Book Recommendations for Harvest

The manager of the Harvest Bookstore here at Mountaintop has been encouraging me to give her a list of book recommendations – with the idea of creating a section of pastor recommended books.  

It took me a while but here’s what I finally sent her (assuming that the Bible is a given):

Basic Christian Leadership – John Stott

Simply Christian – N T Wright

Life and Holiness – Thomas Merton

Prodigal God - Tim Keller

Bonhoeffer – Eric Metaxas

Mourning Becomes Cassandra - Christina Dudley

There are lots of other titles I might have added, including the two that I am reading this week:  Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson and On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness – Andrew Peterson. And any of these could have also made the list although maybe some aren’t really great for our bookstore:

Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy (Conroy’s My Losing Season really should be on the list too)

Velvet Elvis – Rob Bell

Banner in the Sky – James Ullman (my favorite book in 4th grade)

A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson (really any Bryson book could be on the list)

The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand

The Lord of the Rings (the three volumes together) - J.R. Tolkien

The Seven Lamps of Architecture – John Ruskin

The Agony and the Ecstasy – Irving Stone

Learning from Las Vegas – Robert Venturi (if I had to leave one off to get to 15 I guess it would be this one)

Blue Like Jazz – Don Miller

The Chronicles of Narnia (all seven volumes) C. S. Lewis

Same Kind of Different as Me – Ron Hall and Denver Moore (the last book that made me cry)

Run with the Horses – Eugene Peterson

Communicating for a Change – Andy Stanley

The Year of Living Biblically – A J Jacobs (I also loved The Know It All and My Life As An Experiment)

The New Complete Walker – Colin Fletcher

Washington – Ron Chernow

Confessions of  a Pastor – Craig Groschel

What books are you reading this week – and what books would you recommend?