This is my 7th year of birthday reading lists! (You can see the others here: 30 // 31 // 32 // 33 // 34 // 35 // 36). My top non-fiction picks for this year are Divine Conspiracy, Try Softer, Paradox Lost, Prayer in the Night, The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and The Making of Biblical Womanhood.
And my top fiction reads were A Place to Hang the Moon and Project Hail Mary. Also, this list feels a little bit strange to be so heavily non-fiction, because I also read over 20 Newbery books which were nearly all middle grade fiction, but those reviews are other places (including one of my all time favorite books The Graveyard Book). Also, I re-read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows two of my very favorite books of all time. So my fiction / non-fiction ratio was a bit more balanced than this list suggested; it’s always a good idea to re-read Harry Potter!
Parenting
1. Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Kids Create and Sustain Life-long Joy by Edward M. Hallowell M.D. My husband’s cousin’s wife Jenni recommended this book to me. It’s older, 2003 (nearly a classic) and ironically, most of the studies of children are about people my age, but I really enjoyed it. Hallowell, a clinical psychiatrist, is cheerful and encouraging and practical. He sets out five steps (connection, play, practice, mastery, and recognition) that are helpful to keep in mind that kids cycle through. I think what I honestly loved about this book is that it made me feel encouraged as a parent: keep loving your kids! It’s not overtly Christian, but Hallowell talks about going to church throughout the book.
2. The 6 Needs of Every Child: Empowering Parents and Kids through the Science of Connection by Amy Elizabeth Olrick and Jeffrey Olrick. This is a brand new book that in many ways reminded of Hallowell’s five steps. The Olricks use a compass metaphor to talk about finding your way with your child (delight, support, boundaries, protection, comfort, and equipping). This book is trying hard to push back against a kind of Christian culture that is really heavy on complete obedience and compliance, trying to integrate faith and current understandings of developmental psychology (Jeffrey Olrick is a working therapist and has done high level attachment theory research). I thought the science of this book was great, but a lot of the practical suggestions felt like they worked for older kids and families with a different temperament than mine. (Although the idea of taking a walk with my grade school age kids as a way to help them talk seems like exactly the kind of thing I’d like to do!) I think it might be a book that I’ll revisit in a couple of years. One of my very favorite parenting books by Kim John Payne has a helpful scheme of governor/gardener/guide to talk about how kids at different stages need different kinds of boundaries. This felt more like a book for the gardener/guide stage of parenting.
3. The Yes Brain: How to Cultivate Courage, Curiosity, and Resilience in Your Child by Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson. This is the third parenting book by this dynamic duo, and I think their most practical and straightforward. They address the question of how to help our kids stay in their “yes brain” where they are able to take on challenges and cooperate with others. It has four practical areas (balance, resilience, insight, and empathy) in which they talk through what it might look like to coach a child (and yourself!) through to help stay in that happy zone. I liked their two previous books, but I think this one might be my favorite because it’s more narrow in focus, but really they are all worth reading.
Non-Fiction Health/Brain-Body Connection/Self Help
4. Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival Mode–and into a Life of Connection and Joy by Aundi Kolber. After I listened to this book on Audible, I bought hard copies for three different people in my life. It is a compassionate, wise, and scientifically-based but also a beautiful example of the integration of faith and learning, as well as being a compelling memoir. It’s a bit like going to the first couple sessions with a good therapist (although, not a replacement; go see a good therapist!).
5. Mom Genes: Inside the New Science of Our Ancient Maternal Instinct by Abigail Tucker. This is part popular science, part memoir, and inspired a whole blog post earlier this year: Valuing A Mother’s Work: 7 Books that Helped Me See Motherhood in New Ways. It explores the science of mothering, what we do and don’t share with mammalian mothers, from cradling babies in our left arm, to having instincts versus flexibility (humans have a lot of flexibility, we can raise young in the Arctic, the arid deserts, humid rainforests, and in concrete jungles).
6. Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor. This was such a fascinating read about different kinds of breath work, and their connection to history and science and the body. My biggest takeaway was this: whenever you can, remember to slow your breathing down to 5.5 seconds in and 5.5 seconds out. For me this works out to saying the Jesus Prayer (Lord, Jesus Christ Have Mercy on Me a Sinner) once on the inhale and again on the exhale.
7. Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting by Lisa Genova. This is Lisa Genova’s second book (her first was Still Alice, a fictional but highly accurate account of early on-set Alzheimer’s) giving people a solidly scientific, readable, and comforting description of how memory works and what kind of forgetting is normal. (Or as she describes it, forgetting where you parked your car is normal, forgetting you have a car is not.) My main takeaways from this book are you cannot remember what you do not pay attention to, and my memory is not as accurate as I think, so when I disagree with my husband about how something happened: chances are very good we are both wrong.
8. The Back Mechanic by Dr. Stuart McGill. This super practical book is about ways to move to improve back pain (i.e. don’t bend over, squat down) and exercise to increase back strength (side planks, a modified roll up, and a dog/bird). I’ve been doing the main three exercises most days and trying to squat more than forward bend, and my back feels a lot better.
9. Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. This is a great kick in the pants to pay attention to the way you use your phone (and especially the social media, email, and texting notifications) and some small practical suggestions that you can pick and choose from to make your life a little bit calm and focused. They suggest that you pick an important thing you want to do that day (a “highlight”), that you focus in (or “laser) on that, make sure you have enough energy to do it (“energize,”), and then later consider (“reflect” on) how it went: highlight, laser, energize, reflect. There are more extreme ideas (like making your phone essentially a dumb phone by taking a lot of apps off) and easier ones like setting a visible timer, but the book is just filled with things you can try. It’s probably worth a re-read every couple years!
Memoir
10. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb. This book reminded me a great deal of the experience of first watching my mother go to school and do all the practicums for becoming a therapist as a second career, talking to my therapist mother-in-law about her 30+ years of being a therapist, and of course my own experiences with therapy throughout my life. There are practical take-aways, for sure, but it’s also just a great story where you are rooting for people to make it and get better. (It’s not a Christian book. It’s not a super graphic book, but just a heads up that there is hard stuff in there. I also read Dopamine Nation which was also an excellent book told from the perspective of a therapist about the science of dopamine in relationship to addiction –including phones and social media– but had some very graphic stuff in it, especially the first chapter, which if you’re sensitive I’d suggest that chapter you skim or skip altogether.)
11. Blessed are the Nones by Stina Kielsmeier-Cook. This was such a moving memoir about a Wheaton couple a few years ahead of us. (We don’t know them personally, but a mutual friend recommended the book, and someone from our wedding popped up in the middle of it, so it felt very close.) The husband, a scientist, loses his faith through a process of deconstruction that is likely a more common story than I’d like to think, but wants to stay married and fully engaged in loving his wife and raising their children. The author finds an unlikely community of nuns in her neighborhood around the same time, and weaves this story of her own journey in an unexpected landscape of belief.
12. Share Your Stuff. I’ll Go First.: 10 Questions to Take Your Friendships to the Next Level by Laura Tremain. I have loved Laura Tremain since I got to know her work from one of my favorite podcasts Sorta Awesome where she used to be a co-host. Her memoir is organized around questions that you can ask friends to help you get to know each other well. She is a great story teller with a unique story and a true passion in facilitating communication through vulnerability and story-telling. Within her bigger story is a story of coming to faith (through Bible camp) and also deconstructing her faith to where I’m not sure if she would still use the label Christian necessarily (she didn’t explicitly say where she was at the end, I imagine because she feels like she is still growing and that labels aren’t very important). But her Oklahoma to Hollywood story with a heart for connecting women in friendship is worth the read.
Non-Fiction
13. Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane. This can hardly be classified as memoir (all of his books are difficult to categorize), but a typically amazing Robert MacFarlane, gifted writer, English naturalist, and travel writer, in this book is playing a part-time linguist. MacFarlane collects lists of words about place- think names for specific kinds of hills, valleys, rivers, bogs, and moors. So the book is part glossary, and that part of the audio book put me to sleep (in the best possible way, like a lullaby of beautiful old words ) and part narrative about people who love very specific places and aspects of nature, next to essays about why words for things matter. If we do not have words for something, do we know it, can we love it, can we value it enough to protect it? It’s probably not the first Robert MacFarlane book I’d suggest you start with (The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot is a good one for that), but if you already loved and read his other works, you’ll not be disappointed. The audiobook was excellent.
14. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren. This was such a beautiful book, sort of a reflection on one of my favorite prayers from the BCP compline: (I’ve written a little bit about it in this post: A Simple Prayer for the End of the Day: Jim and June Young’s Evening Prayer). Tish Harrison Warren is a priest in our diocese, and a few years ahead of me, so I trust her wisdom like a mentor calling back to me from just around the bend. (Although this particular book is written after two miscarriages and the death of her father, so I hope that is not exactly what I have ahead of me.) I don’t know how I missed reading her first book, but it’s definitely one I want to read soon.
Biography
15. C. S. Lewis — A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet by Alister McGrath. This is a very human portrait of CS Lewis, based on the newly available published correspondence. I did feel like I could imagine his experience as a professor more clearly after reading it. Other CS Lewis scholars tend to feel that this biography is harsh in its interpretations of his romantic relationships. It certainly seems that they are complex and difficult to summarize. Overall, there is a bit of sense that this book is taking part in a scholarly conversation that is above the average CS Lewis lover’s typical level of interest, especially in pinning down the exact date of CS Lewis’ conversion, which it seems like Lewis himself later seems to have gotten wrong.
16. Becoming Dallas Willard: The Formation of a Philosopher, Teacher, and Christ Follower by Gary W. Moon. After reading two of the big works by Dallas Willard and watching a handful of his talks, I really enjoyed listening to this biography. I especially loved how the biography situated Dallas Willard as a child of the Great Depression (for example his clearly remembering electricity coming to his home), and the explanation of his professional philosophical studies. I cannot say that I really understand the difference between analytic and continental philosophy, or what exactly phenomenology is, but I do now know that they are important movements within 20th century philosophy. This book made me love Dallas Willard even more.
Spiritual Formation
17. The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. I had heard of Dallas Willard for years before I finally picked a book of his up. (For some reason, I always got him confused with the Dallas Theological Seminary.) People often talked about the way he talked about the Kingdom of God as being very similar to NT Wright’s discussion of the Kingdom of God. I started with Divine Conspiracy and read Renovation of the Heart right afterwards, so it’s hard for me to keep them apart in my head, but they were both amazing: easily some of the best books I’ve read. They are demanding (he’s smart and wants to you keep up), encouraging (he clearly thinks Jesus loves you deeply and that the Kingdom of God is available to you right now), and inspiring (practical ways to become more like Jesus). They are both books I know that I’ll return to again and again.
18. Soul Keeping: Caring for the Most Important Part of You by John Ortberg. This book is mostly a book about Dallas Willard! John Ortberg has the most wonderful stories about his friend and mentor Dallas, and then goes on to unpack much of Dallas Willard’s teachings on the soul and its care. It’s definitely easier to read and quicker than plowing through Divine Conspiracy and Renovation of the Heart . My favorite part was, no surprise, the stories about Dallas Willard.
19. The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World by John Mark Comer. This is another book inspired by…Dallas Willard! Actually, also John Ortberg: the quote comes from a conversation between John Ortberg and Dallas Willard in which Dallas Willard gave John Ortberg the advice to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry.” An ode to the practice of Sabbath, as well as general practices of solitude, silence, and using our phones a whole lot less, this book is a big exhale and reminder that we often are our worst when we hurry and our best when we go at the pace of love.
20. Paradox Lost: Uncovering the True Identity in Christ by Catherine Skurja. My mom passed on this book to me, and I absolutely loved it. Catherine (Katie) Skurja is a marriage and family therapist and spiritual director and this is a book that is just filled with the most thoughtful analogies and examples of how to understand the Christian life, especially seemingly conflicting aspects. It’s hard to summarize well, but she really has a knack for finding the perfect image to capture paradoxes of faith–the members of the Trinity, the lion and lamb aspects of Jesus, our identity as beloved images of Christ who are fallen and sinful. It’s a high level book, but really, really good. I loved it.
21. Revelation for Everyone by NT Wright . A friend and I were talking about the book of Revelation (I know, strange, right?) and I thought I’d lend her our copy of Revelation for Everyone. Then I thought I probably should read it first, if she wanted to talk about it. And about halfway through I found a note in my own handwriting, so evidently I had read it a few years ago. Still, it was awesome and wonderful. I think that the whole series is so good (the whole New Testament in an original translation with engaging devotional reflections by the wonderful theologian and first century historian NT Wright.). After spending much of the last two years listening back through the Bible Project Podcast it was interesting to see the connections between their work and his book. He also has a Lent for Everyone which I read last spring for Lent (Mark Year B), that I think really was for the first time, and that was great as well.
