Books I Read in 2018

This annual post has turned into my favorite blog of the year!  It's a fun chance for me to look back on what I read, and even better, it's a fun chance to give and get recommendations from all my reader friends!  Below is a graphic of the books I read in 2018 (and here's a link where you can click on any of the books to get more information).  My favorites are listed below the picture.

YOUR 2018 BOOKS

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Here are my favorites, listed in random order.

Top 10 Fiction:
"The Great Alone" by Kristin Hannah
"The Leavers" by Lisa Ko
"Everything I Never Told You" by Celeste Ng
"Behold the Dreamers" by Imbolo Imbue
"Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mendell
"The Power" by Naomi Alderman (this is one you will either love or hate, but it is unforgettable)
"There There" by Tommy Orange
"Beartown" by Fredrik Backman
"The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas
"A Gentleman in Moscow" by Amor Towles

Top 5 Memoirs:
"Educated" by Tara Westover
"The Long Haul: A Trucker's Tale of Life on the Road" by Finn Murphy
"Hunger" by Roxanne Gay
"Everything Happens for a Reason" by Kate Bowler
"Calypso" by David Sedaris

Top 5 Other Non-fiction:
Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life" by Tish Harrison Warren
"Morning and Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
"The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson"
"Letters to a Young Poet" by Rainer Marie Rilke
"The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brain" by Nicholas Carr

**Every year, there's books right on the cusp that I'm sad didn't quite make the top, so I want to add the disclaimer that I quit books quickly if I don't like them, so (most) any book that I finish is a book that I would recommend.**

Besides favorites, I'm going to give a (non-sponsored) pitch for any of you who have made it this far to join Goodreads.  Goodreads is a social media site where you can track and share your reading life, and I think you will find that it improves the quality of your reading life without taking up much time or effort.  Here's the Top 10 reasons why you should join:

1.  It helps you keep track of your own reading life.  Each year, you can look back on the books you read and reminisce (this is how I create this post each year).  It also gives you a place to list books you are currently reading.
2.  You can set annual goals for how many books you would like to read, and if you have any kind of competitive or performative streak, this will motivate you to read more.
3.  It's a good place to keep a running list of books you would like to read in the future.
4.  It's a great place to get recommendations by seeing what your friends read.
5.  Relatedly, it's a fun way to start real life conversations by seeing what your friends read.  (Shout out to Naomi, my sister, and my mom!)
6.  It's a handy place to refer to when someone asks you for a book recommendation and you want to be able to review books you've read recently, or when you're looking for a literary gift for someone.
7.  It's a good place to read reviews for a book.  I find this particularly helpful when I'm on the fence about a book - if you suspect that you won't like it despite good reviews, you can scan through the 1-star reviews and see if those reviewers agree with your (potential) objections; conversely, if you suspect that you will like it despite mediocre reviews, you can scan through 5-star reviews and see if it's exactly your kind of quirky.
8.  Many of the books are on lists (such as "special needs parenting", "best fiction of 2018", etc.) - so if you find one book you like, you can sometimes find similar others by using Goodreads lists.
9.  You can write reviews to let others know about books that make your heart sing, or warn others about books that are the worst.
10.  Because who couldn't use more social media time in their life?  I joke.  The final good thing about Goodreads is that it's very manageable time wise.  I log on about twice a month, for 5-10 minutes at a time, and get all of the benefits listed above, and I would guess that's a very average usage.  It's not addictive and it's not a time suck.

My favorite part of doing this blog post every year is getting all of your recommendations!  You all always help me come up with some of my favorite reads for the upcoming year.  This year, I would especially like recommendations on your favorite non-fiction social justice-themed books, but I would also love to hear about books you loved of any genre.  Happy reading!

