Of The Making Of Many Books, There Is No End: My 2025 Chronicle of Books

One of my first memories as a little girl was getting my very first library card.  I didn't have to prove I could read, but just that I could scribble my name. I practiced for weeks.  I couldn't wait.  The library was a wonder to me.  All those books for the taking.  And reading. And reading again.  Mom limited how many books I could check out. And often hid them from me at home. My foremost rebellion as a child was reading with a flashlight under the covers.

You're going to ruin your eyes!  Mom warned me over and over.  I thought it was worth the risk. 

The library is still a remarkable, splendid and moveable feast to me. 

One of my favorite books of 2025 was Theo of Golden, a self-published paperback novel that literally took the publishing world by surprise this year.  It was written by near-70 year old first-time novelist Allen Levi who lives by himself in rural Georgia. He never even intended for it to be published.  That would have been a shame.  Even as I write this post, the Nashville library alone owns 42 copies of the physical book with 334 people on the wait list.  There are 123 copies of the e-book with an astonishing 771 people on the wait list. And that is just Nashville. It ranks at the top of my list this year.  A gem of a story.

Of the making of many books, there is no end, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 12. 12.  I am grateful to God for the creativity of those who are faithful to their calling. 

I did not read as many books this year, but I discovered new authors and savored their words. My new favorite novelist is Niall Williams, an amazing Irish writer.

Here's my 2025 list with a few annotations from my favorites: 

Even After Everything: The Spiritual Practice of Knowing the Risks and Loving Anyway by Stephanie Duncan Smith (2024)

Table for Two by Amor Towles (2024)

Why Everything That Doesn’t Matter, Matters So Much: The Way of Love in a World of Hurt by Andi Ashworth and Charlie Peacock (2024) No one gets to adulthood without a past....be on the lookout for redemption. It comes in waves.....In essence, I was training for a work I could not yet see or know.

A Shepherd Looks At Psalm 23 by Phillip Keller (1970)

The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis (1954)  He had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one.  

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Timothy Keller (2012)

Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago by Kerry Egan (2004)

Foster by Claire Keegan (2010)

Theo of Golden by Allen Levi (2023)  ...for helping people see themselves for who they really are.

Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage by Carey Wallace (2020)

Time of the Child by Niall Williams (2024)  But storytellers skip the everyday, mistaking the ordinary for the dull, seizing on the sensational and leaving out the habitual that is in fact the fabric of life.

The Reading Life by C. S. Lewis (2019)   As we read we find ourselves sharing their burden;  when we have finished, we return to our own life, not relaxed but fortified.  [Fellowship of the Ring]

The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa (2017)

Bel Canto: The Annotated Edition by Ann Patchett (2001, 2024)

Tinkers by Paul Harding (2009)

The Hospitality of Need by Kevan Chandler and Tommy Shelton (2025)  It's not just people saying yes to my need, but me saying yes to their participation.       

As It Is In Heaven by Niall Williams (1999) When something of great size moves into the heart, it dislodges all else.

Four Letters of Love by Niall Williams (1997)

You Have A Calling:  Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good and Beautiful by Karen Swallow Prior (2025)   What if your calling isn’t what you get paid to do?  What if it is?  What if your calling isn’t something you feel passionate about every day – or even most days?.... What if a calling isn’t just about what you do but how you do it? What if it isn’t just about doing a certain thing but also about being a certain way?

Little Shrew by Akiko Miyakoshi (2024)

An Axe For The Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant (2025)

October, October by Katya Balen (2020)

The Teacher of Nomad Land  by Daniel Nayeri (2025)  And because He has freely given these things I do not deserve, then I can freely share with you......Did God give you to us, or did He give us to you?.....Only love lets us forgive the inconvenience of other people. 

 Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story by Wendell Berry (2025)

Living in the Present with John Prine by Tom Piazza (2025)  John’s show wasn’t good because his vocal intonation was perfect, or his guitar technique was perfect, or his guitar was perfectly in tune, or because he was making no mistakes…Quite the contrary!  But it didn’t matter.  Because his ability to deliver the rest of it – the emotional part – was so in the stratosphere that none of that mattered. 

Stewards of Eden: What Scripture Says About The Environment and Why It Matters by Sandra Richter (2020)

Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley (2015)

My Dear Hemlock by Tilly Dillehay (2024)

The Happiness Files:  Insights on Work and Life by Arthur C. Brooks (2021-2024)

The True Gift by Patricia MacLachlan (2009)

 Letters From Father Christmas 1920-1943 by J. R. R Tolkien (1976)

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (1935)

An Incremental Life by Luci Shaw (2025)  Never give up on the grace of God.

