Welcome to the annual best-of-books episode of The Russell Moore Show! Former show producer and current editorial director of print Ashley Hales joins Moore to talk about his favorite reads of the year. Hales identifies three themes in Moore’s book list—the importance of outsiders in communities, ways forward in our historical moment, and the pursuit of the beautiful as a humanizing mechanism. 

**Special Event: Join Russell Moore, Ashley Hales, Bonnie Kristian, and Matt Reynolds on YouTube for the CT Book Awards Live Event on December 12, 2024, at 8:00 p.m. EST. Book of the Year winner Gavin Ortlund and Award of Merit winner Brad East will share the inspiration behind their books and the big ideas that animate them as they answer questions from CT staff and subscribers.**

Russell’s top ten books (in alphabetical order by author):

• Another Day: Sabbath Poems, 2013–2023 by Wendell Berry
• I Cheerfully Refuse: A Novel by Leif Enger 
• Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Changed Country Music Forever by Brian Fairbanks
• Ghosted: An American Story by Nancy French
• The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness by Jonathan Haidt
• The Crisis of Narration by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steuer 
• The Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C. S. Lewis & J. R. R. Tolkien by John Hendrix
• Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart: What Art Teaches Us About the Wonder and Struggle of Being Alive by Russ Ramsey
• Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment by Charles Taylor
• Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically by Kevin J. Vanhoozer



Resources mentioned in this episode or recommended by the guest include:

• CT Book Awards Live Event
• “The Beautiful Orthodoxy Book of the Year”
• “Christianity Today’s 2019 Book of the Year”
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
• Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
• Owen Barfield
• A Secular Age by Charles Taylor
• Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge
• Poiéma by Michael Card
• Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor
• The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix
• Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton
• James by Percival Everett

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