Devotional Recommendations

With the New Year approaching quickly, I wanted to put up a blog post with some recommended devotionals that I've read through in the last several years, since this is a good week to put in an order for a new daily devotional book and have it ready to go when the calendar turns over.  There is quite a variety in this little group, so I'll put up a little synopsis and link to more information on each one.  All of them were manageable on a daily basis and helpful to spiritual growth in their own way, but depending on your personality type, you will probably lean more towards one then the others.  (I'm an Enneagram 9, so can meld myself into the type of personality that is able to receive each of these different books, haha!)

"Savor:  Living Abundantly Where you Are, As You Are" by Shauna Niequist

The pros: Shauna Niequist has a wonderful sense of God's abundance, His grand redemptive plan, and the gospel and our lives as an interwoven story. On the days where she chooses these kind of topics, she totally nails it and is SO encouraging. I texted these to my friends more than any other devotional I've read in the last 5 years.

The cons:  There were many days (i would say 20-30% of the book) where it felt like "good advice on living" rather than digging into the Bible or connecting with God. Which would have been fine, if it was marketed as Christian living rather than a devotional. But because it was supposed to be a devotional, I felt frustrated on the days where it felt like it was more about how to be a good hostess rather than how to connect with God. There's nothing unorthodox in here, but some of the days felt off topic.

Other:  The tone of this book is very casual and conversational - I don't consider this to be a pro or con, just extra information for your consideration.  



"The Songs of Jesus:  A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms" by Tim Keller

The pros:  The Psalms are such a rich, moving, beautiful book of the Bible, that you could get a TON out of just reading them on their own for a year.  Keller's insights and applications take this already rich book and add to it.  I loved learning more about the wide range of emotions and situations that the Psalms cover. 

The cons:  Tim Keller is my favorite modern Christian author, so it's really hard to find anything bad to say about him.  I felt like sometimes the devotionals were a little heavy on logic and analytics and short on emotion for discussion of such a poetic book of the Bible (though this is a big part of what I enjoy about Keller's style, so it's hypocritical of me to hate on it). 

Other:  Tim Keller also has a devotional on the Proverbs, which is what I'm planning to read for 2019. 

"Jesus Calling:  Enjoying Peace in His Presence" by Sarah Young

The pros:  This is a great book for reminders of all the positive promises Jesus gives us - of things like love, peace, and hope.  This would be a great one to read when you're going through a hard time and you 're seeking comfort and strength through the promises in the Bible. 

The cons:  The style of this book is not my favorite.  It's presented as Jesus writing you letters each day.  This initially rubbed me the wrong way, though I got used to it pretty quickly (and I know others who really enjoy this style). 

Other:  This is the most commercially popular book on this list, at least in recent years.  If you're looking for a book that you can find at any bookstore with a religion section, or a book that you might be able to discuss with others who have also read it, this is probably the best choice. 

"Morning and Evening" by Charles Spurgeon
The pros:  This one is a classic devotional, and for good reason.  It's got tons of good theology, biblical analysis, and practical application packed into one page of text per day.  It's encouraging and inspiring, challenging and thought-provoking, and covers a really wide range of the Christian experience. 

The cons:  This is kind of unfair because there are lots of ways to manage this, but I didn't like how there were 2 devotional readings assigned to each day rather than one.  (The idea being that you would read one in the morning and one in the evening, hence the title.)  I couldn't sustain doing two different reading times each day, and I also couldn't mentally handle reading just one and ignoring the other, so I read both each morning, and consequently felt like I got less out of each day than I would've with a really focused reading of just one.  If I could start over, I would make this a 2-year book and read just one per day.

Other:  This has the most formal language.

What daily devotionals have you read that you loved?  Please recommend in the comments!

Advent post 2018: Already, Not Yet

I love the Advent season.  I love the way it pulls together darkness and light, weariness and new hope, waiting and the fulfillment of promises.  I love the way it acknowledges the difficulties of life, from the daily grind to profound suffering, and it meets us in our struggles and breathes life into the pain. 

