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Books give shape and voice to my life. They always have. So each year, I enjoy looking back on what I have read, discerning a few favorites, and sharing them in hopes they can spark something lifegiving in someone else. I’ll confess: this post is overdue. It sat on my to-do list for three months! Perhaps that is emblematic of our lives of late…

What were your favorite books in 2025?

Below is the list of books that seeped into my heart and mind this past year. Some of them were chosen by desire, and some of them were chosen by the syllabi of my Bioethics Master’s program!

Let me start by sharing a fun quote about reading. I found this gem in the book Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (which is now one of my favorite works of fiction!). The book is a long letter from a tender old pastor, John Ames, who is addled by a failing heart. John sets out to write a letter to the son he will never see grow old. John, a fellow bibliophile, confesses:

I have developed a great reputation for wisdom by ordering more books, by far, than I ever had time to read, and reading more books, by far, than I ever learned anything useful from.

Oh, John! In the words of Anne Shirley, I think we are “kindred spirits.”

I hope you enjoy my Book List for 2025. Perhaps you will find something to add to your reading list this year!

Classic Literature and Fiction

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

This is a story about friendship, that inestimable gift that halves our sorrows and doubles our joys.

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A work of curiosity, warmth, and culinary delight!

The Birthmark (Short Story) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A parable on human hubris. In our aspiration for perfection over the givenness of life, we risk rejecting the best that the earth has to offer.

Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment (Short Story) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

“Having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again!” There is wisdom in wrinkles.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A story that makes you want to hug your grandfather.

Spiritual and Theological

Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank C. Laubach

We are never alone; inward conversation with God is the chiefest of delights.

Renovation of the Heart by Dallas Willard

Who you become is more important than what you do. Willard is wiser than any Instagram sage.

The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

Witty and compelling; the basis of friendship is the sentiment, “You too? I thought I was the only one…”

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

Who is more quotable than C.S. Lewis? His allegories and phrases drip with wisdom.

Arrows of the Almighty by A. Berg

A story of a pioneer missionary to Papua New Guinea and of a life well lived.

The Familiar Stranger by Tyler Staton

A rousing call to leave behind functional cessationism.

Made for Friendship by Drew Hunter

A short book on the neglected topic of friendship — that sunbeam of life!

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship by Peter Scazzero

Love is the measure of maturity!

How to Hear God: A Simple Guide for Normal People by Pete Greig

Life with God is relationally real. It is dynamic like flesh and bones.

Bioethics, Culture, and Philosophy

After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre

Our modern world is fragmented because we don’t have a teleology that gives ethical concepts their meaning. MacIntyre teaches me how to see.

Beyond Therapy by Leon Kass and the President’s Council on Bioethics

A contemplation of the ethical issues of advancing biotechnology. “When does the quest for self-improvement make the self smaller or meaner?”

Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman

A challenge to not waste our “one wild and precious life” and to not buy cheese knives!

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

Humans have purpose! Human good is an activity of the soul in accord with virtue. 

What it Means to Be Human by O. Carter Snead

Snead makes a compelling case that an anthropology of embodiment would make our nation’s legal and ethical frameworks far wiser.

The Peaceable Kingdom by Stanley Hauerwas

Christian ethics is primarily narrative and about the formation of virtue within a community. We are fools if we reduce ethics to abstract moral reflection!

Leadership and Personal Development

Wooden on Leadership by John Wooden

The man you wish was your coach for every life endeavor, your mentor in every season, and the uncle who took you under his wing. He models how to live a meaningful life rooted in Christian faith.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

A kick in the pants for me to do less. I am way more finite than I’d like to admit, and I’ll stop being so stressed when I throw in the towel and choose wiser limits.

History

Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts

Churchill was a British Teddy Roosevelt. How could one life be so full of life?

Favorites…

While I enjoyed much of what I read this year, a few books burrowed deeper than the rest. These three earned a place apart!

Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach

I devoured this book while on a 24-hour retreat at Rondon Ridge in Papua New Guinea, which gave this work an unfair advantage in my heart’s affections. Letters by a Modern Mystic is the correspondence from a missionary to the Philippines in the early 1900’s to his father. Laubach made it his aim to carry on an inward conversation with God throughout his day, and aspired to call God to mind at least one second of every minute. Can you imagine doing the same? Being that we are mortals, what if we started by training ourselves to give God an affectionate look at least once every hour, then every half hour? Then, maybe, every ten minutes or every minute? Attention is the beginning of devotion, and communion with God is life’s oxygen.

Wooden on Leadership by Coach John Wooden

I am not a basketball devotee, so my adoration for Wooden took me by surprise. This book is brimming with wisdom for every area of life: work, parenting, spiritual journey, marriage, and friendship. It is the best leadership book I’ve read. Would you ever think to teach your players how to put on their socks or lace up their shoes? Well, little things make big things happen, and Wooden’s life and leadership were big things.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and I covet his mastery of storytelling. Crossing to Safety follows two couples—Larry and Sally Morgan, and Sid and Charity Lang—whose friendship begins in the 1930s and endures for decades. As careers, marriage, illness, ambition, and disappointment reshape their lives, the novel moves back and forth in time to show how deeply they depend on one another. His writing is blindingly detailed. He illuminates the radiance of life against the backdrop of human failure. Life is fragile and disappointing—don’t we all know that?—but the sun still rises and throws slanting beams through the pines.

In conclusion…

These books were my friends in 2025! Some stirred my devotion, some sharpened my thinking, and some simply reminded me of the beauty and sadness of ordinary life.

What are your thoughts on this list? Have you leafed through any of these pages?

As always, if this blog encourages you, please subscribe and share it with others. May 2026 be a blessed year for you, and may you fill it with good stories and beautiful art!