Congrats for making it to the end of the Summer Reading Challenge 2022! As I sat down to work on the list of books I read this summer, I am so proud of us and of this challenge. Thanks to this challenge, every summer I read several books that I simply would not have read without this nudge of this challenge. I imagine it’s the same for you.

Three things to know for me this summer:

1. I am embarrassed to say I only read one novel.

2. Thanks to the “Penalty Book” category, for the fifth summer I read a book I have been meaning to read for ages! Go penalty books! Unfortunately, for the first time, my penalty book was a massive disappointment.

3. Summer reading makes me happy.

So, how did The Summer Reading Challenge go for you? Remember, in The Summer Reading Challenge the goal is to read seven books between June 1 and August 12th. Comment below and you are entered for one of ten $10 Amazon gift cards. Even if you didn’t read seven books, still share what you read! This isn’t really a contest so much as a chance to share and a chance to see how many books we read collectively.

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I’m going to put the categories here if you want to cut and paste them into the comments. Also feel free to just list books, whatever works for you.

—Read Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhood by Gary Paulsen.

—A Biography or about history

—A book you already own

—A book you’ve been wanting to reread

—A book a friend recommended

—A Young Adult book (YA)

—A book with a great cover

—A book of poetry

—A memoir or autobiography

—A graphic novel

—A book for professional development (loosely defined)

—A book longer than 700 pages (counts as two books)

—A book with a verb in the title

—A play

—A book about a country or culture you have never visited

—A book with the number 7 in the title or subtitle (in honor of this being the 7th anniversary)

—A book that won an award

—A book by someone with a different view point than you recommended you read

—A mystery

—A classic

—An audiobook

—A book with an animal

—A book less than 100 pages

—A book you want to discuss with others

—A book you read as a child

Penalty book (subtract two books if you didn’t read this book)

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Amy’s books with a five star rating (you don’t have to do this!)

Read Gone to the Woods: Surviving a Lost Childhoodby Gary Paulsen: Reread it this summer. Still love his writing and ability to craft a story in an unexpected way, in this case a memoir in the style of a YA book. (5 stars)

A Biography or about history: Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill by Candice Millard (5 stars)

A book with a great cover: Becoming More Fruitful by me :) . . . it will be out on Tuesday! (5 stars and a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and love)

A memoir or autobiography: Gehrig and the Babe: The Friendship and the Feud by Tony Castro (4 stars)

A graphic novel: Discipline by Dash Shaw (3 stars)

A book for professional development (loosely defined): Sacred Rest: Recover Your Life, Renew Your Energy, Restore Your Sanity by Saundra Dalton-Smith (4 stars)

A book longer than 700 pages (counts as two books): Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris (History gets 4 stars, fake story teller named after the author? Negative 5 stars!!! Do not read this book; it was too confusing to sort out what was actual history and what was Fake Edmund’s life. Hard pass.)

A book about a country or culture you have never visited: River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard (4 stars)

A book with the number 7 in the title or subtitle (in honor of this being the 7th anniversary): I started a book with a 7 in the title but I’m not even going to tell you what it was to not be cruel to the author. Don’t waste your time. (2 stars, which is more than Edmund Morris got!!!)

A book that won an award: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet  by John Green won the Goodreads Choice winner for Nonfiction 2021 (He gave a 5 star rating to at the end of each essay to the subject, thus my hat tip with my 5 star rating, 4 stars)

A mystery: The Last Flight by Julie Clark (fun, light read, 5 stars)

An audiobook: The Lord Is My Courage: Stepping Through the Shadows of Fear Toward the Voice of Love by KJ Ramsey (5 stars)

A book less than 100 pages: The Self-Aware Leader by John C. Maxwell (Technically more than 100 pages, but that’s because if you choose a small cover and paper, you make a short book long :). If this were “typical” size? Less than 100 pages) (4 stars)

A book you want to discuss with others: Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers by Chip Heath and Karla Starr (5 stars and one exclamation point!)

Penalty book: Dutch: A memoir of Ronald Reagan (I read about 30 pages of notes to clear the 700 page goal too)

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You can see I didn’t read in every category.

