This is my 10th year of doing birthday book posts! (You can see the past years here: 30 // 31 // 32 // 33 // 34 // 35 // 36 // 37 // 38 // 39). I have found that between listening to more podcasts and trying to list more books (40 is in fact 25% more than 30!) It was harder to get to the number 40. So you’ll see that I put a few rereads from my childhood and a few books on the list that I had rather mixed feelings about (mainly in the adult novel section).
One thing I did start doing this year was trying to be disciplined about reading during lunch (as opposed to being on my phone). I tried to read classic books that I knew I’d like. I’m amazed how you really can get through more than you’d think in 20 minutes a day.
Here were my top 8 books of the year: My two favorite classics were Little Men by Louisa May Alcott and Heidi by Johanna Spyri. My two favorite middle-grade books were The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt and The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers. My favorite two memoirs were The Shaping of a Life: A Spiritual Landscape by Phyllis Tickle and It Wasn’t Roaring it Was Weeping: Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories by Lisa Jo-Baker. My two favorite Biblical Studies books were Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts by Lucy Peppiatt and The Lost World of Genesis by John H. Walton.
Novels
1. Works of Mercy by Sally Thomas. This book by Catholic writer Sally Thomas reminded me a lot of Incredibly Bright Creatures, although instead of an octopus, there is an older immigrant woman cleaning a local Catholic parish. It’s a sad book. In many ways, if I had known how sad it really was, I might not have tackled it, although the narrator is somewhat detached from that sadness (and she does have some growth in that area as the novel goes along). I’d say it was a “Literary” novel, and it had a somewhat hopeful ending, although I wish there had been another chapter with more concrete joy than just the hints we get. I’m glad that I read it, and I thought it was beautifully written.
2. The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton. I read this along with my husband Evan who was re-reading it for his book club. I really want to be the sort of person who loves GK Chesterton. I enjoy a good Chesterton quote immensely. (He was so wise and jolly and pithy!) But I have found that while I appreciate the brilliance and depth of Chesterton, I have found his longer form works difficult to enjoy. This book was amazing and yet, I wouldn’t say that I really enjoyed it. (Maybe I would on a re-read?) I am not really a mystery lover, and there is a dream-like quality to this book that made it not my favorite. So even though so many people I love and respect love it, it’s still not my favorite. I am glad I read it, and there are a lot of profound images that have stuck with me.
3. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. A time travel romance/spy thriller in which a man from a doomed 1845 expedition to the Artic is saved and brought to the not-too-distant future. This is another book I still have many mixed feelings about, although for very different reasons! First off, it is dark and an open-door romance. For sure, it’s a book for adults. These are two things that normally make me not like a book (or even pick up if I know about it beforehand!). And those were the parts that I did not like about the book. But there was a lot about the book I did enjoy–the history, the romance, the friendships, and the unraveling mystery. I read it very quickly and thought about it long afterward. It presents a lot of questions about history and time, about what makes us ourselves. (I think it’s an example of newer genre of Climate Fiction.)
4. Little Men by Louisa May Alcott. This book was a delight. My very favorite Louisa May Alcott book is probably still Eight Cousins, but I loved grown-up Jo in this book. I can see why this is a favorite book among Charlotte Mason homeschool moms–it casts such a beautiful vision of how education can be full of bringing up children who grow in virtue and love the natural world.
5. Love & Saffron by Kim Fay. This was a sweet epistolary novel that had a lot of food and fun, friendship and culture in it…until it broke my heart with its sad ending. I still enjoyed it, but I felt a little taken in by the promise of something light. But I have found myself thinking about it long afterwards. My favorite epistolary novels are: Daddy-Long-Legs and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. (Also 84, Charing Cross Road and Attachments.)
Biblical Studies & Spiritual Formation
6. Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women: Fresh Perspectives on Disputed Texts by Lucy Peppiatt. I did a lot of my reading about Christian egalitarianism in and immediately following college, so I found this recent volume so fun to see how since I’ve been really engaged in the scholarship, new things have emerged. I loved the tone of this book, encouraging and full of the conviction that Jesus and the Bible love women and love to see women furthering the Gospel and following the Holy Spirit’s call on their lives.
7. Practicing the Way: Be with Jesus. Become like him. Do as he did. by John Mark Comer. I’m a big John Mark Comer fan. One of the best parts of John Mark Comer is that he reads wonderful books (especially those by Dallas Willard) and makes them accessible and understandable to people who might not pick up the heavier spiritual classics. I thought the first section of this book on spiritual formation was particularly worthwhile.
8. Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott. I love to read a good Anne Lamott book. This tiny book is not a full treatise on prayer. It is not everything I think is important about prayer. But I enjoyed her reflections on the three big prayers: Help! Thanks! Wow! She is such a good writer, and she gives so many people permission to begin where they are, to be irreverent and earnest and messy. I’m so grateful for her work.
9. The Lost World of Genesis by John H. Walton. I never got to take a class with Dr. Walton at Wheaton, but I have a fond memory of him. His son Josh was friends with my husband Evan, and after Evan graduated and came to visit me my senior year when were engaged, the Waltons graciously let us camp out in their living room one afternoon. I have a sweet memory of Dr. and Mrs. Walton sitting at the computer together, Dr. Walton saying aloud what he wanted to write and Mrs. Walton thinking about it and asking him questions and then writing down what he said. It was such a picture of warmth and partnership, of scholarship and Biblical thought. Since I am studying Genesis with my Women’s Bible Study this year, it was a great reason to finally read some of Dr. Walton’s work. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and it makes me want to read the rest of the series. If you want to love the Bible and take it on its own terms, set it into historical context, and understand the history of interpretation and Ancient Near Eastern context, it’s so helpful.
10. Prayer by Timothy Keller. This was my first Tim Keller book! Honestly, even though I enjoyed it, I don’t think it was a very representative book to start me out. It was more a book on what Luther, Calvin, and Augustine wrote about prayer. It was interesting, and I underlined a lot of wise things, but honestly, I found this 5 minute Q and A with Tim Keller even more helpful. His thoughtfulness and intellectual and theological rigor make me want to read other Tim Keller books that are more what he thinks, and less about Luther, Calvin, and Augustine.
11. Acts for Everyone vol 2 by NT Wright. This was a great book (I love all the books in this series!) that helped me prepare for my Women’s Bible study on Acts (We used Life-Change Acts by the Navigators, and I also listened to the Acts podcast episodes on the Naked Bible Podcast by Michael Heiser.) This second volume would also make a great pairing read alongside NT Wright’s Paul: A Biography that I read a few years ago.
12. Genesis for Everyone Vol 1 by John Goldingay. I have long loved the New Testament for Everyone by NT Wright, but this was my first time reading an Old Testament for Everyone by John Goldengay. I have used this to prepare for my church’s Bible study of Genesis in combination with John Walton’s NIV Commentary on Genesis and the Bible Project Classroom’s classes. Between the three of them, I feel like I’m getting a very good overview of the scholarship on the book of Genesis as well as practical application. I do like these books a lot, but I think that they feel slightly more progressive than the New Testament ones. That doesn’t bother me, but whereas I recommend the New Testament ones to everyone, I’d probably be more judicious about whom I recommend these to. But I definitely want to read more of this series for myself!
Memoir
13. Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir by Ina Garten. This was my first introduction to Ina Garten, and I thought it was so fun. I especially loved the first half of the book about her childhood and young adulthood. My favorite part was her talking about her camping through Europe. My parents also did that about 8 years after the Gartens, and I grew up hearing about that famous summer. I also loved hearing about Paris and her husband Jeffrey. It feels like eating a warm chocolate chip cookie (and getting her recipe for one!).
14. The Shaping of a Life: A Spiritual Landscape by Phyllis Tickle. This was one of my favorite books of the year! I love Phyllis Tickle. I love her Divine Hours prayer books. I love her church year reflections from her Farm in Lucy. So when a good friend of my mother’s passed this book on to me thinking I would like it, I was so excited. And it did not disappoint. Phyllis Tickle was born roughly the same time as my grandmothers, so it was fun to notice a few similarities to stories they had told me about their childhoods in these stories. But mostly, it was just a beautiful account of becoming a person who loves to pray by reflecting on the physical spaces in which she learned to pray.
15. It Wasn’t Roaring it Was Weeping: Interpreting the Language of Our Fathers Without Repeating Their Stories by Lisa Jo-Baker. I adore Lisa Jo-Baker, and one of my great sadnesses of the year was that her wonderful podcast Out of the Ordinary cohosted with another favorite of mine, Christie Purifoy, ended this year. But the last push of the podcast was to help launch this wonderful memoir out into the world. It is heavy and hard and wonderful and beautiful. It would be a great pairing with Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah, another memoir about growing up in South Africa.
