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The Deep Dish
Summer Reading with Melissa and Collin (from TGC's Gospelbound Podcast)
01:11:51
In this bonus episode of The Deep Dish, we’re sharing a conversation from TGC's Gospelbound podcast. Melissa Kruger and Collin Hansen discuss their summer reading lists and recommend books to inspire your own!
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- [00:00]
Melissa Krueger
Want to make Bible stories come alive for the children in your life? The Storyteller's Bible is designed just for that. With 35 engaging read aloud stories, beautiful illustrations from artists around the world, and fun questions to spark conversation, this book helps you capture kids attention and point them to God. Each five minute story is perfect for bedtime, Sunday school or family devotions. Help the children in your life connect with the greatest storyteller of all creative Grab the Storyteller's Bible today wherever you get your books or visit bhpublishinggroup.com.
- [00:35]
Colin Hansen
We look back and we can see the effects that television has had on our attention span. I think that's heightened and exponentially increased in terms of the difficulty with social media, as you point out. But looking back on the things that were affected by the television, I think that's actually a reason why we need to emphasize reading today and not take it for granted. Summer is a time for reading. Work slows down a bit. I know at least in my job I'm not traveling as much to speak and to teach. School's out, which I guess could mean a harder time for reading the kids around. But I do spend more time at the lake. In fact, I think I have spent more time reading on a couch next to the lake than any other place in my life. I've read everything from history to fiction to theology on that couch. That helps put my mind in the right place to relax and then also concentrate. Was just doing that this last weekend as well. Well, one of my favorite guests is back on Gospel Bound to talk about summer reading as we close out the 2025 spring season. Melissa Krueger is Vice President for Discipleship Programming at TGC and co host of the hit new podcast the Deep Dish. Melissa, welcome back.
- [02:02]
Melissa Krueger
Hey Colin, I mean this. We might need to prepare the listeners. This might be long.
- [02:07]
Colin Hansen
I just all the books that we enjoy reading, especially in the summer. Yeah, I mean, you and I have talked about reading for a long time. We always make it a part of our year end podcast. But you and I have swapped reading lists for many years now. I know that I'm not good at many things, but thanks to God and my mother and my teachers, I can at least read. It's one thing. One thing I can do at least.
- [02:36]
Melissa Krueger
I actually think that's a skill that is in decline these days. I mean, I even notice my ability to read in the way I used to. I do think it's a little bit diminished because of the social media scroll. I mean, we're like, oh, what are the three block letter, you know, points. Okay, that's the point. And we, we move on. And it's really, I have noticed even in my own brain, a slowness to really read the words of a paragraph. And so let me, let me start with actually that question. We'll turn the tables. Well, I get to ask you some questions here. You know, we both do love to read, but we live in a day of multimedia. So we have podcasts. You know, people are listening to this one right, right now, which, a podcast, you know, you can sit here and listen and get the dishes done. So that's great. Whereas when you're reading, if you're actually holding a physical book, you're, you know, you're kind of stuck somewhere. We can get news without ever reading. We can get it through TV, we can get it through YouTube or TikTok or wherever. So let me ask you this. In our day and age, why does reading even matter? And can you give us an apologetic of sorts for still being a reader in a multimedia age?
- [03:54]
Colin Hansen
That's a good question. My seven year old daughter came to recently and she said that she just doesn't enjoy reading. Now it probably with her was, was like the, the evening that she announced to my wife that she was a vegetarian and that was her way of saying that didn't want to eat that dinner that night. But when she says I just don't enjoy reading, I do get it. Not everybody is going to enjoy reading as much as we do. But I just told her it wasn't an option to not enjoy reading. There are entire worlds that are simply closed to you without reading. I told her that not liking reading is not like just not enjoying certain foods. Maturity is developing your taste for food. It's also developing your taste for what kind of reading you would enjoy. And it's certainly not something reading that you would give up on as you're heading into third grade in her case. Again, I think it's not enough to just say I don't want to do it that night. She has to make a more definitive statement. And you and I have talked about this as well before with media ecology. We look back and we can see the effects that television has had on our attention span. I think that's heightened and exponentially increased in terms of the difficulty with social media, as you point out. But looking back on the things that were affected by the television, I think that's actually a reason why we need to emphasize reading today and not take it for granted.
- [05:36]
Melissa Krueger
I cannot imagine That a child who looks so much like you does not also have a genetic affinity for reading. So I have a feeling with her, it's going to come down to probably her ability to read right now does not match her interest level. This is my gut.
- [05:55]
Colin Hansen
Yeah.
- [05:55]
Melissa Krueger
And when she actually can read what's interesting to her, it's going to catch up. Because I don't know how a child can come from you or Lauren and not want to read. So that doesn't make any sense in my world.
- [06:13]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, it doesn't make sense for me either. But yeah, like I said, there's going to be different levels. And I think as we go through this list, we want to be clear that not everybody's going to have the same taste. Nati Rip is going to have the same ability. And books that you and I read now, our tastes have probably changed. They can change. Just like with music, we can like certain things at a certain time and certain things at another time. At the same time, there are certain kind of books that I always have to push myself. And I guess another thing here, Melissa, you. I mean, it seems like reading and writing are kind of a zero sum game in some ways. You can either be writing or you can be reading. But you are somebody who produces so many books. You write so many books. Why don't you kick us off with just answering the question of how does your reading affect your writing?
- [07:06]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, I mean, for me, I have no trained writing abilities. I mean, you know, I was a math major. I placed out of English for college and I took zero. I didn't take it as elective. None, zero. Nothing. Okay. I read classics post college because I was interested in them. So I decided to start reading a classic every year for a while. And just, I just thought, oh, the writing's so much better with these. And then I was kind of like, oh, this would have been fun to discuss with other people. Like to take a class. So I missed out on that in college. I mean, I really think the one, the one 10 page paper I had to write was on non euclidean geometry. Let me say I still have it and it is non intelligible to me now. I do not know what I was talking about, nor can I reproduce it, but I will say the way words came together, I'm really thankful. And again, we all probably want to honor our moms here. My mom kept great books around the house. So I can remember my first book series was B is for Betsy. I got into this, it had multiple books. I read them all. That was my first like, oh, books are great. But I also remember my mom keeping Shel Silverstein poetry books around. And I loved how words were put together and ideas were put together. And I'm just so thankful that I grew up in a house where books were always around because it's like learning another language. You become fluent in how words should be written when you have read a lot of them. So. And you also learn, oh, sometimes when you turn it on its head, it makes you notice it a little more. So when you use a surprising word in a sentence, people are more apt to read it again and to think about it and you're like, oh, I wouldn't have thought about it that way. And one word concisely said can say more than 20 words. So learning to do that is what good writers do. And I don't think you can grow as a writer without being a reader. What about you? How do you, how do you associate the two?
- [09:23]
Colin Hansen
Well, first is Shel Silverstein the inspiration for your own poetry?
- [09:28]
Melissa Krueger
Probably. It's probably. And Dr. Seuss.
- [09:30]
Colin Hansen
And Dr. Seuss.
- [09:32]
Melissa Krueger
I just, I'm like, why are there no fun Christian kid books to read out there? They're all like, you know, I mean, they were just. Weren't fun to read. Whereas like Sam I am that Sam I am. I do not like that Sam I am. Yeah, I mean like as a parent it resonated with me. So yeah, probably so, yeah.
