Summer Reading with Melissa Kruger

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Collin Hansen
We look back and we can see the effects that television has had on our attention span. 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

Collin Hansen
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’ve 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. Hey,

Melissa Kruger
Colin. I mean, this we might need to prepare the listeners. This might be long,

Collin Hansen
just all the books that we enjoy reading, especially in the summer. Yeah. I mean, I It’s 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.

Melissa Kruger
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 is 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 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 podcast, 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?

Collin 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 I 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 she just 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 read, it’s not like just not enjoying certain foods. Maturity is it’s 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. Think that’s heightened and exponentially increased 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.

Melissa Kruger
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, my gut, yeah, 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 in my world. Yeah, it

Collin Hansen
doesn’t. Doesn’t make sense for me either. But yeah, I mean, that’s 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 is going to have the same taste. Not everybody’s 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 certain time and certain things at another time. The same time. There are certain kind of books that I always have to push myself. And I guess another thing here, Melissa, you 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 ask answering the question of, how does your reading affect your writing? Yeah.

Melissa Kruger
I mean, for me, I have no trained writing abilities. I mean, you know, I, I was a math major. I did not I placed out of English for college, and I took zero. I didn’t take it as elective. I none, zero, nothing. 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 110 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 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 what 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 associate the two?

Collin Hansen
Well, first is Shel Silverstein, the inspiration for your own poetry.

Melissa Kruger
Probably, it’s probably, and Dr Seuss, Dr Seuss. Ham. 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, then 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,

Collin Hansen
my three year old son grabbed, grabbed off the shelf. I had all the 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, is called Papa’s daughter. It’s actually a Swedish book about immigrants, naturally. And then the one, 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. It took a long time to get through. Maybe that was part of his strategy. Me. But it is a, it was a tongue twister. But, yeah, I mean, Shel Silverstein was a classic my school, we would always use those, because those were easy to memorize for an, you know, like a speaking contest and that kind of stuff.

Melissa Kruger
I still have sick memorized. I cannot go to school today so little Peggy and McKay. I have the measles and the bumps of gas and purple bumps, I mean, like it gets into you and you cannot let it go. I could perform the whole thing for you. Colin, no, it’s good. 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 gonna get into this on chat, GPT 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. Yeah,

Collin Hansen
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 chat, GPT and get some of those options, and it’s better than the rest of us can do. Not 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 before 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 scratched there. There’s really no better way to improve as a writer than reading. But yeah, I think that with with AI, you can easily summarize, you can get the points. Essentially, you can get Cliffs Notes 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 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 about, if you have kids in the home, having books around, by the way, that is an 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. EV, 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 as 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

Melissa Kruger
for you? Yeah, that’s been an evolving process. My comfortable places 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, another

Collin Hansen
case for physical books and not digital, because it doesn’t work on digital. It

Melissa Kruger
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. I have different genres

Collin Hansen
on iPad, for sure. It’s different. Again, I think what we get through here is different genres in different ways of reading.

Melissa Kruger
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

Collin 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.

Melissa Kruger
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 also, I mean enjoyable reading I do at night, before bed. You know that’s that’s relaxing to me. Other type reading I needed to do during the day, like so if I’m studying a text for, you know, 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 once it’s so

Collin Hansen
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 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 audio books, 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, whereas 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 audio books. So

Melissa Kruger
I’m fascinated you read it sounds like you read a lot of audio books. I have struggled to read books. My brain just wanders like 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,

Collin 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. So did you

Melissa Kruger
watch the documentary?

Collin Hansen
I think, I mean, which one you think about there came out, another new one. I have not watched it yet. Really good.

Melissa Kruger
It’s really good. Okay,

Collin Hansen
I mean, zero, dark 30. Really interesting movie there as well. So, I mean, I was looking for something 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. But

Melissa Kruger
Elise is not into reading right now, right?

