This was the year I finally got into Civil War history. My reading of McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, mentioned in the last post, was a follow up to reading Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery earlier this year. I really enjoyed Foner’s book, but felt that I lacked an understanding of the broader context of the war, which led me to McPherson’s book. Now I’m looking forward to moving on to James Oakes’ The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, a copy of which I received as a Christmas gift.
On the theology front, Friedrich Schleiermacher loomed large this year. I read his systematic theology, The Christian Faith, and it has had a significant effect on how I think about theological questions. I supplemented it with Terrence Tice‘s and B.A. Gerrish‘s introductions to Schleiermacher–the latter was particularly helpful. Currently I’m working through F.S.’s On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.
I’ve also been revisiting the work of Paul Tillich. I read a lot of Tillich in college, but hadn’t paid him much attention in years. This year I read two collections of his sermons–The Shaking of the Foundations and The New Being. Right now I’m just over halfway through his History of Christian Thought, and I have The Courage to Be and Theology of Culture on deck. I’ve discovered that I still find Tillich’s approach to theology helpful, even if I may not agree with all his specific conclusions.
Fiction-wise, the high point of my year was Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. Great Expectations (which I read late last year) was my first foray into Dickens, but Copperfield edges it out in my estimation. While Expectations is more tightly plotted, Dickens’ famous knack for generating larger-than-life characters is on fuller display in Copperfield. I’m thinking about finally tackling Tolstoy in 2013–possibly Anna Karenina.
What were your favorite books this year?
A Thinking Reed 