Best Books of '07

One of my goals at the start of 2007 was to read a book every week. I kept up a good pace for a while, although my chance at reading 52 books fell apart around September when I started grad school. However, I did manage to finish about 40 new books this year, and I wanted to give my "best of" awards for those of you who might be looking for something worth your time.

Best Novel - A Prayer For Owen Meany by John Irving. The best, most memorable book that I read all year.

Best Theological Book - Holy Scripture by John Webster. Not a light read, but it will change the way you approach the Bible.

Best Book of Poetry - Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot. 'We must be still and still moving/Into another intensity/For a further union/A deeper communion.'

Best Non-Fiction - A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah. Really an amazing story - Beah is a surviving child soldier from the Sierra Leone Civil War. Eloquent, important, and bluntly horrific.

Best Baseball Book - Good Enough To Dream by Roger Kahn. My favorite baseball writer, this is the story of the year Kahn spent as owner of the Utica Blue Sox, a now defunct Single A team that played five minutes down the street from our old apartment.

Best Classic - Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Discovered this book for the first time this summer. Honorable mention to On The Road and Pride & Prejudice, a book that revealed to me the secret of a woman's heart.

Best Short Story - Legends of the Fall by Jim Harrison. The plot is generally the same as a movie, but written in absolutely spare prose.

Most Confusing Book - The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton. With thirteen years of homeschooling, four years at a Christian college, and a semester of seminary under my belt, it seems like I should be able to understand G.K. Chesterton a little bit. But it hasn't happened yet.

Other Recommendations: Godric, by Frederick Buechnera fictional biography of an 11th century saint, is tough to read (vernacular from the Middle Ages), but it is absolutely worth it. Stuart: A Life Lived Backward by Alexander Masters, is a British biography of a homeless man, and unlike anything you have likely read.

I found something beautiful, intriguing, or redemptive in all these books. If you're looking for something to read in 2008, I'd recommend each one of these books.
-matt