Collin Hansen
Not in the car

Melissa Kruger
Maybe I know the problem, and this

Collin Hansen
is, yeah, 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 one on the way to camp. So yeah, it really just depends on the genre. No, I don’t do many Christian books on audio book. 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 audio books. 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 audio books 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 popular new book, like, like original sin and the new political book about President Biden. I’m way back in line. I don’t know when I’m going to be

Melissa Kruger
nice. Like, I feel like it always comes. I just got a book yesterday from the library that I threw Kindle, that I put on hold. I put it on months ago, and I was like, oh, nice little.

Collin Hansen
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, Captain Cook’s final journey. And Hampton Sides, one of the best historical narrative non fiction writers alive and of all time. And I 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 why do I see

Melissa Kruger
Colin gift cards you can buy the long books. That’s what this is really about that’s true. I just

Collin Hansen
am too cheap, too cheap to do audible, is what this is really all about. Here I have 10 books on hold.

Melissa Kruger
I’ll buy more. Colin, I’ll sponsor you the

Collin Hansen
fate of the 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 gonna have to write about that. I’m not gonna have to report on that. No one’s gonna 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. That’s right, especially as they get older and younger to age appropriate kinds of things in there, but generally I would just want, I’d rather have them reading something than That’s

Melissa Kruger
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, yeah, 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 read. I am sure everybody would like us to stop talking about all of this and talk about actual recommendations. That’s true. That’s true. So tell me actually, tell me your favorite genre. Okay, and tell me one book of that genre that you’re like, oh, you should read this. Oh, man, oh, that’s gonna be too hard. You’re gonna need some time you can come back to that. No, I gotta,

Collin Hansen
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 I missed a pretty easy one, because I would have been very shaped as a as a Christian, with biographies. And when I was when I was young, in college, I would 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 not, 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 leave 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 Oberman and Roland Benton’s biographies of Luther are simply amazing. And of course, I’ve, 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 slash biography. They usually go together. But biography is not the only form of history that I enjoy, but it’s definitely, 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. World. You accomplish something in a world, and then how are you remembered? It’s a very clear narrative structure, so it’s easy to kind of grasp.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, it appeals, I think, to your journalistic background too. So what 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 funny, like I I love reading them. I just love it. But it’s not my writing genre that I’m very comfortable with, and so you do a good job of understanding how a story should be told, and and all that. 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 keep reading. And there are so many good biographies, 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 czar, so I read a bunch about the Romanovs and the, you know, Nicholas, the second and Alexandria thing.

Collin Hansen
How did you get into the Russian czars? Where’d that come from? Well, you know, I

Melissa Kruger
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 9594 95 so but before I even went, I just was fascinated maybe by the tragedy of the Russians as well. Their story is just interesting. So I took a few classes.

Collin Hansen
Very dramatic, yeah, very dramatic, yeah, yeah. And I was just

Melissa Kruger
always fascinated by the people and their literature shows their story in a lot of ways. So I am with you on biographies and and historical fiction, what’s a genre you don’t like?

Collin Hansen
Oh, good question. Yeah, I don’t like fantasy and that. No, I do. No, I yeah, I did read and enjoy that. And my wife read those to our kids all the way through, including, including Elise through the pandemic. So that was a pretty memorable experience. There probably those. 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 I some people will 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. And that’s just not the Russians. John Grisham, yeah. John Grisham, that kind of stuff, good stuff, and was 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 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.

Melissa Kruger
I know I need to. I’m on the last book and I still haven’t finished it. Yeah, so

Collin Hansen
I 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. I just, 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, what about for you, what genre do you not like? It’s

Melissa Kruger
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 clearly before the world of the internet. Now you would never take the time to do that. We just I know 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. You know, that’s why,

Collin Hansen
that’s why we do it. Robinson Crusoe is the book that I go through with my oldest son. That’s fine chair and read it. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
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, i. Was not you

Collin Hansen
didn’t enjoy the clue board game either. Oh, I love the board game. That

Melissa Kruger
was fun.

Collin Hansen
You know, it didn’t connect back to your reading interest.

