Today's question is about books and it comes from a listener named Roger. Hello, Pastor John, in your solid, joyous devotional, Ignorance Leads to Ungodliness, you exhorted us to "read, read, read, but beware of wasting your time on theological foam and suds, read rich doctrinal books about the one who called you to his glory and excellence." So could you please make some recommendations of the books you are referring to?

How do I make the distinction between theological suds and theological substance as I build my personal library? Okay, this is really risky because I'm sure I'm going to forget some books that I myself regard as more important than the ones I'm going to mention here, because that's just the way my memory works.

But it might be worth the risk anyway to get some people started. It's like a snowball. Reading is like a snowball, right? Going down a hill. When you read a few really good books, those books generally point you to others and those others to others, and pretty soon you're well on your way to a life of consistent personal growth.

But let me stress at the outset, before I mention any books, that I don't think reading many books is important. Not for the average person anyway, maybe for the scholar, but not for the average person. Reading good books, solid books, non-sudsy books, but substantial books really well is important.

And if you wonder what I mean by reading really well, one place to start is Mortimer Adler, that's the author, How to Read a Book. Not a new book. I read it for the first time after my college days. Ah, I wish I'd read that book earlier, but I'm so glad I read it in my early twenties.

How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler. If you want to go deep with how you read, you'll be inspired and helped by that book. So let's begin by grouping some books, and I'll just name what came to my mind in some categories, and you can go from there.

Let's start with biography. I love biography. I think biography is one of the most efficient ways to learn about history and theology and psychology, all the while in the form of a good story. At least the best biographies are amazing in this regard. So here are a few. Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, a biography of that epic-making Martin Luther in the 1500s.

David Danielle, biography of William Tyndale, who translated the Bible from Greek into English for the first time in the 1500s and was killed for it. It's an amazing glimpse into the kind of Christianity that burns people alive for reading the English Bible. I mean, you've got a taste that we have had periods of history in which Christians burned Christians for reading the Bible.

Oh, David Danielle, William Tyndale, great story. Ian Murray, biography of Jonathan Edwards. Ian Murray, The Forgotten Spurgeon. Murray is an unusually effective storyteller because there is always life and there's always doctrine, and yet you never feel like he's just using the story to teach the doctrine, but the doctrine really does create amazing stories.

One more biography. St. Augustine died 430, probably the most influential Christian in history outside the Bible, his Confessions. This is the longest prayer you will ever read. I thought, "I want to write a book that's 300 pages long that the whole thing is addressed to God." Well, taste and see what Augustine does there for the celebration of sovereign grace in his lecherous early life and what God made of him.

Second category I would give is missions. I know it's a biography, but I'm putting in the missions to the Golden Shore, the life of Adoniram Judson, went out from America. I think the first, at least the first white American, I think there was a black woman who went to Hawaii before him as a missionary, but first white missionary to outside America, to Burma, where he almost went insane with grief and loneliness.

What a great story of Adoniram Judson by, oh shoot, did I not, Courtney Anderson. Yeah, there it is. John Patton autobiography. This book is worth it just for the first few pages with his magnificent farewell scene from his father. Unforgettable, beautiful scene where a father loves a son, sends him off knowing, "I may never seen this boy again, and he's doing exactly what I want him to do." Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, written by his son and daughter-in-law.

And here you get inside the founder of the China Inland Mission, and getting inside Hudson Taylor is a great place to get. Elizabeth Elliott's biography of Amy Carmichael called A Chance to Die. And this is good, not only because Amy Carmichael was a one of a kind woman and missionary, but because you get a taste of Elizabeth Elliott.

Elliott was, to my mind, just almost in a class by herself in 20th century women because of the amazing combination of gifts that she brought. And if the women who are listening would like a longer list of books that are worthy about women, I would suggest you go to Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth's article at TGC.

I think it's called On Your Shelf. There's a whole bunch of books there. I mean, a whole bunch of people there who they ask what books are on your shelf. And Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth has listed a lot of biographies of worthy women there. Here's another category, Reformed Theology or Reformed Vision of Reality.

