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

Don't you hate these ugly click-bait ads? Visit LookingCloser.org for a bigger, better, ad-free version of Jeffrey Overstreet's blog. Jeffrey Overstreet is the senior film critic for Christianity Today, the author of Through a Screen Darkly and Auralia's Colors, and he teaches writing and film at Seattle Pacific University, Houston Baptist University, and Northwest University.

  • 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!