The struggle in my life right now is weariness.  There is so much to get done in the running of a household with 3 young kids.  There's so much patience, attention, humor, energy, creativity, and oh yes, food preparation needed each day.  There's also all the special needs stuff.  I love my family dearly and consider my husband and children to be the greatest blessings in my life, but man, I am failing them all the time.  They could all use more and better from me, and I just don't have any more to give.  I don't mean to turn this into a pity party - they all know that they are loved and we have many happy moments.  But I wish I was never short and/or anxious with any of them, never chose to scroll Facebook over giving them my full attention, and never felt too depleted to give any of them my full and best self.  (This is not the highlight reel that I put on social media. :).)

I'm very lucky that these are my struggles right now.  I have a few friends who have lost children this year, others who have lost parents, and others who have lost relationships.  I know the holidays are a fresh reminder of the loss, and my heart goes out to all of you.

I made a promise to myself not to make this post political, but we can all think of situations in our country and in the world where there is gross suffering and injustice.  Advent speaks to these situations as well.

Advent meets our personal pain, and the suffering of the world, with the answer of "already, not yet".

The "already" part we celebrate is that God came to earth as a baby.  This brings hope to all the pain and darkness and difficulty on earth, because it gives us a tangible reason to believe that it won't be like this forever.  Jesus already came down to earth, fulfilled a bunch of historical promises, and lived a life, death, and resurrection that changes everything and gives us hope beyond what we see in the here and now.  We can ground our hope in this "already".

The "not yet" part that we celebrate is that the life we live now, which still has suffering and brokenness and world injustice and our own constant messing up, is not how things will always be.  Part of what we look to during Advent is the second coming of Christ, which is when every tear will be wiped away.  The sadness and diagnoses and losses will end.  I will no longer fall short for the people I love most.  Injustice will be righted.

Whatever you're going through this year, whatever is bringing your heart pain, I hope that the great hope of Advent meets you where you are and brings you hope and light.

Day 30: For this challenge because...

I am grateful for this challenge because of the depth of questions on this list (see Day 1 for the full list).  I've done this 30 day gratitude challenge for the past 3 years and it's always helpful to spend an extended time reflecting on all the blessings in your life.  But this particular list focused more on intangible things than the past lists, and even on some challenges.  It caused me to remember people and events that go way back in time, and to reframe certain difficult memories through a lens of gratitude.  I'm hoping that this mental stretching in what constitutes a blessing will be helpful to me in having gratitude towards a wider range of things in my life going forward.  I'm hoping that I will more often think of the people in my life, or situations that are challenging, or regular parts of my life that I just don't give much thought to one way or the other, and see the rich amount of goodness that can be found in all of it if I just bother to look.  I'm grateful that this challenge has helped me grow in this way. 

Day 29: The Inspiration of..

I am thankful for the inspiration of the Obamas.  I listened to two podcasts this week that interviewed each of them (David Axelrod interviewed President Obama, Oprah interviewed Michelle Obama)(and for the record, i almost always listen to David Axelrod's podcast and almost never listen to Oprah's, but that's the subject of a different conversation), and it was inspiring to hear from both of them.  Listening to the interview with President Obama, it was so inspiring to hear someone with such intelligence, humor, grace, and poise speak.  It was good to hear a former president draw on the positive things about our country and our shared humanity, rather than tapping into messages of fear.  It was heartening to remember that our presidential leadership has not always been the way it currently is, and will not always be this way.  Though I disagree with President Obama on some of his policy and political positions,  I respect that he comes to his positions thoughtfully, intelligently, and compassionately.  I deeply admire the way he held the office with dignity and without scandal.  Listening to the interview with Michelle Obama, I had several of the same thoughts - I also admire her intelligence, humor, grace, and poise.  I admire the way she is real, but also so impressive.  It's exciting to think about what both of them might do with their lives to inspire and improve the country in the next several decades, and I'm very grateful for their leadership and example.