- [09:51]
Colin Hansen
My three year old son grabbed off the shelf. I had all the, it was just me at home with the kids and I had each one of the kids go grab. We have a standing book that each one of us will, will read. And one, the one with my daughter is. It's called Papa's Daughter. It's actually a Swedish book about immigrants naturally. And then the one, then Carter and I have one, a classic that's my, my 10 year old son. And then William, he'll just go. My three year old, he'll just go grab one. And the last one he grabbed was Dr. Seuss. It was a long book, I gotta say. It took a long time to get through. Maybe that was part of his strategy. But it is a, was a tongue twister. But yeah, I mean Shel Silverstein was a, a classic. My school, we would always use those because those were easy to memorize for in, you know like a speaking contest and that, that kind of stuff.
- [10:49]
Melissa Krueger
I still have sick memorized. I cannot go to school today. So little Peggy and McKay, I have the measles and the mumps of gash rash and purple bumps, my mouth sweat, my throat is dry. I mean, like, it gets into you and you cannot let it go. I could perform the whole thing for you, Colin.
- [11:03]
Colin Hansen
No, it's good.
- [11:04]
Melissa Krueger
They're so good, though. I mean, so people who can put words together. It's just a beautiful thing. And I think we're going to lose something when we rely too heavily. I mean, we're not even going to get into this on ChatGPT and all these things. There's a skill to be learned that I fear we may be losing. But the first skill I fear we're losing is reading. So that's going to affect the writing?
- [11:27]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's a whole separate conversation. I think, like when I. When I think about the kind of poetry that you write, you can punch a lot of them into ChatGPT and get some of those options and it's better than the rest of us can do. Not you. You have some real skill in that area. But the thing is, there's no story, there's no struggle, there's no process. You're not learning how to think. And reading and writing are a process of learning how to think. They're not just a destination for communication, they're part of the journey themselves. And so for you get to that journey of being able to write something, you have to travel the journey of being able to read. And you're imitating what you're reading there, you're being stretched there. There's really no better way to improve as a writer than reading. Yeah, I think that with, with AI, you can easily summarize. You can get the points, essentially you can get CliffsNotes of anything that you want and so you can answer the exam questions, but it's missing the entire point of any of it. It's not just to be able to have some information in your head. It's been able to shape who you are and shape how you think, how you communicate, how you interact and how you see the world. And yeah, those are things that are worth, worth fighting for. But we have to be deliberate about doing that. So I'm wondering, Melissa, is just how do you read? I love, by the way, what you said about if you have kids in the home having books around, by the way, that isn't apologetic for physical copies of books. You can have entire libraries of digital books. There you go. Which can be wonderful. In my office here at home, the entire wall is covered up here and over here with shelves and I've got another office as well on there. Throughout the House. In addition, we do that very deliberately as a family. And I have got a lot of digital books as well. We're going to talk about different forms there, but just how do you. We've got. A. Right behind. Here is a library in our home every night for family devotions. That's where we read together into a story, Bible and catechism and things like that. But, Melissa, where do you just. Where and how do you read? What does it look like for you?
- [13:51]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, that's been an evolving process. My comfortable place is with a real physical book. I like to mark up my books. I like to remember where a paragraph was visually on a page, whether it was on the right or the left top.
- [14:06]
Colin Hansen
Another case for physical books and not digital. Because it doesn't work on digital.
- [14:10]
Melissa Krueger
It doesn't work on digital. Although I have seen that now. And I like to underline. I have seen that there's a new Kindle option that, you know, has a stylist and you can underline and. Because I have started reading fiction on Kindle and some of that is because of travel, it's really nice. You can pile five books onto your Kindle. You know, I'll have something to read at night when I'm in a hotel room. I can go to sleep to it. That's always great.
- [14:37]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, I have different genres on iPad, for sure. It's different. Again, I think what we get through here is different genres in different ways of reading.
- [14:45]
Melissa Krueger
That's right. That's right. And so that's what I'll do. But I always would rather have a physical book. That's just my comfortable place. I cannot read thoughtful books that I want to really process in any other way. So if it's a book that I want to take in, if I'm chewing on something, Christian books, commentaries, I need them in a physical form. That's still how I like to read.
- [15:10]
Colin Hansen
Interesting commentaries in a physical form because I prefer commentaries in a digital form because they're easier to bounce around and search and pop in and out of that way.
- [15:20]
Melissa Krueger
And if you're going to clip a quote, it's. It would be easier to do that. You're right. There are. There are some positives on that, but I just. Yeah, I like to. I like to sit and underline and process. And now, you know, your notes app can just take a. It can pull it in and get all the words in there and it makes it a lot easier to save things. But I, I also, I mean, enjoyable reading. I do at night before bed. You Know, that's. That's relaxing to me. Other type of reading I need to do during the day, like, so if I'm studying a text for, you know, a talk or something, if I'm looking at commentaries or something, that type of work I need to do at a desk, I. Yeah, I need to be really in it. What about you? Like, how do you like to do it?
- [16:03]
Colin Hansen
Why is it so different for so many different people? And that's why we wanted to go back and forth on this. As long as I'm getting regular rest, I read in bed before going to bed, I think, and that usually is a good way of putting me to sleep. But also, I do try to have something that I look forward to reading. It's not usually the time to read something where I know that it's my medicine that I have to take. It's something that I really want to look forward to. And then I can either keep going, knowing, oh, I'm not going to get as much sleep, or I can just. Or I can just be satisfied and look forward to the next night as well. It's interesting. I read way better in the morning and evening, not in the afternoon. Afternoon is a real struggle. I don't know what this is like. I also read lying down. A lot of people read sitting, but I definitely prefer to read lying down. So in the afternoons, it just. I seem to fall asleep when I'm doing that. But. But it does. It does matter a lot in the audiobooks or the different. Different kind of books there as well. So just. But yeah, if I'm like, if it's something that I really want is hard and I'm pushing myself through, usually needs to be a morning where that time is set aside. In the evening, I can work quickly through stuff that I really enjoy, and then I can fill the rest of the day with audiobooks.
- [17:21]
Melissa Krueger
So I'm fascinated you read. It sounds like you read a lot of audiobooks. I have struggled to read audiobooks. My brain just wanders. Like, it's. It's different than, like, listening to a podcast. Like, I could listen to this very easily while on a walk or doing, you know, doing the dishes or folding laundry. But it's really tough for me to listen to a thoughtful book. Like, I can listen again to a fiction book that's well told. It has to be, like I mentioned here, I think, remarkably Bright Creatures. It's a fiction book. It was really well told that I went on many runs listening to that, and I would look forward to the run because that's when I would let myself listen. But it sounds like you listen to him a lot.
- [18:06]
Colin Hansen
Well, but only certain genres, so. I mean, like, right now is no Easy Day by Mark Owen, which is just a military book about the mission to capture Osama bin Laden. It's a popular book from many years ago.
- [18:19]
Melissa Krueger
So did you watch the documentary?
- [18:22]
Colin Hansen
I think. I mean, which one are you thinking about there?
- [18:24]
Melissa Krueger
Oh, the new one.
- [18:26]
Colin Hansen
I have not watched it yet, but it's really good.
- [18:28]
Melissa Krueger
It's really good.
- [18:29]
Colin Hansen
Okay. I mean, Zero Dark Thirty. Really interesting movie there as well. So, I mean, I was looking for something, actually, that my son and I could listen to in the car together, and he tends to like military books, so that was where this one was coming from.
- [18:44]
Melissa Krueger
But Elise is not into reading right now. You do know that, right?
- [18:48]
Colin Hansen
Like, Elise is not in the car when we're listening.
