What I Read January - June [From the Book Pile 2021]
You can see all my reading lists since 2006 here.
Spring 2021: my local library re-opened for (masked) browsing and book hold pick ups! This is right up there with the best things that happened to me last year. For reasons I haven’t totally figured out yet, the books I’m reading in the beginning of this year feel like one great pick after another. I’m excited to hear what titles catch your attention.
What've YOU been reading lately? Any suggestions you want to send my way?
I want to hear what you think about this list and what you’d add to it!
Drop me a comment below!
Spiritual Nonfiction / Theology / Spiritual Practices
See an excellent additional personal reflection on the church listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
1. Where the Eye Alights: Phrases for the Forty Days of Lent
by Marilyn McEntyre (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2021. 144 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Church | Lent
My review in 3 or more words: lyrical | reflective | inspiring
Forty brief but rich meditations written as a response to the phrases that point us to the heart of Lenten prayer and practice (e.g., “remember that you are dust”, “watch and pray”, “every riven thing”, “we’ll pass it on to you”) and a wonderful format to capture McEntyre’s warm intelligence. I’m continually amazed how McEntyre fits theological, Scriptural, literary, cultural, and personal references - all beautifully apt and intertwined - in so few words!
Other good reviews:
Lent 2021 – Three Superb Devotionals for the Lenten Season! by C. Christopher Smith at ERB
Quoted on Goodreads
One of my favorites:
“I have limits. Perhaps I can stretch them. But respecting them, I have learned, is generally wiser than pretending they’re not there. Because I don’t have all the time in the world, I have this whole hour, this day. The duration of one cup of coffee. The time it takes to listen to one more winding sentence or to stay with a child on her slow way to sleep.”
2. Be Kind to Yourself: Releasing Frustrations and Embracing Joy
by Cindy Bunch (IVP, 2020. 160 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Direction | Spiritual Practices | Wholeness & Healing.
My review in 3 or more words: gentle | encouraging | devotional
A warm narrative with guided reflection for tending to joy in our daily lives. I enjoyed the format of Bunch’s story, offering direction for practicing joy framed around the spiritual practice of praying the examen. Also, if you’ve ever needed encouragement in the spiritual practice of Smashing Things, this book is for you!
Chapter titles are one of my favorite things about this book:
Paying Attention to Beautiful Things
Speaking Kindly to Ourselves
Creating a New Mental Playlist
Knowing What to Let Go
The God Who Sees Me
Establishing Self-Care Practices
Discovering What’s Underneath
Forgiving Others
Taking One Thing At a Time
Gratitude Flip
The Wisdom of the Enneagram
Finding Time for What Nourishes Us
3. Charitable Writing: Cultivating Virtue Through Our Words
by Richard Hughes Gibson and James Edward Beitler (IVP Academic, 2020. 248 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Daily Work & Callings
My review in 3 or more words: reflective (both cerebral & emotional) | informative & richly sourced | inspiring a prophetic imagination
Thank you, Karen Stiller, for this excellent recommendation! This book is one of the most excellent encouragements I’ve ever seen to consider writing as a spiritual discipline to form us in the virtues of humility, love, and hope. I was especially helped by the insight that making a loving argument is an act of charitable writing. Don’t let the word “academic” throw you off. The authors employ academic research but write accessibly and charitably for every reader.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“For the community’s quieter members, the call to humble listening is, seemingly paradoxically, a call to speak up. If others build an auditorium for you, you do them a disservice if you fail to sing. As we noted above, humble listening must declare itself: you are simply not listening well if you don’t talk back. When your peers speak, they need to hear from you. At the very least, they need to know that they have been properly understood, and they often need to receive your comments and criticisms so that they can improve their ideas and arguments. The same is true when you speak up. In his “Prayer Before Study,” Aquinas reminds us that we have been born into the “twofold darkness” of “sin and ignorance.” As limited creatures who are prone to error, we all need to hear from others.”
