My annual list of the books I’ve read over the past twelve months.
This post is long but is written to be skimmed. Scroll through and see what piques your interest.
With the year drawing to a close, it is time to share my annual list of books I’ve (mostly) enjoyed over the past twelve months.* You’ll find these 60 books grouped into broad categories, to help in locating those of special interest.
- The top reads (I’ll revisit these over the years)
- Author interviews (talking with writers)
- History and biography (and all that entails)
- The places where we live (natural and man-made)
- The times we live in (politics and civic life)
- Fiction (novels, short stories, poetry)
- Reading dangerously (AKA murder mysteries)
- Sports (really just baseball)
- Theology and more (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
- Outbursts of radical common sense and whatever else tickled my fancy (otherwise known as the miscellaneous section)
I hope you enjoy perusing the treasures I pulled from my reading shelf this past year. Clicking on the link under the book title will take you to my original review. After providing more detail in the first two categories, I begin each additional section with my top choice for the year followed by short blurbs for the others in that subject area, listed alphabetically by author. Please feel free to use the comments to tell me which books most touched you in 2025.
Now let’s jump in and see what was on the list.
THE TOP READS (I’ll revisit these over the years)
The Postcard (2021; translation from the French in 2023) by Anne Berest is a compelling and timeless work. In January of 2003 an anonymous postcard is delivered to the Berest family home, arriving alongside the usual holiday mail. On the front, a photo of the Opéra Garnier in Paris. The back contains only the first names of Anne Berest’s maternal great-grandparents and their children Noémie and Jacques. There were five members of the Rabinovitch family. These four were all killed at Auschwitz. The fifth—an older sister to Noémie and Jacques—is Myriam, Anne Berest’s grandmother, who never spoke about the loss of her family or acknowledged her Judaism. Although Myriam had a harrowing escape from the Nazis and then worked for the Resistance, she was traumatized; filled with guilt and grieving. The quest to uncover who sent the postcard and why leads Anne and her chain-smoking mother Lélia Picabia on a multi-year journey of discovery that is painful at a profound level and yet somehow resilient and inspiring.
James: A Novel (2024 and winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction) by Percival Everett is a brilliant reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of Huck’s enslaved sidekick Jim. The first part of the book follows Twain’s general outline, but when Huck and Jim are separated Everett takes James down different paths. A masterful writer, Everett works through tales and scenes that move between gripping terror and laugh-out-loud humor, all while putting forth observations from his protagonist that cut to the bone. James is depicted with intelligence, compassion, and agency in a way seldom seen in American literature about slavery. Everett has said, “I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written. I do not view the work as a corrective, but rather I see myself in conversation with Twain.” Do yourself a favor. Read this book.
Question 7 (2023) by Richard Flanagan is a genre-defying memoir that examines the choices we make and the resulting chain reactions that explode halfway around the world and decades into the future. The choices Flannagan considers begin with the love affair of H.G. Wells and Rebecca West. He then take the reader through the work of nuclear physicists in the 1930s, the horrors of Japanese slave labor camps near Hiroshima, the world-changing 1945 atomic bomb attack on that city, and the fear of a young man trapped in rapids on a wild river, unsure if he is to live or die. But to lay them out in this sequential order does a disservice to Flanagan’s extraordinary ability to meld dream, history, science, and memory in this masterpiece. Flanagan, as a friend of mine noted, “writes like a god.”
An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (2018) by Daniel Mendelsohn is a brilliant combination of memoir and literary exploration that begins when the author’s father, eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn, decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College. It is not surprising that early in the course the father and son have a public disagreement in class over the nature of Odysseus. Was he a hero or a self-pitying liar? It is the beauty and genius of this book that Daniel can hear his father’s disagreement; listen to how his seminar students react to father, son, and the text; and lead everyone to a far deeper understanding of the epic poem. Like Odysseus and perhaps most of us, Jay is polytropos: “many-sided” or “much-turning.” By examining their life together, Daniel is making his own peace with the past. It is a beautiful and thoughtful journey.
