This was a good reading year. I’m either getting better at picking out books I’ll like, or better at abandoning ones I don’t, or both. I read a lot (for me) of theology this year. Maybe too much? I still struggle every year with how to properly think about and truly learn from everything I read. The debate about whether I’m learning or just consuming always bats around in my mind.

The upside is that I couldn’t narrow my top 10 to 10, so here’s 10, plus four more that could easily have slid into that number 10 spot, plus even more at the end because I’m a cheater.

10. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge A delightful little fairy tale and purely sentimental pick. This story, about a girl who is orphaned and goes to live in a maybe-enchanted old home with a distant relative and there’s adventure and mystery and super innocent romance, basically tracks my 9-year-old daydreams perfectly. If I had read this then, it would have lit my imagination on fire. It was fun to read something like that now.

9. Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places by Eugene H. Peterson It took me a long time to read this book, but it’s a rich feast that I’ll dip into again and again. Almost a year after I finished it, I keep thinking about his simple observation that “the Jesus way” is so surprising to us still, and it requires us to be vigilant with our hearts and with our scripture reading, because our sin-twisted selves need that refreshing water of remembrance of what He’s really like again and again and again. Now that I’m awake to it, I’ve found it’s so true. This year has been one of hard and painful looks at my heart, which is indeed so quick to forget that I’m a new creation. (This year, I hope to jump into the next volume in this series, Eat This Book. I’m already awarding that best title of my 2022 reads.)

8. Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt Another one that reminded me of the books I loved as a pre-teen and teen, and got me hooked on historical fiction. Somehow I missed this Civil War title back then, but it’s on so many booklists, I wanted to tackle it. It was exceptional and so interesting to read coming off of 2020 because there are so many parallels: Family members, all with good intentions, having tough conversations where they disagree about what’s right. Watching the news and trying to interpret what’s actually happening with the understanding that someday this will be more clear in hindsight. Moral dilemmas with no good options. Ugly-cry moments. I’ll read this one again.

7. According to Plan: The Unfolding Revelation of God in the Bible by Graeme Goldsworthy A clear, well-organized introduction of biblical theology that was both enriching to read on its own and began enriching my other Bible study as I progressed through the chapters. One of those books that’s more like setting the charges than it is a mind-blowing experience in itself. Now that I’ve read it, every time I study the Bible or read theology or hear a sermon, there’s a boom of greater understanding.

6. The Tech-Wise Family by Andy Crouch One of the few books (or articles) I’ve read about managing technology’s creep and takeover of our lives that starts with a positive vision: What family is for. It builds from there, gently coaching and teaching how to put tech in its proper place and create a family culture around wisdom and courage. The immediate application Crouch draws is with tech—which he defines widely—but it’s given me a framework for many parts of parenting and our home life. Highly recommend. This is my new baby shower gift.

5. Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers by Dane Ortlund A necessary comfort and course correction for me, a person who believes whole-heartedly in Christ’s love for me and others but who still chafes at all the hard things His love allows. This book is a balm, a deep breath, and a good field guide to some Puritans I should read.

4. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke This isn’t a book you can summarize to someone—and I think it would be best to go in cold, so I’ll just say I have a feeling that as I think about and reread this book (because both are unavoidable), it will become a five-star book for me. It’s one of the most unusual books I’ve read. And I’ve read Clarke’s 1,200 page parallel history about what would happen if “English magic” returned to the land during the Napoleonic wars! (See below.)

3. Found in Him: The Joy of the Incarnation and our Union with Him by Elyse M. Fitzpatrick Jesus Christ is so good. This book covers His incarnation and our unity with Him. I’ve been a believer for as long as I’ve had a consciousness and still I read these truths clearly articulated and my jaw drops. Do I have a few bits to pick with a sentence or idea here or there? Sure. But I’m grateful for this book and will recommend it to many as an easy-to-read, scripture-soaked, worship-inducing outline of who Jesus is and what He’s done for me, for you.

2. All the James Herriot’s As a lover of British literature, I’ve heard about these books before (there are three biggies in the series: All Creatures Great and Small, All Things Bright and Beautiful, and All Things Wise and Wonderful). But I always put them off because, you know, animals. I’m not big on them. I STAND CORRECTED. I love these so much. They are absolutely delightful. So English. So wholesome. And funny! I mean, I was interested in what was happening to cow rectums for almost 500 pages. And that was just the first volume! So he’s good at this. If you, like me, cannot fathom how wildly entertaining stories from a country vet in England in the 1930s can be, start with the PBS Masterpiece series that released last year. It’s charming. I adore it. But don’t skip the books.

