These are some of the books I've read (or listened to) all the way through in 2022. Key themes are friendship, sexuality, early monasticism, trauma healing, resolving anger, and the father-son relationship.
Athanasius. (written between 356-374). The Life of Antony. In Carolinne White (tr.), Early Christian Lives. Penguin, 1998.
The story of a hermit who engaged in mortal combat with demons and emerged victorious -- he gained a following and reluctantly taught the people, and then went back to his mountain for some solitude.
Vaughan Roberts. True Friendship: Walking Shoulder to Shoulder. 10Publishing, 2013.
Has some good insights in Chapter 1 into the shared pursuit of wisdom being a main reason we need friends.
Drew Hunter. Made for Friendship: The Relationship That Halves Our Sorrows and Doubles Our Joys. Crossway, 2018.
The best part is Chapter 6, retelling the whole biblical narrative through the lens of friendship.
Jay Stringer. Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing.
Deeply insightful into the complex origins of sexual and relational dysfunctions, with good advice for developing a satisfying life. It came recommended to me by one close friend, and later when I recommended it to a new friend whom I greatly respect, that friend said he was already a big fan.
Jackie Hill Perry. Holier Than Thou: How God's Holiness Helps Us Trust Him. B&H Books, 2021.
The audio version read by the author, a Black rapper and recording artist, is absolutely lyrical and rhythmical. She pulls no punches in her depiction of the wonder of God's holiness, and how this makes him trustworthy to us shy and fearful humans.
Andrew Angel. Intimate Jesus: The Sexuality of God Incarnate. SPCK Publishing, 2017.
A daring and imaginative look into the nuances how of the sexual and intimate (and yet chaste) side of Jesus' humanity is expressed in the gospel of John, specifically in his interactions with the woman at the well and with the disciple John at the Last Supper.
Edward T. Welch. A Small Book about a Big Problem: Meditations on Anger, Patience, and Peace. New Growth Press, 2017.
Fifty short chapters on different aspects of the process of understanding and taming one's own anger. Sort of like drinking a daily shot of vinegar mixed with honey.
Marvin Olasky. Lament for a Father: The Journey to Understanding and Forgiveness. P&R Publishing, 2021.
Sort of a detective story, in which Olasky, former editor of World Magazine, tracks down the life story of his father in order to understand how his difficult background as an Eastern European Jew in Boston and his experiences in liberating Nazi concentration camps and absorbing evolutionary philosophy in graduate school weighed down his youthful ambition and made him a difficult father. Wonderfully compassionate.
Addendum on the last day of the year:
Marisa G. Franco. Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make--and Keep--Friends. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2022.
I wrote this list and thought I was done. Then I saw this book at the top of a top-five list by James Quigley in an email from Meetup, after my sister told me I should get on there and make some friends with common interests in music, following a Thanksgiving gathering where I'd prepared song sheets and then given up when it seemed like most of my relatives weren't keen on singing. So I got back on Meetup and ended up attending a very satisfying jam session at a local violin shop one night a week later.
But back to Franco's book -- she tells us why our friendships are broken as a result of mismatched attachment styles due to trauma growing up and life's general slings and arrows. She weaves compelling personal stories with the latest research studies to show how good friendships are key to a healthy and satisfying life. Then she unpacks some of the ingredients for a good friendship, like vulnerability and affection. She speaks at the right moment in our cultural conversation, laying out a balance between me-first boundary-lines and us-first circles. She also explains what it's like to be a minority and experience micro-aggressions, and the labor it takes to stay in friendships with people who don't understand -- it falls to those from the dominant cultural group to try to understand and take the humble posture in order to make the Other feel welcome.
Platonic is a complex book, like Jay Stringer's Unwanted. Like Stringer, Franco exudes a warmth and humility that is really endearing to me as she pulls together multiple strands of research. Franco's rich young voice in the audiobook brightened my days during several weeks of long rainy commutes between Vancouver and Milwaukie this December.
