All the Books I Read in 2024

Too Many Books, Too Little Time. Again.

Reading in bed one night, my wife leaned over and said, “You do read a variety of books, don’t you?” Um, well, yes, I do. When I finish one book, I find another one usually calls out to me. Maybe related to the previous book, maybe totally unrelated. When a book summons, I heed the call.

That approach – reading by daemon or whim – may not work for everyone. But, for me, it makes for fascinating and captivating reading every day.

Like last year, here is a digest of all the books I read in 2024. I hope you find one or two calling out to you. And please let me know your favorite books from this year! – RS

1. Fletch by Gregory McDonald

A quick, fun read to start off the year. I’ve loved the movie version for years, so I enjoyed finally reading it. The book won McDonald the “Best First Novel” Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1975. I read it in three nights; it moved snappily. The movie follows the book closely, but not so tightly that I knew everything coming. That seemed good.

2. The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote 56 stories and four novels about Sherlock Holmes. Of the novels, The Hound of the Baskervilles seems most prevalent in the cultural imagination. At least 17 TV shows and movies have been made of it. I find it unfulfilling. The specter of supernaturalism appears thin and unconvincing. At the least, the novel has aged poorly. The Sign of Four makes for better reading. I do enjoy A Study in Scarlet, the launching off story for the famous detective and his erstwhile Boswell, Dr. John Watson. But I adore The Valley of Fear. I have re-read it more than any other of the Holmes novels. Will Birdy Edwards defeat the dastardly Scrowers, wrecking evil and destruction in the hellish Valley? Or will the wicked secret society crush the man sent to redeem the Valley?

As I read, I hear the husky voice of Johnny Cash signaling justice:

Well, you may throw your rock, hide your hand
Workin' in the dark against your fellow man
But as sure as God made black and white
What's done in the dark will be brought to the light

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Run on for a long time
Sooner or later God'll cut you down
Sooner or later God'll cut you down

Sometimes life doesn’t turn out that way, you know. Sometimes evil prevails.

3. The Marriage of East and West by Bede Griffiths

My friend Joyce West suggested this book last year. I had a hard time finding a copy, finally tracking one down in a bookstore in Australia. But by the miracle of the internet and international shipping, some weeks later a small package arrived. Griffiths was born Alan Richard Griffiths, a British Catholic, and he joined the Benedictines. In his early life, felt also himself drawn to the spiritual traditions of the East. He traveled to India to help establish a monastery there. He wrote,

“It was not merely the desire for new ideas which drew me to India, but the desire for a new way of life….I want[ed] to discover the other half of my soul.”

Griffiths sees in the faith traditions of the West and East apparently equal halves of the spiritual wealth of the world. The West represents the masculine, the rational, the conscious and the active. The great insights of the feminine, the intuitive, the unconscious and the passive constitute the East. He believed the world needed both these inspiring parts and, on some level, union between them. I remain unconvinced that fusion is possible or even desirable. But in these recent years of strife, carnage, hatred, and injustice, I feel fully convinced by the power of Bede Griffiths’ life example of seeking with humility to understand, to uplift and to honor the Other.

4. The Vedas and Upanishads for Children by Roopa Pai

My friend Nicolás Forero suggested this book to me. It offers simple explanations of the Vedas and ten key Upanishads, which together form some of the sacred scripture of Hinduism. Remember, “everything, everything in the world, comes from a common source.”

5. The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse

My favorite Hesse novel, really a novella. Published in 1932, Hesse returned to many of its themes in his deeper study, The Glass Bead Game, which won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946. I had never heard of The Glass Bead Game or its connection to The Journey to the East until my friend JG found this article. It makes sense. Both books weigh similar themes, but The Glass Bead Game – longer, denser – clearly analyzes issues at the core of Hesse’s soul in a more complex and sophisticated manner.

And yet, and yet – I prefer the earlier novella. Maybe because I first read it as a seeking and impressionable high schooler, so its questions imprinted themselves into more pliable clay. Maybe because I wanted to join H.H. and Leo on their honorable journey, joined by Albertus Magnus, Sancho Panza, Parsifal and knights seeking the Grail, and Paul Klee, through space, time, and imagination.

It also brilliantly addresses trials of faith and service. Will H.H. pass those trials? Will Leo? Will I? Will you?

6. Sometimes a Wild God by Tom Hirons

You know God is wild, right? You know that?
You know God has not manners nor grace, right? You know that?
You know God has bloody injuries, right? You know that?
You know God, right?