Go to J.I. Packer's Knowing God. Get J.I. Packer's Quest for Godliness, which is a collection of shorter writings. You don't have to read it. You don't have to read it straight through. In fact, in that book, John Owen's Death of Death and In the Death of God, Packer's introduction to John Owen's Death of Death is probably one of the most influential short essays in the contemporary Reformed resurgence, catapulting many of us from a fledgling love of God's sovereignty into a more full and robust appreciation for the truth of God's sovereign grace.

Glory Road, edited by Anthony Carter, subtitled The Journeys of Ten African Americans into Reformed Christianity. This is valuable not only because the stories themselves are fascinating and helpful, but because these ten brothers become portals into African American authors that you may know nothing about and may be worthy of following up on.

Jonathan Edwards' book, Religious Affections, in a class by itself, in my judgment, for elevating and clarifying the role of the affections or the emotions in the Christian life. It was a shocking and glorious read for me, sitting in a rocking chair on many Sunday evenings in Munich, Germany, years ago.

If you want the best short thing that Jonathan Edwards has ever written, or the most seminal, I would say, A Divine and Supernatural Light. It was a sermon. You can read it in an hour or less, and you can find it online. A Divine and Supernatural Light immediately communicated to the soul.

If there's one thing that Edwards wrote that I would recommend that's short, that's where I would go. The next category would be salvation, and I would point you to John Stott, Basic Christianity, John Stott's book on the cross, John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied. Oh, I remember reading that in my early 30s, that just the title to understand what it means that there's redemption and an accomplished stage and an applied stage, what that means in God's sovereign way of working in our lives.

And then I've got a category called Christian Life, and I would give you a Puritan, Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, as a sampling of all those Puritan paperbacks that Banner of Truth has done, all of them worthy of our attention. Spurgeon has written so much, you can't begin to read it all, but let me point to two essays in his lectures to his students, and they're probably available online separately, The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear, How to Handle and Survive Criticism in the Ministry or Anywhere.

If you want to know how to navigate life when you are a controversial person, you need to have a blind eye and a deaf ear, and read what Spurgeon means by that. And the other one is The Minister's Fainting Fits, an old-fashioned title for how do you deal with depression and discouragement?

I mean, you will be really encouraged by that short piece by Spurgeon called The Minister's Fainting Fits. And let me end maybe with a few fiction. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress, probably has sold more books than any other book outside the Bible. There may be one or two. I don't know how Harry Potter is doing in relation to John Bunyan, but historically, The Pilgrim's Progress is just off the charts, helpful and influential.

If you've never read that classic, go there. C.S. Lewis, the Narnia children's books. I read them first in my mid-30s, believe it or not. I didn't grow up in a home that even knew about C.S. Lewis. I didn't read them as a kid, but oh, how we read them and our children loved them.

And I loved them in my mid-30s. So the children's books called The Chronicles of Narnia. And then there's the Space Trilogy for an adult taste where you can see what Lewis does with science fiction in a contemporary cultural criticism. And then just one more, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. And probably this is in my mind because I read it as a junior in high school.

And I don't remember what impact it had, but I remember being riveted by it. Just recently, I listened to it again and found it. Oh, my, this is why Dostoevsky, the Russian novelist, is so compelling because of his penetrating insights into the human soul for its evil and its good and how those are all tangled up together.

Let me close with another warning. Beware of reading for quantity to impress anyone. Read for your soul. If we could live a thousand years and experience a thousand relationships in the thousand times and places and cultures that offer themselves, perhaps we wouldn't need books in order to become wise.

But our lives are short, and God has been merciful to give many places, many times, many cultures, many insights distilled into books. So find the ones that strengthen your faith and make you want to live all out for God. Amen. That's quite a library starter, Pastor John. Wow. Thanks for joining us today.

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Well, Monday is Labor Day in the States, and we will be back fielding a question from a listener who wants to know how she can find joy in God each morning. What does it look like in the ordinary situations of daily life? That's a question on the table Monday.

When we return, I'm your host, Tween Ranky. Enjoy the long weekend. We'll see you then.