No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain (2025) by Rebecca Solnit is a celebration of indirection. Focused on history, power, change, and possibility, Solnit writes in beautiful prose poetry to inspire hope in dark times. She builds this work on two terms she suggests we all adopt. One is “longsighted,” which she writes is “the capacity to see patterns unfold over time.” The other, as alternative to “inevitable,” is the rarely used adjective “evitable.” As she notes in the introduction, the “misremembering of the past (or not remembering the past at all) ill equips us to face the future.” In a series of essays Solnit uses her formidable storytelling skills to seek out examples of slowness, patience, endurance, and long-term vision as she helps us find “our powers and possibilities.”
Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future (2024) by Jason Stanley is a powerful and timely work. Stanley literally wrote the book on understanding fascism, and here he takes a deeper dive into the tools of totalitarianism. Stanley explains in urgent and crisp writing how critical examination of a nation’s history and traditions is discouraged in authoritarian countries. This has happened across the world for centuries and is now a feature of the new regime in Washington. That authoritarian regimes “often find history profoundly threatening” is a key lesson of the past century. By providing multiple perspectives on the past, a robust study of history undercuts one of autocracy’s key tools: the unquestioned voice of the leader. We lose those perspectives at our peril.
We Are Free to Change the World: Hannah Arendt’s Lessons in Love and Disobedience (2024) by Lyndsey Stonebridge is the book we need for these times: a compelling biography but also a primer for how to think if we want to be free. Arendt was not perfect and not always the easiest person to understand, as Stonebridge details, but she thought and cared deeply about humanity. Thanks to Stonebridge’s very accessible and thoughtful writing, readers are brought into Arendt’s world to see why she came to think the way she did. In doing so, Stonebridge takes us from fascist Germany to twenty-first century America. Arendt’s life and work is, in this masterful biography, in a dialogue with today’s turbulent times.
TWO TOP BOOKS I READ AGAIN IN 2025
A Wrinkle in Time (1962) by Madeleine L’Engle is often described as a teenage or young adult novel, which does it a great disservice. From the opening scene it stretches the mind and expands the heart for readers of all ages. In the midst of a storm the teenaged Meg Murry; her small and brilliant brother Charles Wallace; and her beautiful mother, patiently waiting for her husband’s return after a long, mysterious absence, have come to the kitchen for a midnight snack. Suddenly they are interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Whatsit, a most disturbing stranger bundled up in clothes, wrapped in scarves of assorted colors, with a man’s felt hat perched on top of her head. It seems that Charles Wallace has met Mrs. Whatsit—and her two friends Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which—before. As she prepares to leave, she says, “Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.” And the magical story about time travel in the fifth dimension—along with the power of imagination, friendship, and love—begins.
Lost & Found: A Memoir (2022) by Kathryn Schulz is a tender, searching meditation on love and loss and what it means to be human that I returned to read during these troubled times. Schulz, an exquisite writer, knows that there is both a wonder and fragility to life. While many feel small and powerless in the face of that reality, it is also easy to feel amazed and fortunate to be here. Schulz is clearheaded in her exploration of the mixed experiences and motives we encounter. As she moves through life, Schulz notes that her days are exceptional even when they are ordinary. “We live remarkable lives,” she writes, “because life itself is remarkable.”
AUTHOR INTERVIEWS (talking with writers)
Paris: A Short History (2024) by Jeremy Black, MBE is a succinct and incisive look at how the city, founded in the first century BCE, was shaped by cultural circumstances and then grew to have impacts across the world. Black explains how a small Gallic capital was transformed into a flourishing medieval city and he brings the illustrious reigns of Louis XIV and XV—a time when Paris became one of the most beautiful and cosmopolitan capitals in the world—to life. I was delighted when Jeremy, emeritus professor of history at the University of Exeter and the author or editor of over 100 books, agreed to answer a few questions for my Author Q&A series.
