This is a list of books I am reading and have read over the years.
2024
Blue Nights, Joan Didion (essays, memoir)
Reaching Out: Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen (spiritual practices)
Theology of Play, Jurgen Montmann (obviously)
On Reading Well, Karen Swallow Pryor (reading and virtues)
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr (fiction)
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (fiction)
Borderless, Jennifer De Leon (YA fiction)
Make A List, Marilyn McEntyre (spiritual practice)
Ordinary Light, Tracy K Smith (memoir)
Body of a Dancer, Rene D’Aoust (memoir)
50 Miles, Sheryl St. Germain (memoir)
Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga (anthropology of play)
2023
Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, Katherine May (non-fiction)
The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris (non-fiction, memoir)
The Undying, Anne Boyer (rant essays, social justice prose poetry, breast cancer memoir)
These Precious Days, Ann Patchett (essays)
My Body and Other Crumbling Empires: Lessons for Healing in a World That Is Sick, Lindsay Medford (memoir, social justice)
Pillars: How Muslim Friends Led Me Closer to Jesus, Rachel Pieh Jones (memoir, travel)
Shattered: A Son Picks Up the Pieces of a Father’s Rage, Arthur Boers (memoir)
Holy The Firm, Annie Dillard (uncategorized non-fiction)
The Givenness of Things, Marilynne Robinson (essays)
More: Life on the Edge of Adventure and Motherhood, Majka Burhardt (memoir)
Negative Space, Cristin Leach (memoir)
Staying Put: Making Home in a Restless World, Scott Russell Sanders (essays)
Dubliners, James Joyce (fiction, short stories)
On Trails, Robert Moore (non-fiction)
Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer (essays)
JFK’s Secret Doctor, Susan E.B. Schwartz (biography of a Shawangunks climber and doctor)
The Long Run: A Memoir of Loss and Life in Motion, Catriona Menzies-Pike
Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces, Michael Chabon (essays)
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami (memoir)
On Beauty, Zadie Smith (fiction)
Time On Rocks, Anna Fleming (climbing history, memoir)
Teaching A Stone To Talk, Annie Dillard (essays)
The Year of Horses, Courtney Maum (memoir)
2022 (27)
Where Goodness Still Grows, Amy Peterson
Prayers in the Night, Tish Harrison Warren
Space Below My Feet, Gwen Moffat
Home is the Road, Diane Glancy
Cassandra at the Wedding, Dorothy Baker
Unraveled, Katie Brown
Acedia & Me, Kathleen Norris
Intimations, Zadie Smith
Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit
Dracula, Bram Stoker
Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit
Forget Me Not, Jennifer Lowe-Anker
A Line Above the Sky, Helen Mort
Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard
Our Greatest Gift: A Meditation on Dying and Caring, Henri Nouwen
Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey
Erosion: Essays of Undoing, Terry Tempest Williams
With Or Without Me: A Memoir of Losing and Finding, Esther Maria Magnis
The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene
Valley of Giants: Stories from Women at the Heart of Yosemite Climbing, Lauren DeLaunay Miller, Ed.
No Country for Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Abbey’s Road, Edward Abbey
Walking: One Step At A Time, Erling Kagge
Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit
The Sharp End of Life, Dierdre Wolownick (Alex Honnold’s mom)
A Life’s Work, Rachel Cusk
2021 (28)
Still, Lauren Winner
Homing Instincts, Sarah Menkedick
Vesper Flights, Helen MacDonald
The Exact Place, Margie Haack
Contemplative Prayer, Thomas Merton
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard
The Abundance, Annie Dillard
All the Little Things, Wallace Stegner
Dakota, Kathleen Norris
Living Into Focus, Arthur Boers
Behold the Leviathan, Peter Moe
H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
Waiting for God, Simone Weil
The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, Belden Lane
Cities of the Plain, Cormac McCarthy
Wife|Daughter|Self, Beth Kephart
Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
Mudhouse Sabbath, Lauren Winner
High Infatuation, Steph Davis
The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich
The Situation and the Story, Vivian Gornich
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Negotiation with the Dead, Margaret Atwood
Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr
To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
End of the Rope, Jan Redford
2020 (30)
Light, Eva Figes
Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
The Plague, Albert Camus
Citizen, Claudia Rankine
A Burnt Out Case, Graham Greene
Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Why We Drive, Matthew Crawford
Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn MacEntyre
Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O’Connor
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor
Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Crying Book, Heather Christle
Till We Have Faces, CS Lewis
No Man’s Land, Eula Biss
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
History of the Kings of England, Geoffrey of Monmouth
Compendium (parts), Thomas Aquinas
Paul Among the People, Sarah Ruden
Still, Lauren Winner
Lancelot, Walker Percy
Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry
The Dangers of Christian Practices, Lauren Winner
The Year of Our Lord 1943, Alan Jacobs
The Undying, Anne Boyer
Tenth of December, Greg Saunders
Miracles, CS Lewis
How (Not) to be Secular, James KA Smith
2019 (18)
Incarnation, Will Willimon
Abolition of Man, CS Lewis
The Way of Discernment, Liebert
Girl in the Orange Dress, Starbuck
Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch
When Harry Became Sally, Arnold
The New Asceticism, Sarah Coakley
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
The Crossing, Cormac McCarthy
The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows
Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton
The Rule of St. Benedict
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Lost in the Cosmos, Walker Percy
Benedict Option, Rod Dreher
Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner
Big Rock Candy Mountain, Wallace Stegner
The Last Gentleman, Walker Percy
2018 (16)
Surprised by Hope, NT Wright
Brave New World, Aldos Huxley
The Island, Aldos Huxley
Into the Silent Land, Laird
Orthodoxy, GK Chesterton
Master and Marguerita, Mikhail Bulkagov
Mystics and Misfits, Christina Peterson
The Sound of a Million Dreams, Caulfield
Acedia and Me, Kathleen Norris
Silence, Shusaku Endo
All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
Subversions of Christianity, Jacques Ellul
The Heart of the Matter, Graham Greene
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
How We Think, Alan Jacobs
2017 (19)
Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut
The Great Divorce, CS Lewis
Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins
Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
On Writing, Stephen King
Boys in the Boat, Daniel James Brown
Unbroken, Laura Hillebrand
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
You Are What You Love, Jamie Smith
The World Beyond Your Head, Matthew Crawford
Liturgy of the Ordinary, Tish Harrison Warren
Spiritual Friendship, Wes Hill
Wearing God, Lauren Winner
Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Creating a Spiritual Legacy, Taylor
The End of Education, Neil Postman
