Dear fellow travelers,

It’s become a tradition here to post what books I read during the year.  This year’s total was 23, relatively high for me, but I read a lot of short books.  Last year I noted that I read less books (16) because of my struggle to get through the over 900 pages of The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah by Alfred Edersheim (1883).  I still haven’t finished it even though I started in late 2023 and didn’t really try in 2025.  Maybe in 2026 I can “close the book” on that one.

So, what books did I finish reading this year?

Fiction books (in order read):

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

I’ve read all of these before except Pride and Prejudice and A Christmas Carol.  The first is one of my wife’s favorites and I finally read it and did enjoy it.  The key is to know Austen is making fun of her characters.  The second is a story we all know, but reading it fills in a lot of spaces.  I was surprised at how funny it was.

Just like Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, I re-read Lewis’s Narnia books every few years and they are as good as ever.  I’m in the middle of The Silver Chair now, and am alternating between these and other, “harder” books.  It helps me stay motivated to read.

A few history books:

A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins
Pax by Tom Holland
Blood and Thunder by Hampton Sides
Wedding of the Waters by Peter Bernstein

Wedding of the Waters, a history of the building of the Erie Canal, is the only one of these I’d read before.  Pax, a history of part of the Roman Empire, was very well written and interesting, but I expected it to cover the time period of the New Testament.  It didn’t, but Dominion by the same author (which I got for Christmas) will probably cover that ground and more.

Plus several religious books:

In addition to regular Bible and study Bible reading, in 2025 I read:

The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser
Making Me, and Like the Stars by Glenn Parkinson
Several books by Warren Wiersbe: Be Loyal (Matthew), Be Free (Galatians), Be Rich (Ephesians), Be Dynamic (Acts 1-12), Be Daring (Acts 13-28), Be Faithful (1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon), Be Victorious (Revelation).

I picked up Wiersbe’s entire “Be” series in 2021 as part of a digital subscription and am working through it over time.  A long time.  I like his overall approach, and the books are a great source of thoughtful stories and quotes.  I’ve covered 32 of the Bible’s 66 books so far!

Have you read any of these?  What books did you enjoy in 2025? And speaking of reading, I want to thank all of you who take the time to read this blog.  In 2025 I nearly doubled my views from 2025 (the previous high)!  I don’t know what happened, but October through December of 2025 were very busy here.