State of the Bookshelf 2024
Well, it’s that time of year again, friends! I do love a good book list, and I can’t help but get in on the fun at the turn of each year. My 2024 list is at the bottom of the post if you’re mainly here to get some book recs!
On these yearly posts, I also like to share a few reflections on my year as a reader, a gift that is becoming sweeter to me as I watch my children unwrap it for themselves. Here are a few reading highlights for me this year:
Reading in bed. I know what you may be thinking: “Reading in bed? Like, when you read a book in bed before going to sleep? This is a highlight for you?” In a word, YES! For three and a half years, our youngest slept in the sitting room area off of the main part of our bedroom, and we had to creep into our room at bedtime in the pitch-dark to keep from waking her. Turning on the lamp—even a book light—was a recipe for disaster. But this past summer, all four kids finally starting sleeping through the night consistently enough that we could have them in a room together. Now we have our room to ourselves, and I have a new lease on life, baby! There are few things I love more than burrowing under our down duvet, propping up pillows behind me, and unwinding with a book by the soft lamp light. The very best thing.
Read alouds. This is a habit we’ve enjoyed since our oldest’s earliest days, but this year all four kids were able to get in on the chapter books we read at bedtime, and it is so special to have those shared stories. We read the first Harry Potter book (I cried when I started the first chapter, I was so thrilled to be introducing them to this magical world), The Silver Chair and The Horse and His Boy, The Green Ember, A Christmas Carol (still in progress, but hey—it’s only the 7th day of Christmas!) and—most gloriously of all—I got to listen in from the other room while Matt read his own book, Red Rex, aloud to the kids after it released this fall.
Enjoying poetry. I spent most of my formative years believing that poetry was primarily a riddle to be solved, instead of beauty to be enjoyed. The thing that refreshed my perspective? Actually reading poetry! Well, that and the generous encouragement of many gifted, humble, and companionable poets who consider it part of their vocation to help people befriend poetry (Malcolm Guite and my friend Jody L. Collins do this so beautifully). If you are thinking to yourself, “That stuff is just way over my head,” might I encourage you to give one of these collections I’ve enjoyed just this year a try:
Ponds by J.C. Scharl
Sounding the Seasons by Malcolm Guite
Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation by Luci Shaw
Mining the Bright Birds by Jody L. Collins (who has a fabulous Substack)
Alive Together by Lisel Mueller
Before the Door of God: An Anthology of Devotional Poetry, edited by Jay Hopler and Kimberly Johnson
And now, without further delay, as it is nearly midnight on this New Year’s Eve, here are the books I enjoyed this year! An * means that I listened to the audiobook. I’ve bolded the ones that were especially memorable or resonated with me particularly. There’s not a bad one in the bunch (and I can’t always truthfully say that).
And if you want to follow what I’m reading along with a short review/reflection on each book, you should subscribe to my newsletter!
The Awakening of Miss Prim, Natalia Sanmartin Fenollera
Glittering Vices: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins and Their Remedies*, Rebecca Konyndyk Deyoung
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers*, Anne Lamott
The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves, Alexandra Hudson
Gratitude: Why Giving Thanks Is the Key to Our Well-Being*, Cornelius Plantinga
Lent: The Season of Repentance and Renewal*, Esau McCaulley
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek*, Annie Dillard
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë
The Boys in the Boat*, Daniel James Brown
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
The Untold Story, Genevieve Cogman
You Are a Tree, and Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer*, Joy Marie Clarkson
Tom Lake*, Ann Patchett
The Murder Wheel*, Tom Mead
The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism*, Tim Alberta
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness*, Jonathan Haidt
The Cost of Control: Why We Crave It, the Anxiety It Gives Us, and the Real Power God Promises*, Sharon Hodde Miller
The Silver Chair, C. S. Lewis
At Home in Mitford, Jan Karon
I Want God: How to Love Him with Your Whole Heart and Revive Your Soul*, Lisa Whittle
Awaking Wonder: Opening Your Child’s Heart to the Beauty of Learning, Sally Clarkson
I Cheerfully Refuse*, Leif Enger
Humility, Andrew Murray
The Gift of Limitations: Finding Beauty in Your Boundaries, Sara Hagerty
How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen*, David Brooks
The Unmaking of June Farrow, Adrienne Young
The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs & Experience of God*, Steve Cuss
He Should Have Told the Bees, Amanda Cox
The Green Ember, S. D. Smith
Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West*, Andrew Wilson
The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants*, A. J. Swoboda
A Yellow Wood and other stories, K. C. Ireton
Shades of Light*, Sharon Garlough Brown
Hunt, Gather, Parent: What Ancient Cultures Can Teach Us About the Lost Art of Raising Happy, Helpful Little Human*, Michaeleen Doucleff
The Horse and His Boy, C. S. Lewis
The Scent of Water, Elizabeth Goudge
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty*, Anderson Cooper
The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement*, Sharon McMahon
Be Ready When the Luck Happens*, Ina Garten
Born of Gilded Mountains, Amanda Dykes
The Bee Keeper’s Apprentice*, Laurie R. King
The Frozen River, Ariel Lawhon
How to Solve Your Own Murder*, Kristen Perrin
The Flourishing Family: A Jesus-Centered Guide to Parenting with Peace and Purpose*, Dr. David and Amanda Erickson
Adorning the Dark, Andrew Peterson
Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages, Grace Hamman
The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming, Sally and Sarah Clarkson
Impossible Creatures*, Katherine Rundell
Glad and Golden Hours: A Companion for Advent and Christmastide, Lanier Ivester
Happy Reading, my friends!
P.S. What books were your favorites this year? Any that you can’t stop thinking about? Let me know in the comments!