I come back to this not being a contest, if you read four books and that was your goal, great! I just find that I’m more likely to accomplish my goals if I tell people what they are. I would not have read the short book or the graphic novel and I’m 99% sure I would still be intending to read Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris. Thanks to you, I read all of them and can move on from Dutch once and for all times.

All who comment between August 11-15th with the names of the books they read will be entered to win one of ten $10 Amazon gift cards. To enter, leave a comment on this post.

I can’t wait to see what you’ve been reading. I’ll pick winners on Monday so you have several days to leave a comment.

Thank you for joining in!

Amy

P.S. I need to read more novels in 2023. Can you believe I only read one this summer? That is pathetic :)

P.P.S. In preparing my list I enjoyed looking over what I read last summer and thought you might like to see what you read. If you left a comment last summer, you can reread what you read here.

I love all of the book lists that come out at this time of year. People, we are so fortunate to be literate and to have such an abundance of wealth when it comes to books! (That truth deserves all the !!!!!) No surprise that my nonfiction list is slightly longer than my fiction list and I am all the richer for reading both nonfiction and fiction :).

Nonfiction I loved

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth —What sticks with me is role in high school of being part of a group (any group! music, sports, a club) and sticking with it for at least one year and the way it fosters grittiness that can be tapped into the rest of a person’s life.

Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep by Tish Harrison Warren — I listened to this with my ears and 2021 and plan to read it with my eyes in 2022.

Every Moment Holy, Volume 1 by Douglas Kaine McKelvey (Author), Ned Bustard (Illustrator) — I loved reading these liturgies for every day moments. This is one to pick up and read a prayer, maybe not in the moment something happens. But because you’ve marinated your soul, when a moment happens you are able to notice God in it more readily.

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal — This was one of those “mind blown” books. Distraction is not quite what I thought it was and I have four pages of notes to prove it. Ha!

Boundaries for Your Soul: How to Turn Your Overwhelming Thoughts and Feelings into Your Greatest Allies by Alison Cook PhD and Kimberly Miller MTh LMFT — Very helpful “map” of the soul and why sometimes you might feel or act like an exile, firefighter, or manager. 

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant — I took four pages of notes that start, “I need to buy a copy of this book!”

A Burning in My Bones: The Authorized Biography of Eugene H. Peterson by Winn Collier — If you like memoirs that read like novels AND you like to how others navigate being a person of faith, dedicated to ministry, and living the ups and downs of life, this book is for you.

The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities by Kate Bowler—I found this utterly fascinating. Each chapter looked at a different area: The preacher, the home maker, the talent, the counselor, and the beauty. Context baby, this book provides a-ha moments as puzzle pieces come together.

Fiction I loved

Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles — He is a master story teller and I never want the books to end!

Out of Darkness, Shining Light: A Novel by Petina Gappah – This is a well-researched story of the Africans who brought David Livingston’s body after he died out of the “heart of Africa” to the coast.

Anxious People: A Novel by Fredrik Backman — A failed bank robber bursts into an open house and takes the viewers hostage. Backman is a master at taking unlikely groups and turning them in a community.

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger — The writing and storytelling is breath taking. This is a book you will want to own a copy!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng — Beautifully told story of a family who didn’t communicate. As a reader, my heart ached for each character as I understood them better and wanted others in their family to know what I knew.

Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn — I first read this years ago in China (thank you Stephanie!). If you haven’t read this delightful novel, it is a “must read in 2022.” It might be a tad quirky at first, but keep going. I promise you will marvel at the word twists the author makes!

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One of my goals for 2022 is to read six biographies. What reading goals do you have? What biographies would you recommend? I raise my glass, smile at you and say, “Here’s to good books for all of us in 2022.” Clink!

With love,
Amy

Tis the time of year for book lists! I love to see what other book read and thought you might too. We met on Tuesday night and discussed December’s book and looked back over this list.

Conclusion? We did not have one dud this year! And every book other than January and April’s books were someone’s favorite. The summaries are from Amazon. Happy browsing and then reading!

January — The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits by Les Standiford

February — Before We Were Yours: A Novel by Lisa Wingate: Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong.