Just Like That by Gary D. Schmidt (2021)   Bless us in the unexpected.....She’s not going to have a new start, thought Meryl Lee. There is no new start.  There’s only what’s next.

Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day By Day by Peter Scazzero (2008)

Bread of Life: Savoring the All-Satisfying Goodness of Jesus Through The Art of Bread Making by Abigail Dodds (2021)  She knows the two most important things:  she is in need of help, and He is able to give it........Knowing there is a purpose behind the pressing down and rolling out can change our experience of the pain.....We need the Word. We need the people of the Word.

Humans Of New York by Brandon Stanton (2013)

History of the Rain by Niall Williams (2014)

The Bible  Never underestimate the power of God's Word.  Of all the books I read every year, the Bible continues to change the course of my life.  From my own reading, I post a daily scripture verse in my blog www.worddujour.blogspot.com  Don't go into the day hungry for God's Word. 

 

In Our Comings and Goings -- Inktober 2 #discover

My biggest creative moments rarely arrive when I am sitting at my desk, but when I am doing something else, mostly when I am doing something that bans any kind of creative action at that very moment.   Traveling 70 miles per hour on Interstate 40, I am bombarded by ideas, the revving up of my limited creativity, hardly the place to write, even to jot down a couple of words on any available scrap of paper.

But as soon as I arrive at my destination or back home and pull into the garage, as soon as I turn off the car, any prevailing thought or idea evaporates, like birds swiftly flying through the air and into the unknown. 

I sit down immediately to a blank screen.  An hour later, it is still staring back at me without words.  Doing something else appears to be the key to connecting the dots.

I wait these things out.  Those vanishing thoughts are not an end in themselves, but the beginning of yet, perhaps, another direction, another part of the story.  What has flown past once will return, what has caught my attention will take up residence in a different form.

What is significant, what bears tremendous purpose, what brings fruit, are not necessarily our intentional pursuits -- or on our radar-- but what we discover along the way of doing something else.  It is in our comings and goings, we find the deeper things.  They don't arrive on our doorstep, nor drop magically in our laps. We do not necessarily discover them in extraordinary circumstances, nor do they just sprint to us.  But it is in doing something else that we find them, even in the most familiar surroundings, often in the mundane, especially on the way looking for something else.

Call them as they are:  divine appointments, eternal encounters, the hand of God, the sacred connections and holy intersections and the clicking together of two seemingly unrelated things that only God can snap seamlessly into place.

Discovering is living expectantly even in the ordinary, which is never so ordinary at all.

...and the hand of the LORD
 was upon him there.

                          Ezekiel 1. 3

Right upon us here as well, right where we are, right in the midst of this, right under our feet. Not just a matter of discovery, but direction.  Do we recognize it?  God sings His faithfulness over us.

As Wendell Berry says in his iconic novel Jayber Crow, "...and times when, looking back at earlier times, it seemed I had been wandering in the dark woods of error.  But now it looks to me as though I was following a path that was laid out for me, unbroken, and maybe even as straight as possible, from one end to the other, and I have this feeling, which never leaves me anymore, that I have been led."

Several years ago, as my husband Bill retrieved a bag of potting soil from under the deck, he found not just the plastic sack of dirt he was looking for, but what he was not looking for.  The "lost" pole for our bird feeder was poking out from under the gravel, hidden in plain sight for five years, discovered when we were on the way to something else.  

We cannot take credit for discoveries.  God wakes us up to what is already there, waiting to emerge, waiting to be grasped and shared.  And sadly, we miss what we have left untried.

When we least expect it, as we are being faithful to Him in what we are doing, God brings an opportunity along our way, unexpected and in the most unlikely situations, sometimes even in the uncanny.  When we ask where did that come from?  God chuckles. And all these "unrelated" things that we have been doing and pursuing are just the training ground for what God has placed before us.  Just waiting to ripen. 

Just waiting to be discovered.

Blank Spaces

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the course of reading, we often find blank spaces on a page.  These indicate times of transition from one thought to another. Or indicate a passage of time.  Sometimes it just visually breaks up enormous blocks of tiny print, so that one argument or situation does not appear so overwhelming.  The gaps cut a huge thought or development into bite-size bits that we can swallow and digest.

We can take a breather.  And then jump back into the train of thought.

Or in the case of a story, the vacancy is inserted when one scene fades out, and the story is about to move on. A shift in time or place has occurred.  Or the characters have developed. The white space on the page might as well be marked "And then."  The story is not over.  But a new section is about to be revealed.