- [18:52]
Melissa Krueger
Well, maybe I know the problem, and this is what he was figuring out.
- [18:55]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, I was just driving him up to camp. So we kind of have a tradition of listening and watching movies together and things like that on the. On the way to camp. So. Yeah, it really just depends on the genre. No, I. I don't do many Christian books on audiobook. I pretty much am only in certain kinds of fiction, usually contemporary fiction, not historical fiction, meaning classics. I don't usually do classics. However, my wife does loves classics on audiobook, so that's a different. And she listens to those before bed, so that's. That's one way. And that allows her to concentrate more and things like that. But, yeah, if I. If it's something that I have to remember the details of, it's not usually audiobooks. However, I do think that in general, I have pretty good oral recall, so if I hear something, I do tend to remember it pretty well. So that's probably a reason that I like audiobooks and podcasts, for that matter. But one of the things. I mean also, I just. I love the ease of being able to use audiobooks on my phone from the library, from the Libby app, and from the Hoopla app. I mean, it's pretty. It's pretty amazing. I mean, if you're gonna. If you're gonna look for a. A popular new book like. Like Original Sin, the new political book about President Biden, I'm way back in line. I don't know when I'm going to be able to read.
- [20:23]
Melissa Krueger
That's kind of nice. Like, I feel like it always comes. I just got a book yesterday from the library that I had through Kindle that I Put on hold. I put it on months ago and.
- [20:32]
Colin Hansen
I was like, oh, nice little Christmas surprise. When I kept. I can't tell you how many different times I had to borrow the Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides. Great book. Captain Cook's Final Journey. And Hampton side is one of the best historical narrative nonfiction writers alive and of all time. And I just, I couldn't get through it fast enough. That's one hard thing about long books. So I just could not. And then if you have a long book and it's in high demand, you got your two weeks and then you got to go to the back of the line again. So.
- [21:08]
Melissa Krueger
So Colin gift cards. He can buy the long books. That's what this is really about.
- [21:16]
Colin Hansen
That's true. I just am too cheap, too cheap to do Audible is what this is really all about. Here I have 10 books on hold.
- [21:25]
Melissa Krueger
I'll buy you a book, Colin. I'll sponsor you the Fate of the.
- [21:30]
Colin Hansen
Day by Rick Atkinson about the American Revolution. I am. It's a 32 hour book. I am. There are eight people waiting. And then I got a six week hold on it and I already got in. I've had it once. So I've circled all the way back on that one. So yeah, that's just one of. I'm not going to have to write about that. I'm not going to have to report on that. No one's going to ask. But I'm going to learn a lot. I'm going to be engaged, I'm going to enjoy it. And it's. I think one thing that people get confused about in reading is they're often trained in it as something that they have to do something that they don't enjoy doing. And it's hard to get that taste out of your mouth. And so that's why whether it's with my daughter or anyone else, just read what you want to read and we'll try to develop the taste from. From there. I'd rather have you reading something. Now there are some things I wouldn't recommend people to read.
- [22:30]
Melissa Krueger
That's right. That's right.
- [22:31]
Colin Hansen
Especially as they get older and younger too age appropriate kinds of things in there. But generally I would just want. I'd rather have them reading something than.
- [22:40]
Melissa Krueger
That's right. And there are so many great books for elementary school kids. It does get hard in middle school. Wow. If you've ever been in the library at a public library, you turn the corner to like middle school, high school literature and it's like all black and dark.
- [22:57]
Colin Hansen
Yeah.
- [22:58]
Melissa Krueger
Like, went real dark for a while, and so it's. I think that's a little bit harder. But I actually loved. I read a lot of the books my kids read, like the Benedict Society and even all the Percy Jackson books and which are the. You know, and they. They have some things in them. I mean, all these books can still have some things in them, but they're really. I found them fun to read and enjoyable to. You know, if you're a reader, you like a good story, it doesn't matter that it's written for a fifth grader or it's written for you. And so there are so many, many good ones. So, okay, those are different types to read. I am sure everybody would like us to stop talking about all of this and talk about actual recommendations.
- [23:43]
Colin Hansen
True. That's true.
- [23:44]
Melissa Krueger
So tell me, actually, tell me your favorite genre and tell me one book of that genre that you're like, oh, you should read this.
- [23:54]
Colin Hansen
Oh, man.
- [23:54]
Melissa Krueger
Oh, that's gonna be too hard. You're gonna need some time. You can come back to that.
- [23:58]
Colin Hansen
No, I gotta. I gotta think. I gotta think about it in there. So. I mean, it's clearly history for me. So it's just the drama, the personalities, the contingency. How could this have gone? What. What happened in here? The lessons that we derive for life and for. For leadership. I could. No, it's a pretty easy one because I've been very shaped as a Christian with biographies. And when I was young, in college, I asked my pastor, what are some great biographies to read? And so the year that I graduated college was the year that George Marsden's biography of Jonathan Edwards came out. And I have only written a couple books that don't have Jonathan Edwards as a major emphasis in them. So that was very formative for me. I could read a Martin Luther biography every year. There's enough of them. His life was just so interesting. Just never gets old. But Heiko Obermann and Roland Bainton's biographies of Luther are simply amazing. And of course, I've dabbled in variations on this genre myself. Just writing about a character and the influences. Speaking of Tim Keller there. So, yeah, I mean, history, biography, they usually go together. But biography is not the only form of history that I enjoy. But it's definitely near the top of my list and one of the easiest to recommend. It's a very like you. You're born into a world, you grow up in a world, you accomplish something in a world, and then how are you remembered? There's a very clear narrative structure. So it's easy to kind of grasp.
- [25:44]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, it appeals, I think, to your journalistic background, too. So I love reading biographies of pricey. That's my favorite genre, now that you say that. It'd be between that and historical fiction. So I love historical fiction, but it's, I love biography. I don't know how to write it, though. Isn't it funny? Like, I, I love reading them, I just love it. But it's not my writing genre that I am very comfortable with. And so you do a good job of understanding how a story should be told and, and all of that. And, and the best biographies, I think, make you feel like you're reading fiction. They somehow tell the story in such a way that you're like, oh, I want to know more, you know, and you, you, you keep reading. And there are so many good biographies. I, I, yeah, I mean, I love the Christian ones, and we'll talk about that in a minute. I have so many ones that really affected my faith and encouraged me. But I also love, I'm fascinated by the Russian czars. So I read a bunch about the Romanovs and the, you know, Nicholas II and Alexandria, I think.
- [26:56]
Colin Hansen
How did you get into the Russian czars? Where'd that come from?
- [26:59]
Melissa Krueger
Well, you know, I, all the electives. When I wasn't taking English in college, all of my electives were Russian history. I just loved it. And I spent a summer in Ukraine in 95, 94, 95. So, but before I even went, I just was fascinated maybe by the tragedy of the Russians. That's why I was like, their story is just interesting. So I took a few classes.
- [27:23]
Colin Hansen
Very dramatic. Yeah, very dramatic.
- [27:27]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah. And I was just always fascinated by the people and, and their literature shows their story in, in a lot of ways. So I, I, I'm with you on biographies and, and historical fiction. What's a genre you don't like?
- [27:41]
Colin Hansen
Oh, good question. Yeah, I don't like fantasy and that I do. No, no, I, I, yeah, I, I did read and enjoy that, and my wife read those to our kids all the way through, including Elise, through the pandemic. So that was a pretty memorable experience there. Probably those are ones that you can and should go back to. I mean, Carter should go back and read those at some point, sooner than later in there. So some people will say Russian literature, they don't like because the names are so confusing, the ideas are so confusing. It's just very different realist fiction from what we expect. We associate fiction in the United States with Tom Clancy. You know, Stephen King, things like that. That's just not the Russians.
