Last year we were in Costa Rica for Seminario ESEPA’s anniversary; I gave a talk on “Christian Leaders and LifelongLearning.” I suggested that “reading” was one of the best tools for building up brain power. And that reading broadly, including books we disagree with, will help rescue us from our social media echo chambers. Just on the level of religion: in 2023, I read books by all sorts of Christians, an evangelical-turned-modern Gnostic, two women who were doubters-turned-fervent Anglican Christians, an atheist existentialist, a spiritual rock star, historians, and so forth.
I use the Goodreads.com app to keep track of books I Want to Read, books I am Currently Reading, and books I have Read. It also allows you to assign tags to the books for genre (history, Brit lit, science fiction, theology) and also source (hard copy, Kindle, Logos Bible Software, Everand). As of New Year’s Eve 2023, I had read approximately 2620 books. Now, that goes all the way back to Dr. Seuss, Winnie the Pooh, Tom Swift, and the Hardy Boys, so it is an all-inclusive list.
I offer some highlights from 2023.
History. In Search of a Kingdom: Francis Drake, Elizabeth I, and the Perilous Birth of the British Empire, by Laurence Bergreen. Did you know that Drake, not Magellan, was the first to captain a ship around the globe? This is a fine seafaring tale of adventure, discovery, and international politics, back when England was a small player, trying not to get trampled by the mighty Spanish Empire. Drake was on the spot at many of the critical moments. The fact that the US is an English-speaking nation is due in part to him. Unsolved Mysteries of American History: An Eye-Opening Journey through 500 Years of Discoveries, Disappearances, and Baffling Events by Paul Aron, just because I’ve always liked books with titles like this. Confessions of an Opium Eater by Thomas de Quincey is autobiographical, telling the tale of how an early 19th century man because addicted to large daily quantities of the (then legal) drug laudanum. The story abounds with dreams, nightmares, visions, horror, creative expression, despair, and finally, hope.
Historical fiction. See Picnic at Hanging Rock, below. John Hannay’s three novels about espionage during WWI: The 39 Steps (Hitchcock made it into a movie in 1935); Greenmantle; Mr. Steadfast. Great for giving a sense of history, although I found only the first novel – and an excellent movie starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll – an interesting read. I watched the 1955 Lawrence Olivier version of Shakespeare’s “Richard III”, because of all the fuss about finding his remains. I am not a fan of Olivier, but he hit it out of the park with this portrayal. Besides which, the movie has been digitally remastered and is a delight to watch. Tristam Shandy = I’m glad I read it but did not find it exciting.
Modern fiction. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. She takes us back to her fictionalized student days at Dartmouth. Not a spoiler: an élite group of classics students learn from their professor that they are superior human beings – this leads them to murder the most annoying member of their study group. Secret History has shades of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, the Leopold and Loeb murder case of 1924, and the wonderful Hitchcock film “Rope”, but still manages to stand apart and tell its own tale. Also read the first volume of Sartre’s Roads to Freedom trilogy, The Age of Reason.
Blue Ribbon for Fiction.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is regarded by many as the greatest novel to come out of Australia. I first encountered it as the extraordinary movie from 1975, one of Peter Weir’s early films. It was recently made into a miniseries, but its reviews hinted that I might not enjoy it as much as the movie (later: yes, I watched about 15 minutes of the new series, caught the sense that it was not faithful to the book, so I dropped it). I picked up the book. Wikipedia says: “In 1967, Lindsay published her most celebrated work, Picnic at Hanging Rock, a historic Gothic novel detailing the vanishing of three schoolgirls and their teacher at the site of a monolith during one summer” in 1900. It reads like history, and Hanging Rock in Victoria, Australia, is a tourist destination. Issues of race, class, wealth, gender, imperialism are subtly woven throughout.
Classic Books I should have read before now. Joseph Conrad is remembered for Heart of Darkness, which was the basis for the movie “Apocalypse Now”; I reread it in 2023. Now have read Nostromo, a sprawling novel which, if you can get through it, is superior. It details life in the late 19th century, in the fictional nation Costaguana (which resembles Colombia), which is driven by silver mining, pirates, soldiers, sea and river traffic, and a cavalcade of political revolutions. Human nature is painted in dark tones.
Books I reread and was glad to! Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, by Amanda Montell. Heart of Darkness, Conrad. Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, Ben MacIntyre. Shakespeare’s “Henry V”. Paul Revere’s Ride, David Hackett Fischer.
Book from Another Religion. Princeton professor Elaine Pagels has been known for many years as a leading expert on ancient Gnosticism, a Platonic reinterpretation of Christianity that provided the church with its fiercest foe beginning in the 2nd century. Interest shot up with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in the 1940s. In Why Religion? A Personal Story, she does the unusual for a professor of her level and tells of her own spiritual journey. “Saved” at the Philadelphia Bill Graham Crusade in 1961, a youth group member and later a biblical scholar, she not only studied Gnosticism, she became highly attracted to its teachings as a superior alternative to the gospel. Included in her story are two catastrophic losses of an ill son and then her husband.
Theology and Spirituality. The commentary The Fourth Gospel by E. C. Hoskyns was highly recommended by a contemporary evangelical and scholar on John (Gary Burge), and it did not disappoint. Hoskyns combines history, theology, exegesis, and spirituality. Published it 1940, it is one of those commentaries that does not pass into obsolescence within a decade. Bono, of all people, published his Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. It works best as an Audible book, which he narrates and intersperses with musical tracks.
Blue Ribbon for Theology:
Bible in other languages: This year we had an online Hebrew Bible group. I read Ecclesiastes, Job, Jeremiah, Ezekiel. In 2024 we are reading Psalms and Proverbs in Hebrew. I am also reading chapter by chapter through the Latin Vulgate version of the Psalms. (Psalm 23 – “Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit” = “The Lord ruleth me, and nothing will be wanting to me.”)
Old Testament in Symbolic Universal Notation (SUN). SUN is a “constructed” language: one that was deliberately created, as opposed to one that developed naturally over the centuries. Esperanto is the most famous of these. Other examples: Tolkien created Sindarin for his trilogy; linguist Marc Okrand invented Klingon for the Star Trek franchise. SUN was created only in 2016 by Wycliffe Associates, and I got recruited to work on the project just as COVID was starting. In 2023 I completed the final run-through on the first edition of the Old Testament and started on the second edition of the New. Click HERE to access it. Here is an example from 2024’s work:
“Behold. I stand in_front door.” Rev 3:20a
Goodreads.com, remember that app!
“My Favorite Books of 2023”, by Gary S. Shogren, Professor of New Testament, Seminario ESEPA, San José, Costa Rica
Open Our Eyes, Lord! 
What do you think?