7. Scrimstone by Tom Hirons

Cue the song above by Johnny Cash. Cue it again.

8. Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals by Herbert Anderson and Edward Foley

One of the books we read for the Clinical Pastoral Education class I took as a hospital chaplain intern. I found the chapter on modern moments for which we do not yet have especially well-constructed societal rituals especially fascinating.

9. What Do I Say? by Elizabeth Johnston Taylor

One of the key texts for my Clinical Pastoral Education class during my hospital chaplaincy internship in the spring. It contains useful frameworks, tips and exercises for health care professionals seeking to deepen their conversations with patients in hard, liminal moments.

10. Screaming Goats: A Pocket Guide

Only God may judge me.

11. Courting the Wild Twin by Martin Shaw (audiobook)

I’ve read several of Martin Shaw’s books. And I’ve listened to a few too. They sing either way. They resonate hearing them spoken in Shaw’s voice, hearing his breath, as if a cave had exhaled for the first time in eons. Like Homer, we can read, but we should listen.

12. In the Dark Places of Wisdom by Peter Kingsley

“The truth is so simple, so lovingly simple: if we want to grow up, become true men and women, we have to face death before we die.

“Our western culture carefully keeps us from such things. It keeps going, and thriving, by persuading us to value everything that’s unimportant.”

So begins Kingsley’s telling of a lost way of life, founded by Parmenides of Velia, in ancient Greece. Its loss created a rupture in Western civilization never repaired. Can we repair it? Can we reclaim it?

They likely would not have agreed on much, but at the end of this book, I wondered whether Kingsley points toward the political philosopher, Leo Strauss. Strauss begins his magisterial examination of ancient Greek political philosophy, The City and Man, with an urgent cry for the West to return to its roots:

“It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West.”

Did the loss of Parmenides bring on this crisis, I kept wondering.

13. Reality by Peter Kingsley

Kingsley continues his analysis of Parmenides’s teachings: “For Parmenides it’s through stillness that we come to stillness. Through stillness we come to understand stillness. Through the practice of stillness we come to experience a reality that exists beyond this world of the senses.”

He blows up what you thought you knew – and appreciated and loved – about Plato and Gorgias and others. You may not agree with his notions, but I – I, at least – was left wondering, What if Kingsley is right?

14. Harlan Hubbard by Wendell Berry

Painter and writer Harlan Hubbard spent much of his childhood in New York City, but urban life never really suited him. He took the path of Thoreau, rejecting the supposedly superior sophistication of the city for a seemingly simpler life among nature. After marrying Cincinnati librarian Anna nee Eikenhout, they spent several years on a shanty boat, riding up and down the Ohio River. He wrote a book about their experiences, well worth reading. After a few years, they settled down on a farm called Payne Hollow, near the River between Louisville and Cincinnati. He wrote a book about their experiences here too, also well worth reading.

Berry paints a sympathetic picture of the Hubbards, as you would expect. After all, the three of them decided to live unconventional lives, in out of the way places, completely in alignment with their truths. Who of us can say we live in such alignment?

In February 2025, Jessica Whitehead will publish a new biography of Hubbard, called Driftwood. I met Jessica briefly and feel excited to read her book. The Filson Society in Louisville has an exhibition on Harlan Hubbard going on now, to coincide with Jessica’s upcoming book, through mid-March. If you get to Louisville in the next few months, you should definitely check it out!

15. Learning to Pray by James Martin, SJ

From January to May of this year, I served as a hospital chaplain intern at Norton Healthcare. I worked as a chaplain in the hospital two to three days a week, had a day of class, and took call one night per week. One of my goals for the program was to deepen into prayer. Even after converting to Catholicism years ago, I never prayed regularly. I wanted to change that. Martin shares a quote outside one of the Jesuit retreat centers: “That which you seek is causing you to seek.”

As I have increasingly appreciated over time, when something new enters my life, my default act involves researching it: digging into the great thinkers and doers of the topic. Prayer followed that pattern too. I began reading this delightful analysis of prayer by the well-known Jesuit scholar and writer, Fr. Martin. He goes through the various kinds of prayer and offers practical tips on doing them. He urges an approach I found true: when it comes to prayer, research is fine, but nothing beats doing it.