- [28:34]
Melissa Krueger
John Grisham.
- [28:35]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, John Grisham. That kind of stuff. Good stuff. I mean, it's very entertaining, but that's just not what you're getting. If you're saying, hey, you like fiction? Well, you should try Dostoevsky. Well, that doesn't really, really work. But I think it's, it's just easy in Russian literature to get lost in that world. But I am going through Lewis's Space trilogy right now, and that is hard.
- [28:55]
Melissa Krueger
It is.
- [28:56]
Colin Hansen
I know I need to.
- [28:58]
Melissa Krueger
I'm on the last book and I still haven't finished it.
- [29:00]
Colin Hansen
Yeah. So it just. I know that I need to read this. I know that it's good for me to read this. I know it's good to stretch me to do this. It's not the genre that I would turn to. We have some, some colleagues who love to just geek out talking about 10,000 page fiction fantasy series that they just really love. And I'm not against that. It's just not. It's not, it's not me. So what about for you? What genre do you not like?
- [29:34]
Melissa Krueger
It's funny that you said that. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy either. Mike loves it and he was the one who finally got me through the Lord of the Rings. We actually read it when we lived in Scotland. We read it out loud to each other. This is, you know, clearly before the world of the Internet now you would never take the time to do that. You know, we just read. I know, we should. That's one thing we should talk about at some point is reading out loud. I, it's, it's a pastime that families don't do anymore.
- [30:02]
Colin Hansen
You know, that's why, that's why we do it. Robinson Crusoe is the book that I go through with my oldest son.
- [30:08]
Melissa Krueger
That's fine.
- [30:09]
Colin Hansen
So we just sit in a chair and read it.
- [30:11]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, it's a great way to spend time together as a family. And I think, you know, we don't even watch movies together as family now. Right. Everyone's got their own device and so I think it's just something to share a story together. That's a really, a really good thing. But I would say one genre I've never been into is mystery. My dad loved mystery novels and I've just, I was just never into them for some reason. The who done it was not.
- [30:36]
Colin Hansen
You didn't enjoy the Clue board game either.
- [30:38]
Melissa Krueger
Oh, I love the board game. That was fun.
- [30:42]
Colin Hansen
But you know, it didn't connect back to your reading. Interesting.
- [30:48]
Melissa Krueger
Maybe it's just most murder mysteries aren't that well written, so it. I don't know. Maybe.
- [30:53]
Colin Hansen
Maybe it's not like an Agatha Christie or anything like that. I haven't read much of it either.
- [31:00]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, I tried. I tried, but they just never. Yeah, I feel like they always kind of end with a wow at the. They. They seem to all take a similar storyline and.
- [31:10]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, same kind of thing. It's like watching an episode of the West Wing. How's he gonna get out of this mess this time? 55 minutes in, he magically just miraculously fixed everything with a couple. Couple words.
- [31:23]
Melissa Krueger
That's right.
- [31:23]
Colin Hansen
Sorry, West Wing fans, but that's definitely how that series goes.
- [31:26]
Melissa Krueger
That's right.
- [31:28]
Colin Hansen
So I'm going to get hate mail on that one.
- [31:31]
Melissa Krueger
It's like, oh, I didn't know about that kind of poison, so I missed it, you know, or whatever. I didn't know that, you know. Yeah, it feels like they kind of take a similar. Similar route. What's something you're planning to read this summer?
- [31:44]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, so I am hoping to get through the Space trilogy this summer. That would be good. A friend of mine. It's good to have a friend whose recommendations you trust. And that's part of how Melissa, of course, you and I have related over the years, and that's the spirit in which we're offering this podcast. We hope that some other people will find us to be reliable guides there. But a friend of mine, an elder at my church, has recommended some of my favorite books of all time in the past, and he was like, you've got to read Frederick Buechner's Godric. You have to. And I had not read it before, so it's on my list there as well. I'm hoping to get back into Rick Atkinson's the Fate of the Day. As I mentioned on the American Revolution, I've just read so much history and so much military history, I've finally gotten to the point where I know what I'm looking for. And there are some people who skim too high when if you know a lot about the period, it's really boring to you. There are some people who are just so into the details on everything. Also very boring. Some people can navigate between both, and Rick Atkinson is one of them. His trilogy on World War II in Europe is, I think, the best out there. So this is his second in the American American Revolution. So those are three that I have in mind. But what Are you looking forward to.
- [33:04]
Melissa Krueger
I mean, easy beach reads, Colin. So well, one thing I want to. Well, I put this down and then magically it came up from the library. Kate Morton. Kate Morton is an Australian author that I found at some point. I have really enjoyed her. So if you like fiction, if you're looking for something that's good to read but really satisfying to read on the beach, I like her stuff and I actually. So homecoming. I finished two days ago, so I got it. It came. It came in my inbox that it was ready from the library earlier than I thought and I just finished it and I could. I can recommend it. Hers always have a little bit of mystery to them without being a mystery, so to speak. It's normally things that are going on in family dynamics that unfold. And I think she's a really good storyteller. So I, I recommend her books and they, you know, I. I find them overall very clean, you know, I mean, so that's nice to. To. To have my memory, if my memory is correct, I will admit. Now, my memory's not always perfect, but I. I find them good beach reads with. With a little more than just like some typical beach read or whatever. I've been reading Francis Schaefer's the Lord's Work in the Lord's Way. In fact, I think I have it here. Yeah, I do. I have it. These. Okay. A friend.
- [34:26]
Colin Hansen
Long book, right? It's pretty short book.
- [34:28]
Melissa Krueger
A friend recommended it to me. She sent it to me in a picture. I couldn't see how little it was. Now you can see how little it is, right? It's a little book.
- [34:37]
Colin Hansen
The talk, basically, a long time.
- [34:38]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah. It's so good. It's really. So I've just been kind of keeping it at my desk to read and it's been very encouraging in some ways. I think even in our work in ministry, sometimes you can think you need to apply everything from business to. To doing ministry work. And it's just a really good reminder of the Lord causes us to work a little bit differently than he does. You know, we're not. It's not just by metrics sometimes a lot differently. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and so, oh, it can be really tempting, especially in our Internet world, to look at data as what's. What's telling us the truth rather than, hey, how prayerful are we being? How trusting in the Lord are we being in our work? Anyway, I found it really encouraging, so. And, and then because I saw how short this was from Cross Bay, our good Friends at Crossway. This is a little sponsorship that we did not plan. I ordered, like, three more of these that were this size. Like the explosive power of a new affection. Yeah. From Chalmer Holiness. J.C. ryle. Yeah. Anyway, so then I was like, I like little books are delightful.
- [35:53]
Colin Hansen
They're so much better when you're counting up your end of year score.
- [35:56]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, good idea. As if. I'm like, yeah, I don't have it together enough to remember what I read in a year. Golly.
- [36:05]
Colin Hansen
That's why you do Goodreads. So you do Goodreads. I would not remember exactly what I read if I didn't use that app, so.
- [36:14]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, that's smart.
- [36:15]
Colin Hansen
Well, I do feel like I have to ask you this question. You mentioned the short books, and there is something significant about the sense of accomplishment when reading a book. And it can be hard to get through a book when it's really long. There are not many chapters. The margins are short. The. The layout is really long. That's the way it is with a Churchill book that I'm reading right now. But I'm so engaged in the topic, and I need to learn it because of a writing project that I'm doing in the future. So I'm willing to go through it. But there's often you just need a sense of accomplishment. So I need to ask Melissa, when do you know when you should give up and stop reading a book? And what's an example of a book that you have given up on?
