This is my final Reading Roundup for 2025. What a great year of reading it has been!
This month I finished 7 books for a total of 71 books for the year.
On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius is one I read every year in December and every year I find it refreshing and beautiful and every year I love Jesus more because of this timeless book.
Multiply by Francis Chan is a helpful book for those who are baby Christians even if they have been in the church for a long time. I feel like the title is a little misleading. It looks like a book about how to evangelize, or how to disciple others but really, it’s a primer on how to grow in your walk with Christ. And in that way it is really good.
Every Day I Read by Hwang Bo-Reum is essentially a collection of love letters to books and reading. I enjoyed it and that’s really about it. There’s nothing revelatory here. There is nothing deep or incredibly powerful. It’s a nice book. If you love to read, you’ll enjoy the writing of someone who also loves to read. But if you don’t already love to read, I don’t think this book would make you fall in love with it.
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald is the first book I have read by the man C.S. Lewis called “his master” in writing. And if you are familiar with Lewis’ work, you can see MacDonald’s influence in it. This book was written as children’s fantasy when that genre was first beginning. It is no allegorical (like The Pilgrim’s Progress), but it is Christian and you can see MacDonald’s faith on display throughout. There is definitely an overarching moral of the story and it is simply that true royalty is based on behavior not title or bloodline. Even if you are from the working class if you display excellence of character you are just as much a princess or prince as someone from a royal family.
Eat This Book by Eugene Peterson is a re-read for me. The first two sections of the book are now loaded with flags, notes, and underlining, the third section I pretty much skimmed because it is primarily about his journey in creating The Message Translation, and I honestly had zero interest in that. However, the first two-thirds of this book on spiritual reading are worth the price of the book and are rich and helpful.
The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn is a well researched, engaging, and fascinating look at the infamous shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. Guinn expertly defines the setting geographically, historically, and socially and introduces us to all the key players, and then walks us through the events that lead up to the 30 seconds that has spawned legends, books, and movies ever since. He pulls no punches and has no interesting in scrubbing away the unsavory bits of the lives famous men like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and it has made an excellent edition to my library on the history of the American West.
The Affections of Christ Jesus by Nijay Gupta (Not pictured). Gupta is another “new to me” writer this year and I loved this rich and powerful book on the love of Christ in the writings of the Apostle Paul. My copy is LOADED with underlining and little flags and marginalia. I have set it aside for a bit and then I am going back to it and making notes in a learning journal because there is so much here you can’t just read it and throw it on your shelf.
Gupta writes with a depth of knowledge of the Scriptures and he also writes with a depth of love for God and His Word. He is one of those rare subject matter experts that understands that not everyone is an expert so while his writing is challenging, it is accessible. I found no trouble at all following him.
I also loved that this is not just a book of scholarship, although it is certainly that. It is also a book with encouragement, implications, and applications throughout. In that sense, it is richly pastoral.
Joseph McBee 