Stories do not just line up on our shelves, neatly arranged in alphabetical order. But we are surrounded by them, some of them written down, and some of them profound stories seamlessly woven into our own lives.
Somebody asked Willie Nelson where he got his songs, and he said, “The air’s full of them, just reach out,” stated novelist Ursula Le Guin in her 1998 book about writing.
2021 was one of those years, full of deep chapters of unexpected magnitude -- and not just published in books. I felt almost every day as I did as a child, so immersed in a book, that I would respond "I'll be right there. Let me finish this page. I can't put it down now." As a little girl who sometimes furtively read with a flashlight under the covers, I couldn't just leave mid-sentence as if the life or death of a beloved main character was dependent on me finishing another page. Sometimes while reading, we are the ones quivering on the edge of an abyss. Or that's how it feels, even though the names are different from our own.
And in real-time we watch stories and lives around us unfold, page by page, cliff by cliff.
Our lives are not just a series of incidents after all, but are intricate and cohesive stories of redemption. And in the scary I-am-not-going-to make-it moments, we are just getting to the exciting part. God is working. He redeems His narratives in our lives. He always has. He is present on every page.
Of the stories published between front and back covers, these are what I read in 2021, some brand new, some centuries old, and some I am already planning to read again:
1. Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends by Flannery O’Connor (2019)
2. Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley (2020)
3. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson (2020)
4. Just Like That by Gary D. Schmidt (2021)
5. Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood by Gary Paulsen (2021)
6. Aging with Grace: Flourishing in an Anti-Aging Culture by Sharon Betters and Susan Hunt (2021)
7. Sabbatical Journey: The Diary of His Final Year by Henri J.M. Nouwen (1998)
8. Get Out of Your Head: Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts by Jennie Allen (2020)
9. Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren (2021)
10. The Pursuit of God by A. W. Tozer (1948)
11. The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon (1969)
12. Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life by Carole F. Chase (2001)
13. Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding by Daniel E. Lieberman (2020)
14. The Calvary Road by Roy Hession (1950)
15. The Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (2016)
16. Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi (2020)
17. Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About the Environment and Why It Matters by Sandra L. Richter (2020)
18. In His Image: 10 Ways God Calls Us To Reflect His Character by Jen Wilkin (2018)
19. Barking To The Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship by Gregory Boyle (2017)
20. The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (2012)
21. The One and Only Bob by Katherine Applegate (2020)
22. Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People by Sarah H. Bradford (1869)
23. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History by Vashti Harrison (2017)
24. The Wild Birds: Six Stories of the Port William Membership by Wendell Berry (1985)
25. Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates (1950)
26. The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman (2019)
27. A Burning In My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson by Winn Collier (2021)
28. The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch (2008)
29. The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (2020)
30. My Own Two Feet: A Memoir by Beverly Cleary (1995)
31. The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry (1974)
32. Watch With Me: And Six Other Stories of the Yet-Remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and His Wife, Miss Minnie, Nee Quinch by Wendell Berry (1994)
33. That Distant Land by Wendell Berry (2004)
34. The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe (2012)
35. My Remarkable Journey: A Memoir by Katherine Johnson (2021)
36. Sandy: A Heart for God by Leighton Ford (1985)
37. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez (2003)
38. Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake (2020)
39. Breakthrough: Elizabeth Hughes, the Discovery of Insulin, and the Making of a Medical Miracle by Thea Cooper and Arthur Ainsberg (2010)
40. Faithful Leaders: And the Things That Matter Most by Rico Tice (2021)
41. The Language of Fire: Joan of Arc Reimagined by Stephanie Hemphill (2019)
42. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders (2021)
43. Here In The Real World by Sara Pennypacker (2020)
44. All The Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner (2021)
45. The Light of Days: The Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judy Batalion (2020)
46. Wendell Berry: New Collected Poems by Wendell Berry (2012)
47. The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson by Robert S. Levine (2021)
48. The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles (2021)
49. The Crime of Living Cautiously: Hearing God’s Call to Adventure by Luci Shaw (2005)
50. Letters From The Mountain by Ben Palpant (2021)
51. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab (2020)
52. Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved by Kate Bowler (2018)
53. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky (1879) (1990 edition)
54. The God of the Garden: Thoughts on Creation, Culture and the Kingdom by Andrew Peterson (2021)
55. Steering the Craft: A 21st Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story by Ursula K. Le Guin (1998)
56. Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty (2020)
57. No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear by Kate Bowler (2021)
58. The Bible
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