- [37:07]
Melissa Krueger
You know, there's a lot of shame attached for me to this answer, because it's a book that you recommended that I'm giving. I've given up on. I ordered the whole trilogy. Is the Wolf hall trilogy. You're like, it's amazing. It's so good. I was like, oh, great.
- [37:24]
Colin Hansen
I. I found it very dense and very literary too.
- [37:27]
Melissa Krueger
Very dense. My. My son came in. He's getting ready to go. He'll be away all summer, so he wants some books. And he's like, what should I read? And I was like, take this one for you. He ended up with. He ended up with the brothers. Is it the brothers? How do you say?
- [37:46]
Colin Hansen
Karamatsov?
- [37:47]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, okay. See, yeah, I'm not. I can't speak Russian. He ended up taking that. I was like, that'll keep you busy all summer, John. You know, just take this one.
- [37:58]
Colin Hansen
Do you not have any interest in that Tudor England period? That makes it even worse.
- [38:06]
Melissa Krueger
I'm gonna try again. I'm gonna try again. Maybe it was the season I'm gonna try again.
- [38:11]
Colin Hansen
I really, I don't think. I think the first one is a hurdle to John. I mean, it's a classic, it's amazing. But the second one's way shorter and it's about Anne Boleyn. So a lot of people are just naturally drawn to Anne Boleyn's story and tragedy, of course. And then there's a lot of controversy there. By that point you only have the third one. The third one is then long also. But if you've done the first two, you got to see it through to completion in there. So I do think also with Wolf hall, there is a lot of palace intrigue, there's a whole lot of Catholic church dynamics that are not that interesting. But I keep going back and I think, Melissa, this could be. It's just part of what we're trying to commend here, especially with fiction, is how do you relate to the characters? And I think one thing that's interesting about another infamous book that we've talked about, Kristin Laveran's Daughter, another trilogy in there, a book that I recommended to you and you didn't know how long it was.
- [39:14]
Melissa Krueger
Book warning, it's at least 900 pages. So I'm just telling you before you go order it, at least nine.
- [39:20]
Colin Hansen
It's a trilogy and it's over a thousand pages. But yes, you were not prepared for that. But I think what Sigourney Noon said, what the author should be commended for is that is writing a book whose character. I don't know how I'm supposed to relate to a young medieval girl in Scandinavia, but somehow I do. With Wolf Hall, I could relate a lot to the difficult circumstances that the protagonist, who is also an antagonist, meaning there's some question about is he a good guy, is he a bad guy? That's kind of the tension that holds the entire series together. I just thought that was really fascinating. But if you're not drawn in by the. By the character of Thomas Cromwell, it's just not going to be that interesting to you.
- [40:08]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, yeah.
- [40:11]
Colin Hansen
But I've got one that I gave up on too.
- [40:14]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah? What'd you give up on?
- [40:16]
Colin Hansen
Donna Tartt's the Goldfinch. I mean, it was a best selling book, won all these awards years ago. Fiction. Finally the book got to Las Vegas and it just. To me it was not interesting anymore. And I think more importantly for me at that point, it just wasn't edifying. I've shared this with other people. I just could not. Not that all fiction needs to be Edifying in the same way. I just couldn't. I could not get anything out of this. And I was many hundreds of pages in and had many hundreds of pages left and just thought, I'm not going to keep going. I don't usually give up on books. I probably should give up on more books.
- [40:56]
Melissa Krueger
I saw in the notes I gave up in Las Vegas and I was like, colin, were you in Las Vegas reading this book?
- [41:04]
Colin Hansen
Maybe that has something to do with it, maybe sitting at the slots all night.
- [41:09]
Melissa Krueger
What are you talking about?
- [41:11]
Colin Hansen
I've never even been to Las Vegas.
- [41:13]
Melissa Krueger
To Las Vegas. Like, okay, okay, just try to save you some drama.
- [41:18]
Colin Hansen
The character is hanging out in some suburban nightmare in Las Vegas, basically. And I'm like, I'm. I've had enough. I'm not. I'm interested in this. I'm. I'm just trying to maximize the amount of hate mail I get for this episode. So I've gone after the West Wing, which I actually do enjoy. Then I've gone after the Goldfinch. We'll see. We'll see. What else is there? You just. You're just picking fights with me.
- [41:45]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah.
- [41:45]
Colin Hansen
Not with the listeners there.
- [41:48]
Melissa Krueger
Well, then, okay. Since we've said those, or especially maybe that one particularly wasn't helpful or edifying, so you gave it up. What about biographies? That. Christian biographies. Have you ever read something? How do they spur us on? Are there any that you'd recommend that you'd be like, you should read this book.
- [42:07]
Colin Hansen
I've already mentioned several of them, and some of them that I mentioned are especially helpful if you're heading into ministry. I don't think that everyone should be reading George Marsden on Jonathan Edwards, but it's a very good book. If you're going to read any of the biographies I've mentioned, Roland Bainton's Here I Stand on Martin Luther is definitely a more popular level book, so that should be one that you definitely pick up there. Heiko Obermann's Man Between God and the Devil is a little bit. It's a little denser, a little more academic. But the Platonic ideal, I say, with some pun intended, the Platonic ideal of biography, Christian biography, is Peter Brown on Augustine. I'm just not really sure how you could improve upon that book. And I think, Melissa, a great book is in part closing the gap between what you didn't know you needed or wanted to know and really expanding you there. That book probably did more than almost any other book to open up a whole world of the Roman Empire and its Collapse and the continued rise of Christianity, the development of Western Christianity, the different fights that he was waging theologically and ecclesially at the time. And of course those things have become important in my work in apologetics because Augustine is more or less once again the Platonic ideal of what we're holding out for our apologetic method methodology at the Keller center for Cultural Apologetics. But that book, I mean, it's probably more of a 301 level book, so it could be a little bit difficult for people to jump into, but. And, and we could talk about some that would be a little bit kind of at the easier level. I mean, I. There's a lot of different options there, but want to just hold out. Peter Brown on Augustine as, as one of the best. So I also love learning from the mistakes of leaders have gone before us. That's one reason Luther is so interested, because he makes a lot of mistakes. Yeah, and you can learn from that.
- [44:18]
Melissa Krueger
But yeah, all of mine are on that much less academic level, I'll give you that. Mine, I think are really, I mean, they're just, you know, they're just telling the story. The first one I probably read was A Chance to Die by about Amy Carmichael. Elizabeth Elliott wrote it and honestly it was hugely formational for me. See it, see in it A chance to die is something that often runs through my head when things are hard, when following Christ is hard. Those words see it, see in it A chance to die. And that's the call the Christian. It comes back. Hudson Taylor's spiritual secret. So good. I can just remember watching the way his faith was played out in really trying circumstances. You know, he and his first wife move and she died soon after I think their arrival in China. And just, you know, watching these, these saints and they, they persevered and they endured. Another one is Darlene Rose. Evidence Not Seen is excellent. She was put into a Japanese camp in World War II during the fighting. You know, they, they came into wherever she was doing missions. I can't remember what, what, where she was, but she was put in a camp and suffered greatly. And obviously, you know, the story is like the hiding place. There are so many books like this that we learn from Christian saints often who have suffered greatly and persevered. And I am thankful so much for their witness because it continues to spur on the church today.
