Journey Into Christmas by Bess Streeter Aldrich
I read this last holiday season but finished it in the new year, and it was automatically the first nomination for this list. I’d had it on my to-read list for years, but never got around to tracking down a copy until interlibrary loans became relatively easier to make through my library system. Before I’d finished reading it I knew I’d be adding a copy to my personal library someday. These short stories are exactly what a Christmas story should be: simple, warm, heartfelt, wholesome, nostalgic. The title story “Journey into Christmas” makes me cry (in a good way) every time, and “Star Across the Tracks” and “The Drum Goes Dead” are my other favorites.
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A hefty, multi-threaded story of the lives and loves of a group of people in an English country town in the 1830s, Middlemarch is an example of what a classic is and should be: a book that absorbs you in the story, and also makes you go slowly and think. I thoroughly enjoyed it even as I found some things to differ with and critique. Eliot’s prose can be a touch ponderous in passages where she is discussing ideas, but her delineation of character and interactions between people are wonderful. It was also pretty much the only book I managed to write a lengthy review of this year, which you can read here.
St. Peter’s Fair by Ellis Peters
So far my reactions to the Brother Cadfael books have alternated between “okay, pretty decent” and “wow, BRILLIANT.” I wouldn’t say this one quite matches up to last year’s One Corpse Too Many, but it was excellent. A merchant is murdered at a crowded fair where tensions are already running high, and two plot lines, of a young girl who holds the secret key to the motive but isn’t telling, and a suspect trying to clear his own name, interweave and finally converge at the exciting climax.
Adorning the Dark: Thoughts on Community, Calling, and the Mystery of Making by Andrew Peterson
An impulse-buy that turned into my nonfiction read of the year. The way Peterson describes his creative process and struggles, and the tension between innate self-centeredness and the sincere desire to bring glory to God—it was like reading my own mind. There were times when I couldn’t see the words for tears. It forced me to look honestly at the various fears holding me back creatively; and it also gives a glimpse of the glorious possibilities we forfeit if we’re not willing to be brave and work hard, and I think that’s why it resonated so deeply. I read it straight through twice, which is a rare occurrence for me.
Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf
This would have been my top nonfiction read of the year if Adorning the Dark hadn’t bobbed up and taken that spot. It was fascinating to learn how the Founders that it focuses on (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and a slighter role for Franklin) were not only avid gardeners who had tremendous botanical knowledge, delighted in discovering new species and varieties and regularly exchanged seeds with their correspondents, and relished nothing more than being at home working in the gardens on their own land. But even more importantly, how they were passionate about agriculture and farming in general, and how their views on the subject were vital to their vision for the new country they founded. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that made these people and the formative years of the United States so interesting to me. Highly recommended for farmers, gardeners, and history lovers, and especially if you’re all three.
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
This was absolutely perfect summer reading fare: quiet, deceptively simple vignettes of life in a small Maine fishing village, and of the people the nameless narrator meets while spending a summer there. The chapters centering around Mrs. Todd and her mother and brother are so simply sweet and wholesome and poignant, I just wanted to be able to visit that tiny island and know people like them. It’s the perfect kind of book to take you on a a vicarious seaside vacation.
Heroes Without Glory: Some Goodmen of the Old West by Jack Schaefer
That spelling in the subtitle is not a mistake; it is in fact “goodmen” rather than “good men” (a nuance that was missed by University of New Mexico Press in their recent reissue). That’s because the book is a direct response to what Schaefer called the “cult of the badmen,” the obsession with outlaws over and above all the other history of the Old West. His fire-spitting introduction alone is worth the price of admission! But so too are his profiles of ten real men whose courage, resilience, and spirit was demonstrated in far more worthwhile ways than gunfights or robbing banks. This is the real West, where the stories of the doctor and the mailman are *more* thrilling than the stories of the outlaw—a perspective on the subject that’s desperately needed now even more than when Schaefer wrote the book.
Whispering Smith by Frank H. Spearman
I’d have read Whispering Smith sooner if I’d realized it was set in the same “story universe” as Spearman’s railroad short stories that I love. It’s a novel that by no means fits the narrow pop-culture definition of a “Western,” for rather than focusing exclusively on a few cowboys or outlaws, its cast of characters are involved in railroading, ranching, mining, and the town life adjacent to these professions, assisting and clashing with each other in a variety of ways; the antagonists range from run-of-the-mill cattle thieves to a river in flood. The plot, somewhat characteristic of many early-20th-century Westerns, sprawls and rambles a bit, taking a few chapters here and a few there to focus on each of four or five central characters in turn, but it all gradually and purposefully draws together—and I enjoyed every minute of it. Read my slightly fuller review here.
With Christ in the School of Prayer by Andrew Murray
Quite frankly the best thing on prayer I’ve ever read. A study in Jesus’ own teachings on prayer, the overarching theme of the book is what God’s promises regarding prayer truly are, and how a lack of understanding and faith in those promises often limits Christians’ power in prayer. (The chapter on Christ the Intercessor is amazing.) Another one that I plan on re-reading in full.
This Hill, This Valley by Hal Borland
Spending as much time as I do reading books about other parts of the country or world, it was lovely to discover a book that speaks so beautifully and perceptively of the place I’ve always felt most at home: New England farm country. In this informal journal of a year of life on a Connecticut farm, first published in 1957, Borland records descriptions and observations of the land, plants, wildlife, weather, and a farmer’s work and life. I started reading it in the summer, and since it runs from spring to spring, I was able to stretch it out so its changing seasons loosely paralleled whatever season I was in. The gently tangential musings on things as varied as a chickadee’s personality, the mood evoked by a winter night, and the mindsets cultivated by growing a vegetable garden make for both intelligent and quietly comforting reading. (My single criticism would be Borland’s too-frequent harking back to some plant or geographical feature’s supposed emergence from prehistoric ooze, which demonstrates the underlying sense of unease and questioning the evolutionary worldview gives to one’s overall philosophy of life. Nature writing this good which was also grounded in the confidence and awe of regarding creation as an intelligent design, with mankind having a clear purpose in the scheme of things, would be truly brilliant.)
* * *
Six of this year’s list were Kindle purchases (Middlemarch, The Country of the Pointed Firs, and Whispering Smith are public-domain and free, and With Christ in the School of Prayer is also public-domain and inexpensive); Founding Gardeners was a library borrow and St. Peter’s Fair a digital library borrow, and Journey Into Christmas and Heroes Without Glory required interlibrary borrows.
In other trivia, this year’s list ties with 2018 for most nonfiction titles to make the cut (five), and becomes the year with the most-ever books from my summer reading list becoming top-ten picks (four). An Ellis Peters book makes the list for the fifth year in a row (at least one book of hers every year since I began reading them), which also makes her the author with the most overall top-ten appearances through the years!