Health and Wellness
16. Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well by Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. I have been listening to Gabrielle Lyon’s podcast for several years. I love her take on muscle-centric medicine and focusing on gaining muscle (rather than losing weight which often involves losing muscle and fat). Since I’m used to listening to the podcast, I did listen to the audiobook, although I think in many ways the physical book might be easier to read and refer back to. The big take aways are eat a lot of protein (1 gram per pound of ideal body weight a day) and lift weights (at least) 3xs a week.
17. Nutrivore by Sarah Ballantyne. For years, Sarah Ballantyne has been my number one source for all things nutrition. I was so sad a few years ago when she stopped her podcast to work on launching Nutrivore, but I think the end product is something worth all her time and attention. She began the Autoimmune Protocol but has become concerned about how people have become more and more restrictive on what they eat, veering into a kind of diet-culture orthorexia while thinking they are avoiding dangerous and harmful foods. As someone who has been really helped by her previous work, I was a little skeptical about this shift. But I also happily have been able to reintroduce some dairy, legumes, and nightshades into my diet this year, so I appreciate that as well. (I still cannot do gluten, raw onions, raw kale or raw Brussel sprouts–if you were wondering). I still am a big believer in doing an elimination diet, but I think reading Nutrivore is so helpful to guide you in the most important part of any diet: what you actually DO eat. (As opposed to what you don’t.) Eating a wide variety of whole foods is what gives you a wide variety of nutrients and the most robust and diverse microbiome.
18. Rethink Your Position: Reshape Your Exercise, Yoga, and Everyday Movement, One Part at a Time by Katy Bowman. I love Katy Bowman and her work so much. She has a way of explaining complicated things in a simple and straightforward way (often with stick figures) that helps you understand and want to make changes to the way you move your body. This book is one that I think I could re-read every few years and slowly incorporate more things. It can be overwhelming to try and change the way you hold your neck and bend over to pick things up. But understanding why, and slowly making changes and working on mobility and movement patterns is so important. Plus, getting this book from the library is a lot less expensive than physical therapy!
19. ROAR, Revised Edition: Match Your Food and Fitness to Your Unique Female Physiology for Optimum Performance, Great Health, and a Strong Body for Life by Stacy T. Sims PhD and Selene Yeager. Stacy Sims is the expert on female athletic training, and this book was packed with helpful ways to think about fueling your body (eat enough food, especially protein, but also carbs and fats) and train (lift heavy things) and problem solve recovery (she has some great suggestions on sleep). It’s probably aimed at a more serious athlete than I am, but her message that women are not small men, and they need to think about hormones from adolescence through menopause is particularly important.
Non-Fiction: Literacy & Homemaking
20. The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. I have heard about this book for years, and when I spotted it at little library I grabbed it and dove in. I was hoping that it would give me some tips for how to get good books into the hands of the middle schoolers I work with in the library. And in many ways it did, although it’s really focused on advocating for a free-reading based language arts curriculum or approach to middle school English. I did find her argument compelling, although I’m not a middle school ELA teacher, so I’m not sure I have a sphere to implement it. It has an appendix with what she found to be the most loved books by her sixth graders over the years, and I have a lot of new reading material from that.
21. Dyslexia and Spelling: Making Sense of it All by Kelli Sandman-Hurley. This was a book I found by putting in a search for “dyslexia” and “spelling” into Amazon, and then navigated my library’s interlibrary loan system to get a copy. In many ways it was profoundly helpful. It introduced me to the idea that dyslexic people need to use etymology and morphology to help them understand why words are spelled the way they are. (For example, why is there a silent “g” in the word sign? Because it is there in other forms of the word–the “g” is there like signature or signal.) In other ways, it opened up a big can of worms–how do you go about teaching kids the etymology and morphology of thousands of words? That is a question that I’m still trying to figure out. So stay tuned! But if you want to fall down the rabbit hole too, I’d recommend this resource page from learningaboutspelling.com.
