My Top Ten Books of 2023

 

We begin the year with what has become a traditional post for me, my top ten books of 2023. Years ago, in an effort to stop buying the same used books repeatedly, I archived all of my books on Goodreads. I still use it frequently to track my books owned/read. I also review each book I read, and participate in their annual reading challenge. For 2023, my year in review shows I read 54 books totaling 21,757 pages. My shortest book completed was 50 pages (Riley Barrett’s Not The Exception.) My longest book completed was 2,368 pages (The Strand Study Bible.) Average book length was 402 pages. My most shelved book, Killers of the Flower Moon, is on 745,000 other shelves. My least shelved book, a biography of William Biederwolf, is only on my shelf. Along with this annual post about my reading, I also maintain a list of books I recommend in general. You can find it here at Brennan’s Book List. It currently contains 423 recommendations spread over 41 different categories.

Without further ado, in no particular order, here are my top ten books for 2023:

 

The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People by John Kelly

As a direct descendant of Irish immigrants who fled Ireland to escape this event, I have a natural interest in it. This is by far the best book I've read on the subject. Kelly does an outstanding job of telling us the story in context rather than just relating dreary statistics. There are statistics, of course, appalling ones, but he frames them well within the overarching story. In the process we learn about the Irish climate, economics, and farming practices. We discover how the peasants and landlords of that time lived and were viewed. We see how philosophy shaped relief, and the uninenteded massive consequences of laws passed attempting to fix things. Perhaps the most compelling part of a compelling book was the discussion of the flight via ships to North America, and how the Irish were received in Canada and the United States.

As the Irish said, "God sent the blight but the British sent the famine." I do not necessarily agree with that, nor does Kelly, but after finishing this book I certainly understand better why the feeling existed. If your heritage is the Irish diaspora in America you owe it to yourself to read it. And you won't be sorry. 

 

Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women by Sarah Helm

 This has to be one of the most difficult if not the most difficult books I have ever read. This is not because of the writing. I have no complaint there. It was well written. But the content - which was painstakingly reconstructed and is pure history - is savage, vile, and heartrending. I've read other works on the Holocaust, I've watched the documentaries and movies, I've been through the Holocaust Museum in DC, nothing affected me like this book did. It is not a book I will remember; it is a book that will haunt me.

Evil exists in this world, and it is good and right to fight it, tooth and claw. My deep gratitude for Sarah Helm's work here. If it was difficult to read I can only imagine how difficult it was to research and write. We owe her, no, strike that, we owe the tens of thousands of women who were enslaved and tortured and murdered there not to forget.

...so read it. As difficult as it will be to read. Because you will not forget.

 

The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer’s Standpoint by Walter M. Chandler

 I would liken this book in my mind to mold. It grew on me slowly as I read it. And I had to read it slowly. This particular edition has print that is not tiny, it is infinitesemal. It was more than just a pain, it was a serious handicap to reading the book. But I plowed ahead and I'm heartily glad I did. Divided loosely into two main sections or volumes, one discusses the Jewish examinations of Christ and the other the Roman.

Chandler as an author is not necessarily fantastic, but he quite clearly knows his stuff, both historically and legally. He does not compare the trials of Christ to trials in our own day for such would be pointless. He painstakingly and damningly compares them at all points with the Jewish and Roman law of Christ's own day. He does not work on theory or probability but strictly on law. The book is true to its title. Though narrow in that sense, it is a highly valuable thought exercise overall. It's the kind of book you can lean on. It is patently reliable in its knowledge, logic, and argument. I had heard all of my life that Jesus' trials were illegal; after finishing this work I am utterly convinced of it. 

 

The Incomparable Christ: The Person and Work of Jesus Christ by J. Oswald Sanders

 This is my second Sanders work, and this one excels his more widely known and praised work on spiritual leadership. As a pastor, it is apparent to me this work was the result of a series of messages Sanders preached about Christ. It makes the book no less impressive for all that. He walks us through aspects of Christ's character, strengths, and attributes before finishing with an examination of the seven sayings on the cross. Each chapter is short, and would serve marvelously well as the foundation of a lesson or series of lessons. Along the way Sanders gives us not just pithy comments, which he does in spades, but downright enlightening ones.

I really, really liked it, and on the basis of this book will move Sanders up in my estimation and willingness to read him. 

 

Cobalt Red: How The Blood Of The Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

 Kara's work, while not flawless, is nonetheless searing. Recent. Painstakingly sourced, at risk to his own life and limb. Damning. A century and a half ago, it was Belgium raping the Congo; now it is the Chinese - and, by extension, their American customers. I've read King Leopold's Ghost; this is like the mad sequel made 150 years later. Truly, the Apostle Paul was right when he said, "The love of money is the root of all evil."

The task Kara set for himself was simple: to match the pledges made by tech companies in relation to the cobalt in their supply chain with the situation on the ground. The kindest word Kara uses in the whole book is "fiction." Which is precisely what they are. Focusing essentially on (badly named) artisinal miners, he shows how men/women/children labor in life-threatening conditions for practically no pay, and are exploited at every possible turn. Children under the age of ten digging in tunnels 18 inches high, left to rot by the dozens when the tunnels collapse. Teenage girls sexually abused, lives wasted away before their 18th birthday. Soldiers shooting children for the high crime of wanting to find another buyer for their precious sack of heterogonite. Politicians looting their homeland of tens of millions of dollars. Incalculable environmental damage. Organized crime. It goes on and on and on.