If thoughts come up, wonderful! If feelings come up, even difficult feelings, also wonderful! As I began to pray with some regularity, I found myself feeling angry quite a bit: angry with myself, with others, with God. And yet, as I came to greater regularity in my prayer practice, something unexpected happened: as I shared these feelings, even anger, even anger with God, as I cried them aloud in hurt and pain, I began to feel closer…to God.

One of the very brightest takeaways from my internship contained this lesson: even expressing anger at God brought me closer to God.

16. Conquest of Mind by Eknath Easwaran

“Somehow, in our modern civilization, we have acquired the idea that the mind is working best when it runs at top speed. Yet this is not true even with assembly-line production. A racing mind lacks time even to finish a thought, let alone to check on quality.”

Easwaran wrote those words in 1988. How true they still ring today, 36 years later!

The Oracle at Delphi commanded: “Know Thyself.” It might have profitably added: “And Command Thyself.” I know of no better book for beginning the arduous journey of knowing and commanding ourselves.

17. A Splendid Savage by Steve Kemper

My lifelong friend Pat sent me this book, on the life of tracker, officer, writer, and entrepreneur, Frederick Russell Burnham. Self-made in the rough and tumble American West and in Africa, his tracking skills seemed unparalleled among people of European descent. His superior Richard Harding Davis wrote of Burnham:

“Indeed, than Burnham no man of my acquaintance to my knowledge has devoted himself to his life’s work more earnestly, more honestly, and with such single-mindedness of purpose. To him scouting is as exact a study as is the piano to Paderewski, with the result that to-day what the Pole is to other pianists, the American is to all other “trackers,” woodmen, and scouts. He reads “the face of Nature” as you read your morning paper. To him a movement of his horse’s ears is as plain a warning as the “Go SLOW” of an automobile sign; and he so saves from ambush an entire troop. . . . Like the horned cattle, he can tell by the smell of it in the air the near presence of water, and where, glaring in the sun, you can see only a bare kopje, he distinguishes the muzzle of a pompom, the crown of a Boer sombrero, the levelled [sic] barrel of a Mauser. He is the Sherlock Holmes of all out-of-doors.”

18. Pearl translated by Simon Armitage

I read this Medieval poem with The Catherine Project, an adult reading and education forum, modeled on the approach of St. John’s College. A man loses his priceless pearl – his daughter – and has a vision of seeing her again in Heaven. Beautiful, heavy, and redemptive.

19. Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

My great friend JG suggested this book to me. In it, a brilliant scientist creates a substance that instantly freezes everything on earth. I haven’t read much Vonnegut – this and Galapagos, way back in high school. But both have a theme of humans getting too smarty-pants for their own good – or, more precisely, more controlling of nature without the constraints and guardrails of a corresponding wisdom tradition to say, “Hold on, let’s pause a moment here.” And so, yeah, back in 1963, Vonnegut was frying different fish, but the book seems eerily, uncomfortably contemporary.

20. Ask Aristotle by Vishal Sharma and William Jaworski

My friend Ellen Fishbein’s business partner, Bill Jaworski, is a professor of philosophy. He wrote this short book with Vishal Sharma – a dialogue on the continuing importance of Aristotle in solving our individual and societal challenges in the modern age. They’ve kept the dialogue going with a Substack well-worth reading too.

21. The Book of Revelation introduced by Kathleen Norris

OK, how did I go all these years without hearing about the Pocket Canons: Books of the Bible. Each book contains one book of the Bible, along with an introductory essay and captivating modern relevant photographs. The introductions are written by scholars and religious figures, like the Dalai Lama, and in this volume on Revelation, Kathleen Norris. But other volumes have introductions written by more eclectic figures, like Bono and crime novelist P.D. James.

Revelation is my favorite book of the Bible, and along with the Gospel of John, the only parts I read regularly – at least annually. Why do I find Revelation so attractive? I can’t really explain it. Maybe the power of the imagery; maybe the hope for a final triumph of good; possibly the longing for everlasting peace. Whatever the calling to my head or my heart, I return again and again to it.

I welcomed Norris’s perspective:

“I am attracted to the Revelation … because it was Emily Dickinson’s favorite book of the Bible, and because it takes a stand in favor of singing. In fact, it proclaims that when all is said and done, of the considerable noises human beings are capable of, it is singing that will endure.”

22. The Believer by David Coggins

The best fly fishing writer today visits Argentina, Cuba, Spain and points beyond. Join him.