1. Delighting in the Trinity: An Introduction to the Christian Faith by Michael Reeves This book’s number one spot will surprise no one who knows me in real life, since I think I’ve said, “I read this book on the trinity, and…” about twice a day since June. I thought I had a grasp on the doctrine of the Trinity (though I fell into the erroneous “it’s a mystery!” camp), but wow. Reeves makes a compelling, winsome, and laugh-out-loud funny case for why the trinity is THE defining doctrine of Christianity and why it should bring us joy. This is my favorite type of theology book: It expands my understanding of the faith, causes me to worship, and has me rushing back to my Bible with fresh eyes to see the riches there. Highly recommend.

+ The Bonus 4

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok Meaty. So much to think about and discuss here (art’s purpose and interaction with life, faith transmission, Judaism and Christianity, parent and child relationships, calling, limits…). But that doesn’t mean it’s stiff and boring. I grew to love this family.

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer This book surprised me. The first half outlines the problem of hurry (and makes it clear JMC is way cooler than I’ll ever be. I get it). This started to drag, but things picked up in the spiritual disciplines section where he argued we should try to mimic Christ’s way of living (solitude, sabbath, etc.) as His followers. While I’m not sure JMC and I would agree on every theological point, his wisdom and practical examples are helping as I try to deepen my Christian practices.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke Honestly, this probably belongs on the numbered part of the list. I’ve never read any book like this. It’s Dickensian in its detail and range of characters. It’s so satisfying and so precise and full and original. It was delightful and intriguing and sort of astonishing. I laughed, I gasped, I blew through the floppity jillion pages.

What God Has to Say About our Bodies by Sam Allberry I’m not sure there is anyone speaking or writing right now who is as obviously compassionate and shepherd-like as Sam Allberry. He just seems soaked in the goodness of God, the truth of the Scriptures, and a willingness to bring us to that same place. This volume, which is exactly what the title says it is, is solid, dignifying, clear, full of hope, and pastoral.

+ the books and authors my kids (2 and 4) and I enjoyed this year

My 4-year-old boy:
// All of the St. George/Arthurian knights/dragon-slaying medieval or older stories that Margaret Hodges brings to life. (Start with St. George and the Dragon.)
// The BFG by Roald Dahl. I laughed out loud as I read and answered so so many questions about if there are really giants who will come eat us because we are human beans.
// The Paddington series. Just delightful
// Home in the Woods by Eliza Wheeler. A picture book about a family who finds a tar-shack home in the woods during the Depression (or soon thereafter). A beautiful story about how family makes a home and attitude is everything, plus a look at a time in history that isn’t talked about much in children’s books.

My 2-year-old girl:
// Sandra Boynton, always and forever, amen. (She particularly likes The Belly Button Book and What’s Wrong, Little Pookie?)
// Lola Dutch by Kenneth Wright and Sarah Jane Wright. Young girl takes on her everyday life with admirable gusto. Fun to read aloud and beautiful illustrations.
// The Biggest Story ABC by Kevin DeYoung. Lovely illustrations, big letter pages that are fun for pointing out favorites like S and L and M (for Mama, obviously), and a surprisingly thorough introduction to Biblical theology.

Me (the cheating cheater who has about 25 books on my top 10 list):
// The whole 1oo Cupboards series by N.D. Wilson. Just hang in there. The world gets built out more and makes perfect sense by the end. And huge props for letting parents be heroes alongside the youngs.
// Astrid the Unstoppable by Maria Parr. Like a Norwegian Anne of Green Gables if she were athletic. So fun.
// The Emily books by L.M. Montgomery. The older millennial female Internet was right: I did enjoy this lesser-known series with a somewhat more serious bent. (However, I read a biography of L.M. Montgomery that ranks as the most depressing thing I read all year. That woman had an imagination, because there was almost zero love and beauty in her real life.)
// Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt. That feeling that you completely trust an author to deliver a true, good, and beautiful work—I have that trust now in Gary Schmidt. This moving, hard, redemptive book didn’t disappoint. Should be in my top 5 above but I’m cheating in order to fit more books in.
// Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri. I love a book like this that helps me understand things both familiar, like family and the absurd ways we try to belong, and things not at all familiar, like Persian myths and what it feels like to be a refugee in America. The passages on faith predictably made me tear up. I’d read this again (preferably with a book club!) and will start giving it to my nieces and nephews as they hit 15/16.

Previously:
// Top 10 books of 2020
// Top 10 Books of 2019
// Top Ten of 2018
// Top Five for the First Half of 2015
// Top Five for the Second Half of 2015
// Top Ten of 2014
// Best Books of the Summer, 2013
// Top Five for the First Half of 2012
// Top Five for the First Half of 2011
// Top Five for the Second Half of 2011

Why is this post 11 months late? I plead old age and a diminishing desire to learn how new technology works. In other words: I didn’t know how to post here anymore. But take heart! I applied myself and figured it out in a not-unembarrassing amount of time and here we are.

10. Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope by Jasmine L. Holmes
How does someone my age have so much wisdom to share? This is an exceptional testament to maternal love, to unity, to astounding grace, to boldness that looks like Christ’s boldness. I needed to hear what Holmes has to say about being a black woman, a black mother, and a black Christian. In the book, she talks about how she admires Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie and wants to sit across a table from her and just talk. I want to do that with Jasmine Holmes. 

9. The River by Peter Heller
I am an indoorsy type and I was spellbound by the descriptions of nature here…along with the plot. It’s like a survivalist thriller meets friendship story. It raises big questions of morality, too, which means everyone needs to read it so we can talk about it. 

8. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
Whoa. That had a last act I did not see coming. Well worth reading and now I want to get my hands on the rest of the trilogy.

7. How to Think: A Survival Guide for a World at Odds by Alan Jacobs
Fantastic, easy to read, worth buying to read more slowly in the hope of absorbing the lessons. This book earned Jacobs a spot on my running list of authors whose works I want to read in their entirety. Indeed, four more authors on this list are also on that list.

6. Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey
Not a “woman’s book!” Just needed to clear that up. This is, in fact, a fascinating book of applied philosophy. What does the post-modern idea of dualism (mind is better than/dominant over body) do to the major moral questions of our time? SO MUCH. Clear, accessible, enormously foot-noted–and my copy is annotated to the hilt with thoughts, questions, and all the things I learned.

5. The Land by Mildred D. Taylor
Excellent. This story of a mixed-race man’s quest for something of his own in the time directly following the Civil War does more than a dozen textbooks on the Reconstruction era and a thousand online hot takes on racial history could do. I’m eager to read this series all the way through. My library copy had a sticker on it that said, “children’s.” I wouldn’t hand this to anyone younger than 16. But I’d like to hand it to everyone older than that.

4. The Wednesday Wars (and bonus pick: Okay for Now) by Gary D. Schmidt
Am I turning into a Gary Schmidt superfan? Yep. His characters have so much voice and personality, and his themes are grounded. Plus, they’re just good stories. Can’t wait to hand these to my nephews and nieces. (In case you’re wondering, he’s on the “read the complete works” list.)

3. Fidelity: Five Stories by Wendell Berry
I thought the first story, “Pray Without Ceasing,” was the best short story I’ve ever read. Then I read “Making It Home.” Then I read “Fidelity.” (Berry is on the list, duh.)

2. Culture Making by Andy Crouch
Required reading for understanding what culture really is and how to create it. For Christians, this is an encouraging and paradigm-shifting explanation of our God-given role in culture. [Updated to add: As of this posting, I’m STILL thinking about this book and have it in my stack to re-read already. Crouch is on the list.]

1. Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Stunning. A perfect book. Paton is on the list but boy, I’ve read one other book by him and it was amazing, but hard. So it will probably take me all my life to get through Paton’s canon.

Honorary mentions:
Last Night in Montreal by Emily St. John Mandel
How to Teach your Children Shakespeare by Ken Ludwig
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Bonus favorite kids’ book discovery:
The Lighthouse Family series by Cynthia Rylant (Delightful! Charming! Replete with tasty-sounding food made of flowers!)

And an unasked-for update: This year [2020] I did watch the War & Peace miniseries despite Paul Dano’s creepface and it’s a gorgeous and dramatic portrayal of the major plot points. I love it for that. But you’d need about 400 episodes to get as deep into the world as Tolstoy does. After watching the series, I started reading War & Peace AGAIN because I’m that kind of nerd and it’s that good. I might be perpetually reading it all my life. Desert island book? Just read it.

My year-end reading recaps, previously:
// Top 10 Books of 2019
// Top Ten of 2018
// Top Five for the First Half of 2015
// Top Five for the Second Half of 2015
// Top Ten of 2014
// Best Books of the Summer, 2013
// Top Five for the First Half of 2012
// Top Five for the First Half of 2011
// Top Five for the Second Half of 2011

The books I wrote in, cried over, lent out, and learned from this year.

12 // New Minimalism by Cary Telander Fortin and Kyle Louise Quilici
This is all the wisdom of paring down possessions minus the legalistic quotas for how much to toss and the New Age-y flimflam that puts more mental energy into your belongings than they deserve. Instead, Cary and Kyle offer concrete helps like “redefine full,” and “dramatically increase your standards.” I read this book and tackled my wardrobe (again), my cookbooks (with new clarity), and even tackled the years of paperwork in our filing cabinet. It’s that doable. Beyond that, this book started a good ponder about our possessions and how a gospel-centered life includes them (or doesn’t).