The Civil War (2025) by European military historian Jeremy Black, MBE reorients readers to see what was extraordinary in the civil war of “the American colonies.” As Black states early in this work, the Civil War “was the most traumatic conflict, indeed event, in American history.” That holds true even when compared with the War of Independence, as the divisions within the country at the time of the revolution were not as long-lasting. The Civil War in America was not just a military struggle; it was also a political struggle. This concise new volume asks the reader to look at this watershed moment in world history with a broader international perspective, and Jeremy answered questions about this new work for my readers.
A Child is Born: A Beginner’s Guide to Nativity Stories (2025) by Amy-Jill Levine is a short but insightful book that examines the other nativity stories in the Hebrew Bible. Christians easily recall the narrative around the birth of Jesus, but how many know, much less think about, the nativity stories of Moses, Isaac and Ishmael, Samson, and Samuel. Just in time for Advent author AJ Levine has prepared a fascinating four-part study explaining the context that would have been basic knowledge for the faithful in the first century CE. She also shows the connections between these ancient stories of displacement, pilgrimage, and exploration and the one we now celebrate on December 25th. A Child is Born is a book full of insight and wisdom, which I discuss with AJ in a delightful interview.
The Accidental Vineyard: An Old House, New Vines, and a Changed Life in Wine Country (2025) by Richard A. Moran is a heartfelt memoir that begins with a spontaneous drive into California wine country in an attempt to lull a fitful, crying son to sleep. On the drive Moran, his wife Carol, and their three children chance upon an old Victorian house for sale. They make the commitment to restore the house, even though it had challenges by the boatload and would disrupt Rich’s busy, corporate consulting business. Both of those facts turned out to be keys to finding the well-rounded life he didn’t know he was seeking as the journey began. Moran—in simple yet compelling language—happily lets us all in on the secrets he and his family uncovered in following their dreams. This is a memoir full of heart and humor, which I discuss with Rich in the 20th installment of my Author Q&A series.
Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman’s March and the Story of America’s Largest Emancipation (2025) by Bennett Parten makes the compelling case that this seminal event in the Civil War—when Sherman’s army cut a path through Georgia from Atlanta to Savannah—was a turning point in the history of American freedom. When as many as 20,000 formerly enslaved men, women, and children followed the army as war refugees, it was the largest emancipation event in our history. Sherman’s March was not only one of the last campaigns of the Civil War, but it was also an early battle of Reconstruction. We continue, here in the 21st century, to live with the consequences of this march toward freedom. Author Ben Parten discusses his new work with me for MTC readers.
Sex of the Midwest: A Novel in Stories (2025) by Robyn Ryle—an NPR “Best Book” of 2025—begins as the residents of Lanier, Indiana (population 12,234) wake up to discover an email in their inbox inviting them to participate in a study of sexual practices. The town is soon abuzz (as small towns often are) trying to figure out how Lanier was chosen and who wrote the email. A legendary basketball coach is convinced the e-mail and the epidemic of STDs at the junior high are both part of the moral decline of the town, and although he has to drag around an oxygen tank he sets out for action. The bartender at the Main Street Bar finds that the email brings back fear of a midlife crisis. A town employee who likes to follow the rules is surprised to find where life’s pathway takes her after receiving the email. Author Robyn Ryle chats with me about her new work where “the e-mail opens up the secret (and not-so-secret) lives of one small town, and reveals the surprising complexity of sex (and life) in the Midwest.”
It’s Not Even Past (2025) by Anna Scotti is a brilliantly conceived set of murder mysteries involving the librarian originally known as Lori Yarborough. Lori moves through several aliases, multiple locations across the U.S., and a variety of rather menial jobs in order to stay a step ahead of her ruthless ex and his cartel henchmen. In each place our protagonist has an uncanny ability to find herself in the midst of trouble and murder; her ingenuity in solving those crimes inevitably forces her to move on, often to a new city with a new WITSEC-provided identity. I reached out to Anna to see if she would answer a few questions on murder mysteries. She agreed and we had a delightful exchange.