23. On Prayer by Saint Sophrony

If Fr. Martin’s offered a helpful digest of the act of praying, types of prayers, and suggestions, Saint Sophrony, of the Eastern Orthodox Church, made me feel the yearning, the longing, the everlasting desire for life with Christ. Saint Sophrony blends loving thought and incandescent feeling throughout these essays of the story of his pursuit of God through prayer.

“Abandon the quest for unity with Him? Impossible – the idea of condemning myself to separation from His Light appalled me.”

“Oh, this gift of prayer! Through prayer we enter into another form of being, not spatially but qualitatively surpassing this world. The soul, neither intoxicated by the imagination nor incited by rational philosophy, seeks paths where there are no paths.”

24. The Practice of Pastoral Care by Carrie Doehring

Another book for the hospital chaplaincy internship. The book helps you analyze what preconceptions, embodied theologies, and paradigms about suffering, evil, and redemption you bring to caregiving relationships.

25. The New Laurel’s Kitchen by Laurel Robertson, Carol Flinders and Brian Ruppenthal

Inspired by Eknath Easwaran, this was one of the first vegetarian cookbooks published, originally in 1976.

“Of all the things we said in Laurel’s Kitchen, I don’t think any subject brought more appreciative response than the section on working with one-pointed attention – sanctifying ordinary work by the state of mind you bring to it. Any work you do for a selfless purpose, without thought of profit, is actually a form of prayer, which unifies our fragmented energy and attention and calms the mind.”

I am not a vegetarian and I doubt I will become one. But this book reminds me of a truism my dear friend Jon Bacal taught me decades ago: everything we do – everything – involves ethics.

26. The Artful Universe by Bill Mahoney

Mahoney’s fascinating book explores the earliest origins of what evolved into Hinduism – the variegated religions of the Vedas. You may have heard of the Rig Veda, but may not know of the Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharaveda – which comprise some of the oldest religious and ritual texts in history. Originally sung “around 1500-1200 BCE, but perhaps reflecting much earlier ideas, images, wording, and themes,” the Vedic world emphasized “imagination, especially the divine imagination, that gives image to the transcendent artfulness of the universe.” Indeed, the imagination becomes the locus of the meeting of the divine and the human, because “both possess the power of imagination.”

Poetry, art and song as the manifestations of imagination thus hold a place of esteem in the Vedic age we would struggle to comprehend today. The gods had created the world in a luminous act of imaginal creation. In poetry, art and song, humans revealed the divine vibrational source of creation. Light and sources of light were “equivalent with being itself, and thereby to truth. To perceive light was thus to gain knowledge of reality.”

From such attunements, the Vedic sages came to understand a world of universal harmony. The gods oversaw but also inhabited this universe of dazzling color, energy and wonder. Gods existed everywhere, in everything. For instance, agni – fire – became Agni the god of fire. Slowly the Vedic elders came to view proper worship of Agni – the god of fire who existed in the fire – as understanding and tending the fire inside us, the human fire, the fire of our heart. So they turned inward, to meditation.

Over the centuries, the Vedic universe evolved. The Upanishads are part of the Vedas, but a very different part. Over time, the vision of The Upanishads began to dominate ritual and religion of the Indian subcontinent. Eventually, worship evolved into the multitudinous forms that we in the West group as Hinduism

27. The Upanishads translated by Eknath Easwaran

The Upanishads are an enchanting set of scripture. Usually, 108 of them are considered what we might call ‘canonical,’ but over 200 exist. Of them, 10 or 11 or 13 are considered ‘the major’ Upanishads, depending on who’s counting. The Easwaran translation includes 11 major and 4 minor ones.

Given their age, The Upanishads seem shockingly modern in their appreciation of human nature. This, from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, could serve as the code of a modern success-in-business guru:

You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.

We should keep foremost in our minds, though, that business, production and productivity could not have concerned the sages of The Upanishads less. They sought, in truth, no less than full consciousness of Reality, and union with the Divine.

28. God Makes the Rivers to Flow by Eknath Easwaran

Easwaran compiled this treasury of excerpts from the scriptures of the world’s great religions and faiths. In his 8-point program for bringing the lessons of the beautiful wisdom traditions to bear in day to day life, the first one is Passage Meditation – going slowly, silently through a snippet of scripture. This book includes the passages Easwaran believed most potent for meditating on. True to his belief in the beauty of many paths to God, it includes scriptures from Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and native practices.

