Top Books I Read in 2023

Here’s my annual listing of the Top Ten books I read in 2023, with some honorable mentions and a few more page-turning details. I hope you’ve got the spine to continue reading. I’m sure you’re bound up with suspense and your excitement speaks volumes to me. This post is one of a series (you’ll have to visit my old blog journeyguy.com to see previous Top Book posts). If you’re a reader and enjoy book recommendations, these posts may help you stumble upon your next favorite book!

Goodreads

If you are a reader and don’t use Goodreads, you need to pause this entry and click over and set up an account now! It’s a fantastic way to track your reading and receive recommendations as well as see what your friends are reading. I’ve discovered some wonderful reads as a result of seeing a connection on Goodreads comment on a book.

Also, I encourage you to always write a review (2-3 sentences) on good books you’ve read! It helps the rest of us, and reviews from friends go a long way. They also encourage self-published authors! (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Here we go…

I set a goal of 35 books this year. I accidentally blew past that – and read 53. If you wonder how I read that many, this blog entry from 2015 ^[1]Finding time to read (January 8, 2015) about how and what I read is still true.

Here’s the pretty graphic from Goodreads (link here lets you see each individual book), but keep scrolling for my top 10 books of 2023 and commentary about them.

Here’s my top 10 books I read (with 10 being the best):

1. Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World by Michael Horton
   “The first half is tremendous as Horton explains his thesis – Christians today are enthralled with activity, event, movement, and the Next Big Thing. We eschew ordinary, daily faithfulness. The first half is genuinely a wonderful work, full of provocative thought and helpful. I found myself underling almost entire paragraphs.
   The second half… Meh.
   It was peculiar after the first half was so articulately expressed. I could not grasp how some of his conclusions would be the effective antidote.” ^[2]My full Goodreads review here.
2. Worth It and Wonderful: Inspiration for Christian Women to Live Bravely and Boldly by Caitlyn Scaggs
   I was privileged to be pastor Caitlyn and her family for a season. Reading her book is like talking to her over coffee. It’s real. She’s real. She doesn’t put on airs and pretend. I encourage you to read her book and know it’s not the final chapter of her or your story. It has an end AND, through faith, it can also lead to beginnings in your life.
3. Gospel People: A Call for Evangelical Integrity by Michael Reeves
   ”Reeves artfully explains what it means to be a people who are converted by, esteem, protect and proclaim the “gospel.” You’ll especially want to read to help you know what “the” gospel is from a biblical framework, and it will help you distinguish and understand why Roman Catholicism and even some modern Protestantism stray from the gospel.” ^[3]My full Goodreads review here.
4. The Last Crusade: Spain 1936 by Warren H. Carroll
   This book was absolutely fantastic and stunning and has profound implications for our current culture war in America.”In just six months of the year 1936, thirteen bishops and nearly seven thousand priests, seminarians, monks, and nuns were martyred in Spain by enemies of Christianity. It was the greatest clerical bloodletting in so short a span of time since the persecutions on the Church by the ancient Roman emperors… Against all odds the crusaders triumphed, and the Church and the Faith in Spain were saved. This is the story of that crusade…” (Amazon)
5. Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners by Dane Ortlund
   (See my full review here)
6. Dying Out Loud by Shawn Smucker
   I am still processing this book and will write a review on it soon. It’s moving and missionary. It recounts the calling of one SoCal family to serve and minister to the Muslims of Turkey in incarnational, sacrificial joy.
7. Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters by Abigail Shrier
   This book was uncomfortably stunning. But it’s a must-read to understand and truly fight back against the transgender ideology assaulting our youth. (See my full review here.)
8. Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Cures by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
   (See my full review here.)
9. A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte
   I was encouraged to read this book by a church member, and I have since given it as a gift several times!”Tremendous. Fantastic. Not only do you get an “inkling” of the significance of their friendship and subsequent impact on literature by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, but you also get a powerful and eye-opening paradigm-adjustment about WW1.”
10. The New Testament

    In January, I challenged our church family to read through the New Testament in a year. Mission accomplished! Of course, it’s the best “book” I’ve read this year! I used this website to generate a plan to read through the NT, chronologically. It’s a great tool and allows you to print out a checklist to guide your reading.

