Once again, it's that wonderful time of the year when people share their yearly reading lists. So, before we get too far in 2025, I want to take a moment to share some reading highlights from 2024. As usual, I don't pick the "best" or "favorite" book each month, but I want to highlight a notable one (and sometimes it is my favorite book from that month). Looking at my reading recap of books read in 2023, I'm struck by how much less fiction I am highlighting this time around. I guess I tend to read more fiction in some years than others?
Anyways, moving on. I read 92 books in 2024, and they were a fun mix of fiction and non-fiction, books geared towards children and books aimed at adults. From werewolves to economics to mathematics to Amelia Peabody's adventures in Egypt (such good comfort reads!), I dove into a variety of fascinating topics. It was a really fun reading year. Here's one book highlight from each month, followed by a short writing recap :)
January: Rough Stone Rolling, by Richard Bushman
This 700+ page biography of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church, was FASCINATING! It explores the political, social, and religious atmosphere of 19th century America before discussing the Smith family. Bushman, a practicing LDS member, covers an array of topics surrounding the Smith family (including their practice of magic and treasure-hunting) before centering on Joseph. He explores the way that Smith founded the LDS church, the various doctrines, and the controversies that ultimately led to Smith's death.
February: Pinocchio, by Carlo Collodi
Gepetto--a poor woodcarver--makes a puppet named Pinocchio. Pinocchio is mischievous and disobedient, yet Gepetto loves and sacrifices for him anyway. Pinocchio ultimately learns the importance of striving for virtue, sacrifice, and being obedient to his loving father. This is a beautiful, riveting, very dark story and I thought it was a very powerful reflection on a father's love for his son.
March: Remedies for Sorrow, by Megan Nix
After having a mostly uneventful pregnancy, Nix was shocked when her full-term daughter was tiny and kept failing hearing tests. A doctor eventually discovered that her baby tested positive for CMV, a virus that Nix had never heard of, but which is a leading cause for disabilities and developmental delays. In this incredible memoir (seriously, the writing is gorgeous), Nix uncovers what it's like when motherhood is not how you anticipated, as well her frustration at the lack of education on CMV. She also discusses how she navigates medical care for her daughter while living in a small, remote town in Alaska. Also, I loved how the author's faith was gently interwoven throughout this story, with mentions of Roman Catholicism, Byzantine Catholicism, and Russian Orthodoxy.
April: All We Were Promised, by Ashton Lattimore
Set in 1830s Philadelphia, this novel follows three different fictional young women: Charlotte, who escaped slavery in Maryland with her father (who began passing as a white man) and now lives as her father's maid in Philadelphia; Nell, a Black woman who was born free in Philadelphia and lives in an upper-class family but spends her days working for the abolition cause; and Evie, a girl who is trying to escape slavery before her mistress takes her to the Deep South. Their lives and destinies become intertwined in this pre-Civil War story, and it was well-written and engrossing.
May: Finding Margaret Fuller, by Allison Pataki
This novel explores the life, loves, and adventures of Margaret Fuller, the Transcendentalist you've never heard of but need to know about. As a young woman, the well-read Margaret receives an invitation to stay with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his wife at their home in Concord, and here she meets the Transcendentalists. As Margaret continues to write and journey throughout life--travelling to Boston at one point and eventually to Italy--she seeks to find her place in the world and make her mark.
June: Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food, by Lenore Newman
Newman tackles the topic of culinary extinction and explores the different animals and plants that we no longer bring into our kitchens, simply because they no longer exist. I was particularly struck by the author's mention that kitchen gardens just a couple centuries ago looked much different than ours today, because they contained many more cultivars of fruits and vegetables than what we have currently.
July: A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life, by Nicolas Diat (foreword by Robert Cardinal Sarah)
In each chapter of the book, Diat focuses on a different Catholic monastery and the way that death and dying are treated in the community, as well as challenges that the monks go through. He does not shy away from hard topics, and at one monastery in particular, he discusses one monk's suicide. This book was really eye-opening, and it was interesting to learn about the challenges that modern monks face. I loved this book, and my favorite chapter was definitely the one on the Carthusian order.
August: The Noonday Devil: Acedia, the unnamed evil of our times, by Jean-Charles Nault, O.S.B., foreword by Marc Cardinal Oullet
The author walks through the early Christian monastics (Evagrius, Cassian) and explores how the conversations around acedia developed in the West. He also ponders ways that temptations to acedia are present in the lives of monks, priests, single people, and married couples. I felt very called out by this book, and it was so, so good to read and reflect on.