4. Craft, Cost & Call: How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer
by Patricia Paddey and Karen Stiller (IVP, 2019.)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Daily Work & Callings
My review in 3 words or more: encouraging | informative | scrappy and accessible
I learned about this book during a writing webinar hosted by author Karen Stiller. (I’ve written about her book here.) I saw and inhaled the book as a wonderful companion to the teaching and inspiration Stiller offered in the webinar. The book written by two writers who are Christians and also friends offers a wonderful balance of literation inspiration, practical (and fun) next steps and warm, lighthearted-yet-meaningful encouragement.
If for no other reason, the title “Craft, Cost, and Call” captured my interest at this particular stage of my writing life. (I’ve begun asking writers “yes, but what has this calling cost you?”) I’m an avid observer of chapter titles and book frameworks and this book gives the gift of direction on the Table of Contents page alone.
Craft
What is good writing
How to query and editor
How to do great interviews
Outline and structuring: boring and life-changing
How to edit your own work
Cost
A business strategy
What writers are paid
Invoicing
Call
A special call
Spiritual care as a writer
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“Your action, in your writing life, is a part of the action of the larger church in the world.Writers also play a central role in the church, or they should. We are the story-tellers of the community. We write of the church, out of the church, and also to the church.We translate the church to the world, but also sometimes call the church to be better than it is already. We name things. We point and ponder. We show and tell important things and beautiful and painful true stories.”
5. Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time
by Dorothy C. Bass (Fortress Press, 2000/2019. 122 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Wholeness & Healing
My review in 3 or more words: informative in a refreshingly accessible approach | inspiring | slow-paced
Years ago I abandoned this much-referenced book and for the life of me now I can’t remember why?!? I love this book. It speaks to the heart of my own calling to give sacred attention to time - not just in a ritualistic religious sense but in a fully-embodied, transformative, worshipful sense.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“Like, so many images of God, this one [Ps. 90 - our shelter from the stormy blast of time] is both true and limited. In Christian faith, God is immortal. God was before time, and God will outlast time. But God’s immortality is not flexed as a command to human beings to fly away from time into something bitter. Nor is God a deus ex machina intent on plucking us out of everyday life and placing us in a realm of “nontime” somehow higher or better than what is available in the ordinariness of years, weeks, and days. Quite the contrary: it is within time itself that God meets us.”
6. Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life
by W. David O. Taylor (Thomas Nelson, 2020. 224 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Spiritual Practices | Church | Wholeness & Healing
My review in 3 or more words: instructive | transformative | contextualized from the historic church
Our triad small groups read David Taylor’s latest (and, in my opinion, best yet) book. The combination of his inviting prose, biblical and theological research, meaningful personal narrative form a beautiful invitation to read the Psalms with more insight that, I expect, most of us have ever done. Any reader would benefit from taking the time to engage with Taylor’s excellent reflection questions and recommended exercises. I was glad to read the book in a group setting which fit well with the Taylor’s vision of reading the Psalms in community. I’ll be re-reading this book devotionally for many years.
Other good reviews:
Facing the Music - A Review of Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life by Aarik Danielsen for ERB
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“What the psalms offer us is a powerful aid to un-hide: to stand honestly before God without fear, to face one another vulnerably without shame, and to encounter life in the world without any of the secrets that would demean and distort our humanity”
Peace & Justice / Social Critique
See additional excellent titles for this category listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
Nonfiction Self-Help / Memoir
See additional excellent titles for this category listed above under the Spiritual Nonfiction / Spiritual Practices heading.
7. Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy
by Beth Kempton (Scribner Book Company, 2020. 272 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Advent | Christmastide | Family
My review in 3 or more words: relaxing | insightful | refreshingly simple
If Ann Voskamp were an English countryside-dwelling Japanologist and Reiki Master, this is a book she’d write. Which is to say it’s comforting, inviting, and trying to make space for messy reality yet painting an irresistible idealistic image at the same time. (One look at the author’s Instagram account and I think you’ll see what I mean.)