Honorable Mention

• Scribes and Scripture: The Amazing Story of How We Got the Bible by John Meade
  For anyone curious about how we got the Bible in its present form, how it was collated, protected and embraced – this is a highly readable account!
• The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and The War Against the Human by Naomi Wolf
  Truly well-written and provocative. In a time where we are still learning about the unyielding propaganda and falsehoods perpetrated by Big Pharma and power brokers, Wolf’s book exposes a concerted effort to dehumanize and demean dissenters.
• Spurgeon: A New Biography by Arnold A. Dallimore
  Thoroughly enjoyed this straight-forward, unadorned account of the Prince of Preachers. Humbling. It was the first time I’ve read a biography of him!
• Counterfeit Kingdom: The Dangers of New Revelation, New Prophets, and New Age Practices in the Church by Holly Pivec & Douglas Geivett
  ”While it offers helps at the end, it doesn’t really offer practical helps. They’re more like platitudes than helps. Their chapter on NAR music was good, but they didn’t offer alternative sources of solid, biblical worship music. They were eager to name names of the offenders, but they didn’t name names of those doing excellent work.”4
• The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion by Elle Luna
  For creativity and originality, I give this book/art 5 stars. As a Christian, I have some quibbles with the “find your truth” mentality. However, when I define my “must” as Jesus (oftentimes mentally substituting His name for “must” as I read), there were profound applications for my faith. This book was inspiring to urgent me toward being relentlessly, gently intentional with enjoying and making much of Jesus as my “must” for the rest of and for the blessing of others.It also led to a podcast on Ordinary Celebrity!

• Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas
  ”Cultural Christianity in America is cowardly Christianity. Using the example of the powerless, go-with-the-flow German church of the 1930s, Metaxas has written a bold book challenging fearful western Christians. He uses Dietrich Bonhoeffer as an example throughout the book. His writing is prophetic and upsetting (don’t all prophets upset the status quo?). I encourage you to read this book.”5
• The Thrill of Orthodoxy: Rediscovering the Adventure of Christian Faith by Trevin Wax
  A really excellent book which will get even the most skeptical of “progressive” perspectives excited about the beauty of revealed truth. Get ready to fall in love with tue adventure of doctrine.

Here are some series that I read:

• The Monster in the Hollows and The Warden and the Wolf King by Andrew Peterson (#3,4 in The Wingfeather Saga)
• Dragon’s Child by M.K. Hume (King Arthur Trilogy #1) – a really excellent first installment of Arthurian tale. I will definitely be reading the other two.
• Coming of Winter and Dead of Winter by Tom Threadgill (Jeremy Winter Thriller #1,2) – this book came recommended as an Amazon First Read, and I took the bait. I couldn’t put it down, read the second and will be reading more!
• Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline (Ready Player One #2) – really enjoyed the first book (and the movie). This continued to be a fun read.
• The Lightning Rod by Brad Meltzer (Escape Artist#2)
• A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes #1,2)
• Last Mile, The Fallen, and Redemption by David Baldacci (Amos Decker, Memory Man #3,4,5) These stories about a former NFL player, now FBI agent with a photographic memory are memorable.
• Yep. I love me some David Baldacci. I finished #1 of the Archer Tales – One Good Deed and will read more.
• If you’re familiar with my reading at all, you know I’ve read through the Dirk Pitt series. The Devil’s Sea by Clive Cussler (#26) was this year’s entry.
• Turning Angel by Greg Iles (Penn Cage #2) – when I read the first installment last year set in Natchez, Mississippi, I was struck by the quality of writing and the truly wonderful characterizations. The second back did not disappoint, and I’m now reading the third (won’t finish it this year).
• Why Kill the Innocent by C.S. Harris (Sebastian St. Cyr #13) Set in London in the early 1800s, these detective stories have been good brain candy.
• Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (Incarceron #1) Imaginative and at times hard to follow, this tale had enough twists to make me want to read more.
• Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell (The Last Kingdom #4) These books about King Alfred and Uhtred set in the mid-8th century are so good. Many believer Alfred was the basis for the King Arthur legends.
• Sparring Partners by John Grisham (Jake Brigance #4) Don’t get me wrong – I love Grisham’s works. However, this was a bit of a disappointment. It was three novellas. I wasn’t clear on that. Only one of the stories was about Jake Brigance, and that one didn’t get to completion. I was perplexed, and though I enjoyed each, felt unsatisfied that the Brigance story wasn’t finished. It took me 2/3 through the second story to realize that it wasn’t a story arc that would bring me back to where we started.

P.S.

You can click over to my 2023 books page at Goodreads and see my reviews on many of the other books I didn’t mention here.

What did you read this year that you’d recommend?