4000 Books
Feb 8th 2010Jeremy MyersLife & Theology
I’m sure it’s just me…but I sometimes panic when I realize how few books I will read during my life. There’s so much to read and so little time! Is there a phobia for this…The fear of not being able to read?
Look at it this way: The average reader reads only four books per year. Over the course of a lifetime of 80 years (with reading taking place between the ages 15 and 95), this would be only 320 books!
But let’s say you read more. Let’s say you are an avid reader, and can read one book a week, or about 50 books per year. Over the 80 years of reading, that is still only 4000 books! That’s about how many books I already have in my personal library! So even if I never buy another book, I will not be able to read all the books I already own. That’s depressing…
And yet, every time the Christian Book Distributor Catalogue comes, I find another book or two that I want to read.
So I guess the lesson for me is that I must carefully select the books I read. Every time I pick up a book, I ask myself, is this a book that I want as one of my 4000? It makes me sad to think of some of the pointless books I’ve read. Maybe I need to become a speed reader so I can read a book in eight minutes…
Anyway, below are some books I am glad I have read, and may even read again, thereby taking up not just one, but two spots on my list of 4000 books. These books have shaped my thinking in amazing ways. In the future, if I read some list-worthy books, I will include them in the comments.
-The Bible…I know, I know. Do I really have to say it? But it should be one of the books you read regularly, which over the course of your life, will take up multiple spots on your list…80 spots or more if you read it annually.
-Reign of the Servant Kings, by Joseph Dillow
-Transforming Mission, by David Bosch
-The Grace Awakening, by Chuck Swindoll
-The Grace NT Commentary on James, by Zane Hodges
-Expository Preaching, by John MacArthur
-All books by CS Lewis
-Orthodoxy, by GK Chesterton
-The Gutter, by Craig Gross
-God at War, by Greg Boyd
-Satan and the Problem of Evil, by Greg Boyd
-The Shaping of Things to Come, by Frost and Hirsch
-The Forgotten Ways, by Alan Hirsch
-The Last Word, by NT Wright
-Jesus, and the Victory of God, by NT Wright
-The Other Side of Calvinism, by Laurence Vance
-Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism, by C. Gordon Olson
That’s all I can think of right now off the top of my head. By including these books on this list, I am not saying I agree with everything written in them. All I am saying is that these books stretched my mind, and brought about paradigm shifts in my life and thinking. A few of them caused earthquakes.
Feel free to post your own suggestions below. Oh, and by the way, novels are okay as well. Novels can sometimes shape your life and theology more than a book on theology. One of the novels I am glad I have read is Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. I’m not really into Sci-fi novels, but it was so good, I read it twice.