New Building in Old Cities: Writings by Gustavo Giovannoni on Architectural and Urban Conservation (2024) edited by Steven W. Semes, Francesco Siravo, and Jeff Cody is a highly relevant and richly illustrated book of the largely forgotten architectural work of an important early advocate for the conservation of historic cities. Because Giovannoni’s works had not been translated into English, his approach to architectural restoration and rehabilitation based on the “simultaneous consideration of the historical, technical, environmental, social, and aesthetic dimensions of ‘monuments’ and ordinary buildings” was not widely known internationally. In another installment of my Author Q&A series, I speak with the editors about this new work.
Troubled Waters: A Sea Story (2024) by Syd Stapleton is a tale about an environmental disaster and cover-up wrapped in a whodunit. Our hero, Frank Tomasini, is a 47-year-old marine surveyor who lives comfortably on the Molly B, a 1937 salmon troller. Frank is asked to unofficially survey the damage to an abandoned and adrift boat that belongs to Arthur Middleton, a “rich and holier-than-thou environmental warrior.” It turns out very few people, including Arthur’s brother, a high-powered Seattle business shark, seem too eager for Frank to find out what happened. In my post, Syd and I discuss this work of fiction packed with truth.
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY (and all that entails)
History Matters (2025) by David McCullough (edited by Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill) is a posthumous collection of thought-provoking essays by the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and bestselling author. McCullough, who passed away in 2022, wrote eloquently and carefully about the American experience. He told us why American history mattered. David began an essay on the hard, essential work of being an American citizen with a few simple lessons from the past, the first being that “nothing of lasting value or importance in our way of life, none of our proudest attainments, has ever come without effort. America is an effort.” History is not dead in these pages; in fact, history is living and unfolding. And we are an important part of that history.
Josephine Baker’s Secret War: The African American Star Who Fought for France and Freedom (2025) by Hanna Diamond is an enlightening and thoroughly researched history of how the cabaret singer Josephine Baker—one of the most famous celebrities of her time—became a spy for the French Secret Services during World War II. Drawing on contemporary sources, Diamond explains the motivation for Baker’s involvement and how her celebrity, rediscovery of her African American roots, and unusual social fluidity made her success as a spy possible while also shaping her post-war advocacy.
The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past (2024) by Nate DiMeo is a wonder-filled collection of stories from our past that looks into the lives of people, some of them famous but many forgotten by time, whose stories deserve to be known. DiMeo examines the places “between and beyond concrete facts and the well-worn language of familiar stories” to remind us that “life, in the present as in the past, is more complicated and more interesting and more beautiful and more improbable and more alive than we’d realized.”
On Juneteenth (2021) by Annette Gordon-Reed is a work of both history and memoir that explores the long road to the actual events of June 19, 1865, in Galveston, Texas, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state. A native of Texas, Gordon-Reed examines her own life and mixes it with historical events from the state, nation, and world to shape a more truthful narrative around emancipation.
The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865—1915 (2021) by Jon Grinspan considers the economic and technological disruptions following the end of the Civil War and dives deeply into the aggressive tribal partisanship that grew to be a defining feature of that era. Democracy was seen to be in crisis, and the story of what it cost to cool our republic has lessons both positive and negative for today’s period of political crisis.
Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times that Made Handel’s Messiah (2024) by Charles King takes the reader on a compelling and vividly written journey through the lives of a set of characters living in the turbulent times of the early-to-mid 18th century. King shows how a “universe of pain” coupled with the lives of imperfect humans could come together “to make a musical monument to hope.”
Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations (2006) by Craig Nelson is an excellent biography of the man who would write three of the bestsellers of the eighteenth century, topped only by the Bible. Nelson characterizes Paine as “the Enlightenment Mercury who sparked political common cause between men who worked for a living and empowered aristocrats across all three nations.”
Common Sense (1776) by Thomas Paine, published just six months before the Declaration of Independence, has been called the most influential polemic in all of American history. Paine’s work provided the vision of independence that would move millions to change their hearts and minds away from their deference and loyalty to Britain and the throne, It remains vitally important and relevant today.