Kara's work is not flawless, as I said. He gets too emotional, though I can hardly blame him. He inserts himself into the reporting entirely too often, though even that helps us understand how he functions and how he came by his information. What he does do is research the industry, the economy, and the technology. He rests his case on countless interviews with ordinary, everyday, impoverished Congolese. He is at his best when telling their tales. You catch yourself looking at your 21st century American life entirely differently.

This is a book that cries out for answers, for solutions, but the problems are so deep-seated and so complex I am rather at a loss. At the end, it seems so is Kara. This is not the tale of a past crime. I have read those by the score. It is the tale of a present, on-going crime, one facilitated by my desire for inexpensive electronics.

This is a sobering work, and one I hope is widely read. 

 

The Crisis by Winston Churchill

 It is not often that you read a book thirty-five years after the first time you read it, and find it to be just as achingly beautiful as the first time. But today I have. It has been my custom to read to my children all their lives. Today, I read the last chapter of this book to my now adult daughter. What a book to end on.

I do not know why America history has forgotten this Winston Churchill. I find his writing illuminating, compelling, haunting even. It is historical fiction of the greatest variety, showing us both great character studies and perfectly drawn portraits of the age and place in which they live. No book has shown me the South better than this one.

I read almost zero fiction anymore. But walking through this book with my daughter over the last year or more was like walking with a dear friend, one I hadn't seen in decades. If you like historical fiction, I cannot possibly recommend Mr. Churchill highly enough. He will make you see. And think. And feel. He will stay with you. And when you meet him again, you will be glad.

 

Biblical Youth Work by Jim Krohn

 Every once in a while, in a great while, you walk away from a book with the realization you have just read the classic work in the field. I had that feeling after I had, at long last, put this book down. I say at long last because I read it slowly, out loud, paragraph by paragraph, with our church's youth pastor. I suppose it took us a year and a half, give or take. Along the way we discussed almost every paragraph. I was looking for something that would help him grow; what I found was a masterclass in youth pastoring.

Krohn's work is dated, in the sense that the illustrations and some of the applications are old, but the content is spot on. He is fierce, unapologetic, detailed, compassionate, thorough, wide-ranging, committedly conservative, and above all, scriptural. His many years as a youth pastor leaven the work, but they do not provide its foundation; that is biblical. Unafraid to tackle any aspect of the ministry, the value you will find here is enormous. Every independent Baptist youth worker in the world should read it. Slowly. Taking notes. And then immediately plan when he is going to read it again. 

 

The Baptist Distinctives and Why They Matter by Paul Frederick

 Paul Frederick, you have created here exactly what I wanted - a short, well-written, doctrinally accurate, easy to understand explanation of the Baptist distinctives. My compliments. I expect I will purchase/pass out many over the years. It will be a perfect accompaniment to our membership class.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost A Miracle: The American Victory In The War Of Independence by John Ferling

 This is the best one volume work I've ever read on the American Revolution. It is broad without being fuzzy, and detailed without getting bogged down. It shows us the politics, geopolitics, economics, technology, morale, strategy, tactics, and differing cultures that came to bear on the outcome. It shows us army life, paints a magnificent yet balanced portrait of George Washington, and doesn't even shrink from addressing slavery. While it justifiably focuses early on New England, it pays great attention to the war in the American South. And it does all of that without being overly repetitive. In fact, it isn't boring even in spots. Above all, it refuses to accede to the modern trend of revisionism. It is just history, pure and simple, albeit very well designed and effected in its execution as a book.

If you are interested at all in American history, you owe it to yourself to read it at some point. It will clarify the Revolution for you. 

 

The Strand Study Bible by Brad Strand

Having been a Bible-reading Christian for decades, I have found myself in recent years finding new ways to read the old Book. One manner I have hit upon is to read study Bibles. I do this during my personal devotion time. There are two things I always read out loud - the King James Bible and poetry. So I read the Bible portion out loud and the notes silently. 

This year I took down from my shelf the largest study Bible I own, the Strand. I never had the privilege of meeting him, though we have numerous connections. But I do feel as if I know him pretty well at this point after reading more than two thousand pages of his Bible notes. And, for the most part, I like the guy. Further, I respect him. Indeed, respect is the best word I can think of to describe this study Bible. Strand clearly loved the Lord, studied and knew the Bible, and produced a life's work that is deeply edifying.

In giving this a five star rating, it is not that I do not have disagreements with Strand in places in his notes. I did, and some of those were rather serious disagreements. He repeatedly corrects the King James translators, for one, and embraces numerology, for another. It should also be said that I found the notes lacking in places. For example, he often seemed to throw in a random sermon outline from a particular passage. Such did little to carry the over-arching narrative arc of Scripture.

By the same token, I want to make plain I found some great strengths here as well. Strand excels at connecting Scripture with Scripture. He puts the words of the each member of the Trinity in a different color, which adds to readability and understanding. He neatly summarizes core Biblical doctrines and points of emphasis. He does an excellent job showing us where one writer quotes another from the Word of God. And he does an outstanding job tracing Bible prophecies throughout the entire volume. So well done was the latter, this book is practically an eschatology course all on its own.

I do not recommend it without reservation for the weaknesses I found cited above. But I do absolutely recommend it. No matter how long you have walked with the Lord and lived in the Book you will find some things here you have never heard before. And you will profit from it.