2024 Reads
Here are the top 10 books that I read in 2024, in reverse order, David Letterman-style.
Links are to Better World Books or to the publisher’s site, because I wanted to provide non-Amazon options. Of course, you can find them on Amazon or on any of its many subsidiary sites, and most of these are available through the Des Moines Public Library, as well.
#10: Art & Faith by Fujimura Makoto
This book was recommended by Sara Groves at a Songwriting Retreat I attended through Art House North early in 2024. Makoto makes a compelling case for the role of artistic expression in the realm of faith. A recurring theme of this book is the Japanese art of kintsugi, where artisans repair broken clay pots by applying powdered gold into the cracks. Makoto argues that art is an expression of hope; an expression of God’s abundance into a world that scarcity-minded. He provides a critique of some modern faith expressions that haven’t held the arts in high regard, while also casting a vision for a positive way forward.
“…the Christian church to this day has been undermined by the utilitarian mindset of the Industrial Revolution. We see our existence and value only in terms of “fixing the world”. The gospel of a Creator who acts out of love, not necessity, liberates us from this bondage.”
#9: City of Glass by Paul Auster, graphic novel adaptation by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli
Speaking of that Songwriting retreat at Art House North — that’s also how I was introduced to this book, but in a convoluted way. Sara Groves had given participants a songwriting prompt to complete before attending the retreat. Long story short, her prompt led me to Paul Auster’s book, “City of Glass”, which led me to my local library, where I didn’t find Auster’s novel, but I did find this graphic novel adaptation. The writing is dark, but very smart, so it feels more intriguing than it does depressing. Auster draws you into the main character’s internal narrative (who is named Paul Auster), which takes the reader on a journey where identity and reality are called into question. (I should mention that I made a point of keeping this novel out of the hands of my children, because a quirk of the main character is that he writes in the nude, and this quirk was included in the illustrations.) Auster’s intelligent writing had me in the palm of his hand. Of course, I did finish writing that song, and I released it on my album, Henny Penny.
#8: On the Brink of Everything by Parker J. Palmer
Speaking of books that inspired songs I released in 2024… I found a copy of “On the Brink of Everything” while I was doing the songwriting challenge, New Song November in 2023, and I wrote a song based on a poem I found in the book, called “Welcome Home”. This book is about aging, which feels like a gift, because it is written by a man with deep wisdom as he was approaching his 80th birthday. My main takeaway from this book was the sense of deep belonging that Parker was able to find — even whilst alone in the woods, and whilst wrestling with his past and looking ahead toward a limited future.
“Breathing easy now
Breathing with the earth
I suddenly
Feel accepted
Feel myself stand my own ground
Strong, deep rooted as a tree
While time and all these troubles
Disappear”
#7: How to Inhabit Time by James K.A. Smith
I read this book over the course of a few months, and it was important to me to own a copy of it, because I intend to read it multiple times. Smith’s writing is beautiful and intelligent. He sees that a challenge of the modern era is that we can live so disconnected from our physical and temporal realities, because we are prone to be immersed in our virtual worlds instead. For example, working remotely can sometimes feel like you work nowhere; there’s no common physical space that you share with your coworkers. But in this book, Smith focuses on the concept of nowhen — the idea that we are disconnected from the specific era of time our lives occupy. He encourages the reader to examine our point in history. He issues words of warning to any conservative-minded folk who might desire to return to an idyllic time of the past (if ever such a time existed), as well as warnings to progressive-minded folk who desire to force the world into some type of utopia (but whose version of utopia?), favoring instead embracing the place and time we are in, and discerning what are the best ways to be faithful to Christ here and now. This book gave me lots to chew on, and I especially appreciate the following quote, because 2024 was the year where I attempted to process through my struggles with doomsdayism and annihilation anxiety (via Henny Penny):
“In the despair of doomsdayism, we are victims of a future already decided and foreclosed. While fixated on the future, such anticipation is the antithesis of hope. When God can raise the dead, not even death is the end. Resurrection and forgiveness mean the future is always an open source of surprise. ”
#6: The Woman in Me by Britney Spears
From a philosophy professor to a pop star! I waited for weeks to get my hands on this book. When it came out in late 2023, I think there were more than a hundred people in the Libby queue to check this book out from Des Moines Public Library. I really hoped to listen to the audiobook (I hear it was read by Michelle Williams), but the physical book became available first, so I went with that — and honestly, that’s what I would recommend: read it, don’t listen to it. As I read the words on the page, I was able to hear Britney’s voice in my head, since her writing style is true to her demeanor and personality. Britney shares the story of her career — from the Mickey Mouse Club to the conservatorship — from her perspective. Not surprisingly, you’ll walk away from this book with a low opinion of Justin Timberlake, Kevin Federline, and Britney’s family. This was my favorite quote:
“Of all the things they did, I will say that the worst was to make me question my faith… Under their control, I stopped believing in God for awhile. But then, when it came time to end the conservatorship, I realized one thing: You can’t f*** with a woman who knows how to pray.”