A Good Natured Riot: The Birth of the Grand Ole Opry (1999) by Charles K. Wolfe—a highly readable yet thoroughly documented account of the early years of The Grand Ole Opry—“shows the intersection of the birth of the Opry with so many other important, and often overlooked, cultural moments.” In doing so Wolfe examines the background and lives of the key performers on the early Opry to an audience that has largely forgotten Uncle Jimmy Thompson, Dr. Humphrey Bates, Uncle Dave Macon, DeFord Bailey, along with the radio fiddlers and hoedown bands of the era.
THE PLACES WHERE WE LIVE (natural and man-made)
Amsterdam’s Canal District: Origins, Evolution, and Future Prospects (2020) edited by Jan Nijman moves beyond the typical focus on the iconic district’s creation in the country’s 17th century Golden Age to bring together an impressive list of scholars to highlight lessons learned from the district’s evolution. Working from a variety of disciplines, these scholars also bring varied perspectives to the study of contemporary debates facing this world class city. This work is a call for the outward appearance of the city’s architecture “to be linked with the identity of the people who created, used, and maintained it, and still inhabit it.” People are at the heart of this important work.
Civic Architecture Across America: Extraordinary Views (2025) by Thomas R. Schiff provides unexpected perspectives on America’s statehouses, city halls, county courthouses, monuments and more. Schiff’s use of a Hulcherama 360° panoramic camera provides a view that is at once in front, beside and behind the viewer, resulting in a striking and often stunning collection that speaks to the importance, beauty, and—some might add—fragility of the buildings that both serve and represent our American experiment in democracy.
Window Shopping with Helen Keller: Architecture and Disability in Modern Culture (2025) by David Serlin is an academic work from the University of Chicago Press that seeks to reassess modern architecture and urban culture when it comes to addressing the needs of people with disabilities. Serlin’s work too often takes the reader on a dense and winding path, but there is plenty here to capture the reader interested in the topic, either from the perspective of well-known historical figures such as Joseph Merrick (aka the “Elephant Man”) in London and Helen Keller in New York and Paris, or for those who want to study institutions and buildings that had outsized influence.
THE TIMES WE LIVE IN (politics and civic life)
The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley (2024) by Marietje Schaake is an extraordinarily frightening and important new work on how the tech giants of Silicon Valley have become “too big to fail and thus too big to regulate, causing harm to all of us.” With a subject that is large and technically complex, Schaake has written a book that is both engaging and readable, even for the non-expert. Which is a good thing, because what she describes affects each one of us. The ultimate result of this coup is “the fundamental erosion of personal freedom and democratic norms” all for the benefit of American oligarchs.
Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes (2025) by Leah Litman describes in fresh and accessible language how the combination of the court’s power and a poor understanding of its work by the public makes it a dangerous entity in today’s America. In this astute assessment of our condition today she asserts: “They’ve stolen a Court and they are practically daring anyone to challenge them. It’s time to call their bluff.”
FICTION (novels, short stories, poetry)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neale Hurston is the story of Janie Crawford, a proud independent black woman who finds herself while navigating three marriages and a fair share of sorrow. Janie begins as a young girl, goes through a myriad of experiences in the Jim Crow South, and comes out a much wiser woman of 40. She learns that others—family, friends, lovers, busy-bodies—want to tell her how to live. Her Grandma reminds her that the black woman “is de mule of the world” and both white folks and black men will expect her to tote the heaviest load. But in the end Janie proclaims that she has done “two things everbody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves.” Hurston’s vivid writing and empathetic outlook towards Janie’s quest brings this story alive.
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (2021) by Becky Chambers—a lovely story for anyone who could use a break—takes place on a small moon called Panga, centuries after the Awakening at the end of the Factory Age, when the robots “employed” by humans decided they wanted to depart for the wilderness to observe “that which has no design.” They had long ago faded into myth and legend until Sibling Dex takes a turn off the paved road, heads into the wilderness, and meets Mosscap, a 7-foot tall, metal-plated, boxy-headed, wild-built robot who is on their own mission.
