Well, 2020 hasn’t been great for blogging, but it’s been pretty good for reading. 🙂 Here are short reviews of some of my favorites: books from four of my five categories for the Schole Sisters 5 x 5 Challenge (there wasn’t a stand-out for the fifth category of Plays), as well as my favorite novels.
Educational Philosophy
All the books I read for this category were good, but The Intellectual Life by Sertillanges resulted in many pages of quotes in my commonplace book and a blog series. It was a book I’d owned by put off reading for years, and as I said in my first post of the series:
…it’s definitely a worthwhile read if you can take the principles he’s expounding and apply them to your life, even if you’re not his ideal of an “intellectual”.
I know it is one I should re-read sometime, as I will get much more from it. For my 2021 5×5 Challenge, I’m broadening the category to Philosophy in general, but hope that at least one of those books will be educational philosophy (I should finish The Liberal Arts Tradition 😉 ).
The Christian and Culture
Hands-down the best read in this category was Onward: Engaging the Culture without Losing the Gospel by Russell Moore. My sister gave a copy to my husband for Christmas several years ago, and I wish I’d read it earlier (my daughter did and really liked it). But it was still a very – perhaps even more – relevant read this year. His assessment and advice are so thoughtful and well-balanced: realistic about the current cultural trends and the opposition the Church will face, but optimistic because Christ will have the ultimate victory. The only criticism I had was that the editors missed some major typos and at least one place where a paragraph was practically repeated a few pages later – hopefully they’ve fixed that in subsequent printings. Here is a favorite quote from Onward:
When we don’t oppose demons, we demonize opponents. And without a clear vision of the concrete forces we as the church are supposed to be aligned against, we find it very difficult to differentiate between enemy combatants and their hostages. (page 192)
I love Moore’s writing: his honesty, hopefulness, and humor – even his occasional Baptist dig 😉 (I’m a former Baptist, now Presbyterian). I bought myself his latest book, The Courage to Stand, for Christmas, and from the bit I’ve read so far it promises to be just as good.
The Inklings
I meant to read a biography of the Inklings, but just ended up reading six of Lewis’s and Tolkien’s fiction works. I enjoyed reading this beautiful edition of The Hobbit aloud to my youngest (we actually started last fall). I also listened to the Space Trilogy this year, of which the first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was my favorite.
Geography/Travel
This was the hardest category for me to get into for some reason, but it was a good one for this year of very little travel. Prisoners of Geography and Through the Veil tied for my favorites. The latter is a beautifully-written, thought-provoking collection of essays about the author’s time in the Middle East – one that especially spoke to me was Evil Eye, which was about the damage jealousy can do to friendships.
Novels
I loved both The Chosen and The Outsiders. They took me to unfamiliar places and times – the Jewish community in mid-20th-century New York City and the streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1960s – and were very moving. I was also surprisingly delighted with the twists and turns of Lorna Doone, which I’d put off reading for years (although I watched the movie). All three were audiobooks, and all the narrators were excellent, especially the narrator of Lorna Doone – he was John Ridd!
Here’s the complete list of books I read in 2020, with the star ratings I gave them on Goodreads:
- Side by Side by Ed Welch ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- In Vital Harmony by Karen Glass ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- King Lear by William Shakespeare (audiobook & book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Consider This by Karen Glass (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Trent’s Last Case by E.C. Bentley (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Rose-Garden Husband by Margaret Widdemer ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Gorgias by Plato (audiobook & book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare (audiobook & book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Intellectual Life by A.G. Sertillanges ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Character Is Destiny by Russell Gough ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset (mostly audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Pollution and the Death of Man by Francis Schaeffer ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Saints and Heroes to the End of the Middle Ages by George Hodges ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Perelandra by C.S. Lewis (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Beyond Authority and Submission by Rachel Green Miller ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Chosen by Chaim Potok (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Christians Get Depressed Too by David Murray ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Heroes of Ohio by Rick Sowash (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Mingling of Souls by Matt Chandler ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Odyssey by Homer (audiobook & book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- D’Aulaire’s Book of Norse Myths (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Adventuring Together by Greta Eskridge ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- What is a Girl Worth? by Rachael Denhollander ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Onward by Russell Moore ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Sex and the City of God by Carolyn Weber ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Pioneers by David McCullough ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare (audiobook & book) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Breaking Bread with the Dead by Alan Jacobs ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Gathering Storm by Albert Mohler ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Vanderbeekers and the Hidden Garden by Karina Yan Glaser (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Up from Slavery by Booker T. Washington (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Manhattan: Mapping the Story of an Island by Jennifer Thermes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Trojan Women by Euripides (I actually read the Lattimore translation we had) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Happy Christian by David Murray ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Vanderbeekers to the Rescue by Karina Yan Glaser (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (audiobook – I accidentally listened to an abridged version I borrowed from the library) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Great Poets: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Through the Veil by Lisa Ohlen Harris ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Minds More Awake by Anne White ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Christmas We Didn’t Expect by David Mathis ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Christmas Hirelings by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- God’s Wisdom for Navigating Life by Tim Keller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
