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<\/a><\/p>\nTis the season for finding gifts, and how could you possibly do better than books? \u00a0Seriously, when I was a little kid, the tooth fairy left money and YA fiction in our beds. \u00a0It\u2019s hard for me to cull from my list of favorites, so these seven books (plus one bonus recommendation) are all culled from things I read for the first time in 2012.<\/p>\n
Oh, and don\u2019t forget that when you buy books or anything on Amazon through my links, I get a small cut that I turn into more book purchases and reviews\/meditations<\/a> for you! \u00a0You don\u2019t need to be buying the item linked, anything you get after clicking my referral link counts.<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 1 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Well, after a paen to Lewis on Monday<\/a>, a defense of him on Wednesday<\/a>, and some awfully good news for him<\/a> yesterday, I feel obliged to kick off this list with his\u00a0Reflections on the Psalms<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0Since I\u2019ve been praying the Liturgy of the Hours<\/a>, I was casting about for good references on the Psalms. \u00a0 There are better places to go if you want a big scholarly discussion of their history or in-depth analysis of individual psalms, but reading Lewis\u2019s book is like having an intense conversation until the coffee shop closes with a friend who\u2019s spent a long time with these verses.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 2 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n I\u2019ve mentioned I tend to appreciate Lewis more for his apologetics than his fantasy\/scifi, but boy howdy do I love those genres generally and I really loved reading Orson Scott Card\u2019s\u00a0How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy<\/em><\/a> this year. \u00a0I don\u2019t write fiction, but you don\u2019t need to need this book to love it.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always liked the Peggy Noonan remark that the beauty of a speech is in its logic, and Card does a great job of showing you how he\u2019s thought through or been surprised by the consequences and relationships of the worlds he built. \u00a0Oh, and Eliezer Yudkowsky has said this book helps him write\u00a0Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0(I\u2019d still like him to write and write faster<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 3 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n And while we\u2019re talking about writing fantasy that casts a spell on the reader, I have to recommend Catherynne Valente\u2019s The Orphan\u2019s Tales: In the Night Garden<\/a><\/em> and it\u2019s sequel The Orphan\u2019s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice<\/a><\/em>. Reading these books made me feel a lot of kinship with the king in Scheherazade \u2013 I was alternately enraptured and enraged.<\/p>\n But\u00a0Scheherazade\u2019s spouse had it easy; she started a new tale every night and stopped at the cliffhanger, so he couldn\u2019t kill her the next day. \u00a0Then she\u2019d finish the story and start a new one the next night. \u00a0In Valente\u2019s two books, the characters in the stories that our girl is telling in the frame tale start telling stories of their own, or are told them by the people they meet. \u00a0And the stories are so good, that you can\u2019t decide which level down you need catharsis on most.<\/p>\n Not to mention that, a lot of the time, a nested story will cast new light on one of the stories still spinning out, sometimes when the antagonist gets a chance to talk, and sometimes when one narrative just glances off the other, but some small fact is explained (oh that\u2019s where the three mute maidens stole the tongue they shared!<\/em>).<\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for gifts for younger readers, try Valente\u2019s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making<\/a><\/em> and its sequel The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s on a par with\u00a0The Phantom Tollbooth<\/em><\/a> in surreal beauty.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 4 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Like everyone else, apparently, I really<\/em> liked Hillary Mantel\u2019s\u00a0Wolf Hall<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0(I didn\u2019t love\u00a0Bring Up the Bodies<\/em><\/a> or\u00a0A Place of Greater Safety<\/em><\/a> quite as much). \u00a0The length is part of what makes it excellent (and why I didn\u2019t love\u00a0Bodies<\/em>); there\u2019s a lot of room for Cromwell to have to work around his king and his culture. \u00a0 Mantel was also the cause of me reading<\/a>\u00a0A Man for All Seasons<\/em><\/a> this year, which I juxtaposed with\u00a0A Place of Greater Safety<\/em> recently<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 5 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Mantel brought me into history through fiction, and Peter Brown caught me with his nonfiction work The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0It\u2019s a nice reminder about how much work moral theology is, and it\u2019s comforting to see that I\u2019m not the only one who flails around a bit when it comes to all those questions about the realtionship between intellect and embodiment,\u00a0caritas<\/em> and\u00a0eros<\/em>.<\/p>\n Drew Gilpin Faust\u2019s\u00a0This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War<\/a><\/em> is another great book that works through historical problems and makes you think awfully hard about the dignity of the body now. \u00a0Not quite sure if it counts for this list, since I\u2019d read excerpts before for an epidemiology class, but this year I actually read the whole thing.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 6 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n My default mode is more puzzle-solving and abstract philosophizing than anything all that spiritual or communal. \u00a0That\u2019s why I\u2019m really glad I read\u00a0The Presence of God<\/a><\/em>, Weeds among the Wheat<\/em><\/a>, and The Examen Prayer: Ignatian Wisdom for Our Lives Today<\/a><\/em>. I am not the best at thinking of God-the-Person instead of God-the-truth-proposition, and I found these helpful.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/a>\u2014 7 \u2014<\/strong><\/p>\n Earlier this year, when I was still working on the truth proposition problem, I was trying to decide what I needed to do to have finished doing due\u00a0diligence\u00a0so I could walk away from the question of God and feel intellectually satisfied. \u00a0For some reason, I decided this meant I needed to read the big Christian novels I\u2019d been so frequently recommended. \u00a0Which is great, because it meant I finally read\u00a0The Brothers Karamazov<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0I kept coming back to ideas and quotations from it for months. \u00a0(And when that petered out, I think it was a sign I was due for a reread).<\/p>\n P.S. Did you know William Shatner played Alyosha in a film adaptation?!?<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n