I find wisdom, spirit and truth in each passage. And beauty – let us never forget eternal beauty.

29. Second Act by Henry Oliver

One of my very favorite books of the year. You can listen to my interview with Henry here.

30. The Tale of Sinuhe

The Tale of Sinuhe comes from around the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, close to the end of the reign of Senwosret I, or around 1875 BCE. I read this book with The Catherine Project, an offshoot of adult enrichment by a Tutor at St. John’s College. The class was guided by the masterful Gideon Culman.

Oh Sinuhe, Sinuhe, Sinuhe. Your tale seems so sweet and simple to start. Yes, yes it does. But I, and we, kept reading and wondering. Are your words truly so sweet and simple? Why did you write this? What do you want us to believe, and is that the truth? Why did you leave your dearest Egypt? Why, really, did you leave? And why, when you had achieved such worldly success in the foreign lands, did it feel so urgent to return to the land of your birth as you approached death? What can we really believe about you, Oh, Sinuhe, Sinuhe, Sinuhe…

Fr. Schall, my philosophy professor at college, said, “If you have read a book only once, you really haven’t read it.” That truism came home for me with new force as I read and re-read this story two, three, four, maybe a dozen times with my class for The Catherine Project. New questions and views emerged with every new reading. Details I had missed in readings one to eleven came to the fore in my twelfth reading.

My deepest reaction from this class: Have I actually ever truly read a book I’ve read? Thank you, Gideon, for helping me wonder.

31. Mummy Eaters by Sherry Shenoda

Speaking of ancient Egypt, Sherry’s book of poetry is another one of my very favorite books of the year. You will read a heart-wrenching, angst-filled song to the defilement of a land. You will also find a beautiful paean to grandmothers and the innate wisdom of women.

You can see my interview with Sherry here on Mummy Eaters here. And check out our conversation about her novel, The Lightkeeper, here.

32. A Delicious Country by Scott Huler

My writer friend Will Edwards told me about his writer friend Scott Huler, especially this book. In it, Scott walks (and paddles)) the route John Lawson took through the Carolinas in 1700. Scott wrote a beautiful book, full of effort, grace, and serendipity. So many people came out of the woodwork to assist him in this project – reading about them proved one of the great joys of this book.

Scott also wrote words I felt drawn to instantly: “I nonetheless found myself off course for parts of the end of the journey. That is, there’s always more research to do, and no matter how certain we are, next year we may find ourselves off course. As I found myself walking, being off course by a mile or so didn’t turn out to be a bad thing, and in many ways ,ade my trip better. The point, as ever, was the walk.”

This was also one of my very favorite books of the year. Thank you, Scott.

33. Walden by Henry David Thoreau

I found an old Penguin Illustrated Classics edition of the book, with wood engravings by Ethelbert White. I read this book every year, usually in summer, around the time Thoreau went to Walden Pond. It has become one of the markers of time in my life.

If you haven’t read it yet, this year makes an excellent time to pick it up for the first time. If you have read it before, this year provides a terrific time to pick it up again, and soak in Thoreau’s experiments in, and love of, the small life.

34. Walking by Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau used to walk at least four hours per day. I write a newsletter extolling the virtues of walking. So yeah, I love this essay a lot. Like Walden, I read it at least every year. It whispers in my ear, as a light, airy, persistent breeze upon the verdant leaves: “How about going for a walk right now?”

35. Wandering by Hermann Hesse

Somehow, some way I ran across this thin volume of short essays by Hesse. I have loved his fiction for decades; now I love his essays. Early on, he wrote,

“I am an adorer of the unfaithful, the changing, the fantastic. I don’t care to secure my love to one bare place on this earth.

“Whenever our love becomes too attached to one thing, one faith, one virtue, then I become suspicious. Good luck to the farmer! Good luck to the man who owns this place, the man who works it, the faithful, the virtuous! I can love him, I can revere him, I can envy him. But I have wasted half my life trying to live his life. I wanted to be something I was not. I even wanted to be a poet and a middle-class person at the same time. I wanted to be an artist and a man of fantasy, but I also wanted to be a good man, a man at home.

“I am a nomad and not a farmer, a man who searches and not a man who keeps.

“I increased the world’s guilt and anguish, by doing violence to myself, by not daring to walk toward my own salvation. The way to salvation leads neither to the left nor the right: it leads into your own heart, and there alone is God, and there alone is peace.”

