Reading Roundup: May 2025

I finished 7 books in May including the New Living Translation of the Bible. That is a total of 29 books for the year so far, which seems rather low to me. My goal is to make this Summer a big time of reading and I even have an OUTRAGEOUS reading goal, which I will share later in this post.

But first, the May 2025 Reading Roundup!

I read Noah Kagan’s Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way to Launch a 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours, which is a shortish book with a long title. Full disclosure, I have read too many of these books thinking they will serve as a magic wand to POOF make a successful business appear. That’s dumb, I know, but this is the LAST book I will read of this sort. I am either going to start a business this year–a small side hustle thing–or I’m not. I know what I need to know and reading about it is now just a waste of time.

That does NOT mean Kagan’s book was a waste. It wasn’t. In fact, I learned a lot. It’s equal parts inspiring and practical and it’s written by a guy that has actually built a business (many in fact) that is not a business on teaching other people how to build businesses, which the internet seems to be bursting with. So, if you’re going to have a last book on this topic, this is a good one.

Speaking of last books…I read The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins and it is absolutely the LAST self-help book I will ever read in whatever time remains in my life. I did a longer post on this, you can read if you like, but I have come to the belief after far too many hours wasted in this kind of stuff, that self-help books are garbage. You probably already knew that, which means you are also probably smarter and/or less stubborn than I.

One of my favorite writers and thinkers, Jessica Hooten-Wilson, suggested that Christians should read the entire Bible every year and read it in a different version each time. While I have read the Bible through many times, I usually stick to the ESV. This year I went with the New Living Translation. I wanted to read it in the first 90 days and then spend the rest of the year in a deep dive of Ecclesiastes and 1 and 2 Peter, but it took five months to complete, not three. That still gives me 7 months for my deep dives and I did appreciate the NLT, although I remain a member of the ESV faithful. It’s still, in my opinion, the strongest version we have available to us.

I’ve been trying to read more novels this year and I love books about books and reading so The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald was perfect for me. I wrote a longer review on this well-written, amusing, and yet sad book. I recommend it for the excellent prose and the unique and yet familiar cast of characters.

And speaking of books about books, 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff was a fun one to read. It is a collection of letters from Hanff to a little bookshop in London. I thought this was a novel, but the letters are real and a delight to read. You can finish this one in a single reading session and it’s worth the time.

Gospel Eldership: Equipping a New Generation of Servant Leaders by Robert Thune is excellent. I am going through this with some men from my church. You know how some books that say they are supposed to be used in discussion groups only have a few unhelpful discussion questions tacked to the end of each chapter? This is NOT that. This book truly was designed to be discussed with others. It has well-written, convicting, and inspiring articles followed by discussion questions and personal exploration questions that take you much deeper into the subject matter and open up a lot of excellent discussion that facilitates growth both personally and as a group. The real beauty of this book is that it is Biblical and gospel rich content.

I’ve saved the best for last and that is Lest We Drift: Five Departure Dangers from the One True Gospel by Jared Wilson. Again, I wrote a longer review on this one, but this is the best book (not including the Bible of course) that I read this month. Wilson has written a lot of excellent gospel-centered books and this one may be his best one yet. If you are in ministry in any capacity, I would add this to your TBR immediately but it is really a book every Christian could benefit from.

My Outrageous Summer Reading Goal

As promised, here is my Outrageous Summer Reading Goal. I want to finish these three monster books in 90 days (June – August). They represent a grand total of 2,366 pages. This is in addition to other books I am reading, not in the place of.

That many pages seems like a lot, but it’s really around 27 pages a day when you break it down. That’s doable.