Books I’m Not Recommending for Christmas: Mystery, Art and Literature, and Fiction

It’s that time of year again, when I don’t recommend books for Christmas. I’ve always believed that decisions about what books to buy are intensely personal. So, what follows is a list (linked to the review) of the best books I read in 2017. But I’m not recommending them. I think.

The first group includes the categories of mystery; art, literature and criticism; and fiction. Next week I’ll have history and biography; life, culture, and faith; and poetry.

Books that I would include in these categories but for which I haven’t published reviews yet include East End Vernacular: The Artists Who Painted London’s East End, published by Spitalfields Life; Heads or Tails, a mystery by Damien Boyd; and Ink, a play by James Graham.

Mystery

Thirteen Guests by J. Jefferson Farjeon.

How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny.

Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson.

A Shattered Peace by Luke H. Davis.

Death of a Busybody by George Bellairs.

Raven Black by Ann Cleeves.

Art, Literature, and Criticism

A Well of Wonder by Clyde Kilby.

The Arts and the Christian Imagination by Clyde Kilby.

Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Malcolm Guite.

Guilty Thing: A Life of Thomas De Quincy by Frances Wilson.

The Gospel in Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Margaret Ellsberg.

Everything to Nothing: The Poetry of the Great War, Revolution, and the Transformation of Europe by Geert Buelens.  

A is for Azure by Donna Falcone and L.L. Barkat.

Housman Country: Into the Heart of England by Peter Parker.

Fiction

News of the World by Paulette Jiles.

Beren and Luthien by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Day the Angels Fell by Shawn Smucker.

The Ferryman by Jez Butterworth.

Can You See Anything Now? by Katherine James.

A Horse Walks into a Bar by David Grossman.

Photograph by Cesar Viteri via Unsplash. Used with permission.