Summer Reading List 2008, Fiction

[Editor’s Note: I asked Common Grounds Online Contributors to suggest books for a 2008 Summer Reading List and the following are their recommendations. Some of the books are the same as recommended by other Contributors in our 2005 Summer Reading List, which suggests they have some durable quality.

 Also interesting is that three different Contributors recommended Tim Keller’s new book, The Reason for God. Each of the three Contributors’ remarks about Keller’s book are included.

We would enjoy hearing from readers!

If you’re a CGO reader and you have some suggestions for the 2008 Summer Reading List, please add your suggestions in the comments.]

 Fiction 
Mac Richard
So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger. So Brave is just a great story well told. Enger writes disarmingly but genuinely of redemption, second chances, and consequences for decisions made. It’s not neat and tidy, but it rings true. Maybe, it rings true because it’s not neat and tidy.

[Editor’s Note: Leif Enger’s award winning Peace Like a River was recommended by Contributor Doug Serven in our 2005 Summer Reading List. Peace Like a River is a wonderful read.]

Matthew Pipkin
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
This book follows the life of Jayber Crow, a small town barber from rural Kentucky. While that might not sound like the most thrilling premise, Berry is a brilliant writer with an uncanny ability to make his readers care about things that would ordinarily be overlooked or considered mundane. This story is a beautiful depiction of community and what it looks like to walk through the joys and sorrows of everyday life.

Zoe Sandvig
Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Anne Rice The first post-conversion novel by a former vampire writer, Rice takes on the boyhood of Christ. It’s a novel, not a theological treatise, so it is chock full of speculation, and some theological inaccuracies, but it makes you ponder with new eyes the humanity, especially the youthful humanity, of the second person of the Trinity.

 Les Newsom
This American Life by Ira Glass (podcast)
I know, I know...it’s not a book, but it’s like reading for your ears. Ira Glass oversees some of the most masterful storytelling that I have ever heard in this always riveting, often fascinating podcast. One episode a week is free. Back episodes can be purchased from iTunes and are as well worth the money as anything you can find there. 

Carolyn Custis James
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gileadis on my summer reading list. Slow moving, thoughtful, and beautifully written, this book about fathers and sons and spiritual battles is praised as an increasingly rare work of fiction, one that explores big ideas while telling a good story.

 [Gilead was also recommended on our 2005 Summer Reading List.]

 Tim McConnell
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut.  You only know the water your swimming in when someone gives you a ladder to climb out of it and look back.  Nobody does that like Vonnegut.  Powerful and profound in the accounts of the holocaust, and superficial and light in satire of the whims of human life, Vonnegut’s most celebrated novel yanks the reader into a different world. A little bit of bad language and sexual content probably makes this book PG-13, or even R, but it’s a healthy engagement with a totally different perspective on life.  A good book to read for a Christian who wants to get into a different way of life and feel it from the inside. 

Kelly Monroe Kullberg
The War Against God, by David Kullberg, my husband!
Available on Amazon by July.
It’s a Reformed correction to the Left Behind books -- a theological and political thriller, first about the Kingdom here and now, but with some political and romantic plot veins.  It has me learning about guys like George Soros, and what/who he’s funding (including a "ministry") to confuse and diffuse the Church.

 Scott Armstrong
Safe At Home, Richard Doster.  Doster’s first novel swings for the fence.  Through the fictional town of Whitney, Doster explores the tensions of race and the changing racial climate of the 1950s south and the role that baseball played in integration. This may be a fictional account but every page is based on real history that reminds us of our universal, sinful penchant to divide and hate and how love responds.

 Jim Broyles
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  To be read beyond high school reading lists!  Great summer read.

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Previous CGO posts and comments on book recommendations

Summer Reading List 2005, Fiction

Summer Reading List 2005, Non-Fiction

The Book Meme, 2005

Comments

[Mark Upton]

East of Eden, John Steinbeck
An epic that follows the story of two families for generations. A great look at the power of story and choice to shape our lives. Steinbeck said that everything else he had ever written had been practice for this book.

The Maytrees, Annie Dillard
A story about the rise, fall, and restoration of a single couple.
Dillard calls this her final work. It took her ten years to write.
You'll need to plan on reading it twice to get it's full effect as it's dischronologized and will be confusing at first. Great beach read as it is set on a beach.

[Judy Nelson]

Ooops. I forgot to send in my recommendations!

FICTION
A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini
The author of The Kite Runner tells another powerful story of Afghani people during the bumpy political times of the past decades. His narrative of two women captures your heart with both despair and hope, and somehow makes you feel like you're right there with them. Amazing writing.

Snowflower and the Secret Fan, Lisa See
Ironically, this is also a novel about two women, both despairing and hopeful. Set in 19th century China, Lily and Snow Flower become "old sames," arranged friends for life. They learn a secret language (nu shu) written on a fan that is passed between them and chronicles their foot binding, marriages and haunting dramas of life. It is historically fascinating and mixed with themes of love and loss, classism and cruelty.

The Shack, William Young
This book is stirring up lots of discussions and attacks. I did not find the writing particularly good, but the nuggets of truth and the allegorical story of the trinity won me over. I'm glad Young took the time to write this book and upend some of my small categories. It's on Amazon's top 10 list and will make for great conversations on suffering, the trinity and healing.

NONFICTION
Joyful Exiles, James Houston
The principal founder of Regent College in Vancouver, now in his 80s, writes six essays at the behest of his son's desire to write the basic convictions of the Christian life. Houston interacts with the writings of his writer-mentors as well as his personal friends like C.S. Lewis. I loved his wisdom, caution and literary leanings.

My Soul in Silence Waits: Meditations on Psalm 62, Margaret Guenther
Guenther has become a spiritual director to me through her writing. And this thin format of eight meditations arrested me and brought my soul still. I read it again and again.