22. How to Keep House While Drowning by KC Davis. Isn’t the title of this book wonderful? Anytime I mention it to my friends, they immediately wanted to know more! I will say I was hoping for a more practical approach. (Something more along lines of making sure you do the 3 D’s daily: Dishes, Dirty Laundry, and Dinner.) But this was more a mind-shift approach to making care tasks morally neutral (having a clean house is not a virtue and having a dirty house is not a sign of being a slothful or bad person) as well as an explanation of how neurodivergence and mental health struggles can make tending to home care tasks difficult. Honestly, it made me feel like the fact that I am on top of so much of our housework as a real accomplishment. It can be hard. It is real work. And getting it done takes a lot of executive function and energy. (I don’t know if that was her goal, to make me feel more virtuous about my doing laundry daily, but at least it helped me feel less guilty about how embarrassingly infrequently I change our bedsheets.) I will say KC Davis is pretty progressive, so if you are looking for a more conservative and practical approach to keeping house I’d recommend Flylady.net or her book Sink Reflections or the many youtube videos on her system or LikeMotherLikeDaughter.org’s The Reasonably Clean House or her book The Summa Domestica)
Middle Grade Novels & Children’s Books
23. The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams by Daniel Nayeri. I very much enjoyed Everything Sad is Untrue which was Daniel Nayeri’s story of growing up a refugee from Iran in Oklahoma. This book had somewhat of a similar feel. If you enjoyed that one, this seems like the sort of story that the main character in Everything Sad is Untrue would tell. A fairly quick read, 4 1/2 audio book (also narrated by Daniel Nayeri, an excellent narrator) about the Silk Road. It feels like it could be made into an animated movie with lots of action and comedy, and plenty of history. A delight.
24. The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt. Similar in tone to Wednesday Wars and Okay for Now (both books I love), this book has authentic middle school boy protagonists, tough but kind teachers, hard home situations, genuine friendships, a love of great art and science, big emotional swings, and great plotlines. It was just a really fantastic reading experience.
25. Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell. This book had gorgeous scenes, fun and quirky characters, and lots of whimsy and beauty. It was also somewhat lacking in overall plot and had some random swearing and potty references, but the ending scene is highly satisfying and every chapter was enjoyable. I’m looking forward to reading more of her books!
26. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright. Delightful. It’s a wonderful family tale of four children. A nearly perfect classic middle-grade book. I loved it. Four children from wonderful families had Saturday adventures with pooled allowance. Very much in the vein of Swallows and Amazons, The Penderwicks, and The Five Little Peppers.
27. The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney. My memory of this book was that it was utterly charming and made me long to be in a big poor family. Re-reading it allowed me to see that it definitely had wonderful moments like that, but it didn’t quite all hold up to my memory of it, even though the feel of it was still warm and wonderful.
28. The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh (In the vein of Elizabeth George Speare’s Calico Captive and Sign of the Beaver). This is such a tiny darling little book about Sarah Noble who travels with her pioneer father to build a house before the rest of her family joins them. When her father returns for her mother and siblings, Sarah stays with neighboring Native Americans she has befriended. This would make a very good pairing with Little House on the Prairie if you’re looking to balance that classic out with a more positive portrayal of Native Americans.
29. Amon’s Adventures: A Family Story for Easter by Arnold Ytreeide (Also Jotham’s Journey: A Storybook for Advent) This was our first Arnold Ytreeide book, although it seems like it is the fifth one in this series. (I do believe they are meant to be able to be read in various orders.) Later, we also read the first book, Jotham’s Journey, which is in the series for Advent. Both books have a lot of adventure and interesting and well-researched historical facts about Israel around the time of Jesus. Jotham’s Journey was more intense (a very bad, bad-guy who kept popping up unexpectedly) and it wasn’t really a comforting bedtime read. Amon’s Adventures was spread out over more chapters (Lent is longer than Advent) and overall we enjoyed that book more. But we’re looking forward to reading more of the Ytreeide Advent and Amon books in the future.
30. The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame. This is a delightful little 1898 short story by the author of Wind in The Willows. Originally a chapter in a collection of stories entitled Day Dreams, it became a movie in the 1940s and has had many wonderful illustrators create their own versions. The audiobook is less than an hour. It’s about a dragon who’d rather not battle but would rather read poems. The real reason I truly enjoyed this book, though, is that I finally have an answer to my friends who argue that dragons should always be evil characters in books because that’s how they are in all the classics: here is a classic with a good dragon.