My favorite chapter title is “Savoring the Hush” about the week between Christmas and New Year. I’ll be using that phrase in my Advent and Christmastide Daybook for sure!
8. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times
by Katherine May (Riverhead Books, 2020. 256 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Wholeness & Healing | Lent | Advent
My review in 3 or more words: heartfelt (occasionally brilliant / cerebral) | intimate (occasionally self-indulgent) | encouraging (occasionally sentimental)
I kept hearing about this book from writers and readers I admire and was able to get a copy from a library to read while it was still winter. Many reviewers noted the apt timing of a book about the isolation of winter being released during pandemic. Katherine May didn’t know anything about pandemic realities when she wrote the book yet her words fit the zeitgeist perfectly.
While Katherine May doesn’t write through the lens of Christian practices, her deep insight into the transformative power of living within the reality of time brought to mind the fruitful work of the liturgical season of Advent and Lent. With the gorgeously-written connections between the natural world and our own inner landscapes, this book brought Annie Dillard’s essays to mind. If Annie Dillard were a bit more emotive and a bit less abstruse, this is a book she’d write. (I mean that as a compliment to both Annie Dillard AND Katherine May.)
Other reviews:
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many) favorites:
“I recognized winter. I saw it coming (a mile off, since you ask), and I looked it in the eye. I greeted it and let it in. I had some tricks up my sleeve, you see. I’ve learned them the hard way. When I started feeling the drag of winter, I began to treat myself like a favored child: with kindness and love. I assumed my needs were reasonable and that my feelings were signals of something important. I kept myself well fed and made sure I was getting enough sleep. I took myself for walks in the fresh air and spent time doing things that soothed me. I asked myself: What is this winter all about? I asked myself: What change is coming? ”
9. Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I'm Learning to Say
by Kelly Corrigan (Random House Trade, 2019. 256 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life categories: Wholeness & Healing | Friends | Family
My review in 3 or more words: emotional & heartwarming | funny (in the “OMG! I’ve lived exact moment!” kind of way) | family (parents, spouses, and friends)
Of the twelve statements Corrigan offers the one I most want to remember is “Tell me more.”
I loved the character development of her mother, especially in the “No” chapter.
I want to replicate my own list for the “Yes” chapter.
I had to skip a couple of cringy pages in he “I was wrong” chapter. Yikes!
The “I love you” chapter is gorgeous.
Quoted on Goodreads
One of my favorites:
“I love you.
The first time the words pass between two people: electrifying.Ten thousand times later: cause for marvel.The last time: the dream you revisit over and over and over again.”
10. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed
by Lori Gottlieb (Mariner Books, 2019. 432 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Wholeness & Healing
My review in 3 or more words: witty | medium-paced while occasionally feeling bogged down | “scoopy” (as in “inside scoop”)
It took me more than half of this 400+ page book to want to keep reading it. I checked it out of my library based on the stellar recommendation of a blogger I enjoy. As I began to read I could see that the concept for the book was good but it took me longer than I prefer to really care about the characters. I don’t mean that in a harsh way - particularly since this is a memoir with many references to real (but anonymous) people bearing their souls to her behind the closed doors of her therapy office. I think the structure of the chapters took too long to pick up traction which made the book feel overly-drawn out. Still, if you’re curious about what a therapist might be thinking or about what a therapist is telling her therapist, this is an intriguing read!
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“People often mistake numbness for nothingness, but numbness isn’t the absence of feelings; it’s a response to being overwhelmed by too many feelings. ”
11. Call the Midwife, Volume 3: Farewell to the East End
by Jennifer Worth (Ecco Press, 2013. 336 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors | Peace & Justice
My review in 3 or more words: heartwarming | historically fascinating | inspiring
I’ve raved about the television series based on the books. The first three seasons of Call the Midwife follow closely Jennifer Worth’s heartwarming and fascinating memoir of her years serving post-war East End of London as a midwife living with the Anglican sisters of Nonnatus House. My kids purchased the trilogy as a boxed set for Christmas and I was finally able to read the third book. This is a series I will keep reading and watching over again.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“Someone once said that youth is wasted on the young. Not a bit of it. Only the young have the impulsive energy to tackle the impossible and enjoy it; the courage to follow their instincts and brave the new; the stamina to work all day, all night and all the next day without tiring. For the young everything is possible. None of us, twenty years later, could do the things we did in our youth. Though the vision burns still bright, the energy has gone. ”
