My Favorite Books of 2021

The best books that I read in 2021.

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As I write this post, I am sitting in my favorite room in our house–my library. Over 1,500 books on the Bible, theology, history, literature, and the Christian life surround me. These books have shaped who I am. They challenged my long-held positions, sharpened my understanding of the Bible, enlightened my views on history, and stretched my imagination.

People often ask how I read so much and the answer is frustratingly simple. I try to read a little bit every day. I have a full-time job and serve as a bivocational pastor, so I read in the gaps of my day. I try to read instead of scrolling through my phone. I listen to audio books. All of it adds up over the course of weeks and months.

Coming up with the list of the best books I read this year was difficult, not because I had a hard time naming nine or ten books I really liked, but because there were so many that it was difficult not to include. After playing around with several different versions of this list, these are the best books that I read in 2021.

The Wisdom Pyramid

We live in a world in which we consume a constant barrage of advice. Much of what we hear, we need to immediately reject and forge. The problem is that we struggle to know what to believe and who to listen to the most. Brett McCracken cuts through the noise and helps Christians understand where we should find wisdom. It’s not surprising that he lists the Bible and the local church first, but we need to hear this reminder. We spend infinitely more time on social media than we do with our local churches and in the Bible, so we need to refocus our attention on what really matters and where our wisdom will truly grow.

The Possibility of Prayer

There are very few Christians who don’t struggle with prayer. We often feel awkward or guilty during our times of communion with God, so we neglect it. John Starke’s helpful volume is a helpful remedy for our ailing prayer lives. As I wrote in a post with my favorite quotes, “he reminds us that our identity is not found in our performance, but in Christ. This encourages us to pray because our audience with God does not depend on our goodness, but Christ’s. He also speaks into our busy lives to show why we need to give priority to prayer in a time when we are always focused on what we have produced. Starke’s book encouraged me to slow my pace of life so I can give time and attention to prayer.”

Gentle and Lowly

Sometimes Christians just need to be reminded that Jesus loves us. Because we sin, we possess a keen understanding of God’s judgment and often feel like he is disappointed in us. In this work, Dane Ortlund reminds us that Jesus loves us deeply and that he welcomes the weak and wounded sinner who comes to him.

The Death of Porn

I wish more people would take Ray Ortlund’s approach to growing as a Christian. He took a subject that fills many people with guilt and painted a beautiful picture of what life would look like when they run away from it. Ortlund reminds Christians that we are the sons of the living God and that the people on the screens are made in God’s image too. When Christians run from porn and instead experience life as it was meant to be lived, we are filled with the hope, joy, and fulfillment which porn falsely promises.

The Mating Season

For the first six months of this year, there was a steady stream of loud laughter coming from the library in my house. I had fallen in love with the writing of P.G. Wodehouse, particularly the Jeeves and Wooster series. Wodehouse writes memorable characters and puts them in absurd situations. The decisions they make and the words they speak are a source of great entertainment. I chose The Mating Season because it was the last Wodehouse book I read this year, but I easily could have listed Much Obliged, Jeeves; Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit; Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen; or Right Ho, Jeeves.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson

For the past several years, I have been working on reading a biography of every American President. The plan was not just to read any biography of each man, but the one that is considered to be the best. Robert Caro’s majestic four-volume biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson is meticulously-researched and well-written. So far, The Path to Power, Means of Ascent, Master of the Senate, and The Passage of Power have covered up until the early months of Johnson’s presidency. Caro is currently working on the fifth and final volume.

The War Before the War

Any discussion of the Civil War, especially in the South, riles people up. Many in the South still want to argue that slavery was not the central issue in secession and the war. Andrew Delbanco lays out the history of the fugitive slave laws in the United States from the Revolution to the Civil War and shows how central this fight over fugitive slaves was to the tension between the North and the South. It also showed the lengths that the South would go to in order to protect its “peculiar institution.”

The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera

Many of my earliest memories are of family vacations in Destin, Florida. During my college years in Mobile, we made frequent day trips down to Gulf Shores or Orange Beach. I love the Alabama-Florida Gulf Coast, which has often been dubbed “The Redneck Riviera.” Harvey Jackson, who is from my hometown, loves the Gulf Coast too and has written a fascinating history of the area. He chronicles its rise as a tourist destination and how “the beach” became a place where the upper middle class came and tried to recreate the quiet and amenities of their suburban enclaves.

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

Baseball is the only sport where the other team has the ball while a team is on offense. The pitcher determines the pace of the game. He has the ability to confuse apprehensive hitters and make aggressive hitters look foolish. In this fascinating book, Tyler Kepner tells the history of baseball through ten different pitches. He explains the origins of the pitch, discusses its most famous practitioners, and narrates pivotal moments in big games when the pitch was the determining factor. This is a great book for all lovers of baseball.