11 // Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
“Watching this family grabs me inside, twists, and pulls tight. It hurts so much I can’t look at it, so I don’t.” One of the characters in this novel voiced my thoughts perfectly. I fought the urge to put this book down the entire time I read it. It’s hard to look this story straight in the face. There is racism (past and present), class inequality, and child neglect and abuse. It’s often horrifying. But it’s also very important. It shows how the past haunts us now. It shows how it’s hard to put ghosts to sleep.

10 // The Day the Revolution Began by N.T. Wright
This book is meant to explain why the night of Jesus’ crucifixion was dramatically different from the morning–and it does–but along the way, Wright also clarifies Christian vocation and mission, the role of suffering in the Christian life, and how the cross was motivated by God’s covenantal love for his people. The whole Bible is swept up in the doctrine of the cross, and Wright shows it.

9 // The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
A fascinating premise boosted by thoughtful writing. In this one, the world wakes up to the news that the earth’s rotation is slowing. Throughout the novel, she plots the subtle (and then swift) changes this brings about, which is neatly mirrored in her protagonist’s own subtle (and then swift) changes as she goes through a year of middle school. Every time I put this book down, I had something to chew on. Her next book comes out in early 2019 and I can’t wait.

8 // Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
My first Stegner! I kept hearing his name grouped with other writers whose works I love like Marilynne Robinson and Wendell Berry, so I gave this giant book a shot. It might be one of the most complete portrayals of marriage I’ve read. Part of that is because it follows a couple through their courtship to their gray years (and then beyond through the narrator, their grandson). So much life is lived and each look, each decision, each word spoken or not is expertly layered upon the next. Sidebar: This book is set in the frontier days and wowzers. The people who settled the West had grit.

7 // Virgil Wander by Leif Enger
This makes the list purely for his use of the word “beeves” early on in the book. That’s part of what makes reading Enger’s work so delightful. His vocabulary is wide and creative but his sentences never feel unnatural or stuffed. This is the story of a Minnesota man who survives a traumatic injury but has a concussion. As he goes about his small-town life, he has to get to know it and himself again. Yes, it takes a turn at the end and I’m not sure if it needed it, but his style is so gorgeous, I didn’t care where he took me.

6 // The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Inspirational is too obvious a word for this one, even though it’s true. Formidable might be a better one. The author puts the story of eight young guys training for the Olympic gold in crew side by side with the story of Hitler’s rise (and how the Olympics in Berlin fed the world the story he wanted them to see). It’s astonishing. I, who am so not sporty that I once ran into a wall while in pursuit of a racquetball, gripped my book with white knuckles during the passages that describe the crew races. I started sweating, I gasped, I pumped my fist. This is good writing.

5 // The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon
This is solidly in the middle of what might be my favorite three-way Venn diagram: contemplation about food and cooking’s place in our lives, theology, and oversized opinions about absurd matters like the demise of pocket knives and how to take your sherry. His description of dicing a shallot versus an onion made me laugh/cry so hard, my toddler wandered over to check on me, concerned. I adored this.

4 // Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles that can Radically Change Your Family by Paul David Tripp
I needed this book. It clearly lays out the mission and heart of parenting by laying out the mission and heart of God. So many parenting books make me anxious. This one made me worship. God’s character and his promises to not leave us the way we are but transform us are so dear and so encouraging. Read this to understand this intimidating, scary, awesome, delightful task parents are given, but also to remember why the gospel is so good.

3 // Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
It’s brilliant, original, exciting. The chorus of narrators (I think there are about 170, which is less confusing than it sounds) witness and tell of Lincoln’s grief at the death of his son in a way that’s surprisingly intimate. I started weeping on page 58. But my endorsement isn’t whole-hearted. Let’s talk about the humor in this book. Much of it was funny–absurd wit at the perfect moment. But at least the same amount of them were lewd in the way that authors sometimes use lewdness as a cheap stand-in for something that could have been more powerful. Without that, this would have been a five-star read for me. With it, I’m not sure I’ll read it again even though it stood out as one of my best reads this year. (I’m sure George Saunders is heartbroken.)

2 // Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
This was my second time through this one and it’s still one of the most extraordinary books I’ve read. It moves me to tears with the simplest words.  It’s a book filled with quiet comforts and truths. I’ll read this again and again my whole life, if I’m lucky. (P.S. Have you heard about the new Wendell Berry-focused podcast The Membership? They’re discussing his works in chronological order and it is rich.)

1 // The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The most powerful, beautiful book I don’t know if I’ll have the guts to read ever again. This book follows the journey of a father and son as they seek safety after a vaguely-described apocalyptic event. The story is searing and spare; the writing even more so. Like Sing, Unburied, Sing, I had to read this book in small doses. Parts of it were horrifying. Even so, I’m glad I made it to the end. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

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WORTH MENTIONING:

The book that taught me what patience actually is: On Reading Well by Karen Swallow Prior

The mystery series that describes so many amazing meals, I’m basing my menus for winter on them: The Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series by Louise Penny