22. A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. I thought that this book was going to be about being a Christian for a long time…but it was not quite that. This is a book that was originally published in 1980. Eugene Peterson took the 15 Psalms of Ascent (120-134) and rendered them in a modern paraphrase with a reflection afterwards on each. I do remember thinking while reading it, wow this guy really likes to use The Message. which I realized after a moment, well, of course he does, that’s HIS translation of the the Bible. Actually, this book was the beginning of that very large project of creating that contemporary paraphrase of the Bible. When I was in high school, The Message was very popular, but has I think become a little less popular now, but reading A Long Obedience in the Same Direction made me think I need to pull out The Message and use it more. It’s so powerful, and this is a great start to reading the Psalms.
23. Bread and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter. This is a day by day devotional for the seasons of Lent and the beginning of Easter. It has readings from ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary Christian writers (like CS Lewis, G.K. Chesterton , Philip Yancey, Frederick Buechner, Madeleine L’Engle , Henri J. M. Nouwen, Kathleen Norris). Sometimes, the collection felt uneven, some readings were very short, others rather long, some were amazing and others were hard to understand. But overall, it was a good reading experience (and the one for Advent (Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas was similar).
Prayer
24. Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer by CS Lewis. This book was written to be a companion to CS Lewis’ very popular Screwtape Letters. (In Screwtape, it’s a senior demon giving instructions to a lower demon, so it’s full of irony and satire, but in Letters to Malcolm it’s a fictional friend Malcolm to whom—a somewhat fictional– Lewis is writing.) Like most of Lewis’ work it is filled with amazing thoughts, and references to things above my pay grade in terms of philosophical or scholarly conversations. But so many of the images and encouragements are really wonderful, and worth revisiting every few years. I’d highly recommend it.
25. The Open Door: Entering the Sanctuary of Icons and Prayer by Frederica Mathewes-Green. This beautiful little volume was on my parents’ bookshelf, and I borrowed it on our visit to their house and then took it back home. If you’ve never read about Eastern Orthodoxy (or even if you have!) Frederica Mathewes-Green is such a gentle and wise guide. In this book she takes readers through a series of icons and the liturgical season they would be prominently displayed in the center isle of an Orthodox church. Icons are full of imagery that is really helpful for someone to unpack for you. My other favorite book that is similar in style (and comes with beautiful full color prints of the icons as well is Behold the Beauty of the Lord: Praying with Icons by Henri Nouwen.
26. The Praying Life by Paul E. Miller. This popular Protestant book was full of beautiful stories and encouragements to pray. My favorite parts of the book were the stories of his children, especially his autistic daughter Kim. I thought the first chapters of the book were particularly powerful, but I also really appreciated the practical suggestion at the end of using index cards as a system to pray for people. (I now have cards for Evan, Jackson, and Lily that I use as a bookmark in my Divine Hours prayer book, and they help me to pray for them every morning.)
27. Prayer our Deepest Longing by Ronald Rolheiser. John Mark Comer quoted Fr. Rolheiser so often that I had to find a book by this Catholic priest. This little book on prayer did not disappoint. Clearly written from a place of deep wisdom and experience of prayer, it was encouraging and insightful. I have recommended it to many people after I read it and cannot wait to read more by him.
History
28. The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth by Beth Allison Barr. This book was so good, and it was also deeply meaningful to me. With an ability to be both a level-headed historian as well as a compelling storyteller telling her own very upsetting story, I though Beth Allison Barr struck an important balance in her book. As a history professor whose area of study and teaching focuses on medieval women, Beth Allison Barr brought a lot of familiar names back from my own graduate school days: Judith Bennett, Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Allyson Poska (authors of some of my favorite books from grad school) as well as contemporary theologicans writing about women in the church today (like Lucy Peppiatt, Kevin Giles, and Scot McKnight).
29. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Oh this book. It’s an important but really difficult book to read because of the horrible things that 20th century Christian leaders have done and said that the author has dug up in the book. It is a book that will make you really mad. I also think that Kristin Kobes Du Mez was really mad when she wrote it, and that comes through. I think her evidence was so strong she could have taken a more neutral narrative voice. I think that some of the people that she would really hope to reach might be more turned off by the tone of her analysis and summary. (Or at least I have talked to a few who have been.) But I am glad that I read it, and it made me think about evangelical cultural and history in new ways.
Fiction
30. The Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds. I read this quick and powerful free verse read as a companion to the Newbery book The Crossover (also a free verse novel about a young African American boy.) This book felt more YA to me with a 15 year old protagonist contemplating whether to take revenge on the boy who shot (he thinks) his brother. There is a good deal of talk of violence and some language. With a nod to A Christmas Carol, Will encounters the ghosts of men (and a girl) from his family and neighborhood who have been killed in revenge murders or drive-by shootings. The whole novel takes place in sixty seconds (it’s takes 103 minutes to listen to the audio book) as Will takes an elevator ride down and makes a decision.
31. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. This is such a fun book! The premise is that a man without a memory wakes up and finds himself on a spaceship (and he is not an astronaut). He slowly figures out his mission and remembers how he came to be there. It’s tough to talk more about the book without giving away spoilers, so I won’t. But if you were a fan of The Martian (or its lovely film adaptation) you’ll not be disappointed with this book. The audiobook is great. And there is a lot less swearing than The Martian. (But still a little bit of language, so just a heads up on who you listen around.)
Middle Grade Fiction
32. Rainbow Valley by LM Montgomery. I slowly am making my way through the Anne books, and Rainbow Valley and Rilla of Ingleside were just as delightful as the previous four. They are the perfect thing to fall asleep to. Somehow LM Montgomery is both able to observe really difficult and real things, and yet make things turn out in the end in a way that’s comforting and encouraging. There is a great deal less Anne in these book, a lot more children both her own and those of the newly-widowed pastor in town (the Manse children), but they’re fun all the same.
33. A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus. Sarah McKenzie from The Read Aloud Revival highly recommended this new book, and it did not disappoint. (Her recommendations are to be trusted!) It has WWII London evacuee children placed in the English Countryside setting (a la The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and The War that Saved My Life) with a set of kind of siblings working together and love of books (a la The Penderwicks and The Little Princess). If nothing else it could be read for a delightful list of classic pre 1950’s children’s literature. It’s heart warming and delightful.
34. A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck. This was a prequel to a Newbery book, and just as fun as A Year Down Yonder —and you can read my extended thoughts on both books over in that Newbery post. Richard Peck is a master of creating a collection of humorous chapters with dynamic characters that are loosely linked together through setting. Plus it has an amazing grandma.
35. Pine Island Home by Polly Horvath. Evan saw this book on a kindle deal for fans of The Penderwicks and got it for me. It does have a very great set of sisters, like the Penderwicks, but who are living without a guardian, sort of Boxcar children-style, in the home of the Great Aunt who died just days before she was to receive them. It was fun, and sad, and a solid read.
36. Red Sails to Capri by Ann Weil. My sister-in-law passed this book along to me. I think it’s a little hard to figure out the tone of the book on the first read through, but it’s supposed to be very funny. It has a mystery in it that I won’t spoil, but if you want to take a little mental vacation to Italy, it’s great. It has lots of colorful characters and beautiful Italian island settings.
37. A Tree for Peter by Kate Seredy. People have been recommending this book to me for years. At first I thought that I got a copy of it, but actually got a copy of a picture book called Peter’s Tree by Bernadette Watts, which has absolutely beautiful illustrations and but not a story that I really loved. (I got it for Lily for her birthday, and there is a sister named Lily who is really mean in the book.) But eventually I realized that I had gotten the wrong book. I was still a little hesitant because I had read one Kate Seredy book, The White Stag which won the Newbery in 1938, and is honestly one of my least favorite Newberies. But, I finally got the actual A Tree for Peter and I liked it a whole lot more than White Stag or Peter’s Tree. It’s a lovely Christmas read. It’s starts out a little bleak and might be kind of sappy or heavy handed for some later on, but I thought it was just as lovely as everyone (for years!) has been telling me.
What were your favorite reads of 2021?