36. Bonsai from the Wild by Nick Lenz

I have a bonsai, a Brazilian rain tree, which I purchased from Russ Stevens of Twisted Nature Bonsai. I will add another bonsai before too long. If I ever really get into it, and want to find potential bonsai trees in the wild, this book will serve as my guide. I enjoyed reading about his exploits finding bonsai trees in the wilderness, properly collecting them, and styling them into gorgeous works of art. The photographs really pop in this book too – lovely.

37. The Complete Poems by Walt Whitman (selections)

Last year, my friend JG suggested I read some Whitman poems. His excellent recommendation echoed in my mind as summer came into full heat, so I revisited this tome of Whitman’s poetry for a few nights. I believe Whitman’s poetry will join Walden, Dracula and A Christmas Carol as books I re-read annually.

Who can read these words and not feel a tweak in our heart, a sadness for a man gone, who we never met, and yet somehow yearn for, all these decades later:

“O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

“O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

“My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.”

38. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr

Sherry Shenoda and another friend recommended this book to me within days of each other. I found it a deceptively straightforward tale of love, longing and regret in the days of personal and national reconstruction following the First World War. Meaning, I found it anything but straightforward.

39. Patton’s Tactician: The War Diary of Lieutenant General Geoffrey Keyes edited by James W. Holsinger Jr.

LTG (3 stars) Keyes probably should have received a fourth star to become a full General. My complete review of the book will appear in On Point, the journal of the Army Historical Foundation, sometime this coming spring. Here, let me say this: It may be too late for Keyes’s further promotion, but it’s not too late for deeper appreciation and esteem for this outstanding officer and gentleman.

40. From High Chairs to High Rollers by Paul Devlin

My dear friend Paul Devlin wrote this hilarious “A-Z Guide to Guide to Gambling for Grown-Ups With a Childish Sense of Humor.” If you play poker, craps, roulette, or bet the ponies or jai alai, and have or are expecting a kid, you will absolutely love this book!

41. Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu and edited by Ursula K. LeGuin

My dear friend Nicolás Forero ran a reading group on this book. Alas, I couldn’t make the group meeting but still loved the book, of course. Amazingly, for all my love of deep, hard, profound books, I had never read the Tao Te Ching. This version by Le Guin is accessible and offers a plethora of additional resources about Taoism and Lao Tzu. Highly recommended.

42. Feather Trails by Sophie Osborn

One of my favorite books of the year. And not only me — the American Birding Association named it one of its Best Bird Books of 2024! Sophie blends her personal story working to save endangered birds, with the broader context of the threats to them, with gorgeous nature writing. She writes lovingly about her efforts with the Peregrine Falcon, the California Condor, and the Hawaiian Crow – the species and individual birds.

Her work is not for the faint of heart. Re-introducing birds to the wild takes smarts, wisdom, logistics, and constant attention over the newly wild birds – if not hour to hour, then day to day, as long as possible. Sophie’s highs must have soared to the heights of her birds. But the lows - for instance, when reintroduced birds had to be re-captured for a time to save the few remaining ones, or several re-introduced birds were found dead in a matter of days – the lows must have crushed the heart worse than wheat seeds under gristmill stones.

43. The Near Enemies of Truth by Christopher D. “Hareesh” Wallis

Hareesh, educated in comparative religion and an adept in Shaiva Tantra (similar in many ways to Tibetan Buddhism), examines several ‘near enemies of the truth’ – modern propositions that sound charming and correct, but actually lead the spiritual seeker astray. Those near enemies include:

• Follow Your Bliss

• Be Your Best Self

• Be in the Moment

• You Create Your Own Reality

Here’s one beautiful passage I loved:

“It entails no longer rejecting or denying any part of yourself, any emotion or impulse or feeling or memory, until your self-acceptance becomes so complete and profound that these various currents of your being cease to be seen as separable parts and become integrated with the central self. Everything in the internal landscape of experience is fully allowed—even welcomed. Not approved, not identified with, but fully and lovingly allowed to be as it is. Every current of experience is allowed to move through the body-mind field, and as a result, the central self becomes amplified by the merging of all these previously exiled and rejected parts, until the central self has become the whole self, the entirety, and one experiences oneself as a seamless unity: thoroughly undivided. All the stories around pain, sadness, happiness, and discomfort fall away in light of the desire to become intimate with one’s life-energy in its countless different forms. Blaming others and oneself falls away, the impulse to construct a self-image based on emotional experiences falls away, and the breath moves more deeply and freely. No aspect of experience is resisted or denied: everything is allowed to be and allowed to move through. This is true self-love.