Greek Lessons: A Novel (2023) by Han Kang (translated by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won) is set in Seoul, South Korea, where a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice; her teacher is drawn to the silent woman, for he is also moving into isolation as day by day he is losing his sight. Their shared suffering brings the man and the woman together in this work that is, as more than one reader has noted, a love letter to human intimacy and connection.
Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis (2024) by Dave Maass and Patrick Lay, inspired by the Viktor Ullmann opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis, is a graphic novel that mixes “dystopian sci-fi, mythic fantasy, and zombie horror.” Atlantis did not sink in this alternative universe but instead became a technologically advanced tyranny where the power-mad buffoonish Emperor declares all-out war. Death, however, goes on a labor strike, “creating a hellscape where everyone fights, but no one dies.”
Tenth of December: Stories (2013) by George Saunders is a book of short stories with “hesitant, disappointed” protagonists where the reader is in their heads; language that is “exhilarating” and full of slang; and settings in “self-contained” suburbs or small towns. While Saunders has the skill of a satirist, he also brings in a generosity of spirit for his characters that is appealing.
Stoner (1965 and reprinted in several editions) by John Williams has been described as a novel in which nothing happens and everything happens. William Stoner is raised on a hardscrabble farm but takes a required class on English literature at university and in the experience embraces a scholar’s life. As the years pass in this career he loves, Stoner encounters a succession of disappointments. There is a universality to William Stoner that can be both comforting and very sad at the same time.
READING DANGEROUSLY (AKA murder mysteries)
Pietr the Latvian (1930) by Georges Simenon is the first installment in the legendary Inspector Maigret series. As the book begins Detective Chief Inspector Maigret receives notice from Interpol that Pietr the Latvian, an infamous con man, is on his way to Paris. Maigret rushes to intercept him at the train station but is confounded to find two men there who fit the description of the wanted man. One is alive, the other dead. So begins this thrilling tale where Maigret not only has to solve the murder but he must also search for the true identity of the victim.
The Black Swan Mystery (1960; English translation 2024) by Tetsuya Ayukawa (the pen name of Toru Nakagawa) is an alibi-deconstruction mystery of the first order. One morning railway workers find the body of a well-dressed, middle aged man—the much-hated owner of a local mill who is involved in a labor dispute—shot dead. Everyone in Gosuke Nishinohata’s orbit—including the labor union and a new religious sect—harbored ill feelings for the man, or worse, leading to the decision to bring in an expert, Inspector Onitsura, who has a special skill at unraveling difficult schemes.
The Searcher (2020) by Tana French begins as Cal Hooper, after twenty-five years in the Chicago police force, moves to a small rural Irish village seeking nothing more than a small fixer-upper, land to walk, time to think, and a good pub. But into his search for a new start walks Trey, a local kid whose brother is missing and no one seems to care. Slowly Trey comes to trust Cal and the former cop comes to care about finding answers in a village that likes to hide secrets.
A Refiner’s Fire: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (2024) by Donna Leon, the most recent in the Commissario Brunetti series, begins early on a spring morning when two teenage gangs are arrested after a violent fight in one of Venice’s squares. As is her style, Leon brings together contemporary issues with past ghosts of deceit and acts of official wrongdoing as she continues to call on us to strive for what is right, even in the midst of “the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.”
Baltimore Blues (1997) by Laura Lippman introduces us to Tess Monaghan, an out-of-work newspaper reporter who needs to solve the mystery surrounding the death of a prominent attorney in order to exonerate her good friend Darryl “Rock” Paxton. There are twists and turns as Tess navigates the many confusing and compromised relationships, but by the second half of this debut mystery novel Lippman has hit her stride and we move quickly through the pages to a very surprising conclusion.
