100 Books Like Paul

My experience shows that this book can be a lifesaver for anyone living with depression, chronic anxiety, or a troubled heart. 

It offers a Christian take on how to achieve interior freedom and preserve it in troubled times. A friend of mine told me that there was a period in her life when she wouldn’t leave her house without taking this book with her.

In fact, I have often done this myself. The sense of freedom from external circumstances that I could find when reading a page from this book in hard places, at hard times, was extraordinary.

The author, Jacques Philippe, a member of the Community of the Beatitudes, has a special appeal to modern readers, and many say he has helped them to attain a peace of heart.

I have read this book three times. 

As a Christian and a lifelong reader of historical fiction and of books on Christianity, I loved this book and couldn’t put it down.

“Theophilos” is the mysterious addressee of Luke’s Gospel. O’Brien imagines him to be the adoptive father of Luke. In the novel, Luke becomes deeply absorbed in the stories that people who knew Jesus personally tell him and decides to chronicle them as a historian. Theophilos travels to Palestine to try to rescue Luke from the “madness” of Christianity.

The book is an extraordinary feat of historical and psychological imagination. While replete with breathtaking episodes, it is, generally speaking, not fast-paced – one often stops to ponder a sentence, or a reflection – yet it is also a thriller.

My autistic grandson, as a teenager, read this book to me aloud twice; and now, at twenty, he is reading it to me, at my request, but once again with gusto, for the third time.

It is a meticulous and loving chronicle of Jesus’ life, his doings and sayings. I have read many “biographies” of Jesus, but, along with Aleksander Men’s The Son of Man, this is my favourite. The reading of this long book aloud, chapter by chapter, is a joy.

It is dramatic in style, very reliable in details, and sound and insightful in their interpretation. At the same time, the author’s heart is in it, and so is the reader’s. It is nourishment for the soul, as well as for the mind. A splendid book.

For me, Sheridan’s new book was a riveting read – a mind-opening reminder of how early Christians, unbelievably, converted a good part of the classical world and spread Jesus’ radical teaching of love, forgiveness, human equality, and fraternity in a world in which they were total nobodies, scorned, persecuted, tortured, and killed.

Attractively, the book also shows some modern countercultural Christian lives, based on the same Gospel teachings, still capable of acting as a leaven and a sign of hope in the spiritually disoriented Western world.

I found this book extremely refreshing and encouraging, and I have recently given it as a birthday present to a seventeen-year-old granddaughter to inspire her to set herself challenging and God-oriented goals worth living and dying for.

You can’t go to the past, but the past can come to you, through a written voice. 

This is a strong and extraordinary woman’s autobiography from the late 1400s and early 1500s. It’s like taking a phone call from the 15th century.

This directness is what I wanted in my own book.

Kempe could neither read nor write, so she dictated her story. She did things women often weren’t able to do back then. She ran a business, travelled to France, Germany, Spain, and even to Jerusalem. And she spoke out against many received medieval opinions.

How brave Kempe was to challenge the patriarchy.

I LOVED this book because the author does a great job of explaining and describing female sex addiction with anecdotes.

Ferree spent 30 years as a certified sex addiction specialist. As a scholar, I appreciated how she wove in her personal experience with what studies have shown. This approach made reading about sex addiction clinical yet relatable. I also liked that she gave advice on how to talk to family members about this type of addiction. These tips were helpful. I even photocopied some of the pages and gave them to my husband.

Catherine Fox is intimately familiar with the nuances of the Church of England. She writes about them with wit and affection, and she’s dependably funny in this tale of a married bishop who doesn’t want to look too closely at why he’s quite so patient with his disaster of a chauffeur. The Lindchester series is ongoing, and I’m one of many followers who read along to share the joys and sorrows of the diverse, expanding, and delightful cast of characters. This is the place to start, though.

Raheb is a pastor/scholar who lives in Bethlehem and has become one of the most important Palestinian voices describing the Arab Christian experience within the Israeli occupation.

It is rare to read an actual Palestinian voice in this conflict—and rarer still to hear one coming from the church. Raheb is widely respected in academic work but also in the regional church. He has started a remarkable university (Dar al-Kalima University College) and a myriad of projects to alleviate the problem of Bethlehem’s life under military occupation.

I loved reading Jessica Hooten Wilson’s insights into the eight novels she recommends in her book. Jessica asks the age-old question “how do we become better people?” but then posits we need to enlarge the question to “how do we become holy people?” She also says we need to enlarge our imaginations in how we seek the answers. She examines the main characters of eight different modern books and what we can gain from them. Some of the books she recommends are Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Kristin Lavensdatter by Sigrid Unstead, That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, Moses, Man of the Mountain by Zora Neale Hurston, and The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene. I really enjoyed the deep dive into some books I already loved. 

I love how Beth Moore invites you to get comfortable yet uncomfortable in her book. She challenges whether you believe big and act on it. This is so important for changing your thoughts and elevating them for more.

The entire book keeps you engaged, reflecting, and dreaming of more. It’s like having a tall glass of lemonade on the porch with a friend who knows you deeply and expects more from you, so she allows you to want it without you realizing you’ve been up-leveled.

This book puts your faith on steroids, and you will believe bigger and actually want to do something about it.