This page is always under construction. Titles with links (in green) will take you to blog posts where the book was mentioned or reviewed. Most recent at the top.

Read in 2024:

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
How Dante Can Save Your Life by Rod Dreher
They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Enchanted Barn by Grace Livingston Hill
Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens
The Holy Angels by Mother Alexandra
The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes
Crazy John by Dionysios A. Makris

 

Read in 2023:

The Odyssey of Homer by Elizabeth Vandiver
Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee
Studying with Miss Bishop by Dana Gioia
True Grit by Charles Portis
Old Sam, Dakota Trotter by Don Alonzo Taylor
Surprised by Christ by A. James Bernstein
The Son of the Deathless by Nicholas Kotar
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney
The Blessed Surgeon: The Life of Saint Luke by Vasiliy Marushchak
Caravan by Dorothy Gilman
Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame by Fr. Stephen Freeman
The Fragrance of God by Vigen Guroian
Exogenesis by Peco Gaskovski
Sufferings in Africa by James Riley
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Pied Piper by Nevil Shute
Gods, Wasps and Stranglers by Mike Shanahan
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
In the Reign of Terror by G.A. Henty
Heidi by Johanna Spyri
The Ethics of Beauty by Timothy G. Patitsas
The Sunlilies by Graham Pardun
This Rough Magic by Mary Stewart
Our Father by Alexander Schmemann
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart
Christ the Conqueror of Hell by Hilarion Alfeyev
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky
Oleander, Jacaranda by Penelope Lively
Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston

Read in 2022:

Strength in Weakness by Bishop Irenei Steenberg
Heart Earth by Ivan Doig
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart
The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly
My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart
Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
The Captive Mind by Czesław Miłosz
Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley
The Californios by Louis L’Amour
Ride, You Tonto Raiders by Louis L’Amour
City of Illusions by Ursula Le Guin
Shane by Jack Schaefer
China Court by Rumer Godden
1984 by George Orwell
Saint Innocent: Apostle to America by Paul D. Garrett
The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly
I, Juan de Pareja by Elizabeth Barton de Trevino
How Languages Saved Me by Tadeusz Haska
The Black Stallion by Walter Farley
Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O’Hara
Technopoly by Neil Postman
Thunderhead by Mary O’Hara
Father by Elizabeth von Arnim
My Friend Flicka by Mary O’Hara
Caffeine by Michael Pollan
Way of the Ascetics by Tito Colliander
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Up and Down California by William H. Brewer
The New Media Epidemic  by Jean-Claude Larchet
The Beatryce Prophecy by Kate DiCamillo
On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Read in 2021:

Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich by Norman Ohler
Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis
Perelandra by C.S. Lewis
The Cross of Loneliness edited by Nicholas Sakharov
My Father’s Paradise by Ariel Sabar
How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl R. Trueman
The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
Irrational Man by William Barrett
Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All by Christina Thompson
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen
The Eucharist by Alexander Schmemann – also, quotes here and here.
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
Warning to the West by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye
The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin
Never Stop Walking by Christina Rickardsson
The Beekeeper by Dunya Mikhail
The Children’s Homer by Padraic Colum
Whom Shall I Fear? by Anne Clare
The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman
At the End of the Century by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The Red Horse by Eugenio Corti

Read in 2020:

Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Greek to Me by Mary Norris
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird
Alexander Schmorell by Elena Perekrestov
Live Not By Lies by Rod Dreher
Baby Catcher by Peggy Vincent
The Girl from Riga by Sibilla Hershey
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
Letters of a Woman Homesteader by Elinore Pruitt Stewart
The Hill Station and Indian Diary by J.G. Farrell
That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Lily of the Field and the Bird of the Air by Søren Kierkegaard
The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim
At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald
Love by Elizabeth von Arnim
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather
Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West and here
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
This Real Night by Rebecca West
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West

Read in 2019:

My Father’s Glory and My Mother’s Castle by Marcel Pagnol
Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather (audio)
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (audio)
Phineas L. MacGuire Gets Cooking by Frances O’Roark Dowell
A Little History of Philosophy by Nigel Warburton (audio)
My Antonia by Willa Cather (audio)
Dubliners by James Joyce (audio)
Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington (audio)
Life in the Garden by Penelope Lively
The Panama Canal by Charles River Editors (audio)
From and Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan
Earthly Possessions by Anne Tyler
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff (audio)
Kusamakura by Sōseki Natsume
The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzō
The Princess and Curdie by George MacDonald
Kokoro by Sōseki Natsume
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (audio)
Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa
The Great Passage by Shion Miura
Words on the Move by John McWhorter (audio)

Read in 2018:

One Wild Bird at a Time by Bernd Heinrich (audio)
Little Bee by Chris Cleave
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (audio)
Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow
Fidelity by Wendell Berry
Middlemarch by George Eliot
About Grace by Anthony Doerr
The Inner Kingdom by Bishop Kallistos Ware
Mouse House by Rumer Godden
The Rocking Horse Secret by Rumer Godden
The River by Rumer Godden
Great Grandfather’s House by Rumer Godden
Foster by Claire Keegan
The Water Horse by Dick King-Smith (audio)
The Mousewife by Rumer Godden
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

Read in 2017:

Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life by Jeff Wilser (audio)
A Life Wild and Perilous by Robert M. Utley (audio)
Jumping Fire by Murry A. Taylor
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (audio)
Undaunted Courage (abridged) by Stephen Ambrose (audio)
Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne (audio)
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani
The Keeper of the Bees by Gene Stratton-Porter
It’s Not All About “Me” by Robin Dreeke
The Wedding Dress by Carrie Young
Nothing to Do but Stay by Carrie Young
The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig
The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim x2
Betsy-Tacy by Maud Hart Lovelace
Birds in the Air by Frances O’Roark Dowell
Listening Below the Noise by Anne D. Le Claire
Four Seasons in Rome by Anthony Doerr
China Court by Rumer Godden
The Ripening Seed by Colette
Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening by Vigen Guroian

Read in 2016:

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Acquiring the Mind of Christ by Archimandrite Sergius Bowyer
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
Between You and Me by Mary Norris (audio)
Seventeenth Summer by Maureen Daly
The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
Babylon’s Ark by Lawrence Anthony (audio)
This House of Sky by Ivan Doig

Read in 2015:

The Road from Coorain by Jill Ker Conway
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
Grieving Mindfully by Sameet M. Kumar
Rumors of Peace by Ella Leffland
Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury by Sigrid Nunez
The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez
Breathing: The Way by Magdalen Dugan
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
The Day Boy and the Night Girl by George MacDonald (audio)
Anybody Shining by Frances O’Roark Dowell (audio)
Phantastes by George MacDonald
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis (audio)
Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth
When Husbands Die by Shirley Reeser McNally
A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis
A Hole in the Earth by Robert Bausch
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
The Land I Lost by Quang Nhuong Huynh
The Housekeeper and The Professor by Yoko Ogawa (aloud with my husband)
Josselyn’s Wife by Kathleen Thompson Norris
Sisters by Kathleen Thompson Norris
The Assistant by Bernard Malamud (aloud with my husband)
In the Mountains by Elizabeth von Arnim
Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy
A Woman Named Smith by Marie Conway Oemler
The Girl in the Blue Beret by Bobbie Ann Mason (aloud with my husband)
Maude by Donna Mabry
Portrait of a Marriage by Pearl S. Buck
The Living Reed by Pearl S. Buck

Read in 2014:

