2023 Books & Music
As 2023 comes to a close, my feeds are full of year-end lists. I always enjoy reading these lists and sharing my own.
I didn't read much in 2022, so I set a goal to read 10 books this year to get back in gear. In the end, I read 11, so I'm happy to have reached that goal! I'm also still reading Norman Wirzba's collection of essays by Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace. I've been working through it slowly for about 18 months and should finish in early 2024. Here are the books I read in 2023:
- Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools - Tyler Staton
- God Just Is: Approaches to silent worship - Curt Gardner
- An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood - Jimmy Carter
- The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
- Where the Light Fell: A Memoir - Philip Yancey
- Hannah Coulter - Wendell Berry
- The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry - John Mark Comer
- Letters to the Church - Francis Chan
- The Practice of the Presence of God - Brother Lawrence
- Normal to Nomad - Barron Link
- A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season - ed. Fields, Willis
These are in addition to my daily Bible reading. This year, I switched up my reading system and used the M'Cheyne plan (widely available online and in most Bible apps/software). It is a bit lighter than the plan from Professor Horner that I've used for several years and is designed to take the reader through the Old Testament once and the New Testament and Psalms twice over a year. I followed this plan once before in 2018-2019 and have really enjoyed it for a general year-long reading system. I'm planning to use it again in 2024.
My top songs playlist from Spotify is a pretty good representation of my listening in 2023. Here are a few standout artists from the past year, in no particular order:
- Marc Scibilia
- Aoife O'Donovan
- Matt Nathanson
- Foy Vance
- Ben Rector
- Mat Kearney
- Donovan Woods
- Wild Rivers
- Augustana
- Green River Ordinance
- David Nail
- Steve Moakler
- Patrick Droney
- Peter Bradley Adams
- Stephen Kellogg
- Goldmund
Some artists released new music in 2023, some were fresh discoveries, and others are long-time favorites. All of them worked together to build my soundtrack for the past year!
Finally, thanks to all of you for reading this blog in 2023! I'm grateful for the opportunity to write here and for everyone who took a moment to engage with my words. See you in 2024!
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