12. Why Not Me?
by Mindy Kaling (Minotaur Books, 2016. 400 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Friends | Favorite Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: just | plain | fun!
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“I will leave you with one last piece of advice, which is: If you’ve got it, flaunt it. And if you don’t got it? Flaunt it. ’Cause what are we even doing here if we’re not flaunting it?”
Essays / Short Stories / Poetry
See an excellent additional memoir listed below under the Apostles Reads heading.
by Mary Oliver (Penguin Books, 2019. 192 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Daily Work & Callings | Favorite Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: reflective (inspiring attention to beauty) | lyrical | evocative
I picked up this beautiful volume in a sweet Connecticut bookstore during one of our spring road trips. In typical Mary Oliver fashion, this collection of essays overflows with lyrical insight. Her poetic voice is evident, and in my opinion enhanced, by the longer form of the essay. As in her poems, Oliver models a life attending beauty in the natural world, the inner life, and the literary works of her mentors (her “great ones”).
Other reviews:
Upstream: Selected Essays, a review at The Examined Life
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work — who is thus responsible to the work… Serious interruptions to work, therefore, are never the inopportune, cheerful, even loving interruptions which come to us from another.
[…]
It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.
There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
by George Saunders (Random House, 2021. 432 pages!)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Daily Work & Callings | Favorite Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: delightful | insightful | literature with a joyful guide
If you don’t like Russian literature you might love - or at least like - this book. If you don’t care why a short story works (or doesn’t) you might be won over by the irrepressible invitations from the author and professor, Saunders. If you don’t find metaphors helpful for learning you probably won’t be won over. George Saunders uses language like Jesus, earnestly inviting us to know something more fully with every available linguistic aid.
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my favorites:
“We’re always rationally explaining and articulating things. But we’re at our most intelligent in the moment just before we start to explain or articulate. Great art occurs—or doesn’t—in that instant. What we turn to art for is precisely this moment, when we “know” something (we feel it) but can’t articulate it because it’s too complex and multiple. But the “knowing” at such moments, though happening without language, is real. I’d say this is what art is for: to remind us that this other sort of knowing is not only real, it’s superior to our usual (conceptual, reductive) way.”
Novels / Mysteries
See additional novels listed below under the Apostles Reads heading and the Audio Books heading.
15. Glass Houses: A Novel (Chief Inspector Gamache Novel)
by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books, 2018. 400 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: mysterious | supsenseful | medium-paced
I’m still happily working my way through the Inspector Gamache novels. In this book, I enjoyed the flashback framework from courtroom in hot summer back to the scene of the crime in late fall (Halloween - early November). The opioid crisis in Quebec to the US border in Vermont is (sadly) believable and compelling. Gamache’s “third way” to win a major battle in the drug war is a bit hard to understand, but inspiring and satisfying.
I found the mythology / history / anthropology about the cobrador del frac more interesting by reading the author’s note at the end of the book, although I was disappointed to discover that Penny invented much of the backstory. Also touching, was reading Penny’s note about her husband Michael - on whom Gamache is designed - died as she wrote this volume.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“They all had them. Secrets. But some stank more than others.”
16. Kingdom of the Blind: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel
by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books, 2019. 400 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: medium-paced | mystery | on the dark side for this series
This series is always a comfort read, but this particular volume was not my favorite. I understand the importance of describing the ravages of drug addiction, but rather than this feeling gritty, it felt caricatured. How many times did the author need to say “junkies, trannies, and whores” in that sequence before I began to imagine a zombie army instead of human individuals?