- [46:04]
Colin Hansen
But isn't that, I mean, I love the way Melissa, you brought that full circle because the reason we're so inspired by their stories is connected to what they've suffered and how they endured and you went back. And that is a. That's pretty basic to Christian reality of a fallen world, but also the way that the Lord seems to work. So I think that's one thing that reading I mentioned at the very beginning. Reading opens up worlds to you. It opens up a world outside of yourself that helps you to reflect on yourself, to see. Okay, suffering is not something that can be avoided. It's not a good thing. But it is often something that the Lord will use and has used in virtually every case of any person that you would look back on as being especially spiritually mature.
- [47:00]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, and the medium of reading is the way that gets to our little Christian subculture. Because here's the thing. We can probably find a documentary on Abraham Lincoln. We can probably find a documentary, you know, a visual, multimedia thing. There's no multimedia thing on Amy Carmichael. Would someone please create it? Yes, please do. I'd love to see. See, you know, women missionaries in history that I could learn from. But there's nothing out there in the multimedia age that's going to teach us about that and give us those kind of heroes. And so reading allows that, you know, finding books on these subjects will. Will allow for that.
- [47:40]
Colin Hansen
Well, if. If folks have not found a good book yet, do not be discouraged. We've got a ways to go. We still have a number of other books to recommend.
- [47:52]
Melissa Krueger
Start going faster.
- [47:53]
Colin Hansen
No, it's all good. No, it's all good. People expect us to be at least 90 minutes on these podcasts. So we're right on. We're right on pace, everybody. Let's look a little bit here. Here at fiction. We've dabbled in it a couple different times in here. I've mentioned that it's harder to recommend because there's a lot of taste involved. Also, sometimes with historical fiction, you really. Or with fiction in general, you get some really difficult themes there. So, Melissa, where would you. Where would you take us with some fiction recommendations?
- [48:24]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, as a woman who is getting ready to send her last child off into. Into. She's graduating. My youngest is graduating, so I'll be in the empty nest. Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry is. I mean, I just wept when I finished it. I'm going to read it again this summer. It's actually on my list to read it again. And I. I'm not a big reader again person, but that's.
- [48:45]
Colin Hansen
That's a good point to talk about.
- [48:47]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, that one was so good. I want to read it again because I, at the end, I just. He somehow understood motherhood. Like, I. I felt this deep, you know, I was like, oh, this is this feeling I have in my soul. And, you know, it's strange to be honest, for, you know, Wendell Berry to be able to. To do that. And it was done so well. Also, love Theo of Golden that I got over Christmas. Read it in probably a week. That'd be another great beach read.
- [49:21]
Colin Hansen
It's not very quick read.
- [49:23]
Melissa Krueger
It's a quick read, but it's enjoyable. And I left it. Here's what I would say. I left it saying, I want. I want to do some things better in my life. What a great thing that fiction can do. You know, I mean, it made me want to live differently and do some things better. I consider that a high. A high calling of fiction. What about you?
- [49:44]
Colin Hansen
Of course, you can go back and listen to Alan Levi's interview with me on this season of Gospel Bound. And I think people can see in that interview that Alan himself is somebody that we learn a lot from and as a model. And some of that comes out of his Theo character there as well. I'm going to give just two examples here on fiction. One I've recommended a number of different times, and if you're in that Tolstoyan mood or you just really are interested in the Second World War, simply cannot get better than Vasily Grossman's Life and Fate. Easily one of the best books of the 20th century, probably the best book. I'll come back later and talk about the best American book on World War II, but this is probably the best book in general about World War II, which, of course, when you just consider its epic scope, that's a big accomplishment. So primarily by the battle of Stalingrad in Russia. But if you're not interested in those themes, which I understand not everybody will be, I'm going to pass a recommendation on primarily for my wife. She reads and rereads Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities. So if you're the kind of person who wants to read classic literature, you don't know where to start. You're a little intimidated by some of the. Some of the recommendations. Tale of Two Cities is going to be a lot of bang for your buck. It's going to be a lot of really edifying good content for it's not going to be quite as hard to be able to read, but you're really going to, I think, emerge probably. Melissa. Pretty similar to what you get with Theo of Golden. You walk away just thinking, I want to be a better person.
- [51:27]
Melissa Krueger
That's right.
- [51:28]
Colin Hansen
Godlier person.
- [51:30]
Melissa Krueger
That was Another one I put in my son's hands last night was a tale, too. Said he's like, oh, you have to read this if you like, because he liked Oliver Twist. I'm a big David Copperfield fan. That's my favorite of Dickens. But I was like, read A Tale of Two Cities. You have to read this.
- [51:46]
Colin Hansen
You know, I know another genre, Melissa, you're really into is. You've mentioned this earlier. Historical. Well, I guess historical fiction. You said earlier, but let's talk about historical nonfiction.
- [51:57]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah.
- [51:57]
Colin Hansen
In here. Give us a few. These are always popping up on bestseller lists. These are always. There's always classics. What comes to mind for you?
- [52:05]
Melissa Krueger
I think Erik Larson is one of those who makes fiction read. Makes nonfiction read. Like fiction.
- [52:10]
Colin Hansen
Yeah. He's like, hampton Sides. Two of the three best, I think. Working. Working today. Yeah.
- [52:16]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah. The Devil in the White City. I'm just reading. I'm like, this really happened. I'm sitting there like, how's he telling this so engagingly?
- [52:24]
Colin Hansen
That was like. That was like Peter Brown Augustine for me, in terms of. Whoa. Opened up whole worlds.
- [52:30]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah.
- [52:30]
Colin Hansen
I will say that content is pretty disturbing in that book. Just this. What he's writing about is just.
- [52:35]
Melissa Krueger
Yes.
- [52:36]
Colin Hansen
Pretty difficult.
- [52:37]
Melissa Krueger
Yes. Yes, that's right. That's. I mean, it's basically about. Serial killer in the city of Chicago.
- [52:41]
Colin Hansen
Exactly.
- [52:42]
Melissa Krueger
During. Yeah. I mean, so it's. It's definitely not. Most of his are. Are hard topics. I. I really like the Garden of Beast, too, which was fascinating. I. I mean, it was about the American Embassy.
- [52:56]
Colin Hansen
Right.
- [52:57]
Melissa Krueger
I can't remember.
- [52:58]
Colin Hansen
Nazi Germany.
- [52:59]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah. And during Nazi Germany, I was like, thinking, oh, wow, to be part of that. And, you know, so he. He writes it really well. You know, when it comes to biographies, one thing that's been new was the Watchmaker's Daughter by Larry Loftus.
- [53:14]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, I just read that one, too. It's good.
- [53:15]
Melissa Krueger
Oh, yeah? Yeah. I thought it was interesting because I've only read the Hiding Place from Corey's perspective. So it's really interesting to read a biographer writing. And there were parts of her story I didn't know. Like, about the dream that her sister had had in the camp, about this house that they would have after the war. And it was pretty. It was pretty interesting. This. I read this past year, the Woman who Smashed Codes. This was a fascinating book, especially for a math lover. And. But it was this couple, and I had no idea about this. So we've heard Enigma. The Enigma machine in Nazi Germany. There was a movie that came out about the breaking of that in the uk.
- [53:58]
Colin Hansen
Right.
