movie and I'm all,

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I'm here for that. Number 14, Echoes of Exodus by Alistair Roberts and Andrew Wilson.

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Fantastic, superb book on the Exodus. They use a musical metaphor to do a biblical theology of the

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Exodus through all of the Bible. I do have to say that I did not quite as, I didn't enjoy this book as much as I could have because I read another book on Exodus just prior to reading this book that kind of sucked all, it sucked all the wind out of the sails of this book for me.

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It stole the thunder. But if I hadn't have, if I wouldn't have read this other book first, which

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I'm going to talk about in a minute, this book would have been maybe one of the best books I've read this year. It's still among the best, but either way, just pick up a copy.

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If you want to dive deeper into the book of Exodus, this is a fun, easy, deep read that I think you'll really enjoy.

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Number 13, Manson by Jeff, I don't know if it's Gin or Gwin. He has written other biographies on like Jim Jones.

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I think this is his best. The thing that I love about this book is less that it tells the story of Manson, which it does.

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Man, what a story it is. But that it also really helps you understand that era in American history as the best biographies often do.

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They don't just help you understand the person, but they also help you understand the times that shaped the person.

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This was just a great read, so highly recommended. Number 12, Can Women Be Pastors by Greg Gilbert.

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I know what you're thinking. The book only has to be one page. You just say no, and then you cite some scriptures, and then you move on.

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Well, in the day and age in which we live, you need a book that's a little bit longer, not too much longer, and that's what you get with Greg Gilbert.

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This is part of the Nine Marks Church Questions series, and wow, it is lucid, clear, ironic, kind, charitable, powerful.

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The exegesis that he does in one of the more difficult or ostensibly difficult texts on this subject is rigorous and clean.

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This is the kind of book that I'm just ... It's a booklet, really, that I'll just keep on hand to give away to anyone who has any questions about this, and I would recommend you do the same.

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Number 11, Broken Bread by Tilly Dillehay. I think I'm saying that right. I read a book that she wrote on Envy last year, and it was so good.

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I went to her Amazon page, and I said, what else has she written? I saw this book, Broken Bread. I bought it.

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It sat around on my desk for a while, finally picked it up. It was so good that I immediately implemented it into our church's women's discipleship cohort.

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She talks about four different kinds of food -related sins. I won't tell you more than that, but wow, so useful.

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Convicting for me, still convicting for me. I find myself often processing the way

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I think about food and how I relate to it spiritually through the lens of some of the things that I've learned from this book, so highly recommended.

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Number 10, Spurgeon and the Poor by Alex DiPrima. Here's what I'll tell you about this book.

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I was like, I don't really want to read another book about Spurgeon.

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I think sometimes in our world, we idolize Spurgeon, we put him on a pedestal. I don't really want my church to look like the

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Metropolitan Tabernacle. I want my church to look like a faithful biblical church where I am, where our church is situated.

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But I picked it up, and as I dug into it, I just could not believe how useful it was. It was useful because it helped me better understand some things from Scripture about how we should do benevolence ministry and how the church is obligated to care for the poor.

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It revealed some blind spots in my ministry and for our local church. I immediately got

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Alex DiPrima on to talk about that. I think by the time this comes out, his episode will also be out.

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But if it's not, just make sure if you don't get the book that you at least, but do get the book. But if you don't get the book, at least check out the interview because then what's going to happen is the interview is going to be so good, you're going to want to go buy the book and probably buy a couple copies of the book to give to the deacons and elders in your church.

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Moving on. Number nine, The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rossa. Interestingly, I know

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I'm the anti -critical theory guy. This is a book written by a critical theorist in, I think,

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Germany. It's fantastic. Towards the end, he does start to tip his hand a little and show some of his

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Marxist underpinnings. But the majority of the book is him just saying, hey, you can't control the world.

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I know you think you can. Let me show you just with layer after layer after layer of logic why the world is ultimately uncontrollable and why the fact that you think you can control it and try to control it is actually bringing an abundance of stress and anxiety and depression to your life.

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It's interesting. A book written by someone who I think is an atheist and a critical theorist actually just really strengthened my confidence in the

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Lord because, theologically, he never gets there. But what you understand from the book is what we see in the very beginning of Genesis, namely that we are not

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God. Only God is God. Only the one who creates the world can control the world.

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Anytime the creature tries to control the creation, he's going to be severely disappointed. This was an interesting take on that, and I found it so helpful.

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Number eight, Impossible Christianity by Kevin DeYoung. I'm not going to say anything else about this other than Kevin DeYoung wrote it, and if you feel like it's impossible to live out the

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Christian faith according to the standards that have been set for you, you should read this book. Even if you don't wrestle with that, you should read this book.

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It's really good. Number seven, Come Lord Jesus by John Piper. If someone would have given me this book as a young Christian, I probably would have cared a lot more about eschatology a long time ago.

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You know how eschatology is taught, you know, here are the four views and the millennium, you know, and there's debates and there's charts, and Piper says, listen, there should be a yearning, a desire in us for the return of Christ.

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Come Lord Jesus, we love you Jesus, we want to see you, we want to behold your glory, and if we have that desire, then that desire should spur us on to caring about eschatology, and that will even affect the way that we study eschatology.

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We'll do it from a place of devotion rather than polemic. Wow, what a good book.

