Although I didn’t read quite as much this year as last year, thanks to starting a new job and having a season of post-Covid brain fog & fatigue, I did still read enough. Here are my recommendations from this past year of reading:

Fiction

Most of my favorite fiction this year were books that were just a bit more every day and slow, besides the book that started the year (incidentally, my top fiction book of the year).

1. Whistling Past the Graveyard (Susan Crandall)
2. Time of the Child (Niall Williams)
3. All of the Little House books (except The First Four Years), but especially The Long Winter (Laura Ingalls Wilder)
4. The Poppy Fields (Nikki Erlick)
5. Northern Borders (Howard Frank Mosher)
6. Zorrie (Laird Hunt)

Non-Fiction

I read/listened to a lot of “biography-type” books this year (and loved that genre!), and then my other non-fiction was mostly read in themes.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon (David Grann)
2. Where Rivers Part: A Story of My Mother’s Life (Kao Kalia Yang)
3. The Dressmakers of Auschwitz (Lucy Adlington)
4. To Dye For (Alden Wicker)
5. Everything Is Tuberculosis (John Green)
6. Children of Radium (Joe Dunthorne)
7. Mountains Beyond Mountains (Tracy Kidder)
8. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (Anne Fadiman)
9. A Flower Travelled in My Blood (Haley Cohen Gilliland)
10. The Zorg (Siddharth Kara)
11. No Compromise: The Life Story of Keith Green (Melody Green and David Hazard)
12. The Thing that Would Make Everything Okay Forever (Ashley Lande)
13. Our Mothers, Ourselves (Henry Cloud & John Townsend)
14. Necessary Endings (Henry Cloud)
15. Set Boundaries, Find Peace (Nedra Glover Tawwab)
16. The Thin Book of Trust (Charles Feltman)
17. Trust (Henry Cloud)
18. Safe People (Henry Cloud)
19. Safe Church (Andrew Bauman)
20. Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts (Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson)
21. The Art of Disagreeing (Gavin Ortlund)
22. Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice (Judith Herman)
23. Trauma and Recovery (Judith Herman)
24. This Too Shall Last: Finding Grace When Suffering Lingers (K.J. Ramsey)
25. Peace in the Dark (Jessica Herberger)
26. The Comfort Book (Matt Haig)
27. The Power of Full Engagement (Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz)
28. Thirsting: Quenching Our Soul’s Deepest Desire (Strahan Coleman)Remember God (Annie F. Downs)
29. The Four Loves (C.S. Lewis)
30. Surprised by Hope (N.T. Wright)
31. Invitation to a Journey: A Road Map for Spiritual Formation (M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton)
32. 40 Days of Decrease: A Different Kind of Hunger. A Different Kind of Fast (Alicia Britt Chole)
33. The Wisdom of Tenderness (Brennan Manning)
34. Being Fully Known: The Joyful Satisfaction of Beholding, Becoming, and Belonging (Saundra Dalton-Smith)
35. Building a Non-Anxious Life (John Delony)
36. The Seven Primal Questions (Mike Foster)
37. Managing Leadership Anxiety (Steve Cuss)
38. Shift: Managing Your Emotions – So They Don’t Manage You (Ethan Kross)