The Death of Shame (2025) by Ambrose Parry is the most recent installment of the Raven and Fisher mystery series. Set in 1854 Edinburgh, Sarah Fisher—a young widow left with financial resources after the death of her husband—is helping fund Dr. Will Raven’s emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a doctor. As the story progresses, Will and Sarah are drawn into an ever more confusing and dangerous web of treachery, blackmail, secrets, and murder among the city’s more sordid residents.
Still Life (2005) by Louise Penny is a traditional mystery set in the tiny hamlet of Three Pines south of Montreal. A beloved local fixture, Miss Jane Neal, has been found dead on Thanksgiving morning in what the locals think is a tragic hunting accident but Chief Inspector Armand Gamache fears is something much more sinister. In this first of a series that now stretches over 20 years, we see the Chief Inspector’s strength, integrity, and underlying compassion for the victim, the townspeople who mourn Jane Neal’s death, and for his own team as Penny sets up the longer series and the Chief Inspector’s continued involvement in the life—and deaths—of Three Pines.
A Better Man (2019) by Louise Penny is the fifteenth work in the Canadian author’s long-running Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series. The former superintendent of the entire Sûreté du Québec, Gamache has returned after a controversial suspension and demotion and immediately faces devastating spring floods, relentless social media attacks, a law enforcement force that appears split on the question of whether he should have even been allowed to return, and a desperate father seeking help in finding his missing daughter. In the fast paced and multi-layered story, the Chief Inspector and many others are struggling to find their footing.
From Doon With Death (1964) by Ruth Rendell finds Margaret Parsons—a timid housewife devoted to her garden, her kitchen, and her husband in the Sussex village of Kingsmarkham—dead, brutally strangled, her body abandoned in the nearby woods. Chief Inspector Reg Wexford, the big, gruff rural detective, is intrigued by the seeming disconnect between her life and death, and in finding the truth he uncovers several dark secrets that those who knew Margaret Parsons want to keep quiet.
A Man’s Head (1931) by Georges Simenon begins when Joseph Heurtin—who awaits his fate on death row—escapes out of the High Surveillance wing of an infamous Paris prison. As he moves toward freedom, Heurtin is being watched by Inspector Maigret, the detective who convicted him but has come to believe that he convicted the wrong man. Through the twists and turns of the plot, Maigret realizes he has to contend with a criminal mastermind who has nothing to lose and believes he is the smartest person in the room.
Maigret’s Holiday (1948) by Georges Simenon begins as Maigret and his wife are on holiday in the seaside town of Les Sables d’Olonne. Madame Maigret is admitted to a hospital where a young woman in a nearby ward dies. Maigret is unable to resist investigating the circumstances of her death and eventually he uncovers the truth, even when some of the locals—including some very important men and women—do not want to accept it.
The Six Mile Circle: A Sea Story (2025) by Syd Stapleton continues the adventures of Frank Tomasini and the Molly B. Frank’s marine surveyor’s business has fallen on hard times so to make ends meet he signs on as a deckhand and cook on ocean-going tugboats and barges making runs between the Pacific Northwest and Hawaii. When one of the hulls is mysteriously pumped out in the middle of the ocean, a fellow deckhand gets sick and ultimately dies after contact. Frank knows he has to get to the bottom of this mystery.
Everyone on This Train is a Suspect (2024) by Benjamin Stevenson is a modern take on—or at least a big hat tip to—the classic Agatha Christie novel that is a (mostly) clever and always fun murder mystery. The set-up gives you a hint as to both the cleverness and devilishness that Stevenson has in mind: six authors are invited by the Australian Mystery Writers Society to their crime-writing festival aboard the Ghan, the famous train through the vast Australian desert. One of the six is murdered in this locked room (train) mystery, and the other five writers all turn into detectives.
SPORTS (really just baseball)
The Last Manager: How Earl Weaver tricked, tormented, and reinvented baseball (2025) by John W. Miller is a splendid new biography of one of the game’s great characters and innovators. Weaver—forward-looking genius, shrewd evaluator of talent, brilliant strategist, superb entertainer, part wizard—is deserving of the royal treatment. The Bismarck of Baltimore came into the game at the twilight of the age of the baseball manager. His uncanny skill at figuring out so many things about the game without the benefit of the computer probably hastened the age’s demise. Now they just program the machines to think like Earl. As Miller shows in this masterful new work, they broke the mold with Earl Weaver.
