*culture is not optional

definitely. jack kerouac, at least through his early stuff—On the Road, Dharma Bums—, always challenges my energy and excitement for life. also, several political books have had a profound impact on my faith and my politics (i’m a politics kind of guy), such as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by dee brown and Against Empire by michael parenti. i’m sure there are more, but i can’t think of them off the top of my head.

Just wondering…most of the answers here are “Christian book store books,” for lack of a better term. That’s fine and good, but I’m wondering about the capacity of books outside these boundaries to affect our lives as Christians. Ron Hansen? Flannery O’Connor? Walker Percy? I guess that some of these sorts of books “affect” me more, because they speak more completely to my whole self—flaws and all. Even with C.S. Lewis, I find ’Til We Have Faces a more satisfying book than some of his more directly apologetic fiction. Any thoughts?

How about Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale, King Lear, Hamlet, Lewis, Tolkein, and maybe Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. Maybe Holes by Louis Sacher?

To be honest, I have a hard time sorting out books I really like from books that affected me deeply.

Wait, are we talking about books that have affected our lives as Christians?

Okay, that’s still my answer.

I always come back to the book Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I’ve probably read that more times than any other novel. I think it’s the only book that’s ever made me cry. Which is weird because it’s not a sad book and I don’t cry easily.

well, let’s start in junior high…

The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt: (by Patricia McLachlan) explores the difference between fact and truth, helped me pay attention to and love the details of life, to see the interconnectedness of all things, to perceive the existence of an inner life.

Amazing Grace: (by Jonathan Kozol) exposed a world of injustice and the reality of the cycle of poverty, how we should care for the poor if only for the sake of the children.

Major Barbara: (play by George Bernard Shaw) opened me up the plight of the spiritually starved. There’s a whole untouched mission field in the comfortable middle/upper-middle class.

“Faith”: (essay by Frederich Buechner in The Longing for Home) helped me understand the nature of paradox and to see the necessity of doubt, its inevitability since the Fall.

Soul Survivor: How my Faith Survived the Church : (by Philip Yancey) incidentally, a book in which he does (in more depth) what we are doing here. He outlines those who have taught and sustained him along the way, telling their stories and his own simultaneously. Inspiring to me as a Christian and as a writer. also incidentally, he questions the nature of Christian bookstore literature that Grant is talking about, saying, “Writing books that appear only in Christian bookstores to be read only by church people requires very little cunning.” but, being a respected Christian author himself, you can find his book in your local Christian bookstore.

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider, The Long Loneliness and Loaves and Fishes by Dorothy Day, and Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol have all had a profound impact on my faith. they have all, in one way or another, challenged me to realize that what we do for the least of these, we are doing for Christ.

yeah, i like non-fiction.

oops one other: Thomas Khun’s Of Scientific Revolution

Fiction:Flannery O’connor has had a major influence on me. I reread her short stories constantly. Wise Blood is my favorite novel of hers. Fydor Doestchevsky- Crime and punishment and Brothers karamosov.

Non Fiction: RJ Rushdooney – Institues of biblical law. Probably the single most influencial book I’ve ever read. This and David Chilton’s Prosperous Christians in an age of guilt manipulators transformed the way I live my life and view christianity.

I must admit that I have trouble reading some of our respected Christian fiction writers, and non-fiction writers. I know there are several good ones I haven’t read yet, but many of them just don’t appeal to me.

Maybe it’s because the Christian publishing houses seem to push books of support and “encouragement” only. Looking at what’s on the Family Bookstore shelves recently, Christian writing appears to be reduced to “spiritual” self-help guides and manuals on how to recognize God’s presence everywhere you go, in the trees and the flowers (I was surprised to get this from Annie Dillard), in your fellow human beings, even in the occasional struggles etc. That’s fine and good for Believers who are still on the milk bottle (I don’t mean to say only that Christian bookstores need to be more academic), but these Christian bookstores offer very little meat, offer very few books that engage the spirits of the age in battle, that approach problems of and with the Christian community itself (books like The Challenge of Our Age, Hendrik Hart; Rainbows for the Fallen World, Calvin Seerveld; Anything by Flannery O’Connor)

Books that have been influential in my Christian growth include these and also that book about U2’s Zoo TV tour; Calvin’s Institutes; Of Spirit, by Jacques Derrida; and more recently the fiction of Maurice Blanchot.

Ann Lamott has been one of my favorite writers since I read Travelling Mercies a couple of years ago. her insight and honesty as a christian and as a person is very reassuring, and she is really funny, and she swears. She is an incredibly talented writer.

It is kind of odd for a Christian to love and Existentialist so much, but I have been enthralled with Albert Camus for the last few years. His stories are always bleak and sad, but I think his characters, and he himself, are always in pursuit of some greater truth that just seems out of their reach. Camus, in the last few years of his life, came so close to accepting Christianity, but just couldn’t make that leap of faith. His books, especially The Plague and The Stranger, reflect this search for truth in a world that he felt was basically absurd and without order. So, his books aren’t necessarily inspiring, but I think we can still learn from his searching.

That is enough for now.