“Then, little by little, more and more, a profound gratitude for one’s existence begins to dawn. A reverence for the very fact of being itself. Then one discovers that love is not really a transitive verb, requiring an object; that it’s not about loving yourself after all but rather about discovering that on the deepest level of being, you are love, and the love that you are manifests as total acceptance of all that arises in your inner experience. Given enough time, this acceptance naturally results in integration and wholeness.

“This is something far beyond self-esteem or self-approval. This love eventually transcends self altogether and overflows into profound love for the whole of existence: being itself.”

From a nondualist perspective, but also a very rationalist one, Hareesh takes a cudgel to those sentiments, demolishing them to smithereens. He performs a useful service in the midst of today’s nonsensical morass of spiritual quackery. Whether you subscribe to the nondual view or not, you will find this a helpful and sophisticated guide toward understanding and appreciating the reality that is.

44. True Meditation by Adyashanti

Hareesh mentioned Adyashanti as one of his spiritual guides, so I decided to check out one of his books. This one lost me a bit. His approach to meditation seemed quite simple. And yet I did not apprehend it well. Something eluded me. Maybe I need to re-read this one to grasp it better.

45. Yoga and the Quest for the True Self by Stephen Cope

Cope’s The Great Work of Your Life remains one of my favorite books ever – a career transition book based on lessons from the noble Hindu spiritual scripture, The Bhagavad Gita.

Since I was going down this yoga reading path, I wanted to see how Cope approached the subject. He offers a straightforward guide for the Westerner beginning yoga – the overall approach to life, not only the physical postures popularized today:

“In the classical traditions of yoga…the practice of yoga postures never stands alone, but is meant to be done in a context of ethical practices, lifestyle practices, dietary practices, meditation and breathing practices, chanting, and the repetition of mantra. Together, these practices literally transmute every aspect of daily life into a transformational activity.”

Cope tells the story of his gradual immersion into the world of yoga, especially through his life at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. He relates a deeply personal and relatable story of yearning, struggle and searching. As he transforms, so does Kripalu, with a dramatic fall and rise.

It struck me later that his interweaving of those stories conveys a key tenet of nondual conviction: we are our world, and our world is us.

46. Dracula by Bram Stoker

Like Napoleon and many armies before and after, Jonathan Harker and then Count Dracula fail to absorb a critical lesson: you’d better know where you are going before you get there.

47. The Push by Tommy Caldwell

OK, here’s a little-known factoid about me: but for my heart defect, I would have loved to spend a lot of my time mountain climbing. I mean — the thrill, the rush, the planning, the daring, the striving with nature and yourself. It sounds awesome!

But hey, I do have a heart problem, so I have settled for reading about great adventures – Amundsen, Norgay and Hillary, Messner, Bonatti, Slocum, Lewis and Clark – I love reading about them all.

Caldwell and his partner Kevin Jorgeson were the first to free solo climb The Dawn Wall on El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. From concept to completion, it took them nearly 10 years to accomplish. I stayed up several nights in a row, riveted by Caldwell’s life: his upbringing and climbing from a very young age; his rapid ascent in the world of competitive climbing; his kidnapping, along with five other climbers, in 2000 in Kyrgyzstan; his other notable climbs; and much more.

48. The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell

Reading Henry Oliver’s Second Act, and my subsequent conversation with him, reminded me how much I love Samuel Johnson. I took a class on him in college, read one of his Idler, Rambler or Adventurer essays periodically, and have a copy of his famous Dictionary within arm’s reach in my office. (More for inspiration than actual use.) By any definition, Samuel Johnson stands as a giant of English literature.

So does Boswell. Although not a towering genius like Johnson, I suspect more people today know of and have read The Life than anything Johnson wrote. Boswell may have written the greatest biography in the English language.

I left reading it with curious feelings. I found myself disagreeing with Johnson on far more issues than I had expected. And I also perceived a more nuanced, but clearly deeper, human connection to him than I felt after first reading The Life over 20 years ago.

Thank you, Henry, for reminding me that we can not only befriend books, but also their writers and subjects, in a moving way, even though separated by thousands of miles distance, and eons of time.

