Here are 100 books that The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha fans have personally recommended if you like
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha.
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I’ve been obsessed with apocalyptic and dystopian stories for over a decade. For me, they are the books that strike right at the heart of what it means to be human. Reading about characters facing the very worst scenarios possible brings love, resilience, survival, and hope into sharp relief. Not to mention that they are often the most powerful page turners—I have lost so much sleep over these cautionary tales, staying up until the early hours, unable to put them down.
I’ve read this book twice and cried buckets both times.
It is a masterpiece – brutal and unflinching but also maintaining a kernel of hope as the man crosses a devastated landscape with his son, trying to keep him alive against the odds. The prose is stunning and piercing. There are some very disturbing parts of the story, but what shines through for me is human resilience, determination, and love.
I will absolutely read The Road again, but I have to leave a recovery gap between reads!
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE • A searing, post-apocalyptic novel about a father and son's fight to survive, this "tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful" (San Francisco Chronicle).
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if…
The dragons of Yuro have been hunted to extinction.
On a small, isolated island, in a reclusive forest, lives bandit leader Marani and her brother Jacks. With their outlaw band they rob from the rich to feed themselves, raiding carriages and dodging the occasional vindictive…
A great book can supplant your consciousness and bring you into a new headspace of altered mood and perception. Good writing about elevated human experiences can elevate the reader, as the words on the page inspire the release of "feel-good" neurochemicals like endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine. These are the effects I seek to produce in my readers’ experience – I want them to feel the buzzes and the highs and lows my characters feel. In Death By Cannabis, by focusing on the legalization of weed in Canada, I sought to tap into the passionate subculture and complex emotions the emancipation of pot brought to the surface after simmering so long underground.
Early in this book, a character uses his kitchen oven to dry out some psychedelic mushrooms harvested from the rooftop garden at his flat in World War II London. Dosing the characters (and somehow the reader) with Amanita Muscaria is an appropriate way to set the tone of this book.
Mushroom experiences are fun and giggly and clever, at times, but they can also open the mind to the evils mankind is capable of and the intricate conspiracies seemingly hiding in plain sight. Which is what I love about Gravity’s Rainbow – Pynchon’s writing is hilarious, but then he’ll hit you with a gut punch so poignant it will linger in your mind for decades.
Hailed by many as the major experimental nov el of the post-war period, Gravity''s Rainbow is a bizarre co mic masterpiece in which linguistic virtuosity creates a who le other world. '
I’ve always been fascinated by the convergence of the serious and the absurd. Raised on the experimental humor of the 90s, I was delighted to find that weird humor and an absurd sensibility were not limited to experimental novelists of the 20th century. In the literature of the Enlightenment, I found proof that taking a joke to its limit can also produce experimental insight, deep feeling, and intellectual discovery. I discovered a time when early novelists moved seamlessly between satirical mimicry and serious first-person narrative; when esoteric philosophy and scientific abstraction blended in with the weirdness of formalist experimentation. I discovered that the Enlightenment was anything but dull.
I love the experimental and absurd sensibility of this novel. In an age known for its groundbreaking fiction, this work stands out for its playfulness and complexity. Like Swift, Sterne was a clergyman of the Church of England, and I love how intelligent and sophisticated he is about dirty jokes and silly scenarios.
I also appreciate Sterne’s commitment to pushing the envelope: Sterne inserts all sorts of oddities, from marble pages to graphical representations of the book’s winding narrative. The book obsesses over the minutiae and small details of everyday life even as it considers weighty issues and tragic events.
Predicting both Freud and postmodernism, I love how this work feels both ultra-modern and very much of its time.
Endlessly digressive, boundlessly imaginative and unmatched in its absurd and timeless wit, Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is edited with an introduction by Melvin New and Joan New, and includes a critical essay by Christopher Ricks in Penguin Classics.
Laurence Sterne's great masterpiece of bawdy humour and rich satire defies any attempt to categorize it, with a rich metafictional narrative that might classify it as the first 'postmodern' novel. Part novel, part digression, its gloriously disordered narrative interweaves the birth and life of the unfortunate 'hero' Tristram Shandy, the eccentric philosophy of his father Walter,…
Jake Sledge, a rugged ex-cop turned private eye, teams up with his colossal partner Bobo to navigate the gritty streets of River City.
A murdered lawyer drags them into a web of political intrigue, neo-Nazi thugs, and bloody showdowns. With sharp wit and hard-hitting action, Jake tackles scumbags the only…
You know that poem that instructs us to "see a world in a grain of sand?" I've done that, friend. It turns out that the world you see in a closely-examined grain of sand is largely covered with sand, each grain of which contains another world. For reasons that I can't explain (well, the Autism Spectrum Disorder might have something to do with it), I'm compelled to write novels that explore and exploit, obliquely or otherwise, the sub-worlds lurking within the grains of sand that are scattered across the American High Plains.
