My Top Books of 2022

After feeling the sting of disappointment with reading 60 books last year, I came into 2022 with the hopeful but possible goal of reading 75. Then, at some point, I stopped caring. Between two kids and everything else, reading physical books became harder to do. While I normally listen to audiobooks while making breakfast and on the commute to/from work, somewhere in the middle of the year I began to appreciate silence. Some days I was so tired I opted for music rather than more input. As doable as 75 books was, toward the end of the year I found myself clawing to get to a whopping…60 books. But rather than feeling disappointed, I’m ambivalent. I almost didn’t share my list because while I’m sure I read some great stuff this year, I can’t remember most of it. Who knows if I’ll have a list next year. If I do, who knows if I’ll even share it.

I will say this though: looking over this past year’s reading list, it feels more diverse than it’s been in a while. Some of that is stage of life (marriage and parenting), some of that is the nature of work (management, leadership, theology), but some of it has to do with a return reading practices I’ve held over the years, and reading books people recommended to me. The result is a book on mushrooms, infidelity, and parenting rockstars.

As per usual, I have no idea if these are actually the best books I read this year, but these were the ones that stirred my thinking, kept me up at night, or left me wanting to recommend to people in my life. As always, in no particular order.

1. The Cult of We — Eliot Brown and Maureen Farell

Ambition. Power. Money beyond all possible fathomability. As someone in a relatively high level of leadership, this book scared the bejeebers out of me. Not because I saw something of myself in Adam Neumann but of the possibility of it. Are people like Adam Neumann or Elizabeth Holmes simply deluded or are they liars? If the former, what are the implications of that on leadership and innovation? Does changing the world necessitate the belief that you can? This belief has brought forth some of the greatest innovators of our time as well as some of its biggest imposters. What if the difference between the two is whether someone was ultimately successful? In a time where visionary leadership has been almost reduced to a cautionary tale, this book sent me spiraling.

2. You Are What You Love — James K.A. Smith

What’s interesting to me is that this book did not go the way I expected/wanted it to go. I hoped that Smith would get into spiritual formation practices or rule of life patterns that would flesh out his thoughts around desire being a matter of habit, but he never did it. Rather, he takes a liturgical route in church tradition and advocates for our current spirituality to be undergirded by ancient liturgy. Still, I appreciated his exegesis of culture, found his diverse array of references personally inspiring, and his explanation of church tradition so foreign to my experiences.

3. Church of Cowards — Matt Walsh

I pretty much live under a rock and don’t really know who anybody is before I read their books (hence how Ali Wong ended up on my reading a previous year). Even now I don’t know much about Matt Walsh. Apparently, he can be a bit inflammatory. But as the saying goes, even a broken clock is right twice a day. And boy does he get a lot of stuff right. This book is a sobering indictment of American Christianity. It reminded me of when I read David Platt’s Radical as a college student. Even if you know not every church or Christian in America fits into the picture he paints, you also know he’s not making things up. It’s a clarion call to wake up and take Jesus seriously, which is always a gut check for me.

4. Biblical Preaching — Haddon Robinson

One of my personal goals this year was to grow as a communicator. I’ve sat in preaching classes before but so much of what I’ve learned has been intuitive or by watching other people do it. If I had to somehow offer a class on teaching and communication, I would probably use this book as a textbook (as have most people since its release in 1980). Robinson covers everything from outlines to exegeting culture to figure out what are biblical messages that would resonate with your community. Key to good preaching is being a student of the word and the world, which is a challenging word for me. Because this book came out forty years ago, it might be dated. But I still think there’s a lot of gold here.

5. The Power of Regret — Daniel Pink

Some books win on concept alone. This is one of those books. Pink gets under the hood on the different kinds of regrets we carry as human beings and argues that, despite our best attempts to pretend as if we don’t have any regrets, if we let them, regrets actually have the potential to make us better people. Even as he shares his findings, he addresses the tension most of us feel that despite our regrets, maybe everything happened the way it should’ve. Absolutely fascinating.

Honorable Mentions:

6. Spiritual Leadership — J. Oswald Sanders

There’s a reason this book is a classic. It is a bit dated (it came out in 1967), but it’s still relevant. You get the sense that leadership is serious business and Sanders is not playing any games. I found myself wanting to recommend this book for any young/new leader trying to get their sea legs.

