Undaunted Joy | The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight by Shemaiah Gonzalez
A book of joy—the joy of God’s love.
You take good care of her.
You are the object of God’s love in addition to its subject. Jesus tells you to love others AND he tells others to love you.
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
What a great novel! It reminds me a little bit of Catcher in the Rye but the main character is an Iranian-American drug and alcohol addict trying to figure out how to make his life and death matter. Funny, sad, sweet, bittersweet, odd, cool, all the things.
Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth by Richard J. Foster
A book written in the ‘80s about the Spiritual Disciplines—long before they became “cool.”
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
A memoir by the poet Maggie Smith. A collection of lyrical, eloquent, honest, vulnerable vignettes. A “tell-mine” (as opposed to a “tell-all”) of her marriage and its breakdown.
Kitchen Hymns | Poems by Pádraig Ó Tuama
Another awesome collection of poems by my favorite poet, Pádraig Ó Tuama.
Jesus through Medieval Eyes: Beholding Christ with the Artists, Mystics, and Theologians of the Middle Ages by Grace Hamman
I’ve fallen in love with beautiful books—and this is one.
Books I Read in 2025
The list, my star rating, and some notes. In 2018 I started trying to keep a count and list of all the books I read in a year, in addition to the longer entries about particular books.