Melissa Kruger
Maybe it’s just most murder mysteries aren’t that well written. So I don’t know. Maybe, maybe it’s like

Collin Hansen
an Agatha Christie or anything like that. I haven’t read much of it either. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
I tried, I tried, but they just never, yeah, I feel like they always kind of end with a wow at the they seem to all take a similar storyline. And yeah, Sherlock,

Collin Hansen
Holmes, yeah, 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. That’s right, West Wing fans. But that’s definitely how that

Melissa Kruger
series goes. That’s right, I’m gonna get 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? Yeah,

Collin Hansen
so I am hoping to get through the space this summer. That would be good a friend of mine. It’s just, 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 he was like, you’ve got to read Frederick buech, Nurse godrick, 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. Yeah. Some people can navigate between both. And Rick Atkinson is one of them. His trilogy on World War Two in Europe is, I think, the best out there. So this is his second American, American Revolution. So those are three that I have in mind. But what are you looking forward to? I

Melissa Kruger
mean, easy beach reads, Colin. So Well, one thing I wonder, 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 can, 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 recommend her books and they, you know, I find them overall, very clean. Yeah. I mean, so that’s nice to have my memory. If my memory is correct, I will admit now my memory is not always perfect, but 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 Schaeffer, 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 long book, right? It’s pretty short book. 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

Collin Hansen
book talk, basically long story.

Melissa Kruger
It’s so good. It’s really good. 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 doing ministry work, and it’s just a really good reminder of the Lord cause 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, 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 then, because I saw how short this was from crossway, our good friends at crossway, this is a little sponsorship that we did not plan. I ordered like three more of these. That were the size, like the explosive power of a new affection, Chalmers. Yeah, from Chalmers, holiness. JC, rile, yeah. Anyway. So then I was like, I like, little books are delightful. They’re so much better

Collin Hansen
when you’re counting up your end of year score,

Melissa Kruger
good idea. Like, yeah, I don’t have it together enough to remember what I read in year. Golly, you do good reads,

Collin Hansen
Good Reads. I would not remember exactly what I read if I didn’t use that app. So that’s smart. 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 pay the margins are short. 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 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? You

Melissa Kruger
guys, 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 that worded. The whole trilogy is the Wolf Hall trilogy. You’re like, it’s amazing. It’s so good. I was like, Oh, great. I I found it

Collin Hansen
last very dense and very literary

Melissa Kruger
too, very dense. My my son came in. He’s getting ready to go. He’ll be away all summer. So he won some books, and he’s like, which I read? I was like, take this one for you. Ended up with the brothers. Is it the brothers care? How do you say Karamazov? 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. Do you

Collin Hansen
not have any interest in that? Tudor England period makes it even worse.

Melissa Kruger
I’m gonna try again. Maybe it was the season. I’m gonna try again. I don’t

Collin Hansen
think. I think the first one is a hurdle to jump. 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 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’s, there is a lot of palace intrigue. There’s a whole lot of Catholic Church dynamics that are, they’re 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? Yeah, I think one thing that’s interesting about another infamous book that we’ve talked about, Kristen Laverne s daughter, another trilogy in there, a book that I recommended to you, and you didn’t know how long it was, warning

Melissa Kruger
it’s at least 900 pages. So I’m telling you before you go order it at least

Collin Hansen
a trilogy, and it’s over 1000 pages. But yes, you did not, you were not prepared for that. But I think what Sigrid noon said, what the author is commended should be commended for, is that is writing a book whose character I don’t know how supposed to relate to a 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 a 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, it’s just not going to be that interesting.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah, to you, yeah, yeah, so,

Collin Hansen
but I’ve got one that I gave up on too, yeah. What did you give up on? 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 just could not get anything out of this. And I was many hundreds of pages, 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

Melissa Kruger
I saw in the notes I gave up in Las Vegas, and I was like, Colin, were you in Las Vegas reading this book?