- [53:58]
Melissa Krueger
But I did not know because this has been classified. Yeah. What's been classified was Americans broke the code before. Through breaking the code. These, this couple were. They were brilliant, Absolutely brilliant. And they figured out based on their actual understanding of the English language in combination with their understanding of number theory and all these different things, they broke these codes and they. But they were working for two parts of the government and they could not talk about what they were doing with each other. Fascinating story. I just thought it was one of those hidden stories that has just come to light from being declassified. It was great. Okay. Those are some of my favorites.
- [54:39]
Colin Hansen
Yeah. So I feel like I could give too many different options here because again, this is probably my, my sweet spot. But if you're looking for a really long, engrossing read and you're interested in the topic, but you don't know kind of where to start. Andrew Roberts epic biography. Churchill Walking with Destiny is amazing if you want to keep on that theme. World War II, but an audiobook. This is so interesting. Melissa. Malcolm Gladwell has been a real innovator in terms of integrating audiobooks and kind of thinking audiobook first. His Bomber Mafia is best as an audio sort of a podcast in an audiobook. It's designed as an audiobook. There also is a print book, but you really should listen to that if you. That's a great summer. Summer listen there. I'll give. Give one more on that theme I mentioned earlier. Best literature to come out of the Second World War. Eugene Sledge's memoir With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa is some of the best writing on the military experience of all time. Sledge is an Alabamian. He lives from the Mobile area and then settled in Montevallo outside of Birmingham, where he taught until his his death as a college professor. But that's one of those that's still read today as we're recording this right after Memorial Day. And so that is very much in. In the mind. But I want to bring it back to one that is both incredibly insightful in this genre, also incredibly edifying. Andrew Wilson, our friend Remaking the world on 1776 is just a true achievement. I've said this many times before. There are books that I am glad to read. There are books that I'm jealous that I didn't write. That is one of them at the top of my list of oh, I wish I could have written. I wish I could have written. That book that was truly, truly amazing came out and 2023. But I have a feeling, Melissa, you want to go in a similar direction. Talking about general non fiction.
- [56:45]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah.
- [56:45]
Colin Hansen
Not just historical nonfiction, but general nonfiction. Especially with Malcolm Gladwell.
- [56:49]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, I was just going to piggyback on Malcolm Gladwell. I just think his books, they've been so helpful. I love reading people who've done the work and have done the research and are putting forth a compelling argument based on something they've read. So you have outliers, you have Tipping Point, you have Bomber Mafia. I really love David and Goliath. That was really helpful for me. I had a child who was what.
- [57:11]
Colin Hansen
I did an interview with him about.
- [57:12]
Melissa Krueger
Oh, you did? Okay. One thing that really struck me, I happened to be reading it as one of my children was getting tested for some dyslexic tendencies. And it was really helpful how he highlighted sometimes the weaknesses. A lot of CEOs had dyslexia. That's one of his findings. Sometimes the very things that someone's weak in. I mean, David was weak in most everything in comparison to Goliath. And he's looking at this from a sociological perspective, not really a biblical perspective, but I mean, but he was like, you know, but he had one skill and he. He used it. And obviously we know the bigger story behind that is that God used it, but it was really encouraging. I find his books just easy to read, really helpful. I found them really helpful in a lot of ways in parents, in parenting, and how I think through different. Different things with my kids.
- [58:06]
Colin Hansen
That's been true of me as well.
- [58:08]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah.
- [58:08]
Colin Hansen
And one that I want to recommend as a. As a final beach read would be his most recent Revenge of the Tipping Point, once again as an audiobook especially, is helpful. But I think there are a lot of things. And some of the things that he's talked about, like the 10,000 hour rule and whatnot, have been somewhat debunked. But I just appreciate, like you said earlier, the journalistic approach of investigating, learning, trying to piece things together. There just isn't anybody like that. And just, if nothing else, just helps introduce you to interesting ideas and makes you reflect on how. With intentionality about your own life and how those things work together. So Revenge of the Tipping Point, going back to his first major work, is really interesting along those lines as well. So I'll add just a couple more here on the. On the general list. I've recommended some of these so many different times, so people who have listened to me for a long time, but I never want to leave them out of a list like this would definitely encourage people to go back to Jonathan Haidt's the Righteous Mind. I wonder, Melissa I mean, a lot of people know him now, he's super famous because of his Anxious Generation book, which I mean, he might be now, Melissa, the most prominent social scientist in the United States, but his Righteous Mind is much more paradigm shaping than the Anxious Generation. The Anxious Generation is having a huge effect. And like you mentioned, like we mentioned with Gladwell, very much will change the way that you act. Righteous Mind will change not only how you act, but how you think and how you perceive relationships. And I've said other times that I can't really know how my I can't even really fathom how my life would be different in the last 12 years or so since reading that book. And similarly, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend something here from Tim Keller and two of the books, you can't go wrong when you're reading Tim. But his little book, once again going back, trying to do different lengths here for different people in different situations. His little book that City to City did, how to Reach the West Again is I just love it as just a short packs a huge punch. That book is the kind of thing you could read with a small group, read with a group of church leaders in any different ministry. But then if you want to push yourself a little bit more and think about what he was thinking about kind of at the forefront of his mind for the end of his life, making sense of God would be the best example there. But let's give I mean we've again, Melissa, we're going all up and down the range here because we want people to be able to pick and choose from this list and know and I also we haven't talked here, Melissa, about another thing of how we read. But I read multiple books at once and I do this because I'm not always in the same mood for something. Sometimes I want to be that big book. Sometimes I want that little book in there. So I'm reading a a short book from Andrew Wilson right now while I'm also reading this long book on Winston Churchill. But let's say somebody wants to put in that rotation a classic or a book for growth. They want to push themselves, become a better reader. Where would you send them? Melissa?
- [61:22]
Melissa Krueger
Yeah, I mean my biggest recommendation on a push book is Anna Karenina. Anna Karenina, but I think it's so well done. But I will warn you, I wish they could just give you one name for each person, just One, not three. Yeah, they all have three to three official names. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it just feels confusing, so if you can get. It is work, I will say that. But it's brilliant to me what he does with that kind of telling of two stories alongside of each other and how they intertwine. And I just thought it was so well done. So it's a classic. I would definitely recommend. I think I would just recommend even the habit of getting into maybe every other year reading one of the classics. They're classics for a reason, and I think it's just a good. It's a good mind discipline, I think. But what about you?
- [62:22]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, well, staying within Russian literature, you already mentioned Brothers Karamazov. Just got to warn people, that is a. I don't. It's a hard book to understand. You don't have any context, so don't beat yourself up. Do you understand what's going on? Try to find some help out there. But there are a few books out there, they're classics for a reason and because people. They have shaped entire paradigms of perspective on the world, They've reshaped entire civilizations. Brothers Karamasov is one of those books. There are not many. I went back to when I was talking about Peter Brown earlier. That's what Augustine did, that was what the Lord used him to do. And with everything that our world continues to deal with morally, and ethically, psychologically, Brothers Karamasoff remains like the. The gold standard in all of those. All those different realms. Not everybody loves reading Jonathan Edwards, but his religious affections is the place that I would recommend there, once again, it's actually pretty similar to Dostoevsky in that it's a religious psychology. It is helping you to understand how we think and how we behave, how those things are related. That's simply a book that made me a better thinker, but hopefully in some ways a better person as well, which we're going for here. Education and edification going together hand in hand. But let's try to get even more specific here, Melissa, with a book for spiritual growth that you'd recommend, that really influenced you. And a lot of times this can hit us at any stage of life, but it can especially be something we recommend for young adults. What would come to mind for you there?
