Books I'm Reading
2024
Brothers Karamazov, Fyodr Dostoyevsky (fiction)
Deep Play, Diane Ackerman (non-fiction)
Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton (Christian faith)
The Man Who Was Thursday, GK Chesterton (fiction)
Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity, Nadya Williams (non-fiction)
The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise, Pico Iyer (non-fiction)
Stillness, Pico Iyer (non-fiction)
The Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (memoir)
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (classic fiction)
Being Mortal, Atul Gawande (non-fiction)
Let’s Take the Long Way Home, Gayle Caldwell (memoir, friendship, death and grief)
Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas Merton (Christian faith, spirituality)
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)
Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit (non fiction— a reread bc it’s so good)
Body of a Dancer, Rene D'Aoust (memoir)
50 Miles, Sheryl St. Germain (memoir)
Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga (anthropology of play)
2023 (23)
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