What's on Your Reading List? 2025
A book-filled New Year's treat
Happy New Year!
I did it! I promised to read 24 books in 2024, and I have accomplished it… not exactly as expected, but it has definitely happened. And as noted in July, the D.Min. has changed things a bit. But it’s a good list, which I THINK you can see here on StoryGraph1 (if you can’t, let me know and I’ll type out a list).
Hands down, my favorite book was We Solve Murders by Richard Osman. His books have solid mysteries, but more, they have amazingly crafted characters, and the pace is always pitch perfect. I listened to this book on Audible, and actress Nicola Walker’s narration was spectacular (I hope she does the rest of this series).
I also really enjoyed spending a year with Sandi Toksvig’s Almanac 2021 - divided into months, she explores the stories of well-known and little-known women throughout history, along with some intriguing notes about each month’s name and various holidays and festivals from around the world. I took my time with this one, listening to one month at a time (again on Audible, narrated by the author), usually around the first of the month.
Overall, an amazing experience, and it helped that I could use this platform to help keep me accountable.
The list this year is longer - I’m challenging myself to 40 books - because I have decided that I’ve had too many years saying “I’m a voracious reader” and actually no longer being one. Honestly, I got out of the habit of reading for pleasure in seminary (not surprisingly), and I let other things fill my time. But every time I do read a whole book - especially fiction - I get that reader high, and I wonder why I don’t do it more often. I liked reading more last year, and I want to make this a solid habit.
For 2025 I not only have challenged myself to reading 40 books but also joined a reading challenge devised by/for Women of Jeopardy (yes, that’s a thing that I’m now a part of). That challenge invites us to pick 25 books with a variety of prompts, like “a genre you don’t normally read” and “a book set in the town/state where you live.” I’ve picked books for many of the prompts, but not all of them.
So my list includes some new entries to the list, my WoJ challenge books, some left unread/unfinished from last year, along with the current batch of books for my D.Min. studies (January intensives start the 6th). And there will be more - more D.Min. reading, more selections for the WoJ list, plus authors I love will have books out, and I’m gonna have to read them. I did decide to not include children’s picture books this time, because feels like cheating, even if I do read (and sometimes preach on) them.
Anyway… here are the 29 I’ve got on the list so far:
Books for D.Min. Classes
Anthem: Social Movements and the Sound of Solidarity by Shana L. Redmond
Music and Theology by Don E. Saliers
Protest and Praise: Sacred Music of Black Religion by Jon Michael Spencer
In Their Own Words: Slave Life and the Power of Spirituals by Eileen Guenther
Ritual and Liturgy
A History of Religion in 5½ Objects: Bringing the Spiritual to Its Senses by S. Brent Plate
(I WILL finish this book this year. I will. Seriously.) (I know I said that last year but this year I mean it.)
A Worship Workbook: A Practical Guide for Extraordinary Liturgy by Gerald C. Liu and Khalia J. Williams (leftover from last year)
Justice/Social Action/Climate Change/Feminism/Racism etc.
Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Plantation Church: How African American Religion Was Born in Caribbean Slavery by Noel Leo Erskine
Spiritual Growth
The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl (I got out of the habit of reading this, so I’m going to treat it the way I did Toksvig’s Almanac and read it a month or so at a time.)
Theatre
Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey Into Story by John Yorke (leftover from last year)
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson
Dutchman and The Slave: Two Plays by LeRoi Jones
Leopoldstadt by Tom Stoppard
Biography and Memoir
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
Mythology
Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes (leftover from last year)
Troy (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #3) by Stephen Fry (leftover from last year)
Comedy
Ghosts: The Button House Archives by Mathew Baynton, et. al. (leftover from last year)
Fiction
S. by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
Saving Grace by Lee Smith
The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell
A Death in the Parish (Canon Clement, #2) by Rev. Richard Coles (leftover from last year - and I just saw that Matthew Lewis has been cast as Canon Clement in a Channel 5/Acorn version)
As Yet Untitled Thursday Murder Club #5 by Richard Osman (We know it’ll come out at some point this year, so I’m holding a space for it)
The Marlow Murder Club (Marlow Murder Club #1) by Robert Thorogood (leftover from last year - I’m about halfway done and won’t watch the series with Samantha Bond until I finish it)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (there’s a fair chance I read this 20+ years ago, but I have no memory of it, so we’ll take another swing)
Medusa’s Sisters by Lauren J.A. Bear
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (one of the few pieces I did not read last year for class)
So.. how did you do on your 2024 reading list? Any great recommendations? What’s on your list for the coming year? Let’s talk books!
I actually read 28 books, but the Baldwin were all contained in larger volumes, so it only looks like 26. There are a handful of children’s books on there too, which I’m not doing this year.
Thank you for posting this list. Today is my birthday and I used some of my birthday money to buy the hard copy of Sandi Toksvig’s Almanac. And I’m so glad I did. What fun! I’ll enjoy exploring it throughout the year.
Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book is a longtime favorite of mine, along with To Say Nothing of the Dog which is set in the same universe. In 2024 I finally read the massive Blackout-All Clear duology that follows and it is SO GOOD. I hope these books grab you so we can talk about them!