Also, if you’re going to include a storyline about a trafficked child, it needs more development. As it stands in this book, it’s more like an emotional trigger rather than a developed storyline.
I sort of followed the financial crime plot line, but it felt pretty complicated and bulky.
I read in the acknowledgements that the author wrote this novel as she recovered from the deep grief of her husband’s death. I wonder if that might be part of the gaps here?
I did enjoy the Benedict character. He’s a lovable addition to the Three Pines community and I hope to see him return.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“What I was going to say is that my mentor had this theory that our lives are like an aboriginal longhouse. Just one huge room.” He swept one arm out to illustrate scope. “He said that if we thought we could compartmentalize things, we were deluding ourselves. Everyone we meet, every word we speak, every action taken or not taken lives in our longhouse. With us. Always. Never to be expelled or locked away.”
17. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: A Flavia de Luce Mystery
by Alan Bradley (Bantam, 2010. 385 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: lighthearted | mysterious | period piece
My dear friend bought me the first three books of this series for my birthday and they’ve been such a fun diversion whenever the world feels too heavy or dark. (Weirdly, murder mysteries are comfort for me during those time? Maybe it’s the satisfaction of justice being served?)
Flavia de Luce is delightfully precocious thinking and saying and doing all the things I still wish I could think and say and do (especially helping the village detective solve tricky murder mysteries)! Her British neighbors are as quirky as one would hope in a post-war English village. Her family is completely unkind - not unlike the Dursleys. Let’s hope she finds some Hogwart-type friends in the coming volumes!
One note: One part of this particular book included a scene built around racial caricatures that felt gratuitous and might really hurt some readers.
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“As I stood outside in Cow Lane, it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
No ... eight days a week.”
18. A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel
by Alan Bradley (Bantam, 2011. 432 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Neighbors
My review in 3 or more words: witty & precocious | adventurous | period piece
My dear friend bought me the first three books of this series for my birthday and they’ve been such a fun diversion whenever the world feels too heavy or dark. (Weirdly, murder mysteries are comfort for me during those time? Maybe it’s the satisfaction of justice being served?)
Flavia de Luce is delightfully precocious thinking and saying and doing all the things I still wish I could think and say and do (especially helping the village detective solve tricky murder mysteries)! Her British neighbors are as quirky as one would hope in a post-war English village. Her family is completely unkind - not unlike the Dursleys. Let’s hope she finds some Hogwart-type friends in the coming volumes!
I enjoyed this story even more than the first book!
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“Thinking about Brookie Harewood - and who killed him, and why - was really just another way of praying for his soul, wasn’t it?
If this was true, I had just established a direct link between Christian charity and criminal investigation. I could hardly wait to tell the vicar!”
19. Poirot Investigates (Hercule Poirot Mystery)
by Agatha Christie (Vintage, 2021. 256 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Favorite Creators & Cultivators
My review in 3 or more words: lighthearted | mysterious | period piece
Fantastic introduction to Poirot in print! The short stories give such fun commentary to the Hercule Poirot I’ve come to love through David Suche't’s on-screen performance. This little collection of stories made for perfect bedtime reading!
Publisher’s Disclaimer: “This book was first published in 1925. Like many books of its era, it contains some offensive cultural representations and language that detract - and distract - from the value of the work. Accordingly, editorial changes have been made in a handful of places to remove racist language and depictions, but for the most part this classic work is reproduced as originally published.”
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
““Good Lord, Poirot! Do you know, I’d give a considerable sum of money to see you make a thorough ass of yourself - just for once. You’re so confoundedly conceited!”
”Do not enrage yourself, Hastings. In verity, I observe that there are times when you almost detest me! Alas, I suffer the penalties of greatness!”
The little man puffed out his chest, and sighted so comically that I was forced to laugh.”
