Friday Findings – 2019/2020 Books and Reading Edition
I’m a curious soul – with a wide range of nerdy and geeky interests, ranging from space exploration to theological concepts. I often find interesting items when stumbling about on the internet – and on Friday’s I like to share my findings with you!
Reading is an important activity for me – always has been. I keep long lists of books I’ve read, and books that I hope to read. I even purchase a yearly poster, that I proudly hang in my office and use throughout the year, to track my reading goals. (Interested? I’ll add a link to the 2020 poster, below.)
At the end of each year, one of the things I enjoy the most are the many “Best Books of the Year” articles that hit my timelines. I collect and scour them, looking for gems that I may have missed, to add to my “To Read” list for the new year.
The last few weeks of 2019, in particular, seemed to be chock-full with these lists and articles! Each one has been fun to read, so I’ve gathered many of them here, to share with my book-loving friends – enjoy!
Russell Moore – Favorite Books of 2019
Dr. Moore’s list is my favorite each and every year – he is not only a voracious reader, he reads from a wide selection of fascinating genres. Here’s his list, for 2019: My Favorite Books of 2019
Russell Moore – Best Books of the Decade
This year, we get the added bonus of closing out a decade – and to my delight, Dr. Moore honored that by providing a book list. His entire article is a fun read – check it out here (and, if you’ve not read Lila by Marilynne Robinson – read Moore’s review, and then grab yourself a copy – you won’t regret it.): Books of the Decade
NPR’s Book Concierge
How have I not stumbled upon this webpage, until this year?!? A really fun find – you can mix and match filters, and years to explore recommendations from the NPR staff: What Would You Like to Read?
Best Audiobooks of 2019
I resisted listening to Audiobooks for a very long time – but now I’m hooked. I found that listening to books makes exercise less intolerable, haha! Here’s Audible’s Top List for 2019: The Best of 2019
My Audible 2019 Stats
And, if you are curious – here are my 2019 Audible Stats: Shelly Durkee – Audible 2019
The Gospel Coalition 2019 Book Awards
Always a good selection from TGC….two that I particularly enjoyed are “Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy” by Mark Vroegop and “Adorning the Dark” by Andrew Peterson. I highly recommend both of these books, and I’m certain the others listed here are well worth our time as well: TGC 2019 Book Awards
Along those same lines, here are lists from two frequent contributors to the TGC website:
Christianity Today’s 2020 Book Awards
Christianity Today goes at the annual book list a little bit differently – they look toward the future, and provide a list of books that the editors feel will shape evangelical culture and thought during the upcoming year: CT’s 2020 Book Awards
GoodReads
GoodReads is a social media platform for book readers – it’s a forum where we can track the books we read throughout a year, plus see what our friends and community are reading as well. I really enjoy it – if you like to read and you’ve not checked it out – I highly suggest you do so.
Each year, GoodReads invites its community to “vote” on the Best Books of the year. Here are this years’ winners: Best Books of 2019
My favorite part of GoodReads is getting to see a snyposis of my personal year in books. Always fascinating. They also track your reading stats across the lifetime of your involvement at GoodReads – nerdy fun. You can check out my Year in Books here: Shelly 2019 – My Year in Books
2020 Christian Reading Challenge
Tim Challies and the team at Visual Theology team up each year to create a Christian Reading Challenge. I’ve participated for several years in a row now, and always look forward to it. You can participate without purchasing their tracking poster (there is a free download option), but I find the tracking poster a lot of fun – each January 1st, I trade out last year’s poster, for the next year’s poster – clean and full of reading possibilities!
You can read Challies’ article about the 2020 Challenge here: The 2020 Christian Reading Challenge
And if you’d like to check out this year’s poster for puchase, you will find it here: 2020 Reading Challenge – Visual Theology