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Definitely get it. And you don't have to agree with his premillennialism to appreciate the book. Get a copy.

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Number six, Exodus, Old and New by Michael Morales. Listen, don't argue with me.

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Just go buy the book. Buy his book on Leviticus, buy this book on Exodus. It's the kind of book, look it,

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I have this here on my desk, if you're a listener you won't be able to see this, but it's the kind of book that like, you're like, oh,

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I'm going to underline some stuff and highlight some stuff, but then you just end up underlining and highlighting like the entire book.

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It's just so good, it's so useful. You'll not only understand Exodus more, you'll understand your

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Bible better, and you'll understand the gospel and the story of your own salvation. Get a copy, read it, do it now, go do it.

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All right, number five, Foundations for Lifelong Learning. What a superb book.

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I think John Piper is just getting better and better with age. This is a book that he wrote primarily for his seminary students, but I think if you have teenagers, read this book with them.

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If you're a youth pastor, buy copies and read this with your church members. If you just are in a discipleship group or a small group and you're like,

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I don't know what to do next, get this book. You will not regret it. Number four,

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Reforming Criminal Justice by Matthew Martins. This book won all kinds of awards, rightly so. Tim Challey says it was his favorite book of the year.

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I think this is going to be a textbook in many classrooms at law schools across the country.

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That's how good it is. I think it's going to have a very narrow impact in that,

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I don't know in broader evangelicalism how sustained the ministry of this book will be over the next 50 or 100 years, but if law is being practiced, especially by Christians, this is going to be the book that they're going to want to read to make sure that they're biblically calibrated in their view of justice.

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Matthew is a good friend of mine. We recorded a three and a half hour episode of Room for Nuance about this book.

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It is absolutely stunning. Even if you don't agree with everything he says, chapter 11 on the bail system, worth the price of entry alone.

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Get you a copy of this book and at least read chapter 11, but hopefully read more. Number three,

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Murder Your Darlings by Roy Peter Clark. Here's the deal.

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If you don't write much, you may not understand how hard it is to be a ruthless editor of your own work, but it's very difficult.

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It's very difficult, especially when sometimes you think you have to kill a sentence or a paragraph or a page that you love.

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You love. This is a beautiful sentence. This is a beautiful paragraph. This page. I don't want to give it up.

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It feels like I'm killing a child to delete this. Sometimes I won't even do it.

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I'll just cut it out and put it at the bottom of the Word document just so I can save it if I ever want it later.

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Clark argues, I think persuasively, for how if you want to be a better writer, you have to learn to kill.

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You have to murder your darlings. You have to kill some of your favorite pieces of your writing so that your writing will ultimately be better.

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The book itself, even if you're not a writer or a very serious writer, is just a fun read. It's well written.

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I think you would enjoy it. It's my number three. Number two, The Epic Story of the Bible by Greg Gilbert. Another Greg Gilbert book on the list.

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Listen, this is another popular level biblical theology book, but I think it may be the best one.

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I'm not going to give away any more Graham Goldsworthy stuff or the

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Nick Roark book, which I love, by the way. If there's ever anyone who goes, what is biblical theology and how do

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I do it? I'm going to give them this book. It was so good that when I finished it, I incorporated it as well into the

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Women's Discipleship Program. I told you I did that with another book earlier on the list. I incorporated this. This was the only book that universally, all the women in our

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Women's Discipleship Group said, wow, wow, this is a good book. They said it was fantastic.

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Every other book that they read, some people loved, some people didn't like, some people were indifferent.

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This was the only book that all the ladies in the group enjoyed, which I find interesting because it's written from what

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I feel like is a particularly manly perspective. It's about conquering mountains and such.

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This was a surprise hit of the year for me, to be honest with you. I think this is Greg's best writing.

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I have a bunch of copies that I'm going to give away to as many people as I can for a long time to come. Then finally, number one,

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Authority by Jonathan Lehman. We also did an interview with him on Room for Nuance.

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Remember what I do on Room for Nuance. Sometimes I'll interview people that I don't agree with about resources that I'm not fully in alignment with, but I just want to explore a difficult subject matter.

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But I also sometimes will just read a book and think it's so important, I want to try to get the author on to talk to them because I want as many people as possible to hear these ideas.

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Authority by Jonathan Lehman is a book that caused me to want to interview him for those reasons.

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We live in an anti -authoritarian age. We're Americans. I think most of us watching this, listening to this, we tend to distrust authority as it is.

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Scandals with pastors and politicians have only made it worse. We're reformed, so total depravity sort of ratchets that up even more.

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We understand the sinfulness of the human heart. It's hard for us to trust authority, and yet godly authority is a good thing, it's a blessing.

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Nobody will help you understand authority better than Jonathan Lehman. He's been thinking about it basically for 30 years, and he is a fantastic writer.

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Stories, illustrations, his text work is fantastic. I laughed during the book, literally

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I cried at one point in the story while I was reading the book.

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I'm coming off the rails now, but listen, this book is so good. Please buy a copy.

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Read it. Buy two copies. Give another one to a friend. You will not regret it. I think that's all

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I got for this year. I think I'm going to do another video on some of the books that I'm planning on reading this year, so stay tuned for that, but for now

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I'm signing off. Thank you for tuning in. See you next time.