The Best Books I Read in 2021
Hi friends,
Just swinging through before 2022 to share some my favorite reads from 2021. Plenty of these lists are circulating right now—I especially enjoyed this one and this one—and I hope you find something interesting below in my short offering. This year I mostly re-read novels for Reading Black Books, and squeezed in some other reading as I could.
In alphabetical order, here’s seven of my favorite books read this year.
Go Tell it on the Mountain — James Baldwin
“Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late.”
Paul and The Gift — John M.G. Barclay
"What now counts for worth is only one’s status in Christ, and the consistency of one’s allegiance to him. Paul is free, but more importantly a slave of Christ (Gal 1:10; cf. 1 Cor 7:17-24); his body is masculine and circumcised, but more importantly marked by scars that signal his commitment to the cross (6:17; cf. 5:11). All forms of symbolic capital not derived from “belonging to Christ” now lose their ultimacy. Baptism “into Christ” provides a radically new foundation for communities freed from hierarchical systems of distinction, not because of some generalized commitment to “equality” but because of the unconditioned gift of Christ, which undercuts all other reckoning of worth.”
Strong and Weak: Embracing a Life of Love, Risk, and True Flourishing — Andy Crouch
“Leadership does not begin with a title or position. It begins the moment you are concerned more about other’s flourishing that you are on your own. It begins when you start to ask how you might help create and sustain the conditions for others to increase their authority and vulnerability together.”
Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind — Alan Jacobs
“…our ability to think toward the future is limited by our deficient imaginations, and therefore we need the witness of the past. Temporal bandwidth needs to be extended in both directions. Better to look five thousand years forward and five thousand years backward than strain to see only the future, which, being nonexistent, cannot resist us. The past, by contrast, tells us of what we need to know but would never think to look for.”
Living into Community: Cultivating Practices That Sustain Us - Christine Pohl
“Gratitude is also vital to sustaining communities that are holy and good. Part of the recent emphasis on gratitude or giving thanks is surely a response to the epidemic of complaint, envy, presumption, and dissatisfaction that undermines human relationships and plagues many communities. These forms of ingratitude are deadly: they kill community by chipping away at it until participants long to be just about anywhere else. While gratitude gives life to communities, ingratitude that has become established sucks out everything good, until life itself shrivels and discouragement and discontent take over.”
For the Life of the World — Fr. Alexander Schmemann
“In this world suffering and disease are indeed “normal,” but their very “normalcy” is abnormal. They reveal the ultimate and permanent defeat of man and of life, a defeat which no partial victories of medicine, however wonderful and truly miraculous, can ultimately overcome. But in Christ suffering is not “removed;” it is transformed into victory. The defeat itself becomes victory, a way, an entrance into the Kingdom, and this is the only true healing.”
The Man Who Lived Underground — Richard Wright
"He paused; the men’s attitude puzzled him. In panic he wondered if they were indifferent! That was it! They did not care what he said; they thought that they knew what he was about to say! They were not afraid or curious! He tightened inside. Yes, they were waiting for him to speak and then they would laugh at him! He had to rescue himself from this bog; he had to force the reality of himself upon them.”
What are your favorite reads from 2021? I’ll swing through in mid-January to share about what I’m most eager to read in 2022. Happy New Year!
Thanks for reading,
Claude