Reading in 2016 (Part one)

I am a voracious reader. I read for my work as a pastor, and read a lot in my spare time. Sitting with a book, a baroque composer and a single malt scotch is a perfect evening for me. So looking back at 2016 I had a very busy year reading both physical books and e-books on my Kindle. My final total was 177 separate volumes. I do not mean to say I read that much in depth. Some of the volumes only received a scanning read, which is a bit of a cheat I admit.

So with that much verbiage behind me, what books had the most impact on me in 2016. Below I list 16 volumes (or sets) that I will carry with me into 2017 and beyond.

1. Core Christianity by Michael Horton. Horton would be a favourite every year because he writes with an eye to the age in which we live. His focus on the core beliefs of Christianity keeps us away from the polemic fringes that get us distracted and take so much of our church energy in these difficult days.

2. Puritan Theology by Joel Beeke. This is a large volume dedicated to the systematic, biblical and practical theology of the Puritans from the late 16th to the early 18th century.

3. Ecclesiastes by Michael Eaton. This is a short commentary in the Tyndale series but opened up the book of Ecclesiastes for me in ways I never thought of before. (see my post Reading in Ecclesiastes).

My love of biography continued in 2016, and below are several of the lives that I enjoyed reading last year.

4. A Grief Sanctified by J.I. Packer. This includes Richard Baxter's memoir of his wife, and is a wonderful treatment of the Puritan pastoral response to death and grief.

5. J. I. Packer: An Evangelical Life by Leland Ryken. Packer is the grand old man of evangelicalism today, and Ryken shows him in his fights and battles from England to Canada and his fight for the traditional Christian faith.

6. J.C. Ryle: Prepared to Stand Alone by Iain Murray. Murray shares the life of Ryle, a nineteenth century Anglican bishop who stood by himself as the evangelical standard bearer of his day.

7. George Whitefield: The Life and Times of the Great Evangelist of the Eighteenth Century by Arnold Dallimore. This 2 volume set is by an obvious fan of Whitefield, and he seeks to correct the historic record on Whitefield. (Although admittedly at times he overcorrects that record.)

8. Ty Cobb: a terrible beauty by Charles Leerhsen. As a long time baseball fan I found this book on the life of the great hitter eye-opening, and it seeks to set the record straight on the real Ty Cobb, and not the caricature we often imagine.

(Continued tomorrow)