#5: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
I read a decent number of novels this year, but this was the only one to make my top ten list. I love reading fiction… as long as I love the book. I’ll tolerate a book that’s mindlessly enjoyable, but what I really yearn for is for a novel that gives me things to mull over even after I’m done reading the book. The Ministry of Time did exactly that. Bradley does a brilliant job of imagining the concept of time travel in a realistic, human way — and she does so by comparing the experience of traveling from one century to another to the idea of immigrating from one country to another. She raises intriguing questions about how moral values are formed as she imagines clashes between characters plucked from the 1700s with others from the 2100s. I bet Bradley would appreciate the work of James K. A. Smith, because she does a brilliant job of fleshing out each character’s unique point of view as thoroughly established in their original time period. It’s got twists and turns, it asks big questions, (I will say that it has a romantic storyline that I honestly could have done without), it blends historical fiction with scientific realism in a really creative way — all this from a debut author!
#4: The Wood Between the Worlds + Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God by Brian Zahnd
Whoops, two for the price of one. I read these Brian Zahnd books back to back, and the thought that kept going through my head that month was, “Brian Zahnd is saving my faith”. The subtitle of The Wood Between the Worlds is: “A Poetic Theology of the Cross”. In it, Zahnd meditates on the story of the gospel, and fleshes out some examples of its rich application that go far beyond a simplistic penal substitutionary atonement explanation for why Jesus died on the cross. If you, like me, come from a theological tradition where even questioning a particular atonement theory is out of bounds, then you’ll appreciate this book, and you’ll experience a similar vibe in Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God. In this one, Zahnd walks the reader through how he went from idolizing Jonathan Edwards’ sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, to questioning those beliefs, and ultimately landing at a very different place. Suffice it to say: I like where he lands.
“It is not those who advocate for peace who are the naïve dreamers. If we stubbornly cling to the archaic idea that war is a practical way to rectify the evils of the world, we will eventually have total war between nations deploying their nuclear and biological arsenals. The world cannot be rectified by war, only ruined by it.”
#3: Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey
I listened to this book on one of my two trips to Michigan this past spring. No one had recommended it; it was just an audiobook that was available on Libby at the time, and it looked interesting enough, so I gave it a shot. The description might sound cheesy — it’s a book about art history, told through a Christian lens — but Ramsey’s storytelling is quite compelling. There may have been moments here or there that were a little daily devotional-y, but ultimately, I walked away from this book wanting to learn more about art history.
#2: Dinner for Vampires by Bethany Joy Lenz
Another memoir from a pop culture celebrity? Why not, though. I’ve never watched an episode of One Tree Hill, but I saw clips of Bethany Joy Lenz talking about leaving a high demand religious environment (which she refers to as a cult — a term that can be controversial to some (ahem, but not to me)), and I had to know more. This book hit close to home. Reading how she told her story — which characters to feature, which plot points to include, what are the central themes and major takeaways — has me asking similar questions of myself (which even led me to my giant plastic bin of old journals). As an actor, Lenz is used to putting herself in someone else’s shoes to empathetically inhabit their life experience. This skill is apparent in the compassion she shows for all of the characters in her story — whether it’s her younger self who made choices she now regrets, her ex-husband, or the cult leaders who stole two million dollars from her — she writes about these characters as humans, not as monsters (ironic, because the schtick is that all real names have been swapped out for names of literary vampire characters). In this way, this book is not your sensationalized I-left-a-cult-and-those-people-are-terrible type of story. People are doing the best they can with the information they have; and that does not justify wrongdoing, but it does encourage curiosity and understanding — a breath of fresh air, where judgment and condemnation are the norm. The younger Allie in me sees the younger Bethany in her. For me, listening to this audiobook felt like talking to a friend.
#1: The Cosmic Code by Heinz R. Pagels
2024 was the year that I got into quantum physics. Do I understand it? No, but Richard Feynam said that if anyone thinks they understand quantum [mechanics], then they don’t understand it. I do understand more now, after reading The Cosmic Code by Heinz R. Pagels. I loved how Pagels writes about this topic — he includes some of the mathematical particulars relevant to the field, but he doesn’t overwhelm you with them. He mostly tells the story of quantum physics from 1905 until 1982, when he wrote the book. In that way, it reads more like an historical narrative than it does like a physics textbook (but understand: there are still elements of a physics textbook present). As I was reading this book, I had to remind myself that this information is outdated, because a lot has happened in this field since 1982. I wanted to learn more, and I loved how Pagels writes about this topic, so I looked into whether he had written more since the 80s, and what I found was… unsettling.
I’ll explain…
Okay, so, the last chapter of The Cosmic Code has this section that feels pretty out of place. He talks about a dream that he had where he was falling down a mountain and his quantum particles were being resorbed into the general quantum matter (my words, not his). The description of this dream reads like a passage from a prophetic book in the Old Testament. Very out of place. Well you see, as I went a-looking for more Heinz R. Pagels books (which, I did buy two, yay!), I found that he did not write a continuation of the history of quantum physics after the 1980s because he died in 1988. And how did he die, you ask?? He fell off a mountain. Just like his (unbeknownst) prophetic dream foretold.
Thank you for indulging me with that story, and I hope that you hold space for it and really feel the power in it like I did. As interesting as that story is, The Cosmic Code still would have been my number one book of the year with or without it, for the other reasons I already mentioned. I can’t wait to find out what happens in quantum physics after 1982!! ;-)
“One cannot underestimate the role of intuition and imagination in the sciences. Students who do well on examinations do not necessarily become the most creative scientists. ”