I surpassed my goal of 60 books by 7 and completed my doubled version of the Schole Sisters’ 5×5 reading challenge, so it was a good reading year. Here are my favorites from each of my categories for the reading challenge and a list of all the books I read with the ratings I gave them on Goodreads.
Piety
I read Gentle and Lowly during a difficult time this past spring and have since assigned it to my teen boys. My Goodreads review:
“…John’s point in 13:1 is that in going to the cross, Jesus did not retain something for himself the way we tend to do when we seek to love others sacrificially. He does not love like us.
We love until we are betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness.
We love up to a limit. Jesus loves to the end.”
This book has helped me to process the hurt, bewilderment, and anger from recently severed relationships, and to realize that I can, by God’s grace, still love and genuinely desire as much restoration as is possible in this life, because of Christ’s great love for me. As others have said, this book is truly a balm for broken hearts.
Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies was also excellent and one my 17-year-old will be reading along with his 20th Century history books later this school year.
Philosophy
No duds here, but Josef Pieper’s Faith, Hope, Love was probably the most memorable and stretching. I shared some favorite quotes here and here. Jesus the Great Philosopher by Jonathan Pennington was a good one to begin this category last winter – here’s my Goodreads review:
“Love is more than an emotion, but it is not less than one. Love is a way of seeing and being in the world that is rooted in the heart, which necessarily includes the emotions. God’s people are regularly commanded to obey – to do certain actions and to avoid others. But undergirding all of these commands and arching over them all are the two greatest commandments, which focus on love. To do what is moral, to be ethical, requires obeying God with love, and this obedience focuses on the emotions of the person.”
“Altruism has become so deeply embedded in modern ethics that most Christians do not realize how thoroughly unbiblical it is. […] Altruism is indeed death to biblical to biblical (and ancient philosophical) ethics. …it is precisely the desire for happiness that drives all that we do. And that’s okay. It is how God made us and exactly how God motivates us. It is the “staggering rewards” that Jesus continually promises us that are not condemned but commended.”
This book is an excellent introduction to Christianity as a whole-life philosophy which both answers the longings of the ancient philosophers and corrects the philosophical errors of our own day. Its message is much needed, perhaps especially in my own Presbyterian and Reformed circles, where emotions and the desire for happiness are often dismissed either subtly or overtly.
Poetry
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese were lovely, and Dante’s Inferno was intimidating but made much more accessible by the video lectures from 100 Days of Dante. I’m now about halfway through Purgatory, which is much more uplifting. 😉
People
Destiny of the Republic, about President James Garfield, was fascinating – review here. How Dante Can Save Your Life and Mother to Son were also excellent audiobooks.
Places
This category was supposed to be for geography/travel books, but I ended up including books like The Hiding Place and Hallowed Be This House, both of which were inspiring and challenging.
Russian Lit
The Death of Ivan Ilych was comforting and uplifting, despite the title. Solzhenitsyn’s In the First Circle was my big summer audiobook: lots of characters to keep straight (like a Dickens’ novel), some grim spots, and not exactly a happy ending, but very good. After my dive into Russian literature this year, I want two more sons to name Innokenty and Arkady. 😉
British Lit
I finally (re)started and finished North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, and it was lovely – even better than the BBC series.
American Lit
This literature category was somehow less compelling for me, the Twain books especially. Christie was probably my favorite listen here.
Living
Tim Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage was excellent – my husband and daughter also listened to it. How to Be a Friend, a translation of Cicero’s De Amicitia garnered many quotes in my commonplace book and was surprisingly insightful.
Lewis
Most of this category was the first four books of The Chronicles of Narnia, which I am reading to my youngest. I also listened to Mere Christianity, a re-read for me which I appreciated even more this time through.
- A Murder is Announced by Agatha Christie (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Just Do Something by Kevin DeYoung ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- University of Berkshire Hathaway by Daniel Pecaut (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Christy by Catherine Marshall (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Sanctuary Sparrow by Ellis Peters (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Wintering by Katherine May (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Jesus the Great Philosopher by Jonathan Pennington ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- How to Be a Friend by Cicero ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Little Britches: Father and I Were Ranchers by Ralph Moody (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Courage to Stand by Russell Moore ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Vanderbeekers: Lost and Found by Karina Yan Glaser (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Koshka’s Tales: Stories from Russia by James Mayhew (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A Child’s Book of Poems by Gyo Fujikawa (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Poetry for Young People: Walt Whitman (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- On Being Presbyterian by Sean Michael Lucas ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Silas Marner by George Eliot (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A Short History of Russia by Mark Galeotti (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Garden of Truth by Ruth Chou Simons ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- How to Think by Alan Jacobs ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Aeneid by Virgil (part book, part audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Do More Better by Tim Challies ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Ideas Freely Sown by Anne White ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Morning Time: A Liturgy of Love by Cindy Rollins ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Love, Lucy by Lucille Ball (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness by Andrew Peterson (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Hallowed be This House by Thomas Howard ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Meaning of Marriage by Time Keller (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Mother to Son by Jasmine Holmes ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Travels with My Family by Marie-Louise Gay (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Poets’ Corner by John Lithgow (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Faith, Hope, Love by Josef Pieper ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Brontë (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Inferno by Dante Alighieri ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas by Madeline L’Engle (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- In Tune with the World by Josef Pieper ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien (read-aloud) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Joy in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare (audiobook) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I read or listened to two other short stories, Tolstoy’s How Much Land Does a Man Need and Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death, which I counted for the reading challenge but not on Goodreads. And I listened to the ESV Bible on the Bible Gateway app.