7. The Cross and the Lynching Tree — James Cone

A friend of mine has a practice of picking a theologian and reading their works over the course of the year. I decided to give it a shot. My theologian of choice? James Cone. While I don’t agree with everything Cone says or teaches, I think his insight and perspective offer something invaluable to landscape of American Christianity. Not to mention, the connection he makes to the cross and the lynching tree is so good and obvious, I can’t believe I never saw it before.

8. Gentle and Lowly — Dane Ortlund

The challenge of a book like this is that because it relies so much on an external source (namely the Puritans), there’s always a piece of you that wonders why you don’t just read that source instead. Then you hear how many volumes and how many pages that would entail. Suddenly you’re grateful someone else has done the work. Not only was this recommended to me (shout out to Natalia Watkins) but I also found myself wanting to recommend this to my friends struggling with the love and forgiveness of God.

9. Kindred — Octavia Butler

Confession: as much as I love Harry Potter, I’ve never been a huge fantasy/science fiction person. But this book was different. There’s a reason why Butler is legendary. As much as we look at Ta-Nehesi Coates’ Water Dancer or Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, you really can’t get any of those without this book right here. Fantasy in a way that’s not entirely disjointing but also not so grounded in reality that you lose the enchantment.

The Full List (asterisk indicates audiobook):

1. Think Again — Adam Grant*

2. New Power — Henry Timms and Jeremy Heimans

3. Get Good With Money — Tiffany Aliche*

4. Devil’s Knot — Mara Leveritt*

5. The Ninefold Path of Jesus — Mark Scandrette

6. The Cult of We — Eliot Brown and Maureen Farell*

7. A Church Called Tov — Scott McKnight*

8. The Comprehensive ENFP Survival Guide* — Heidi Priebe

9. Three Pianos — Andrew McMahon

February

10. The Nickel Boys — Colson Whitehead*

11. Somebody’s Daughter — Ashley Ford*

12. Biased — Jennifer Eberhardt*

13. Kindred — Octavia Butler*

14. The Cross and the Lynching Tree — James Cone*

15. Children of Blood and Bone — Tomi Adeyemi*

March

16. The Making of Biblical Womanhood — Beth Allison Barr*

17. The Making of a Manager — Julie Zhuo*

18. The 6 Seasons of Calling — Brian Sanders

19. Cultish — Amanda Montell*

20. This is Where You Belong — Melody Warnick*

April

21. Gilead — Marilynne Robinson*

22. Washington: A Life — Ron Chernow*

23. No Ordinary Time — Doris Kearns Goodwin*

May

24. The Obesity Code — Jason Fung*

25. Fast. Feast. Repeat. — Gin Stephens*

26. Animal Farm — George Orwell*

27. Major Labels — Kelefa Sanneh*

28. It’s Never Too Late to Sleep Train — Craig Canapari*

29. Essentialism — Greg McKeown*

June

30. Surrounded by Idiots — Thomas Erikson*

31. Bittersweet — Susan Cain*

32. The Power of Regret — Daniel Pink*

33. The Gift of Disillusionment — Chris Horst and Peter Greer*

34. Raising Your Spirited Child — Mary Sheedy Kurcinka*

July

35. What is the Bible? — Rob Bell*

36. The Last Green Valley — Mark Sullivan*

37. Gentle and Lowly — Dane Ortlund*

38. Preaching — Timothy Keller*

39. No Cure for Being Human — Kate Bowler*

August

40. Pachinko — Min Jin Lee*

41. Biblical Preaching — Haddon Robinson*

42. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous — Ocean Vuong*

43. Love & Respect — Emerson Eggerichs*

44. Give and Take — Adam Grant*

September

45. From Cradle to Stage — Virginia Grohl*

46. The Lean Start Up — Eric Ries*

47. iGen — Jean Twenge*

48. Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist — David Levithan and Rachel Cohn*

49. Spiritual Leadership — J. Oswald Sanders *

October

50. The Leadership Gap — Lolly Daskal*

51. God’s Smuggler — Andrew van der Bijl, Elizabeth Sherrill, and John Sherrill*

52. The Entangled Life — Merlin Sheldrake*

53. Maybe Someday — Colleen Hoover*

November

54. Jesus and John Wayne — Kristin Kobes Du Mez*

55. You Are What You Love — James K.A. Smith*

56. The State of Affairs — Esther Perel*

57. The Motive — Patrick Lencioni*

December

58. Church of Cowards — Matt Walsh*

59. Maybe Now — Colleen Hoover*

60. The Deeply Formed Life — Rich Villodas*

61. Will — Will Smith*

62. Maybe Not — Colleen Hoover*