you know you're a nerd when...

a list of 50 books provides you with material for reminiscing.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: "Few people have accused evangelicalism of being an intellectual movement—but now we feel bad about it, at least."
(Someday, when I'm in charge of evangelicalism, everyone will think it's for nerds. Until then...)

Desiring God: "Who expected a Calvinist Baptist to redeem hedonism for Christ?"
(Who, indeed?)

The Cross and the Switchblade: "Amazing things started happening when, in 1958, a country preacher arrived—Bible in hand and Holy Spirit in heart—in the ghettos of New York City. Christian Retailing reports that 'more than 50 million copies are in print in 40-plus languages of the book that gave birth to the ministry of Teen Challenge.'"
(I read this book over and over, in high school.)

All We're Meant To Be: "Scanzoni and Hardesty outlined what would later blossom into evangelical feminism. For better or for worse, no evangelical marriage or institution has been able to ignore the ideas in this book."
(One of the most exciting books I read in undergrad.)

A Wrinkle In Time: "Madeleine L'Engle told CT that when she tried to be a Christian with her "mind only," she ceased to believe. But then she realized that God was a storyteller. Her 1962 classic modeled the power of imagination to energize belief."
(Still on my bookshelf, alongside the rest of the series.)

The Cost of Discipleship: "'Although cheap grace has entered into the common vocabulary of evangelicals,' says theologian Roger Olson, 'the full weight of Bonhoeffer's exploration of true Christian discipleship has yet to be borne by many of us.' Translated into English in 1949, Bonhoeffer's classic remains a devastating critique of comfortable Christianity."
(Not on my bookshelf beside Life Together, because I loaned it to a friend and never got it back. Someday, when I have endless wads of moolah to spend at the bookstore...)

The Divine Conspiracy "With this call to discipleship, 'Willard joins the line of Thomas a Kempis, Luther, Fenelon, Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, Zinzendorf, Wesley, Frank Laubach, Dorothy Day, and other master apprentices of Jesus,' wrote Books and Culture editor John Wilson in a review, praising the University of Southern California professor's "philosophical depth" and 'penetrating understanding of Scripture.'"
(I got this book for Christmas one year as a teenager; my mom asked me to pick a book out of a catalog, and I chose one that looked like a mystery. Divine love is a mystery, right?)

What's So Amazing About Grace?: "With trademark self-deprecation, Yancey wrote: 'Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it, and I am one of those people. I think back to who I was—resentful, wound tight with anger, a single hardened link in a long chain of ungrace learned from family and church. Now I am trying in my own small way to pipe the tune of grace. I do so because I know... that any pang of healing or forgiveness or goodness I have ever felt comes solely from the grace of God.'"
(This book usually gets stocked in the inspirational section of the Christian bookstore, which I don't visit often. I loved it, though.)

The God Who Is There: "'This book, and its companion volumes, accomplished something startling and necessary: It made intellectual history a vital part of the evangelical mental landscape, opening up the worlds particularly of art and philosophy to a subculture that was suspicious and ignorant of both,' writes John Stackhouse, professor of theology and culture at Regent College."
(Also not on my bookshelf, but should be. The Mark of the Christian is, though, and I'd gladly loan it out even if I knew it wouldn't be coming back- Schaeffer is that good.)

I've read other books on the list, but these are my favorites. When I try to explain to my ESR friends that yes, evangelicals do have scholars and novelists, and we're not just a bunch of illiterate hobos on the religion train, these are some of the folks I'm talking about.