20. Rules of Civility: A Novel
by Amor Towles (Penguin Books, 2012. 368 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
A Sacramental Life category: Friends
My review in 3 or more words: witty | romantic | relaxing | period piece
This is the kind of novel with just enough bells and whistles to feel literary - prologue, epilogue, appendix, structure of seasons throughout 1938, references to other literary works (e.g., Dickens, Thoreau, Agatha Christie, Irving Berlin, Billie Holiday) - and just enough juicy, unexpected plot twists to feel like a relaxing novel. The kind of novel to root for the heroine even if you don’t approve of all of her choices. It’s just good enough I lived in post-book haze where I wanted to be Katey Kontent. (“You stress the second syllable: con-tent, as in “satisfied.” Only problem is, Katey isn't.”)
Quoted on Goodreads:
One of my favorites:
“For the most part in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justices exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our master’s wares with our heads down and our blinders in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar. But there are certain times when chance suddenly provides the justice that Agatha Christie promises. We look around at the characters cat in our own lives - our heiresses and gardeners, our vicars and nannies, our late-arriving guests who are not exactly what they seem - and discover before the end of the weekend all assembled will get their just deserts.
But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company.”
Audio Books
See additional novels listed below under the Apostles Reads heading
21 - 25. All 5 Books in the Chronicles of Narnia series on Audible
by C. S. Lewis., Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, Alex Jennings, Michael York, Lynn Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam, and Patrick Stewart
A Sacramental Life categories: Church | Daily Work & Callings
One of the most helpful soothers for a stressful 2020 and 2021 has been listening to favorites on audiobook. Jim Dale remains our all-time favorite narrator, but this cast is still pretty great!
Children’s Books
See additional excellent titles for this category listed below under the Audio Book and Apostles Reads headings.
Apostles Reads Selections
You can read more about what our church’s reading group, Apostles Reads, enjoyed together in 2019 and the types of books we select here.
26. Light Upon Light: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany
By Sarah Arthur (Paraclete Press, 2014. 219 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads season: Advent | Christmastide
A Sacramental Life Category: Apostles Reads | Spiritual Practices
My review in 3 or more words: rich compilation | diverse voices | liturgically insightful
I only needed to read this description to know I would love the collection: "This collection contains daily and weekly inspirational readings to help the reader prayerfully experience God through the liturgical seasons of winter. Well-loved classics by Andersen, Dickens, and Eliot join contemporary works by Frederick Buechner and Gary Schmidt. Poems by Donne, Herbert, and Rossetti are paired with newer voices: Scott Cairns, Benjamín Alire Sáenz, Susanna Childress, and Amit Majmudar." When I re-read the book with my church’s reading group I suspected I’d need to make the invitation a bit more explicit. I invited our reading group to approach the book like, well, a box of chocolates. I encouraged our group to savor the selections that caught their attention and to not worry about reading every single selection. I suspected the fun for us would be to hear what each of us was most drawn to. To be honest, the book wasn’t what some of our participants expected. Others, however, enjoyed the process of allowing some - if not all - of the selections accompany them during the seasons of Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany.
Other reviews:
Sarah Arthur’s Light Upon Light by Nathaniel Lee Hansen at The Cresset
One of my (many) favorite selections:
“Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?”
27. Babette’s Feast
By Isak Dinesen (Scribner Book Company, 2003. 320 pages)
The short story is a bit tricky to find in traditional print. Here are several other options:
Print copy ($8) or digital download ($3) from the Trinity Forum (HIGHLY recommend!)
Film version (which we love but I differs somewhat from the print version)
Apostles Reads liturgical season: Epiphany
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Church | Daily Work & Callings
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of favorites.
“‘Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together,’ said the General. ‘Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.’”
28. Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide
By Sarah Arthur (Paraclete Press, 2016. 272 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads season: Lent | Eastertide
A Sacramental Life Category: Apostles Reads | Spiritual Practices
My review in 3 or more words: rich compilation | diverse voices | liturgically insightful
As part of my secret plan to get our group to read poetry we'll keep moving through Sarah Arthur's anthologies for the liturgical year.
