One of the things we're doing as we wrap up the year here at Sola Panel is to ask our contributors to share some of their highlights for the year from the world of reading and the web. Here's Nicole Starling's contribution:

1. Three best Christian books of 2009:

   • You Can Change by Tim Chester: I think Jean said it all in her review of this book in The Briefing earlier this year. I found it one of the most challenging and convicting books I've read in years.
   • Radical Womanhood by Carolyn McCulley: A helpful summary and explanation on feminism and its impact on our culture.
   • Finally Alive by John Piper: A book all about regeneration. It has lots of Bible—especially John and 1 John—and it's very encouraging!

2. Top stretching theological read of the year:

   • Well, what may be stretching for me, may not be stretching for others! In the context of doing some thinking about my own opportunities to promote the gospel and how they relate to my family, my church and my networks of Christian friends, I really enjoyed reading Peter O'Brien's Consumed by Passion and John Dickson's Mission-Commitment in Ancient Judaism and in the Pauline Communities. There were some fascinating agreements and disagreements, with lots to chew over and plenty of application to my own life and circumstances.

3. Best fiction of 2009:

   • The Guernsey Literary and Potato peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows: Quirky, original and charming. It's set in World War II in Guernsey, and is written as a series of letters. This is a great holiday read!!

4. Best non-theological non-fiction of 2009:

   • Getting Real: Challenging the Sexualisation of Young Girls by Melinda Tankard Reist: A book written for the non-Christian market about the way girls and women are objectified by corporations, the media and the sex industry. As they say on commercial current affairs TV, a book no parent can afford to miss!

5. Favourite Matthias Media release of the year:

   • Without a doubt, it has to be Right Side Up by Paul Grimmond (AUS | US). I just gave this to a mum at school who has very recently started coming to church. It was great to be able to give her a book that is so relevant to her at the moment.

6. Best website(s) discovered this past year:

   • ProWomanProLife: A Canadian pro-life website written by a team of women.
   • The Ground War: Tim Adeney's blog, which has lots of great stuff about everyday theological ethics.
   • Plus here's a shameless plug for a blog that a couple of friends and I have started recently. It's called ‘in tandem: a blog for ministry wives’.

7. Three best sermons or other audio downloads heard this year (individual talks or series; could be from preachers you hear locally, and not just the overseas heroes):

   • I admit I'm a bit biased here, but honestly I think the most memorable and challenging sermon of the year for me was one preached by my husband, Dave. He gave a couple of talks as part of a brief series our church did on what the Bible says about our homes. His talk ‘Home as mission field and mission Base’ encouraged us to see how our homes fit into the mission of the gospel, and to view them as mission fields and mission bases (Download the MP3).
   • John Piper's series on the Psalms ‘Thinking and feeling with God’.
   • Tim Keller's series called ‘The Fellowship of Grace’, which was a series from Luke 15 that relates to his book The Prodigal God.

8. Most memorable article(s) you've read this year:

   • ‘Trusting in the dark: Some biblical reflections on depression and anxiety’ by Paul Grimmond (Briefing #371)
   • ‘Welcome to wherever you are’ by Carl Trueman
   • ‘Women, awkwardness and one to one’ by Isobel Lin (Briefing #372)
   • ‘Making singleness better’ by Tim Adeney (Briefing #368).

9. Book of the year and why:

   • My book of the year was John Piper's The Pleasures of God. I know it was first published 18 years ago, but I only read it for the first time this year. It's the biggest kind of big picture stuff that you can imagine, with implications for every detail of life.

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