It is not that nothing going on, but something is happening, perhaps too much for us to comprehend at the moment.  The story progresses and then, and then, and then.  We need to wait a moment, not for the story to catch up, but for us to absorb, think about, and get ready for the next.  

It is a time of preparation.  A time to grow into the narrative which occurs on so many levels.  It is not the end, but the and then.

In life, we sometimes come upon what appears as blank spaces when nothing seems to be progressing, or growing, or happening.  Where is God in those times?  He has not abandoned us.  He is drawing us deeper into relationship with Him.  Profound purposes reside in those spaces.

Over and over in Scripture, God calls us to wait on Him.  Indeed, at least seven words in the Hebrew and Greek combined can be translated as wait.  

But wait is not to be equated as late. Nor does its meaning hang on the uncountable times your mom promised, "Just wait a minute," never intending to do anything.  

It is not that God is ever late or not prepared.  The reality is that time, place, or we ourselves are not yet ready for what unfolds next.  God already knows the chronicle of His faithfulness in our lives. Even what is yet to come.  And then.  And then.  And then.  Steps upon steps.  Layers upon layers.  That which we cannot yet see or grasp, but continually and gloriously revealed in all eternity.

The blank spaces are full of His wonders.  What only appear as gaps notify us not just to stay tuned, but to trust Him even more.  And waiting on Him will get us there.  The story is not over.  The white space on the page is not even an intermission of sorts, but God's grand narrative revealed and redeemed.

If we really knew what was happening, we would not consider it a blank space at all.

Wait for the LORD;

be strong, 

and let your heart take courage;

wait for the LORD!

               Psalm 27.14

What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

Looking in the rearview mirror, my husband and I discussed over supper not just what we did in 2023, but “What did God awaken in me this year?” And that went far beyond a litany of our feeble accomplishments to a liturgy of who He is.   

God calls us to much deeper than our accomplishments, but to pray continually, live faithfully, love well, practice grace, and trust Me in this.

God calls us to Himself.

So in 2024, instead of creating an elaborate bucket list of resolutions or goals -- what I want to do -- I am thinking more about what I want to be.  What do I want God to awaken in me this year? Who am I becoming?  I am considering the incremental investments I need to make in my being and relationship with Him for the now and the yet to come.

In his memoir Everything Sad is Untrue, author Daniel Nayeri talks about how his mom navigated their overwhelming hardships as refugees.  "But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.  That’s how she did it."

How do we view our future? On what are we staking our lives?  Not what we want to do, but who we want to be when we grow up.

New York Times opinion writer Tish Harrison Warren views this time as an opportunity:  "...the chief value of resolutions is not found in our success or failure at keeping them.  Instead, they help us reflect on what our lives are like, what we would like them to be like, and what practices might bridge the difference.  There is goodness then in the very process of making resolutions.  There is hope in the idea that we can change -- that we can keep growing, learning and trying new things.  This hope of renewal is the point of resolutions for me."

We are not stuck.  We can change.

Becoming calls for continual growth, no matter how old we are, a moveable feast.

Like every year before this, the new year is made up of ordinary days.  What incremental changes can I make today?  In what am I investing this year?  What intentions would you add to your list? 

This is what I am working on:

* Pay attention.  ...to have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2. 16

*Write something, read something, run something every day.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.  Ecclesiastes 9. 10

*Weave kindness in my words. ...that I may show the kindness of God to him.  2 Samuel 9.3

*Don't interrupt.  ...slow to speak. James 1. 19

*Do small things well.  Do not despise the day of small things.  Zechariah 4. 10

*Listen.  Really listen to others and to God.  ...listen to Me. Blessed are those who keep My ways.  Proverbs 8. 32

*Be present.  Therefore encourage one another and built one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5. 11

*Reinvent.  Reinvest.  Recreate.  Redeem. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  Proverbs 3. 27

*Ask questions.  Lots of questions.  ... Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think?" Matthew 17. 25

And when we come to the end of the year, how will we find we are different?  Will others recognize that we have been walking with Jesus?  And by what will we be known?  Not by our accomplishments, but that We are His.

And where do we start?  Not with resolutions, but living intentionally, composing something new right where God has placed us today.  

In his beautiful piece The Singing Bowl, poet Malcolm Guite suggests:

Begin the song exactly where you are,

Remain within the world of which you’re made.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,

 

Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,

This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood

 

And listen to it, ringing soft and low.

Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.

 

Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime

Is richness rising out of emptiness,

And timelessness resounding into time.

 

And when the heart is full of quietness

Begin the song exactly where you are.