- [64:08]
Melissa Krueger
Okay, I'm going to offer up another. This is not a long book. It is. Let me. Oh, you know what this is? It doesn't even have page numbers. That's all that's true. I don't know who's printing this but it can be printed for free. It's the Art of Divine Contentment by Thomas Watson. It, I, I think it beats the rare jewel of Christian contentment. So it's called the Art of Divine Contentment. I, ah, there are so many good quotes in it. He says things so well. It's not long yet. It is excellent. So that is one that I would just say, hey, read three pages a day. Just work your way.
- [64:53]
Colin Hansen
Amazon says about 133 pages.
- [64:56]
Melissa Krueger
Okay, okay. So depending on which publisher out there you're buying it from. But I just think it's so well done. I also love, if you want to, if you love organized writing, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices is just brilliantly done. He just tears apart how to fight. You know, I just love the Puritans. They really believe that the world, the flesh and the devil were out to get you and you maybe needed to fight. And I think we have been lulled into an easy believism, which isn't just, you know, just, ah, it doesn't really matter. No, you're called to fight, you're a soldier, you're in the war and man, it's good, it's, it's really good. You can tell they weren't reading their phones. They were looking at nature and they, they look, yeah, they're, they're taking nature and they're using illustrations that stand the test of time because they're rooted in what's around us. And so I just think they're excellent. Another one that's really, really well done. Knowing God, my husband, when we were dating, encouraged me to read it. Twenty years later, I finally did. I'm, I'm slow like that sometimes.
- [66:04]
Colin Hansen
It wasn't a requirement for marriage, apparently.
- [66:06]
Melissa Krueger
No, it wasn't. You know, I told you this our first, our first Christmas we were dating. For my gift, my Christmas gift, he gave me three books. And I was like, ah, this is the one, this is the one.
- [66:17]
Colin Hansen
So I know everyone would react, but the beginning of a beautiful life together.
- [66:21]
Melissa Krueger
Exactly, exactly. So what about you? What, what, what books would you recommend for spiritual growth?
- [66:28]
Colin Hansen
I have long recommended Vaughn Roberts, God's Big Picture. And I love to recommend a book that can hit everybody at any level of reading. I'm confident that unless you are a true specialist in biblical theology, you can still benefit from God's big picture. But I can recommend it to anybody. So, like basic biblical literacy, piecing things together similar to that. Maybe not everybody would benefit the same way from the letters of John Newton, but Whoa. That Puritan strain that continues from Jonathan Edwards through Jonathan Edwards and then through also in Great Britain to John Newton is simply remarkable. And it has that same combination you've been talking about, Melissa, between the head and the heart, connecting those two together. Our affections for God as well as our doctrines of God. That's just part of what we treasure at the Gospel Coalition today. It's part of our theological heritage. And it shines so clearly in the letters of John Newton. And then I would. I'm going to put Flavel on here for the mystery of Providence as well, to kind of keep on our Puritan theme here. I think it's only appropriate, Melissa, that we would jump from the Puritans to our last category, which would be beach reads.
- [67:45]
Melissa Krueger
We're almost done. And we'll put all of this in the show notes, right? Will we list all of these? Okay, we'll list all of these. They're all listening to the show notes, so don't get angry at us first.
- [67:53]
Colin Hansen
Well, and it's also, it's easy to. Easy to kind of clip these things and kind of go back and pop in and out. And we're hopeful that this might help you this summer 2025, when recording it, but hopefully it can help you in future summers, which is a beautiful thing about books as opposed to social media and things like that that have this sense of they're here today and they're gone tomorrow, but give people. Let's give people what they want here at the end. Some beach reads.
- [68:21]
Melissa Krueger
Easy beach reads, I have to say. Check out Allison Pataki. She, if you like historical fiction, she does it really well. And it's the type of thing I'm like, oh, I've never thought about this. She has a book called the Trader's Wife. It's actually about Benedict Arnold's wife. And it made me do a deep dive into, oh, is this all true? And it was really, really interesting. So I mention Kate Morton earlier. She has a bunch of great books. I loved Kristin Hannah's the. The Women. It was about the women in Vietnam who were there as nurses. It's really, really good. And obviously we talked about already. Theo Golden's a great, a great beach read. What about you? What would you recommend?
- [69:05]
Colin Hansen
Yeah, let me just close on a. On a couple of these. I've mentioned Gladwell in here. My friend Alex Duke has a great little book in that same Von Roberts genre, From Eden to Egypt, A Guided Tour of Genesis. Love it as a beach read. And I love it also. That you could do it. High schoolers, college, young adult all the way through. You're going to be encouraged, you're going to be, you're going to learn some things, going to be entertained. Alex is a very lively and funny writer, so all those things I can commend in that book. And then finally, David Brooks, how to Know a Person. I did an interview with David on Gospel Bound last year about this book, and it's one of them that I've gotten the most, most positive feedback on and more people giving me feedback of how that book has helped them. I think it's very similar to what you're talking about. Malcolm Gladwell Brooks has that mentality. If I'm going to go out there and I'm going to learn, I'm going to take what I've learned. I'm going to help you. I'm going to try to apply it to my life and help you to apply it to your life as well. And Brooks, thankfully, is also informed in a lot of ways by a Christian anthropology as he's connecting it to the social sciences, but still not a very difficult book to be able to read. So how to Know a Person by David Brooks so well, there you are. If you can't find some good summer reads out of this list, I'm afraid Melissa and I cannot help you. You're going to have to find a different podcast other than Gospel Bound or the Deep Dish to be able to benefit from. There are many good ones out there we could recommend, but this is the best that we can do. So summer is a wonderful time to be able to read and spend time with the people that you love as well. Hopefully with a little bit of a change of pace for some of us at least, especially who are working in academic or just school environments, things like that. So, Melissa, thanks for, thanks for joining. I should just ask, as people are heading off, what should we look forward to with the Deep Dish coming up? Anything we should know about?
- [71:14]
Melissa Krueger
Well, let me just say to the mom out there who maybe dreams of reading a book on the beach, but that is not quite yet an option because she's just trying to keep the children alive. Podcast listening is great on the beach. So listen to the Deep Dish. We have good, we have exciting episodes I think, coming up. I love, I love those conversations. I learn a lot from all the different women that we've had on and if I could actually remember the upcoming conversations, that would be a great thing right now. But I can't remember what they are, but they're coming and we promise they will, Lord willing, be deep and fun to listen to.
- [71:53]
Colin Hansen
Well, so thanks for joining me. Lord willing, you'll be back at the end of the year to do our typical top 10 theology stories. I've been thinking about this. I wonder if I need to do like top 25 or something like that for the first quarter century. A lot of people are doing that these days, so that might be something to think about.
- [72:10]
Melissa Krueger
Three hour episode.
- [72:11]
Colin Hansen
I was gonna say that would be a five hour episode. So maybe I should rethink that plan there. But thanks for joining me as always and keep sending some good book recommendations my way. Okay?
- [72:23]
Melissa Krueger
Will do.
- [72:24]
Colin Hansen
Thanks, Melissa.
- [72:25]
Melissa Krueger
Hey friends, it's Melissa Krueger here and I'm so excited that you're listening to the Deep Dish. Want to stay connected and even more resources for growing in your faith. We've got a new newsletter for you and we're so excited about it. When you subscribe, you'll get discussion questions for the Deep Dish episodes, memory verses, updates on what's happening with women's initiatives, as well as some of our favorite staff picks. And these are really fun. So head over to tgc.org women and sign up today. We can't wait to connect with you again. That's TGC.org women.