I approach new books warily. I have been burned so many times before.

I hate to admit this, because I do love a good bookstore, but I just can’t trust a book on first acquaintance, much less buy it. It galls me to spend the money on something that disappoints badly. It galls me to waste the time on words that let me down.

Anymore, nearly all my reading comes from the recommendations of others—that famous, elusive, non-monetizable “word of mouth.” Sometimes that is the literal words coming out of the mouth of a friend; other times the digital words of a podcast or email.

Presuming that you, too, have been burned by lousy books and would appreciate a trusted source, I’m starting this new segment of the Theology & a Recipe newsletter. In the two months between each of the regular issues, I’ll send you my picks in three categories: one theology book, one cookbook, and one novel. They may be new books; they’ll probably be old books; but one way or another, they’ll be worthy books.

So without further ado, here are my choices for January 2023!

Theology: Albert Camus and the Minister by Howard E. Mumma.

In the summer of 1994, at the end of our first year in Slovakia, my parents hosted a conference on Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue. An elderly Methodist minister attended and one day told us that, in the late 1950s while he was pastoring in Paris, Albert Camus turned up and asked him for baptism but died in the car crash before Mumma could decide what to do (Camus had been baptized as an infant in the Catholic church). I never knew quite what to make of this anecdote but repeated it anyway in my memoir, I Am a Brave Bridge. A reader wrote to tell me that, not only was this anecdote true, but Mumma had written an account of their theological conversations. This book is it! If you despair of the seeping nihilism of our world, read this and take heart that one of the best known chroniclers of alienation was found by the grace of Christ before his untimely death.

Cookbook: Recipes from a French Herb Garden by Geraldene Holt.

I lived in France nearly a year before I finally came around to French food. I’d vetted French cookbooks before (including Julia Child’s) but couldn’t get what the big deal was—probably because I couldn’t get quality ingredients or just plain couldn’t afford them. It was only during a restaurant meal during a trip outside of France that I began to realize what the big deal was: French restaurant food, even the ordinary kind, really was better that what was on offer elsewhere. But the translation into my kitchen didn’t happen until I found this lovely cookbook in a secondhand store. It’s not a systematic survey of the classics of French cuisine but a highly personal set of recipes organized around fresh herbs. The chicken with raspberry-tarragon vinegar is what made a convert out of me. Start there, but try also the choux ring with baby vegetables or the melon and nectarine soup.

Novel: The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas.

If you know Dumas at all, it’s for his Count of Monte Cristo—which is a fabulous book and well worth the (re)read. But I am immensely fond of this lesser known and considerably shorter book of his. The setting is Holland’s tulipomania, and more specifically the race to breed the first truly all-black tulip. But it also contains, along with the intrigue you’d expect from Dumas, one of the best and funniest accounts of what happens when a lover achieves his lady and then promptly shifts his attention to a new ambition for conquest. Let’s just say the lady manages with exemplary aplomb, a lesson to us all.