I find myself in a season of renewing old habits. Accordingly, as in years past, here are the books that I read cover-to-cover in 2017. For me, these lists are a confession of my finitude (I always feel that I should have read more and read these books earlier) and, simultaneously, a reminder that, despite all its apparent solitude, reading is always a social practice. The books that I found particularly illuminating or thought provoking are indicated by blue-colored text. Even though my “to-read” stack has grown beyond what I’m likely to work through in 2018, I’d be glad to hear about the books that caught your attention in the last year.
Theology / Religious Studies
Jay Emerson Johnson, Peculiar Faith: Queer Theology for Christian Witness, 236.
Adam Kotsko, The Prince of this World, 225.
Karmen MacKendrick, The Matter of Voice: Sensual Soundings, 205.
Ted A. Smith, Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics, 204.
Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God, 240.
Daniel Capper, Learning Love from a Tiger: Religious Experiences with Nature, 305.
Shawn Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being, 186.
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, 191.
Katie Walker Grimes, Fugitive Saints: Catholicism and the Politics of Slavery, 179.
John R. Sachs, The Christian Vision of Humanity, 112.
Ilia Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love, 228.
Eric Hall, God: Everything You Ever Needed to Know about the Almighty, 185.
Vincent Lloyd and Andrew Prevot, eds., Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics, 210.
Philosophy / Critical Theory
Matthew Calarco, Thinking through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction, 82.
Gregoire Chamayou, Manhunts: A Philosophical History, 191.
Vinciane Despret, What Would Animals Say if We Asked the Right Questions, 249.
Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness, 246.
Eric Santner, Creaturely Life: Rilke, Benjamin, Sebald, 219.
Cary Wolfe, Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame, 143.
Jamie Lorimer, Wildlife in the Anthropocene: Conservation after Nature, 284.
Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, 168.
Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times, 306.
Marc Bekoff, Rewilding our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence, 198.
Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 365.
History / Historiography
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Trade, 270.
Biography / Memoir
Dave Foreman, Confessions of an Eco-Warrior, 229.
Fiction/Literature
Brian Doyle, Mink River, 319.
Kevin Barry, There are Little Kingdoms, 154.
Brian Doyle, The Plover, 311.
Sherman Alexie, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist-Fight in Heaven, 242.
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, 340.
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, 321.
Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, 505.
Brian Doyle, Martin Marten, 310.
Science / Science Writing
Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us, 250.
Ancient/Medieval texts
Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on the Lord’s Prayer, 30.
Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism, 100.
Gregory of Nyssa, Homilies on Ecclesiastes, 60.
eric daryl meyer 