Collin Hansen
Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe sitting at the slots all night.

Melissa Kruger
What are you talking about to Las Vegas? Just trying to save you some drama. The character

Collin Hansen
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 goldfinge. We’ll see. We’ll see. What else is there you just, you’re just picking fights with me, yeah? Not with the listener.

Melissa Kruger
Then Okay, since we’ve said those, or especially, maybe that one particularly wasn’t helpful or edifying to game 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?

Collin 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 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 obermans, man between God and the devil is a little bit it’s a little denser, little more academic. But the 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 the 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 of the Roman Empire and its collapse and the continued rise of Christianity, the development of Western Christianity, the different fights that 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 in 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 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 when it’s 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 interesting, because he makes a lot of mistakes. Yeah, you can learn from that. But about you,

Melissa Kruger
yeah, they all mine are on that much less academic level. I’ll give you that mine, I think a really, I mean, they’re just yeah, they’re just telling the story. The first one I probably read was a chance to die by about Amy Carmichael, Lizbeth Elliot 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, spiritual secret so good. I can just remember what watching the way his faith was played out, and 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. Um, World War Two, 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 stories 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. But

Collin Hansen
isn’t that? Does 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 just reality of a fallen world, but also the way that the Lord seems to work. So I think that’s one reason, 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. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
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 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. Yeah, finding books on these subjects will will allow for that.

Collin 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. We’ll start going fast. 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 in 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? Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
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 gonna read it again this summer. It’s actually on my list to read it again, and I’m not a big reader again person, but that was a good point to talk about. Yeah, that one was so good I want to read it again, because I, at the end, I just I he somehow understood motherhood like I felt this deep, you know, I was like, Oh, this is this feeling I have in my soul. And, yeah, 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. It’s not a hard, very quick read. 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. Yeah, 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? Of

Collin Hansen
course, you 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 in his Theo character there as well. I’m going to give just two two examples here on fiction. One I’ve recommended a number of different times, and it’s 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 Two. But this is probably the best book in general about World War Two, which, of course. When you just consider it’s epic, it’s epic scope. That’s a big 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 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 the of golden you walk away just thinking, I want to be a better person. That’s right, godlier person. That

Melissa Kruger
was another one I put in my son’s hands last night. Was a tale, too. So he’s like, Ah, you have to read this, if you like, I mean, yeah, 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, you know,

Collin Hansen
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 circle non fiction, yeah, 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?

Melissa Kruger
I think Eric Larson is one of those who makes fiction, read makes non fiction, read like fiction.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. He’s like Hampton Sides, yeah, two of the three best. I think working, working today, yeah, the

Melissa Kruger
devil 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? Like, that

Collin Hansen
was like, Peter Brown, Augustine, for me, in terms of, whoa, opened up whole worlds. I will say that content is pretty disturbing in that book. Just what he’s writing about is just Yes, pretty difficult.

Melissa Kruger
Yes, yes, that’s right. Does that mean it’s basically about serial killer in the city of Chicago? Yeah. I mean, so it’s, it’s definitely not. Most of his are hard topics. I really like the garden of bees too, which was fascinating. I mean, it was about the American Embassy, right? I can’t remember Germany, yeah. And during Nazi Germany, I was like thinking, Oh, wow, to be part of that. And, yeah, so he writes it really well, you know, when it comes to biographies, one thing that’s been new was the watchmakers daughter by Larry Loftus,

Collin Hansen
yeah, I just read that one too. It’s good. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Melissa Kruger
I thought it was interesting, because I’ve only, only read the hiding place from Corey 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. Oh, 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, right? 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 is just come to light from being declassified. It was great. Okay, those are some of my favorites. Yeah. So

