Books and Culture: The Top Ten Books of the Year

December 20, 2005 by


John Wilson shares the B&C picks…

What’s the best book YOU read this year?

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About Jeffrey Overstreet

Jeffrey Overstreet is the author of a “memoir of dangerous moviegoing” called Through a Screen Darkly, and a four-volume series of fantasy novels called The Auralia Thread, which includes Auralia’s Colors, Cyndere’s Midnight, Raven’s Ladder, and The Ale Boy’s Feast. Jeffrey is a contributing editor for Seattle Pacific University’s Response magazine, and he writes about art, faith, and culture for Image, Filmwell, and his own website, LookingCloser.org. His work has also appeared in Paste, Relevant, Books and Culture, and Christianity Today (where he was a film columnist and critic for almost a decade). He lives in Shoreline, Washington. Visit him on Facebook at facebook.com/jeffreyoverstreethq.

  • Bryan Zug

    But in the context of the film, it worked — was I the only one moved when the timid pregnant prostitute began to sing the chorus in a way that said ‘Nothing beautiful could ever come out of me’ and ended with ‘something beautiful just came out of me’?

    Couldn’t care less who sang it — it worked in the film.

  • Gene Branaman

    More proof that the Academy is totally without a clue?

    I’m thinkin’ so.

  • Dan Olds

    Jeffrey,

    Hopefully when you get a chance to see the movie “God Help Me” you will like the totally unexpected Hip-Hop song “Hands High” that is in it. In fact, if you have just a couple of minutes, you can watch the scene at our website at

    http://www.godhelpmemovie.com/media.html

    Just imagine what it would be like to have this song as the first dance at a wedding because the band didn’t show up!

  • -B

    LOL!

  • Peter T Chattaway

    But — but — they thanked Jesus!

  • David Habecker

    I recently read Walter McDougall’s “‘Freedom Just Around the Corner’: A New American History, 1585-1828″ (2004) and loved it. McDougall (the author of one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books, “Let the Sea Make a Noise”) does a wonderful job walking readers through the first couple hundred years of the American story. Why couldn’t I have been assigned a book like THIS in my high school U.S. history class? He ends with a cliffhanger, as the boisterous and uncouth supporters of Andrew Jackson pour into “civilized” Washington after the election to the White House of America’s first “backwoods” president — what will become of the American experiment now? I can’t wait for the next installment. Read this if you want to rediscover the history of your country told as a ripping good yarn. (The book’s title is taken from a Bob Dylan song, by the way.)

  • David Habecker

    I recently read Walter McDougall’s “‘Freedom Just Around the Corner’: A New American History, 1585-1828″ (2004) and loved it. McDougall (the author of one of my all-time favorite non-fiction books, “Let the Sea Make a Noise”) does a wonderful job walking readers through the first couple hundred years of the American story. Why couldn’t I have been assigned a book like THIS in my high school U.S. history class? He ends with a cliffhanger, as the boisterous and uncouth supporters of Andrew Jackson pour into “civilized” Washington after the election to the White House of America’s first “backwoods” president — what will become of the American experiment now? I can’t wait for the next installment. Read this if you want to rediscover the history of your country told as a ripping good yarn.

  • Martin

    If you want your book in the top 10, the cover must bear an image of a bird facing to the left. Don’t ask me why.

  • Why

    I think I would have to say Crime and Punishment.

  • Foolish Knight

    My one-word answer to everything now is:

    Gilead!


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