31. Redwall by Brian Jacques. These were some of my very favorite books as a 6th grader. (Although, we did have a project to write to an author and I wrote Brian Jacques who did not, I’m sorry to say, take time to write me back a la Beverley Cleary’s Dear Mr. Henshaw). Evan devoured even more Redwall books than I did as a child, beginning around 4th grade. And now after we read the exciting adventure of the feasting and fighting forest creatures of Redwall Abbey, our 3rd grader Jackson can be found most days with one of the 20 Redwall series books in his hands.
32. The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Stewart. I was excited to share this modern children’s classic with my family. Although Evan was a little underwhelmed by it. He thought it was too long, lagged in the middle, and generally had an underdeveloped world and setting. He’s not wrong, necessarily, but I think the logic puzzles, the teamwork and found family, and the satisfying ending still make it a great read. My kids liked it a lot. Lily especially loved the physical gymnastics and energy of Kate Weatherall and Jackson loved all the puzzles and mysteries throughout the book.
33. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren. I had never read or watched any Pippi Longstocking, and yet I knew she was a zany girl with braids that stuck out and funny socks. My kids loved Pippi. It’s a quirky book. There are very funny parts, and as a parent, sort of curious parts about this vision of a little girl who doesn’t need parents. (Personally, I just skipped over the cannible references in the first couple chapters.) A friend of mine told me that she heard Astrid Lindgren had to give up a child (a la the movie Philomena), and this was the book she wrote about that baby to assure herself that her child was flourishing without her, although wikipedia says it was written for her daughter Karin when she was sick in bed as a child. My sister-in-law Candace said that they enjoyed Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter more than Pippi, and I’m looking forward to reading that one soon. Still overall, Pippi was a fun read-aloud that my kids loved.
34. Heidi by Johanna Spyri. This is arguably one of the most perfect children’s books of all time. It completely stood up to re-reading it as an adult. I love the mountains and the goats and the goat milk. I love the grumpy sunshine Grandfather, the pure-hearted Heidi, sweet Clara and her wise, wonderful Grandmother, and of course naughty Peter and his dear nearly toothless Granny. It was so fun to introduce the story to my kids and to hear Lily talk about how much she loved the moment when Clara walked. As an adult, I found Clara’s Grandmother’s explanations of prayer and how God works things out for good profoundly wise and theologically sound.
35. Ben and Me: An Astonishing Life of Benjamin Franklin by His Good Mouse Amos by Robert Lawson. This was a family read-aloud that I had read a long time ago as a child. I remember just loving it and thinking it was very funny and clever. It was much shorter than I remembered, but a lovely way for kids to get introduced to Ben Franklin and his inventions and role in American history.
36. The Moffats by Eleanor Estes. This is a book that I’ve heard about from a number of different places as a great book about a big family. Personally, I think that I liked her Ginger Pye a little bit more, although it was fairly similar. The Moffats is very episodic, with only a bit of an overarching plot. It’s enjoyable and fun, but didn’t quite live up to the hype for me and Evan. But the kids liked it a lot.
37. In a Certain Kingdom: Fairy Tales of Old Russia by Nicholas Kotar. Last year we checked out the picture book The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring by Ruth Sanderson. which was an adaptation of several Russian fairytales. So when my mom lent us In a Certain Kingdom from an Orthodox deacon and lover of fairytales, we were excited to dive in. It had a lot of strange and wonderful phrases and many stories of good Prince Ivan and unpredictable Baba Yaga.
38. Princess Tales Edited by Nora Kramer and by illustrated By Barbara Cooney. Lily loves a good princess fairytale, and this collection of classic (The Twelve Dancing Princesses) and unusual ones (The Practical Princess, The Princess and the Vagabond, Melisande, The Handkerchief, The Blackbird’s Song, Ricky-of-the-Tuft, The Son of the Baker of Barra) illustrated by the wonderful Barbara Cooney was such a treasure. Lily and I really enjoyed reading these on the nights the boys had soccer.
39. The Book of Dragons by E Nesbit. This is a collection of fairytales that all include a dragon. They are wildly different types of stories, some I liked more than others. A couple were very odd, but mostly I enjoyed. E. Nesbit is a master, and I cannot believe how many books she produced. Reading a Nesbit is always worth your time.
40. The Eyes and the Impossible by Dave Eggers. This was the year’s Newberry winner, so I have a whole post on it. And it really was a delightful animal tale, such a fun read on audiobook. Minus about 50 words, it’s nearly the perfect children’s book that most people will really enjoy (but read the caveats in my full post for the couple of sections you might want to skip or edit).
What were your favorite reads this year?