2011 in books

So another year has passed, and I’ve managed to read quite a few books in that time. In fact, when I compiled the list below, I surprised myself at seeing I had gone through them at a rate of almost one a week; and that included some fairly weighty 500+ page volumes. I try to maintain a balance between what I tend to identify as my 4 main genres of reading, though as you can see I have been far biased towards the christianity end of the spectrum. There are still some books I received for my birthday in autumn and for Christmas which I have not read. In all, I currently have 4 books on the go at present, with a further 24 on my dining table awaiting to be read (including some of the “books of shame” which I want to finish at last). Of these, there is definite bias towards the fiction side, not least a large number of the less well-known works of Thomas Hardy.

So here's the list, along with a couple that I'd started. Every one should have a link to the relevant review.

Christianity (18+2)

Letters & Papers from Prison – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
If you want to walk on the water, you’ve got to get out of the boat – John Ortberg
Why men hate going to church – David Murrow
A Place for truth – ed. by Dallas Willard
The Resurrection Of The Son of God – N.T. Wright
The Crucified God – Jurgen Moltmann
The Reason for God – Tim Keller
The Didache: a window on the earliest christians – Thomas O’Loughlin
Why God Won’t Go Away – Alister McGrath
The Problem of Pain – C.S. Lewis
The New Testament & The People of God – N.T. Wright
A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis
The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable – F.F. Bruce
Lost Christianities – Bart Ehrman
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses – Richard Bauckham
Heresy – Alister McGrath
Surprised by Hope – Tom Wright
Did St Paul Get Jesus Right? – David Wenham
*The Historical Reliability Of The Gospels – Craig Blomberg
*Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes – Kenneth Bailey

Science (10)

Bad Science – Ben Goldacre
Boffinology – Justin Pollard
Three Roads to Quantum Gravity – Lee Smolin
Cycles of Time – Roger Penrose
Gaia – James Lovelock
The Origin of Species – Charles Darwin
The Meaning of it all – Richard Feynman
You Are Here – Christopher Potter
The Logic of Scientific Discovery – Karl Popper
God’s Philosophers – James Hannam

Fiction (12)

Love in the time of cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Chosen Ones - Alister McGrath
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
The Shadow of the wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Tess Of The D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Master & Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
The Curious Incident Of The Dog In the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
The Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki

Other (8)

Captive State – George Monbiot
The Borgias & Their Enemies – Christopher Hibbert
Begat – David Crystal
No Logo – Naomi Klein
Treasure Islands – Nicholas Shaxson
Wired for God – Charles Foster (this could be put into christianity or science, though it doesn’t fit very well in either)
Churchill’s Empire – Richard Toye
Map Addict – Mike Parker


Total = 48+2

* = currently reading (i.e. unfinished)