2012 Books

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Usually at the end of the year I post a list of the books I read that year. I’m a tad late this year, but this is mostly for my own benefit anyway. But it’s always fun to post the list and see if others have read the same books or have suggestions that this list might spark.

As for favorites, I very much enjoyed diving into books on Theopoetics and Social Trinitarianism. Both were topics I needed to research for writing projects and the ideas have captured my imagination. Those approaches to theology (which overlap quite a bit) make sense to me and will be frameworks I will be returning to. As for the fiction I read my favorite this year was Deborah Harkness’ A Discovery of Witches. It is one of those books that so thoroughly draws you into its narrative that it takes a moment to reorient yourself to reality once you look up from its pages. Maybe it’s because her career started as an academic or because it is her first novel (and firsts are always the most well written, but obvious reasons), but it was one of the most well-written works of popular fiction I have read in a long time. I am currently devouring its sequel and eagerly await the announcement of the third book’s publication date. For similar (but opposite) reasons, I wouldn’t recommend the Hendees’ Noble Dead series. The first two books were okay for that genre (fantasy/vampire hunter), but obviously once they got the contract for the multiple book series the writing quality plummeted. I know that writers once they are expected to pump out that book a year don’t have the time to construct as engaging of a novel as they did to first catch an agents’s/publisher’s eye, but sometimes it is just far too obviously bad.

But enough complaining, here’s the list. I would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations!

Non-fiction

Fiction