Professor’s Book Corner

Posted by admin on Sep 22, 2009 in Arts & Culture, Volume 14 Issue 1 | 0 comments

Here are five books I think you should read if you haven’t already:

1. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. I have a hard time explaining why I liked this book so much. I think it just captured what I had been feeling for a long time about the church and culture. On one level it’s very non-traditional, but it stays so true to the core of the gospel message.  I’ve been searching for a while to find different ways to articulate my faith, and it seems to me that Miller tackles things in the same way I have wanted to.

2. Jesus and the Victory of God by N.T. Wright. I met Wright and heard him speak when our campus ministry group invited him to the University of Iowa, and I was quite impressed with him then. I decided to tackle his three big books, and they have really transformed my understanding of Christian history and the Christian faith. All three books have given me a much deeper understanding of the historical context of the New Testament, but this second book is probably the most relevant for most Christians. It’s very scholarly, but that’s partly what makes it so powerful, and it nevertheless remains readable.

3. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. I’m a geek. I’ve read this book more times than any other save the Bible. I’m going to cheat and lump in The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis, because it’s the same kind of thing for me. Lewis and Tolkien (in their fiction, anyway) conjured up other worlds. I cherish, in my heart of hearts, a sense of adventure and exploration that I know will not ever be fully fulfilled in this life. These books allow me to get closer to it.

4. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form by Scott McCloud. This one’s quality depends less on the message than the medium. I think what he has to say is generally pretty cool—but it’s almost getting a bit dated.  No, the reason I think this is a must-read is because it’s a comic book that does intellectual heavy lifting. I was floored when I first read it. I know a picture is worth a thousand words, but typically those words are all over the place and more emotive than coherent. This was my first experience of a rational, coherent argument being made primarily by images.

5. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. One of the smartest, funniest, drollest, most bizarre pieces of literature ever produced. Adams was the 1980s version of Oscar Wilde or Eugene Ionescu. I laughed myself silly the first few times I read the five books of the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s trilogy. But as I re-read them compulsively, I also unintentionally started to pick up a deeper current in the book. As with all atheist, absurdist literature, it’s deeply hopeless. Oddly enough, that has reinforced my faith. It has also taught me the importance of towels.