Collin Hansen
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, on that theme, World War Two, but an audio book, this is so interesting. Melissa Malcolm Gladwell has been a real innovator in terms of integrating audio books and kind of thinking audio book. First, his bomber mafia is best as an audio sort of a podcast. Then an audio book is designed as an audio book. There also is a print book. But you really should listen to that if you that’s a great summer. Summer listen there. Um, I’ll give one more on that theme. I mentioned earlier, best literature to come out of the Second World. War Eugene. Sledge is 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 death, as a college professor, but that’s one of those that still read today as we’re recording this right after Memorial Day, and so that is very much in in the mind. But 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 are jealous, 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, I wish I could have written that book that was truly, truly amazing. Came out in 2023 but I have a feeling, Melissa, you want to go in a similar direction talking about general nonfiction, yeah, not just historical nonfiction, but general nonfiction, especially with Malcolm

Melissa Kruger
Gladwell. 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 I did an interview with him about he 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 weaken. I mean, David was weakened 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 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 and parenting and how I think through different different things with my kids. That’s

Collin Hansen
been true of me as well. Yeah, 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 audio book especially, is helpful. But I think there are a lot of things, and some of the things they just 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 you 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 heights, the righteous mind. I don’t 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 next generation is having a huge effect. And like you mentioned, like we mentioned with Gladwell, very much, will change the way that you 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 I don’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 can 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 me 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 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 Where would you send them? Listen, yeah.

Melissa Kruger
I mean, my biggest recommendation on a push book is Anna crenanna, 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,

Collin Hansen
not three. Yeah,

Melissa Kruger
three to official names. Yeah, exactly. And it just feels confusing. So if you can get past it is work, I will say that. But I 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? Yeah,

Collin Hansen
well, staying within Russian literature, you already mentioned Brothers Karamazov, just got to warn people that is a I don’t is a hard book to understand. You don’t have any context, so don’t beat yourself up. Do you not 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 karamasaf 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 Karamazov remains like the kind of 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 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. Need to 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? Okay,

Melissa Kruger
I’m gonna 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, 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 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, it’s not long yet it is, it is excellent. So that is one that I would just say, hey, read three pages a day. Just work, work your way.

Collin Hansen
Amazon says about 133

Melissa Kruger
pages. Okay, okay. So depending on which publisher out there you’re buying it from, I think it’s, 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 believe ism which isn’t just, you know, just doesn’t really matter. No, you’re called to fight your soldier. You’re in the war, and you. Man, it’s good. It’s really good. You can tell they weren’t reading their phones. They were looking at nature, and 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. 20 years later, I finally did. I’m slow like that. Sometimes it was,

Collin Hansen
it wasn’t a requirement for marriage.

Melissa Kruger
Apparently it wasn’t our first, our first Christmas we were dating for my gift, my Christmas gift to give me three books. And I was like, this is the one.

Collin Hansen
Everyone would react, but the beginning of a beautiful life together.

Melissa Kruger
Exactly, exactly. So, what about you? What books would you recommend for spiritual growth?

Collin 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 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 for the letters of John Newton. But whoa, that Puritan strain that continues from Jonathan Edward 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 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 of John Newton. And then I would, I’m going to put the flavor on here for the mystery of 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, we’re

Melissa Kruger
all missing and we’ll put all of this in the show notes. Right? Will we list all of these? Okay, all this in the show notes, so don’t get angry at

Collin Hansen
us. Well, 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 five when we’re recording it, but hopefully can help 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 let’s give people. Let’s give people what they want here at the end, some beach reads,

Melissa Kruger
easy beach reads, I have to say, check out Allison Pataki. She if you like his 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 mentioned Kate Morton earlier. She has a bunch of great books. I loved Kristen, Hannah’s the women. It was about the women in Vietnam who were there as nurses. It’s really, really good. And obviously we talked about, all right, Theo of golden is a great a great beach read. What about you? What would you recommend?

Collin 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 it 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 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 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, 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 and I take what I’ve learned, I’m going to help you to 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. I. But you’re gonna 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 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? Well,

Melissa Kruger
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 well,

Collin Hansen
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. Lot of people are doing that these days, so that might be something to think about. But three hour episodes. 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.

Melissa Kruger
Will do.