Catholic writer George Weigel lists for the Wall Street Journal what he considers to be the five best books for understanding Christianity. They are:
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church Edited by F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone (Oxford University, 1997).
2. Jesus Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan (Yale University, 1985).
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Dorothy L. Sayers (Penguin Classics, 1949, 1955, 1957).
4. The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright (InterVarsity, 1999).
5. The Sources of Christian Ethics by Servais Pinckaers, O.P. (Catholic University of America, 1995).
Weigel comments on each of his selections at the link.
Speaking of books, Touchstone offers a pretty good satire on Border's, oops, ... I mean Belial's. It opens with this:
The other day I poked my nose into a store run by one of the nation's two great booksellers: Belial's. As I rummaged through the aisles, I found myself growing testy and irritated, and that made me wonder -- why, when I used to love drowning an hour or two in a bookstore, do I hate going there now? What is it about Belial's (and his rival Beelzebub's) that makes the flesh creep?
Not all bookstore's fit Touchstone's description, of course. We like a cozy little shop in York Co. called Hearts and Minds. Try them.
By the way, I'll be posting my own twenty favorite reads for 2006 on Viewpoint early next week.
RLC