Bookending the Year

or, notes on what I have read and hope to read

There is a small bookshelf—visible as I write if I look over my left shoulder—where I put books when they arrive if I can’t tackle them right away. This shelf is for books I own (not to be confused with books borrowed from the library, books borrowed from people I know, books I am actively reading, and books I bought in college and haven’t read yet).

The shelf is supposed to keep books from disappearing into the stacks before I actually read them, but what with one thing and another (global upheaval, the massive number of interesting books in the world, the unpredictable arrival and temporal fragility of library holds) I was failing to actually read them. By this time last year, the shelf was full to bursting. I set the goal of reading everything on the shelf by the end of 2025.

Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash

A Sampler

I also continued 2024’s experiment of printing out a paper reading log, sticking it on the wall with tape, and writing down titles as I finished them. I now know I will not remember what I read or when I read it any farther back than the last 3 months or so without a log, and I enjoy looking back and thinking about books again as the year winds down. So, in case you’re looking for reading ideas of your own, here are some of the books—from the shelf and elsewhere—that I most enjoyed or have stayed with me over the past year.

Fiction

• Why Do The Heathen Rage, Flannery O’Connor

• The Memory of Old Jack and A Place on Earth, Wendell Berry

• Graveyard Shift and If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio

• Minor Black Figures, Brandon Taylor

• Re-reads by Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, and P. D. James.

History-and-Biography-ish

• Alexander at the End of the World: The Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great, Rachel Meredith Kousser

• The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medeival World, Shelley Puhak

• Boswell’s Presumptuous Task, Adam Sisman

• Seeking Solace: The Life and Legacy of Horatio G. Spafford, Thomas E. Corts

• Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Sayers and Lewis, Gina Dalfonzo

• Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis, Abigail Santamaria

• Desperate for Authenticity: A Critical Analysis of the Feminist Theology of Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Patricia Hawley

• Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy, C. E. Hill

• The Mirror: A History, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, translated by Katharine H. Jewett

Poetry Related

• The Naked Tree: Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis and Other Poems, Joy Davidman

• Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot

• Dove Descending: A Journey Into T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, Thomas Howard

Memoir/Essay

• DarkLand: Memoir of a Secret Childhood, Kevin Hart

• The White Album, Joan Didion

• The Dangers of Christian Practice: On Wayward Gifts, Characteristic Damage, and Sin, Lauren F. Winner

• The Hidden Wound, Wendell Berry

• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer

Other

• Growing Vegetables West of the Cascades, Steve Solomon

Photo by Tanya Barrow on Unsplash

New Year, New Books

I have met my goal of reading through the shelf. I tackled the books in order of whatever looked most interesting in the moment. I didn’t read only books from the shelf because sometimes I needed a break from absorbing new information or reading critically or wrestling with Big Ideas. But with a few exceptions, whenever I saw mention of an interesting looking book, instead of putting it on hold at the library, placing an interlibrary loan request, or ordering it, I wrote it down on. (With a pen. On a mini legal pad. The digital burnout is real.) There are now only four books on the shelf, all acquired within the last 12 months: two gifts and two for upcoming research. And when I think back over all of these books, my sense of the world feels a little fuller, a little more complete, than it did before I had read them.

I’m starting to think about whether I will set a reading goal for next year. I can’t imagine a world in which I’m not reading, but I don’t want to put arbitrary pressure on myself and make things not fun. But thanks to my list, I know these are some of the books I want to prioritize in the months ahead:

• A second pass through Boswell’s Johnson

• The Brothers Karamazov (Tolstoy) and The Brothers K (David James Duncan)

• The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, Tom Riess

• Hannah Coulter, Wendell Berry

• The Many Lives of Anne Frank, Ruth Franklin

• The Oyster War, Summer Brennan

• Jane Austen’s Bookshelf, Rebecca Romeny

• Queens of Crime, Marie Benedict

• Paradise Lost: A Biography, Alan Jacobs

• Making of a Mind: Letters from a Soldier-Priest, 1914-1919, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

• Christlike Acceptance Across Deep Difference, eds. Ronald W. Pierce and Karen R. Keen

What about you? What did you love reading this year, and/or find thought provoking? What are you hoping to read in the new year?