For my day job I teach biblical studies at an Anglican seminary. But at night (and in the mornings with my coffee, and in the twenty-minute increments in between class sessions…), when I’m procrastinating grading papers, I’m as likely to be found reading a novel or a biography as I am the latest book of New Testament criticism. Here are five such welcome distractions that I’ve happily devoured this year.
P. G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters. Although I’m ashamed to admit it, I waited until this year to discover England’s great comic writer. A friend of mine said when I asked him where to start with Wodehouse: “Why not start with the best? The Code of the Woosters.” I haven’t read them all, but I can’t imagine they could be any wittier than this one.
Olga Lossky, Toward the Endless Day: The Life of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel. This biography of one of the twentieth century’s great Orthodox Christians, the theologian and ecumenical organizer Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, inspired and instructed me. From leading a Bible study in a small French home to addressing audiences convened by the World Council of Churches, Behr-Sigel showed the beauty and promise of Christian togetherness in her private and public lives.
Chigozie Obioma, The Fishermen: A Novel. The mounting tension of this novel, like the tautness of one of its four Nigerian protagonists’ fishing lines, finally resolves itself in a devastating conclusion. For thinking about the ways our families school us in the arts of jealousy, fear, and sacrificial love, I don’t know of a better recent work of fiction.
C. J. Sansom, Dissolution. I am always looking for new murder mystery novelists to enjoy. I am also always interested in reading more about Tudor England and the birth of the Anglican Church. Happily, I can do both of those things with C. J. Sansom’s Matthew Shardlake novels. A hunchback detective in the court of Henry VIII, Shardlake is enthralling.
Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings. If you liked what Paul Elie did in The Life You Save May Be Your Own in weaving together the biographies of Flannery O’Connor, Dorothy Day, Walker Percy, and Thomas Merton, then you will warm to this similar interweaving of the stories of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams, as I did.
Wesley Hill is assistant professor of biblical studies at Trinity School for Ministry and author of Spiritual Friendship and other books, He is one of the editors of the Spiritual Friendship weblog. He can be followed at @wesleyhill.
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