Remember how disappointed you were when you first tried to read Tolkien's The Silmarillion? You'd just devoured The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and you needed more Middle Earth, and you asked for The Silmarillian for your birthday and you received it! And it was just a bunch of half-baked fleshless ideas! Well, there's nothing half-baked about Masters of Atlantis! Masters of Atlantis is my least favorite book by my most favorite author! Why did I choose it for this list over Portis's other four novels? Because, for the vast majority of its 300-plus pages, it reads like a hurried summary of a tangled web of bizarro characters negotiating an interwoven freak-o-system of conspiratorial cults!
Lamar Jimmersan, an American doughboy in 1917 France, learns that his life's purpose is to administer the brotherhood of the Gnomons, preservers of the wisdom of the lost city of Atlantis, and Gnomonism risesand eventually fades awayin America. Reprint.
I started studying Judaism as an adult in 1982, and in the 40 or so years that have passed since then I’ve read voraciously on the subject and have discussed it at length with Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform rabbis from Boston to Tampa. I’ve come to see over that time that Judaism’s objective is to shape conscientious, caring human beings who will bring light and compassion to the earth in spite of all the forces that want to keep trouble and insensitivity there. The books that I’ve listed are among the best in communicating the Jewish vision for the planet. I think you’ll learn much from them.
This is the most sensible, persuasive commentary on the Book of Exodus that a contemporary reader could want.
Prager’s pages on the Ten Commandments alone are brilliant and revelatory. But he excels throughout in addressing modern anxieties about a book over 3000 years old and its many insights into human striving. When you’re through with this one, move on to his Genesis!
"Dennis Prager has put together one of the most stunning commentaries in modern times on the most profound document in human history. It's a must-read that every person, religious and non-religious, should buy and peruse every night before bed. It'll make you think harder, pray more ardently, and understand your civilization better." — Ben Shapiro, host of "The Ben Shapiro Show"
"Dennis Prager’s commentary on Exodus will rank among the greatest modern Torah commentaries. That is how important I think it is. And I am clearly not alone... It might well be on its way to becoming the…
No matter how you read it, the Bible is a strange book. It weaves together beautiful narratives and deadly-dull genealogies; uplifting messages with passages that many today find ethically repulsive. Yet it gained an extraordinary authority, in a predominantly pre-literate society. The question of how this happened has been an intellectual and scholarly preoccupation of mine for decades, and as a professor at Brown University I seek to bring my students and readers into this very foreign world in order to open their eyes to new possibilities in the present.
Who Wrote the Bible? is my go-to book for explaining to undergraduates the classic Documentary Hypothesis, that is, the theory that describes how humans wrote and edited the Bible. Friedman’s style is clear and engaging, and he frames his explanation as an academic mystery. I (with other scholars) don’t always agree with his conclusions, but they responsible and worth considering. My students regularly note that this was their favorite book of the semester.
A much anticipated reissue of Who Wrote the Bible?—the contemporary classic the New York Times Book Review called “a thought-provoking [and] perceptive guide” that identifies the individual writers of the Pentateuch and explains what they can teach us about the origins of the Bible.
For thousands of years, the prophet Moses was regarded as the sole author of the first five books of the Bible, known as the Pentateuch. According to tradition, Moses was divinely directed to write down foundational events in the history of the world: the creation of humans, the worldwide flood, the laws as they were handed…
Caroline Herschel has always lived in the shadows. Beholden to her wildly popular older brother, William, who rescued her from servitude, she's worked hard to build a life for herself – one where she can go unnoticed and repay the debt she believes she owes him. But when her brother…
I’ve always been a thinker, asking big questions and playing around with crazy ideas. That’s why I’ve been fascinated by the Bible since I was fourteen, reading it cover-to-cover multiple times and studying it academically for—approaching four decades now. It’s a classic for a reason! At first, I read it because I became a Christian, and it’s part of the package, but within a short time, I was hooked. I was especially interested in the tough parts, the bits I didn’t like or couldn’t make sense of. They were invitations to explore, think, and learn. It never ceases to surprise me with new ideas and inspirational insights.
To my mind, this one is a game-changer. It seems a niche subject—the ways that Jesus’ death is interpreted in NT texts as a sacrifice—but, Man Alive, it was one of the most eye-opening and engrossing books I’ve read in years.
Rillera argues that many Christians have significantly misunderstood Jesus’ death. All that stuff about Jesus taking the punishment for our sins and dying so we don’t have to, he says, is not in the Bible! Sounds nuts, right? That’s why I found it such an arresting book.
And the resulting teaching on Jesus’ death makes a heck of a lot more sense to me. I love books that make me rethink stuff I took for granted. This is one. (Warning: a tightly argued book, so demands some concentration.)