The Story of Holly and Ivy by Rumer Godden
Peony by Pearl S. Buck
The River by Rumer Godden
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep by Rumer Godden
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt (aloud with my husband)
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Four Dolls by Rumer Godden
Little Plum by Rumer Godden
Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (aloud with my husband)
Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden
Premlata and The Festival of Lights by Rumer Godden
The Doll’s House by Rumer Godden (aloud with Maggie)
My Name is Aram by William Saroyan (aloud with my husband)
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
My Antonia by Willa Cather (aloud with my husband)
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
Claire de Lune by Jetta Carleton
A Nest for Celeste by Henry Cole
The Secret Language of Girls by Frances O’Roark Dowell (audio)
The Franklin Trees by Jonathan Nauman
Three Against the Dark by M.K. Christiansen
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
Knock at a Star by X.J. Kennedy
The Beasts of Bethlehem by X.J. Kennedy
The Owlstone Crown by X.J. Kennedy
On Sarpy Creek by Ira Stephens Nelson
Feather Crowns by Bobbie Ann Mason
A Green Journey by John Hassler
What W.H. Auden Can Do for You by Alexander McCall Smith
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
Peace Like a River by Leif Enger
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner

Read in 2013:

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (aloud with husband)
The Faithful Wife by Sigrid Undset
Why Us? How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves by James LeFanu
The Archaeology of Home by Katharine Greider
The Other Walk by Sven Birkerts
The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts
The Cassoulet Saved our Marriage edited by Grant & Harper
Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: Essential Writings edited by Gillian Crow
God and Man by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton
Mister God, This is Anna by Fynn
Blue Chameleon by Emily Gravett

Read in 2012:

Between Heaven and Hell by Peter Kreeft
The Spy Game by Georgina Harding
The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
The Big House by George Howe Colt
Mr. Pip by Lloyd Jones
Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson (audio)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Cousin Rosamund by Rebecca West
This Real Night by Rebecca West
Everywhere Present by Stephen Freeman
Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle
What Hearts by Bruce Brooks
The Flight from Woman by Karl Stern
Creators by Paul Johnson
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken
A Christian Ending by J. Mark & Elizabeth J. Barna

Read (or completed) in 2011:

The Presence of Mary by Alexander Schmemann
The Spirit of God by Thomas Hopko
Dust to Dust or Ashes to Ashes? by Alvin J. Schmidt
Echoes of a Native Land by Serge Schmemann
The Hungry Soul by Leon R. Kass
Splendor in the Ordinary by Thomas Howard
A Long Long Time Ago & Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka
Nothing to Do But Stay by Carrie Young
A Shine of Rainbows by Lillian Beckwith
Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman
The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West (read twice)

Read in 2010

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset
Cairo Trilogy by Naguib Mahfouz
Islam Encounters Christ by Nahed Mahmoud Metwalli
So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger
Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi
Remembering Laughter by Wallace Stegner
The Singing Forest by Mortimer Batten
Chicken Boy by Frances O’Roark Dowell
The Way by Clark Carlton
My Journey with Father Alexander by Juliana Schmemann
Wordstruck by Robert MacNeil
Among Friends by M.F.K. Fisher
Sister Age by M.F.K. Fisher
Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson
My Antonia by Willa Cather (on CD)
Leaf by Niggle by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Raccoon and Mrs. McGinnis by Patricia Miles Martin
Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
Pilgrimage to Dzhvari by Valeria Alfeyeva

Read in 2009:

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard
The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
The Inner Kingdom by Met. Kallistos Ware
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Folding Cliffs by W.S. Merwin
Ah, But Your Land is Beautiful by Alan Paton
Journey Continued by Alan Paton
Towards the Mountain by Alan Paton
The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West
Diary by Anaïs Nin (reviewed though not completed)
The Winter Pascha by Fr. Thomas Hopko
Long Ago in France by M.F.K. Fisher
Mark of the Horse Lord by Rosemary Sutcliff
At Large and Small by Anne Fadiman
Creators by Paul Johnson
How to Cook a Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
M.F.K. Fisher and Me by Jeannette Ferrary
The Endless Steppe: Growing Up in Siberia by Esther Hautzig
Bread and Water, Wine and Oil by Fr. Meletios Weber
Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
Good and Faithful Servant (St. Innocent) by The University of Alaska
Pig Tale by Verlyn Flieger
Living With the Laird by Belinda Rathbone
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
Down, Down the Mountain by Ellis Credle