I’ve always been a reader, but about six years ago I realized that I was not reading nearly as much as I used to. I wasn’t reading every day. I wasn’t always in the middle of a book. I was doing most of my reading online.
I decided to be intentional about increasing my reading time. I set aside a specific time each day to read, and I set a monthly reading goal for myself.
Y’all, I wish all goals were this easy to reach. In 2021 my goal was five books per month, for a total of 60 per year. I read 76. The following year I raised the goal to six, and once again exceeded it, reading 76 books for the second year in a row! Seven didn’t seem like a stretch, and in 2023 I read 103 books (almost nine per month). At that point I stopped setting goals and just kept reading–91 books in 2024 and 97 last year.
That’s 443 books in five years, an overall average of seven each month. Yesterday I read an article claiming that a majority of Americans did not read ONE BOOK last year. My mind boggles.
Anyway, after all that reading, I thought I’d share the best of the best with you today, the books I read that I think you should read too. As always, they are offered in no particular order except that my top recommendation will be at the very end.
Thorpe by Mary Dutton
I don’t know why more people don’t know about this book. It made its appearance the same time that I did, and I discovered it on the bookshelf at my cousins’ house, where I spent a lot of time growing up. I read it over and over, eventually appropriating it. I wrote about my most recent read–my first as an adult–here.
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
I love this book not just for its story, or its clever structure, but because it’s a love story to reading that should resonate with anyone who loves to read. See more here.
The Holy Innocents by J.T. Dwyer
This is the third in a series–The Sheepfold–and you’ll have to read the first two in order to understand it, but the third one is the payoff where all of the author’s careful work bears fruit, coming together in a way that reminds me of the last few chapters of A Tale of Two Cities. Unlike most of the books in this list, it is not something I would recommend to everyone. I think you need to be a Catholic, but not a squeamish one, to appreciate this arc of sin and redemption. Here’s more information.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
This is such a lovely book. Read it to feel a connection with the natural world, and to think about a different relationship with nature. Here is what I wrote about it.
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
This is, of course, a classic. But there is a reason for that. It’s profoundly beautiful, but again you might need to be Catholic to appreciate it fully. Here are some more thoughts.
A Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon
Everyone who was ever a child and then grew up ought to be able to appreciate this book. It defies a short description but there’s a reason that at least one man wanted to be buried with his copy. Here is where I first wrote about it.
And now, finally, the best book I have read in the last five years (and probably longer) . . . and if you have not already guessed what I cam going to say you have not been paying attention . . .
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
I’ve written about this book here and here and here. I’ve read it three times in the past five years. It is a masterpiece, a beautiful book, a simple book and a profound one, a book that cannot be explained but only experienced. I am begging you to read this RIGHT NOW.
You can come back and thank me later, and then you can tell me if there is any one book that you feel this way about. I would really like to know.