March — Rules of Civility: A Novel by Amor Towles: On the last night of 1937, twenty-five-year-old Katey Kontent is in a second-rate Greenwich Village jazz bar when Tinker Grey, a handsome banker, happens to sit down at the neighboring table. This chance encounter and its startling consequences propel Katey on a year-long journey into the upper echelons of New York society—where she will have little to rely upon other than a bracing wit and her own brand of cool nerve.

April — Clock Dance: A novel by Anne Tyler: Willa Drake has had three opportunities to start her life over: in 1967, as a schoolgirl whose mother has suddenly disappeared; in 1977, when considering a marriage proposal; and in 1997, as a young widow trying to hold her family together. So she is surprised when in 2017 she is given one last chance to change everything, after receiving a startling phone call from a stranger. Without fully understanding why, she flies across the country to Baltimore to help a young woman she’s never met. This impulsive decision, maybe the first one she’s consciously made in her life, will lead Willa into uncharted territory—surrounded by eccentric neighbors who treat each other like family, she finds solace and fulfillment in unexpected places.

May — Washington Black by Esi Edugun: Eleven-year-old George Washington Black—or Wash—a field slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, is initially terrified when he is chosen as the manservant of his master’s brother. To his surprise, however, the eccentric Christopher Wilde turns out to be a naturalist, explorer, inventor, and abolitionist. Soon Wash is initiated into a world where a flying machine can carry a man across the sky, where even a boy born in chains may embrace a life of dignity and meaning, and where two people, separated by an impossible divide, can begin to see each other as human. 
 
But when a man is killed and a bounty is placed on Wash’s head, they must abandon everything and flee together. Over the course of their travels, what brings Wash and Christopher together will tear them apart, propelling Wash ever farther across the globe in search of his true self. Spanning the Caribbean to the frozen Far North, London to Morocco, Washington Black is a story of self-invention and betrayal, of love and redemption, and of a world destroyed and made whole again.

June — Olive, Again: A Novel by Elizabeth Strout: Prickly, wry, resistant to change yet ruthlessly honest and deeply empathetic, Olive Kitteridge is “a compelling life force” (San Francisco Chronicle). The New Yorker has said that Elizabeth Strout “animates the ordinary with an astonishing force,” and she has never done so more clearly than in these pages, where the iconic Olive struggles to understand not only herself and her own life but the lives of those around her in the town of Crosby, Maine. Whether with a teenager coming to terms with the loss of her father, a young woman about to give birth during a hilariously inopportune moment, a nurse who confesses a secret high school crush, or a lawyer who struggles with an inheritance she does not want to accept, the unforgettable Olive will continue to startle us, to move us, and to inspire us—in Strout’s words—“to bear the burden of the mystery with as much grace as we can.”

July — Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn: Ella Minnow Pea is a girl living happily on the fictional island of Nollop off the coast of South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Now Ella finds herself acting to save her friends, family, and fellow citizens from the encroaching totalitarianism of the island’s Council, which has banned the use of certain letters of the alphabet as they fall from a memorial statue of Nevin Nollop. As the letters progressively drop from the statue they also disappear from the novel. The result is “a love letter to alphabetarians and logomaniacs everywhere”

August and our 25^th Anniversary! — Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules. Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

September — A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II by Sonia Purnell: In 1942, the Gestapo sent out an urgent transmission: “She is the most dangerous of all Allied spies. We must find and destroy her.” The target in their sights was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore socialite who talked her way into Special Operations Executive, the spy organization dubbed Winston Churchill’s “Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.” She became the first Allied woman deployed behind enemy lines and–despite her prosthetic leg–helped to light the flame of the French Resistance, revolutionizing secret warfare as we know it. 

October — Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: “Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet.” So begins this exquisite novel about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them into chaos. A profoundly moving story of family, secrets, and longing, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

November — Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger: Told from Frank’s perspective forty years after that fateful summer, Ordinary Grace is a brilliantly moving account of a boy standing at the door of his young manhood, trying to understand a world that seems to be falling apart around him. It is an unforgettable novel about discovering the terrible price of wisdom and the enduring grace of God.

December — The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson — We pulled out this classic for something light to read.

Are you in a book group? What did you read?