September: I Cheerfully Refuse, by Leif Enger
Set in a dystopian America slightly in the future, this novel explores the life of Rainy, a musician who lives with his bookseller-wife, Lark. Amid the darkness and corruption of the culture and the mass-suicides that dot the country, their deep love offers them greater hope and joy. Their quiet life together takes an unexpected turn when they accept a young man as a boarder-and one day, tragedy strikes. I like how this book felt like a slightly different kind of dystopian novel, and that it was very poetic.
October: Winters in the World: a journey through the Anglo-Saxon year, by Eleanor Parker
In this researched-but-approachable book, Parker dives into the agricultural and liturgical calendar of Anglo-Saxon England. As she explores this topic, she draws from Old English poetry and history to describe how people have viewed time, nature, God, and the seasons. I learned a lot (there was a period of time when the English people observed the new calendar year in March!), but I especially loved the reflection at the beginning of the book on time, and how people viewed time.
November: How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, by Harrison Scott Key
This is a memoir that discusses the time that the author found out that his wife was having an affair. The author is a humor writer and brings a hilarious tone into a very dark story (I kept cracking up, which I was NOT expecting to do in a memoir about infidelity!). He explores the aftermath of his discovery and the different ways that he tried to find healing when his marriage was, in many ways, dead. He also shares how he and his wife ultimately reconciled. This was a great read! My main caveat is that the tone came across to me as a bit irreverent at times (though according to some reviews I read, the author was "too Christian" for a lot of readers).
December: Mothers of the Church: The Witness of Early Christian Women, by Mike Aquilina and Christopher Bailey
This book offers short intros to various women, with excerpts from primary source documents that were either about them or written by them. I loved seeing some women I already knew about (St. Macrina and St. Helena, for example) and loved learning about some new-to-me, fascinating women (St. Thecla, Egeria the Tourist, Proba the Poet). This was a fantastic, quick read, and I enjoyed it a lot!
Overall, I enjoyed my reading quite a bit. I still haven't managed to read poetry on a regular basis (a goal that I outlined in January 2023!); maybe this coming year will be the year that I make that happen? I'll have to see!
As for my writing life, 2024 was a very restful and fruitful year.
A year ago, I reflected that I had gotten into the practice of "slow consistency," and that I was trying to faithfully do my work while accepting that it's a slow process. As I looked to the upcoming months of 2024, I wrote:
"Ideally, I would love to finish the manuscript on Book #2 and start on a revision of that. I would also love to finish the revision on Book #1 and move that closer to the point where I can get it edited. I also have a couple of children's book ideas that I started putting together in 2023, and it'd be fun to work on those more. But, I'll see what I get to and what God has in store for me!"
What did God have in store for me?
I started out the year by presenting at the Catholic Writers Online Conference. I gave a talk on the importance of rest, and it resonated with a lot of people. It was a really fun experience. After that conference weekend, I was feeling so energized to jump into my writing more and then...pregnancy nausea and fatigue struck. I had the opportunity to "practice what I preach" and live out what I had encouraged other conference attendees to do as I rested, slept, and rested some more. Although I still worked on writing projects at times, I gave myself low expectations on pretty much everything; I was exhausted, and I needed to rest.
And yet, things came together.
While I did not finish the revision of Book #1, I got about a third of the way through that. I worked a little bit more on my children's book ideas. Most exciting of all, I not only finished the manuscript of Book #2, but I rewrote it and started revising the book's chapters yet again. Furthermore, as 2024 ended, I sent out the first few chapters to some amazing beta readers, and I have already started receiving very encouraging feedback.
For 2025, I'm hoping to continue this "slow consistency" as I work on my writing projects. I'm hoping to continue blogging, writing for CatholicMom.com, and sending out my newsletter, but to really focus my writing efforts on Book #2. I'd love to get this rewrite completely done-and maybe even edited? I'll have to wait and see what God wants. Some pretty insane things impacted our family in 2024, some very hard/awful, others that were incredibly amazing (like the birth of Baby #5!). I have no clue what God has in store for the coming year, but it should be an exciting time.
Thank you all for joining me on this adventure! I hope that your start to the new year has been full of delicious treats, beautiful lights, and God's peace.
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