January: Reads + Recommendations
February: Reads + Recommendations
March: Reads + Recommendations
April: Reads + Recommendations
May: Reads + Recommendations
I read five books in June, two of them re-reads of favorites. There was a meditation on the Virgin Mary, my favorite summertime novel, my favorite book about CS Lewis, a theological exploration of holiness, and Martin Shaw’s latest - which wasn’t what I hoped it would be…
The Reed of God
by Caryll Houselander (1944)
A spiritual classic on Mary as the model of openness to God, showing how her humility and surrender make her the pattern for every Christian seeking to receive and bear Christ in daily life.
I was struck when reading this book by how the richness of Houselander’s thought is conveyed with such simplicity. It is a deeply humane, compassionate, and earthy book, which reflects the truth that Mary is accessible to all, waiting for the chance to lead us to her Son. The central motif is that Mary is a reed through which God played his most beautiful song and that by imitating her we can recognize the extraordinary divine call hidden within our everyday lives.
“Sometimes it may seem to us that there is no purpose in our lives, that going day after day for years to this office or that school or factory is nothing else but waste and weariness. But it may be that God has sent us there because but for us Christ would not be there. If our being there means that Christ is there, that alone makes it worthwhile.”
Dandelion Wine
by Ray Bradbury (1957)
A coming-of-age novel set during one magical summer in a small Illinois town, celebrating childhood wonder while exploring mortality, change, and the bittersweet passage into adulthood.
I love this book so much that last year I wrote an essay pleading with people to read it before the end of summer. I’ve read it many times and this year I read it aloud to my husband in the evenings after dinner and it was such a joy to journey through the book together. Dandelion Wine is told in a series of interconnected vignettes that weave together ordinary moments that, in Bradbury’s shimmering prose, are revealed as sublime: the thrill of getting new sneakers, the shivering fear of hearing a scary story, the goings-on of friends and neighbors in a small American town circa 1928, and the solemnity of realizing, for the first time, that you are really and truly alive. This book is pure Americana and it makes me think of the sizzling scent of spent firecrackers twined with the smell of fresh cut grass, the taste of apple pie fresh from the oven, and the fizzy-giddy knowledge that you have months of no school stretching out before you to fill with adventure. It is one of the most life-affirming, joyful, profound books I know - please read it!
“I’m really alive, he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember! He yelled it loud but silent, a dozen times! Think of it, think of it! Twelve years old and only now! Now discovering this rare timepiece, this clock gold-bright and guaranteed to run threescore and ten, left under a tree and found while wrestling.”
The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind
by Jason Baxter (2022)
This is an engaging exploration of how medieval literature and the premodern worldview deeply shaped CS Lewis.
This is my favorite book about Lewis and one that I’ve re-read frequently - so much so that nearly every page is crowded with my underlines and marginalia. It had a huge impact on my understanding of Lewis - and the very modern secular worldview I was raised to think of as so enlightened. Baxter communicates complex ideas with delightful elegance and clarity, guiding the reader through Dante and Boethius and Christian mysticism to shed light on how Lewis interwove his favorite thinkers into his writing. It is a must-read book for all Lewis fans that I can’t recommend highly enough.
“Medieval literature, ancient languages, and the premodern way of looking at the universe were not just Lewis’s study or day job, but his passion, his love, his life’s work, his spiritual formation, and even his “vocation.”
Holy Is His Name
by Scott Hahn (2022)
A study of the theological concept of holiness from the Old to the New Testament that reveals how God increasingly reveals His divine life to mankind and transforms ordinary people into saints.
Like all of Hahn’s books this is a very accessible quick read. I particularly enjoyed the chapters on Isaiah and how Christ chose to reveal his own Holiness by surpassing or fulfilling the types of holiness found in the Old Testament. I also found much to appreciate in the chapter about priesthood, and how Adam was a high priest meant to mediate between creation and the Creator by giving the whole earth as a priestly offering to God. Adam failed and salvation could only be accomplished by the New Adam - Christ, the supreme and eternal priest. And I was especially moved by Hahn’s reminder that salvation is not simply rescue from sin, but a call to holiness and communion with God.
“It is the young mother at the diaper-changing table. It is the landscaper moving a lawn. It is the plumber turning a wrench. It is the cook bent over a stovetop, stirring a pot. It’s the journalist hunched over his laptop, the guitarist strumming his instrument. Each of these is a priestly action. The table, the lawn, the underside of the sink, the cooktop, the keyboard, the fretboard - each is an altar, and any honest work offered to God becomes an expression of the priestly life that every baptized Christian shares with Jesus, the High Priest.”
Liturgies of the Wild: Myths that Make Us
by Martin Shaw (2026)
Mythologist Martin Shaw argues that modern people have become cut off from the formative power of myth, leaving us spiritually adrift. To counteract this, Shaw offers a series of tales, each of which circles a specific topic - such as death, passion, guilt, and envy - that will help the reader through life’s travails in order that they may become a fully realized human being.
I am a big fan of Shaw’s books, particularly A Branch from the Lightning Tree and Scatterlings. His excellent Substack was one of the first I subscribed to and recommended on here. And I had been so looking forward to his latest book because Shaw’s conversion to Christianity brought such brilliance and depth to his essays that I couldn’t wait to see what he could do with a few hundred pages to work with.
Unfortunately, the book was disappointing. It felt like a rehash of Shaw’s standard formula - analyzing ancient myths to show their relevance to our modern lives - but thinner than usual, as if everything had been watered down into self-help. Even his prose, normally so potent and earthy, felt bland. There was also a tendency to romanticize indigenous cultures as somehow more authentic and inherently pure. And while I sympathize with Shaw’s desire to show us Westerners how inoculated we’ve become to Christianity’s soaring, cosmic weirdness, his efforts were not transcendent but hokey; he repeatedly calls Jesus “the Galilee Druid” and at one point says: And who’s more badass than Yeshua? His continual insistence that Jesus is the “most countercultural god of all” seems less to do with conveying the truth of Christ and more to do with Shaw reassuring us that while he may have converted to Christianity he isn’t dull and boring like most Christians, he’s a cool Christian!
My biggest disappointment, however, was that Christianity, rather than being the sunbeam that Shaw now brought to bear upon his old beloved myths, showing them as threads of the one True Myth, felt almost like an afterthought or another interesting tale to mull. There was a good chapter, the one on prayer, which did offer the deeper Christian engagement that I had been hoping for, but I had wished this would permeate the entire book. Ultimately, I couldn’t help but feel like the book was rushed, like Shaw has not fully integrated his new faith with his old stories, so that the result is something that sits uneasily with itself and left me wishing for more.
“The Christian heart at best feels combed through, receptive, quiet, patient, denuded of urgency. The prayer rests there, like a pulse. Any wishes I may have, God already knows about, and the urge to petition at such a moment is absolutely redundant. For a while, I am in the Garden, or as near as a human can be.”