Other reviews:
Sarah Arthur’s Between Midnight and Dawn by Alex Joyner at ERB
One of my (many) favorite selections:
“I believe in the life of the word,
the diplomacy of food. I believe in salt-thick
ancient seas and the absoluteness of blue.
A poem is an ark, a suitcase in which to pack
the universe—I believe in the universality
of art, of human thirst
for a place. I believe in Adam’s work
of naming breath and weather—all manner
of wind and stillness, humidity
and heat. I believe in the audacity
of light, the patience of cedars,
the innocence of weeds. I believe
in apologies, soliloquies, speaking
in tongues; the underwater
operas of whales, the secret
prayer rituals of bees. As for miracles—
the perfection of cells, the integrity
of wings—I believe. Bones
know the dust from which they come;
all music spins through space on just
a breath. I believe in that grand economy
of love that counts the tiny death
of every fern and white-tailed fox.
I believe in the healing ministry
of phlox, the holy brokenness of saints,
the fortuity of faults—of making
and then redeeming mistakes. Who dares
brush off the auguries of a storm, disdain
the lilting eulogies of the moon? To dance
is nothing less than an act of faith
in what the prophets sang. I believe
in the genius of children and the goodness
of sleep, the eternal impulse to create. For love
of God and the human race, I believe
in the elegance of insects, the imminence
of winter, the free enterprise of grace.”
― Sarah Arthur, Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide”
by Thomas Cahill (Anchor Books, 1996. 256 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads liturgical season: Lent
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Church
My review in 3 or more words: delightful & compelling narrative | informative & illuminating | slow-paced overview of early Christianity
In the words of our daughter, Natalie, when she heard the title for our current read "Ah, the Irish. We're a humble people."
While I didn’t expect this read to be as thematically Lenten as some other options, I wanted to give us an opportunity to celebrate the real Saint Patrick during his feast month. The discussion time for this read is one of my favorite we’ve ever enjoyed together. We snuck in a few photos from our trip to the Emerald Isle in 2016, but we tried not to not go overboard.
As expected I enjoyed our Lenten reading but didn't realize how much it would actually form me in Lenten worship. If you want to understand more about the real Saint Patrick or Celtic Christianity, we highly recommend this book!
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many) favorites and the part of the story that connects exquisitely with the themes of Lent:
“The Celts have left us two cups - perhaps the two most famous cups in all of history - which beautifully reveal the story of transformation of Irish immigration from its fearful and unstable pagan origins to its baptized peace. The first cup is the Gundestrup Cauldron, found in a Danish swamp where it was thrown as a votary offering by a Celtic devotee a century or two before Christ. ...
The other cup is the Ardagh Chalice. found in a Limerick field and dating to the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century - the same period in which the “Breastplate” reached its final form. ... Like the Cauldron, it was forged for ritual, but it makes a happier statement about sacrificing, for the God to whom it is dedicated no longer demands that we nourish him and thus become one with his godhead. The transaction has been reversed: he offers himself to us as heavenly nourishment.”
30. Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland
By Tomie dePaola (Holiday House, 1992. 32 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads liturgical season: Lent
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Church
My review in 3 or more words: beautifully illustrated | well-told to include history accessible to all ages | imaginative yet honest about myth vs. historical record
The Apostles kids helped us enjoy this book from the incomparable Tomie dePaola alongside Thomas Cahill’s book. A couple of my favorite pages. We added two resources and two fun bonus features to our discussion (for all ages to enjoy)
1. Saint Patrick coloring page via The Homely Hours
2. Trinity Shamrocks Craft via Little Way Chapel (For $3, you can download a lovely print of the St. Patrick's Breastplate prayer at that same link.)
3. Book of Kells online via Trinity College of Dublin (Next best thing to seeing it in person?)
4. The Secret of Kells animated feature released in 2009 and nominated for an Academy Award. Excellent for everyone and available to rent (I think) on Amazon. This is the gorgeously-rendered mythology behind the very real, magnificent Book of Kells, created by Irish monks to turn the medieval darkness into light. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful....