Lamb of the Free analyzes the different sacrificial imagery applied to Jesus in the NT in light of the facts that (a) there is no such thing as substitutionary death sacrifice in the Torah—neither death nor suffering nor punishment of the animal has any place in the sacrificial system—and (b) there are both atoning and non-atoning sacrifices. Surprisingly, the earliest and most common sacrifices associated with Jesus’s death are the non-atoning ones. Nevertheless, when considering the whole NT, Jesus is said to accomplish all the benefits of the entire Levitical system, from both atoning and non-atoning sacrifices and purification. Moreover,…
I am the teaching pastor of Woodland Christian Church. I have been in ministry since 2007, preaching God’s Word an average of 1 to 3 times weekly. Because my ministry focuses on teaching and preaching, I study God’s Word for 20 to 30 hours per week. I have used numerous commentaries over the years and settled on these as the best one-volume commentaries.
The Thomas Nelson Study Bible is my second favorite commentary to use. It shares many similarities with The MacArthur Study Bible. There are helpful charts and maps. The commentary is clear and understandable. The cross-references are helpful as are the other study tools. The images and charts are done wonderfully. There are over 1,000 articles and notes spread through the commentary, which provide a greater understanding of certain passages and topics. Again there are also book introductions and the outlines can be very helpful. The word studies, the Strong’s numbers in case you want to do further study. The indexes and concordances at the back are helpful and easy to use. One point to consider is while John MacArthur’s commentary is Calvinistic, The Thomas Nelson Study Bible doesn’t seem to lean toward Calvinism or Arminianism, probably to reach multiple denominations.
The full text of the trustworthy New King James Version with robust study notes, vibrant full-color images, and dozens of study resources to help you grow deeper in your faith.
With more than 2 million copies sold, it's no secret that The King James Study Bible, Full Color Edition is a reliable guide for your journey into God's Word. This beautiful full-color Bible provides a complete resource for study, including over 1 million words of custom content contributed by top evangelical scholars. Over 1,000 articles, notes, word studies, photos, illustrations, maps, and other tools, combined with the accuracy and clarity…
I have long been passionate about helping people connect with God through their work. After graduating from college, I worked in full-time minister for six years and then became an entrepreneur. Was I dropping off a spiritual cliff by leaving full-time ministry? I later pursued my PhD and became a professor. At the University of Oklahoma, I became a top researcher and co-founded the Center for Entrepreneurship. The impact of work on my faith has long been an important issue for me. I ultimately gained valuable insights from God that enhanced my spiritual journey. In my book, I explain the profound significance of work for knowing God.
This book does a phenomenal job of building on a biblical foundation to help readers see the relevance of their work to God and their spiritual journey. I love how this book helps me develop strategies for positioning my work to build an eternal legacy.
Jordan Raynor also helped me to see how my view of work can offer important insights about heaven. I feel affirmed in my career and the significant value it can bring to the kingdom of God.
From a leading voice in the faith and work movement and author of Redeeming Your Time comes the revolutionary message that God sees our daily work—in whatever form it takes—with far more value than we ever imagined.
“The Sacredness of Secular Work does an extraordinary job of being both personally relevant and, more importantly, biblically faithful.”—Randy Alcorn, New York Times bestselling author of Heaven
Does your work matter for eternity?
Sadly, most believers don’t think so. Sure, the 1 percent of the time they spend sharing the gospel with their co-workers matters. But most Christians view the other 99 percent…
Rodney Bradford comes into Lindsay's restaurant, offers to buy her small house for double its value, eats her brownies, and drops dead on the sidewalk in front. Next, her almost-ex-husband offers to sign the divorce papers, but only if she'll give him her small,…
I have been an avid reader of historical fiction since I was very young, and I love learning about the life and times of different periods of history. One might describe me as a "research junkie." My desire to know more about the everyday lives of my historical characters has taken me on many wonderful adventures, and my personal library is full of books I use for research. I write fiction, creative nonfiction, and novels. I am currently completing a new novel about a family of downwinders, people who contracted cancer from government-sanctioned radioactive fallout from the atomic bomb tests in Nevada during the 1950s and 1960s.
As its title implies, this book is accessible to the entire family and would be a great resource for Sunday school teachers who want to provide their students with a larger understanding of the life and times of peoples in ancient Palestine and Rome. The book is broken down into easy-to-find categories such as "The Home," "Warfare," and "Travel and Communication," to name a few. There are stunning photographs on every page with detailed and clear explanations. The back of the book has timelines of the Bible and a map of Palestine in New Testament times with highlights of key events in the New Testament. There is also an alphabetical index that makes it easy to find information on specific topics.
Discusses historical and cultural topics relevant to an understanding of the Bible, under such topics as archaeology, geography, government, business, education, and health.
