Books like The Sound of Life's Unspeakable Beauty — picked by fans

This is one of the clearest books I’ve read on creativity.

Elizabeth Gilbert encourages both curiosity and discipline in writing. She also talks about the importance of timing and being ready to capture ideas when they come. Fear and self-doubt are always around, but one must be receptive and ready when the muse appears.

She tells great stories, which makes the book particularly fun and readable.

A memoir about how Miller transformed his life by studying what creates a compelling story after being asked to turn one of his books into a film.

Miller shows that a great life, like a great story, is built on intention, risk, courage, and the willingness to embrace unpredictability. Meaning emerges from the highs, the lows, and the transformation along the way.

I often say I do things “for the plot,” and this book crystallizes that philosophy for me. It encouraged me to take risks, follow adventure, and choose the kind of life I would be proud to look back on. For anyone who has endured hardship, Miller’s reminder is powerful: our lives are more beautiful because of everything we have lived through.

For one year, award-winning sportswriter Joe Posnanski traveled with baseball ambassador Buck O’Neil all over the country, sharing stories about those who played in the Negro Leagues. This is a book about baseball, yes, but this is a book about choosing hope time and time again, even when it doesn’t make sense.

This is a book full of stories of those who were denied a chance to play in the major leagues because of something beyond their control—the color of their skin. But this is also a book about how love is the strongest power in the universe, breaking down hate, and replacing it with hope. I read this book almost every spring, as MLB players are headed to Spring Training.

Several years ago, I read this book and was amazed by its humor, its wisdom, and the place other people have in helping us discover our place on this planet. After reading the book, I reached out to the author, who responded and met me for dinner. At that dinner, I asked Benson if he thought I could be a writer. He said, “This world is desperate for good sentences, for good stories, and for those who are willing to do the hard work necessary to bring them to life.”

This book is exactly like sitting down with a good friend and finding yourself in a conversation so good that you completely lose track of time.

If you are a parent and your children are over the age of eighteen, you know that your relationship with them shifts radically as they become adults. If you’ve raised your children to be independent thinkers, guess what? They will think and act independently, sometimes making choices that cause pain and confusion. Mary does a terrific job of helping parents remain grounded in their faith as they figure out how to love and support their sons and daughters in this new season. Her love for and knowledge of Scripture is very evident throughout. (Note: I would not have included the word “Wayward” in the title. Mary does not focus on adult kids who have made poor choices, but rather ones whose lives look different than what we might have imagined.)

I always feel that personal stories are the best recommendation for what people believe. Dan Graves gives us many prominent scientists who were at the same time sincere Christian believers.

They lived over many centuries and worked in various scientific fields, making some of the most important discoveries. Some were Catholics; some were protestants. I think this is a very readable book, and if anyone ever tries to say that a good scientist can’t be a Christian or the other way around, it provides complete proof that this is untrue.

There is a misconception that reading Buddhist scripture would somehow steer the reader away from God, but given the chance, it does exactly the opposite, actually strengthening the reader's existing faith (whatever it may be). Many of the people who attend my public talks, discussions, and Q&A’s, jokingly refer to themselves as “Recovering Catholics” in search of deeper meaning, and this book beautifully bridges the gap between traditions, highlighting how compatible the two practices can be with one another.  

This book was published in 1992, prior to the recent revolution in our understanding of Jewish and Christian origins, but no book has done more to revolutionize my own understanding of Jewish and Christian origins than this one. What is so important about this book is not any specific fact or revelation, but rather the framework that Margaret Barker establishes for understanding the complex development of Jewish concepts of divinity. Barker shows how the polytheistic roots of Semitic religion led to ongoing turmoil within ancient Judaism and interpretations of the scriptures in ways that indicated there were two or more divine beings, not one.

In Doing What Comes Spiritually, Drescher walks the reader through detailed descriptions of each of the fruits of the spirit and explains how they are the fruit of a proper surrender to God’s will and can not be obtained any other way.

This contains many worthy points and is a great addition to any Christian bookshelf.

Talal Asad’s genealogical analysis of the concept of religion in Western thought is a classic.

Asad, a Saudi-born anthropologist, proposed that it was the unique product of Western modernity and secularism to perceive religious discourse in the public arena as a disguise for power, which created a bias towards it in public life. This bias was then internationalized through the transposition of an inherently ethnocentric concept of religion.

Among other insights, Asad stressed the need to approach religious traditions in reference to the experience of the believers and the texts or traditions they invoke in their everyday life. A seminal piece of work that can provide a point of reference for anyone working to decolonize religious studies.