The Baseball 100 (2021) by Joe Posnanski is characterized by the publisher as “a magnum opus…an audacious, singular, and masterly book that took a lifetime to write.” The rankings are important—and instantly give the reader a chance to argue with Joe, which he encourages. But they serve the larger purpose of providing this talented writer and lifelong fan with a chance to explore baseball’s rich, deep, diverse, and at times challenging history.
THEOLOGY AND MORE (thinking about purpose and mindfulness)
Jesus and the Disinherited (1949) by Howard Thurman is the work that inspired The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and countless other advocates for peace and justice. Rev. Otis Moss, III highlighted the uniqueness of Thurman’s book when he wrote, “No other publication in the twentieth century has upended antiquated theological notions, truncated political ideas, and socially constructed racial fallacies like Jesus and the Disinherited.” In this seminal work, Thurman stresses that Jesus “recognized fully that out of the heart are the issues of life and that no external force, however great and overwhelming, can at long last destroy a people if it does not first win that victory of the spirit against them.”
The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust (2024) by Francis S. Collins combines philosophy, Christian theology, sociology, and some degree of self-help in his effort to promote a more civil society. In this thoughtful and ultimately optimistic book, Collins focuses on four core sources of judgement and clear thinking: truth, science, faith, and trust. “Building the ultimate path to wisdom will depend on individuals” Collins asserts, and that path “runs right through our hearts and minds.” We need to do a better job of listening to one another: it is that simple and that difficult.
In the Beginning was the Spirit: Science, Religion, and Indigenous Spirituality (2012) by Diarmuid O’Murchu takes a broad look at what many know as the third member of the Christian Trinity. In place of anthropocentric traditional approaches to Christianity, O’Murchu wants us to look at the creative act described in Genesis and recognize the Spirit as that which breathed over the formless void, “the force behind the recurring words ‘Let there be . . .’”
A Season for the Spirit (2004) by Martin L. Smith is a work of forty Lenten meditations in which Smith suggests that what we are called to give up in Lent is control itself. The paradox is that by relinquishing our efforts to control our lives we can begin to find the freedom “that is gained only through exposure to the truth.”
OUTBURSTS OF RADICAL COMMON SENSE AND WHATEVER ELSE TICKLED MY FANCY (otherwise known as the miscellaneous section)
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994; Vintage Books Edition 2019) by Anne Lamott is a funny, wise, at times cranky, and insightful work full of wisdom that can support the journey of any aspiring writer. Lamott encourages her readers and students to get off their duffs, look around, explore, and then write about it. Good writing is about telling the truth, Lamott asserts, and this work is full of truth telling for the aspiring writer.
Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (1998) by Ursula K. Le Guin is a handbook on writing well. This master practitioner examines the fundamental components of narrative in this “deceptively simple” handbook that those wishing to communicate more effectively and skillfully through writing could return to again and again.
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine (2024) by Daniel J. Levitin explores the curative powers of music, describing ways in which it can be a beneficial part of recovery for patients. After an opening chapter on the neuroanatomy of music Levitin brings together the results of numerous studies, demonstrating time and time again “how music can contribute to the treatment of a host of ailments, from neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, to cognitive injury, depression, and pain.”
Enjoy!
More to come…
DJB
*To check out previous lists, click here for the posts from
See also: Seeing myself in the books I read: 2024 observations.
MORE TO COME... 
I’m so delighted to find my book on your list – and in such erudite and accomplished company! For those interested in reading It’s Not Even Past, it will be re-released in 2026 by a new publisher! Info at anna k. scotti – Home. Thank you, DJB and More to Come!
Thanks for the note and the update, Anna. Glad to hear that “It’s Not Even Past” will be re-released. Send me the publisher info once you have it and I’ll update the links in the post. Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season. DJB