49. The World’s Religions by Huston Smith

Smith begins the book stating: “my concern is – the world’s religions at their best.” I do not know enough to judge whether he succeeded in articulating what is most sublime and beautiful in Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism and others. But his earnest desire to witness, understand, and celebrate the Best in the Other sang out to me, an indispensable invocation in these days of distrust and strife.

50. The Supreme Ambition by Eknath Easwaran

Now titled Climbing the Blue Mountain, the book compiles essays and talks contained in “The Little Lamp,” Easwaran’s newsletter from the 1960s to the 1990s. I read one essay each night in October. An exquisite way to end each day.

51. Great Swan: Meetings With Ramakrishna by Lex Hixon

The great guru Ramakrishna was born in 1836. Even as a young boy, he felt the stirrings of the Divine and beheld numerous visions. By age 20, he became a priest at Dakshineswar Kali Temple in Calcutta. There he became devoted to the Mother Goddess, Kali. He continued to have visions of the Mother Goddess and Divine Reality, often entering the state of ecstasy with no notice. He attained God-consciousness at an early age and numerous Hindu spiritual leaders viewed him as an authentic Incarnation of the Divine on Earth. His sole aim became unity with Being-Consciousness-Bliss.

Ramakrishna came to see a fundamental unity in all ancient spiritual traditions. He spent time living as a Christian and Muslim. He believed one of his followers had served as one of the 12 Disciples of Christ in previous life. “Meet as many adepts from various paths as you can. Love these persons, receive their initiations, and passionately practice their disciplines.”

Hixon based his book on The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, written by one of Ramakrishna’s followers, Mahendra, and other sources. He doesn’t summarize those books or merely offer quotes as reported by Ramakrishna’s followers. Instead, he writes as if he and the reader are followers of Ramakrishna, and join him at various moments of his life. In this way, Hixon tries to reconstruct the force of Ramakrisha’s example and teachings, as they were likely experienced in-the-moment. I’ve never encountered a book created in this way – but I found it an effective way to convey the sense of living with, seeing, learning from, and experiencing the dramatic and potent life of the Great Swan.

Ramakrishna died in 1886, barely aged 50, of throat cancer. His wife, Sarada Devi, with whom he never consummated his marriage, and his disciple Narendranath Datta, carried on his legacy. Datta became an enormously influential figure in bringing the Vedas, Vedanta and Yoga to the Western world, where he became known as Swami Vivekananda. But without Ramakrishna’s life and love, Vivekananda may have brought a candle to the West instead of his bonfire of Eastern insight.

A few sayings of Ramakrishna, as quoted by Hixon:

“One cannot recognize God, the Simple One, unless one is simple.”

“The sole purpose and goal for human life, the supreme ideal of which all other ideals are simply an expression, is to cultivate love.”

“[T]he authentic practitioner never renounces prematurely the previous disciplines of his tradition – daily prayers, ceremonial worship, study and chanting scriptures, silent meditation, and selfless service to fulfill the physical and spiritual needs of conscious beings. The genuine aspirant remains in a constant state of inward and outward pilgrimage until actually realizing the one goal of true pilgrims – complete God-consciousness, full awakening as Truth.”

“O beloved companions, no one can reach the level of uncompromising spiritual intensity through scholarship alone….What is necessary is to pray without ceasing, to reach a state in which the sacred message or high philosophical teaching is being profoundly assimilated with each breath, each thought, each perception.”

“God is Love.”

52. Anam Cara by John O’Donohue (audiobook)

Curious book for me. A dear friend gave it to me right after another dear friend said I would love it. You’d think the universe or God was conspiring to bring it into my life. As I read the first 30 pages, I underlined more and took more notes than most books in recent memory. And yet, from the first word, I had a deep sense that, as powerful as this book might be, it was the wrong time to read it. When I get that feeling, I listen. After those 30 pages, I put it down.

Then, in November, I began listening to the audiobook and relished a totally different experience. O’Donohue’s fine language came through much more energetically by ear than by eye.

Still, given the whereabouts in my journey, I doubt I caught the full import of his language. I will have to listen again sometime, bidden, perhaps, by a friend to return to this Celtic cairn.

53. The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann

O Hans Castrop, how do you become well among the sick?

But Hans Castrop, would you have remained well had you remained amidst a sick society?

54. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

My 29th annual reading between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My reflections are coming soon. I will say….characters stood out to me in this reading who have never come to the fore before.

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