Here are a couple of my favorite pages:
by Madeleine L’Engle (Square Fish, 2009. 245 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads liturgical season: Eastertide
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Family
My review in 3 or more words: adventurous | fantasy | appropriate balance describing the power of love over the darkness of evil
I've been waiting almost five years for us to read this next book together and am so excited the time is here! For Eastertide, we invite readers of all ages to enjoy this classic adventure that the author describes as her “psalm of praise to life, my stand for life against death."
Our book discussion and drive-in movie night proved, yet again, that reading is more fun in groups of all ages! We split into three intergenerational groups and prepared "book summary in 90 seconds" skits and then enjoyed a discussion in which young readers proved again the intelligence and insight that authors like L’Engle instinctively expect.
The film is groundbreaking in some meaningful ways, but it misses a lot of the straight-up beauty of the original book. You might enjoy reading 2 reviews along these lines.
Same Story - Different Lens? by Lauren Bentley
A Wrinkle in Time is a sincere, inspiring blockbuster for tweens. Why doesn’t it trust them? by Alissa Wilkinson
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many) favorites:
“We do not know what things look like. We know what things are like. It must be a very limiting thing, this seeing. -Aunt Beast”
33. Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation
by Latasha Morrison (Waterbrook Press, 2019. 256 pages)
Bookshop | Amazon | Hearts & Minds Booksellers
Apostles Reads liturgical season: Pentecost
A Sacramental Life categories: Apostles Reads | Church | Peace & Justice
My review in 3 or more words: theologically accessible & substantial | essential personal narrative | inviting
In May and June, a couple of groups in our church read through and discussed this acclaimed book by Latasha Morrison. I’m so grateful for Morrison’s combination of candid assessment of the church’s repeated failures to embrace repentance for racial sins - individual and systemic - and warm, welcome to people from a range of understanding about the realities of racial injustice. Led by Brian and Kendra, our group grew in understanding of our own defense mechanisms (even those of us who thought we were “fully onboard” struggle with defensive postures!). We grew by listening to Latasha’s stories, the stories of people of color in our congregation, and the stories of racial sin in our families of origin and institutional affiliations. We grew in our desire to wholeheartedly embrace a life of biblical justice and considered how to live this out now and next. May God mercifully forgive us and bring reconciliation out of our repentence.
Other reviews:
Review of Be the Bridge by Adam Shields at Bookwise
Quoted on Goodreads.
One of my (many) favorites:
“If repentance requires turning and walking away from the sins of our past, doesn’t it require walking toward something more reparative? So reparations and repentance are inextricably intertwined, and those who’ve inherited the power and benefits of past wrongs should work to make it right for those who’ve inherited the burdens and oppression of the past.”
A couple of years ago I began using Amazon affiliate links as a way to bring in some pocket change from the books I share on the blog. I was challenged by an independent bookseller to reconsider this strategy as Amazon has a horrible reputation in its dealings with authors and other members of the book industry. I want to champion local business and humane working relationships and so I've highlighted Bookshop for you to purchase books from an independent bookseller. I've also included the order link for one of my favorite booksellers, Hearts and Minds Books. Using the link I've provided you can order any book through heartsandmindsbooks.com, a full-service, independent bookstore, and receive prompt and personal service. They even offer the option to receive the order with an invoice and a return envelope so you can send them a check! Brian and I've been delighted with the generous attention we've received from owners Byron and Beth Borger. We feel like we've made new friends! (I also highly recommend subscribing to Byron's passionately instructive and prolific Booknotes posts.)
Go to my reading lists page to see my reading lists from 2020 and previous years.
Here's my Goodreads page. Let's be friends!
p.s. This post includes affiliate links in this post because I'm trying to be a good steward, and when you buy something through one of these links you don't pay more money, but in some magical twist of capitalism we get a little pocket change. Thanks!