The 2018 Christian Reading Challenge

Do you love to read? Do you want to learn to love to read? Do you enjoy reading books that cross the whole spectrum of topics and genres? Then I’ve got something that may be right up your alley—The 2018 Christian Reading Challenge. Whether you are a light reader or completely obsessed, this 2018 Christian Reading Challenge is designed to help you read more and to broaden the scope of your reading. How It Works The 2018 Christian Reading Challenge is …

The Rise of Digital Technologies and the Decline of Reading

It seems we’ve come to a time in history when there’s no problem we won’t blame on technology. Digital technology is ruining our attention spans and social skills, it’s destroying our memories and displacing our hobbies, it’s demolishing the way we see the world and downgrading the way we interact with one another. We are slaves to our screens, to our ever-present glowing rectangles. They threaten everything that’s precious to us. Or that’s the narrative we hear again and again. …

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Writing Great Books for Kids (and Reading Great Books To Kids)

Parents love to buy their children good books. Christian parents love to buy their children good Christian books. Thankfully, we are well-served with excellent titles geared to children. Many of them come from the pen of Marty Machowski. I recently asked him about writing great books for kids (and reading great books to kids). I hear often from people who dream of writing a book for kids. Yet I know from speaking to publishers that it’s one of the toughest …

Reading Out of Love for Others

Reading is a solitary pursuit. You grab your book, you kick back on the couch, and the hours roll by. But even though reading is a solitary pursuit, it is not necessarily a selfish one. Reading can actually be an important way to love others. Here are five ways to love others in your reading. Read to Grow You can love others by reading books meant to address flaws in your character or conduct. The husband who reads Dave Harvey’s …

I’m Complementarian and I Read Books By Women

I wonder if you have ever noticed that Christian books authored by women tend to be written for women, while Christian books authored by men tend to be written for both men and women. Books authored by women tend to have feminine covers, while books authored by men tend to have neutral, not masculine, covers. In general, men write with a voice that reaches both genders, while women write with a voice that reaches just one. This perplexes me. It …

My Top Books of 2016

We are drawing near the end of another year—a year in which I did a lot of reading. Today I want to give some of my top picks of the 100 or so books I read in 2016. First, though, let me offer a few caveats: First, these are almost certainly not the best books of 2016 in any objective sense; rather, they are my favorites, the ones that have remained in my mind and impacted my life since I …

10 Books Every Christian Teenager Should Read

A reader recently asked the question: Do you have a suggested list of books for teenagers, something like a “Ten best books every Christian teenager should read?” It surprised me that I have never compiled such a list, especially since I’ve got two teenagers of my own. I decided I’d better remedy this oversight straight away. Here, then, is a list of ten great books every Christian teen ought to read—or at least consider reading. Please note that these are not …

2016 Reading Challenge Update: September & October

This year I have been participating in the 2016 Reading Challenge, a fun way to increase and diversify your reading through another year. I took the challenge and set this year’s goal at 104 books. However, because so much of my reading has to go toward reviewing books that are recently published and of interest to Christians (both for reviews published here and in WORLD magazine), I decided to pick from all over the list rather than working through it …

2016 Reading Challenge Update: July & August

This year I have been participating in the 2016 Reading Challenge, a fun way to increase and diversify your reading through another year. I took the challenge and set this year’s goal at 104 books. However, because so much of my reading has to go toward reviewing books that are recently published and of interest to Christians (both for reviews published here and in WORLD magazine), I decided to pick from all over the list rather than working through it …

One Very Good Reason to Read Your Bible

There are some proverbs that practically beg for personal application. Proverbs 3:27 is one of them: “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.” That little maxim resonates in a hundred other passages including, of course, the Golden Rule and the second Great Commandment: “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” and “love your neighbor as yourself.” Taken together, they reinforce the …