Books I’m Not Recommending This Christmas

It’s my annual list of the some of the best books I read this year. I call it “Books I’m Not Recommending” because I’m personally resistant to recommendations. But I can tell you what I consider to be the best books I read.  

Poetry

 

The largest single category of my 2025 books is, as it has been for several years, poetry. I read a considerable number of really fine poetry collections, and my reviews end up at Tweetspeak Poetry. If I had to pick one, it would likely be an older one – Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice. 

 

Three books about poetry that I enjoyed are Dante’s Divine Comedy by Joseph Luzzi; An Axe for the Frozen Sea by Ben Palpant; and Ambiguity & Belonging: Essays on Place, Education, & Poetry by Benjamin Myers. 

 

Fiction

 

I OD’d on Wendell Berry year, reading three of his numbers (not to mention his Mad Farmer Poems). Without question, I enjoyed Remembering, The Memory of Old Jack, and Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story. Berry is still writing, and I’m hopeful I haven’t seen the last of the Port William novels. 

 

Foster by Claire Keegan is a short novel that packs a powerful wallop; her 2021 novel Small Things Like These is also rather amazing. And the (longish) short story Abscond by Abraham Verghese is a wonder. I also read an older short novel, A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, that was published in 1980 but speaks to us today.

 

Art and Architecture

 

Art continued to be an interest, and three books I would not only say were among the best I read overall but I also wouldn’t hesitate to recommend. Van Gogh’s Ear by Bernadette Murphy explains how the author researched and tracked down the real story of his ear (and his art). Christopher Gorham’s Matisse at War is meticulously researched and focuses on Henri Matisse and what he and his family did during World War II. And Russ Ramsey followed his wonderful Rembrandt Is in the Wind with the equally good Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart.

 

I’m not a major (or even minor) reader of books about architecture, but one I read this year that was excellent was Forgotten Churches by Luke Sherlock. (It probably helped that I had visited some of the ones cited in the book.)

 

Civil War

 

Last December, my historical novel Brookhaven was published by T.S. Poetry Press. The research that went into it – nine pages of bibliography – was extensive. But publishing a historical novel doesn’t mean the research stops. Two books about the Civil War I read this year and I really liked were Glorious Courage: John Pelham in the Civil War by Sarah Kay Bierle and Fred Grant at Vicksburg by Albert Nofi. (I reread Brookhaven, too, and I highly recommend it.)

 

Mystery

 

Willliam Kent Krueger’s mysteries have been around for many years, and I’d read his more literary novels. I finally read Iron Lake, the first in the Cork O’Connor mysteries, and then the second, Boundary Waters. I’ve bought the third and can’t wait to read it. (There are some 20 or so in the series.)

 

I also liked London Blue, the latest in the Lord and Lady Hetheridge mysteries, and Tides of Death by Luke Davis, the first in the DI Gareth Benedict series. I also reached the current end of the Pete Brasset mysteries featuring DI James Munro (Ruse), and the current end of the Hillary Greene mysteries by Faith Martin (No. 21, entitled Murder on the Train). And I enjoyed Suffer the Dead by Rhys Dylan, the fourth of 21 in the DCI Evan Warlow mysteries.

 

And that’s the list for 2025.

Top photograph by Olena Bohovyk via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Wednesday Readings

 

At the Savoy Chapel – Spitalfields Life.

 

“Oh I could raise the darken’d veil,” poem by Nathaniel Hawthorne – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.

 

Dropped without Joy – Alexander Fayne on the poet R.S. Thomas.

"Forgotten Churches" by Luke Sherlock

When we’ve gone to England, we’ve always made sure to visit churches and church buildings, because it is in these buildings where history comes alive. 

All Hallows by the Tower is likely overlooked by most visitors, but it shouldn’t be. You follow the short walking tour, and you discover the window blown out during the Blitz, the Saxon arch, the Roman cobblestones, and even the Tower from which Admiral Penn (William’s father) stood with Samuel Pepys and watched the great Fire of London in 1666. Or St. Bride’s on Fleet Street, the “Journalists church,” rebuilt after World War II to Sir. Christopher Wren’s original design, including the famous steeple which has inspired wedding cakes the world over.

 

The churches of London aren’t only Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. And you can’t go anywhere in England without coming across a church, even in the smallest hamlets that you pass and see from the train window. More than 12,500 are listed by Historic England, not all still functioning churches but still serving a function. 

It is these churches that are the focus of Forgotten Churches: Exploring England’s Hidden Treasures by Luke Sherlock. Churches are something of a serious avocation for Sherlock, who has visited them all over England. They tell the story of England’s past; one day, they might tell of it future. 

 

Sherlock considers the past of these churches; many of them date back to Anglo-Saxon and late medieval times.  But he also looks their architecture, their current uses, unique characteristics, and people associated with them. Most of them can only be reached by automobile; Sherlock often took trains, caught taxis, or just walked to visit them. The 71 churches he describes speak mostly to town and village life, as well as the very different times when they were built. 

 

Each entry is relatively short; Sherlock doesn’t give you every fact and figure or tell the full, complete history of each church. Yet he writes with respect and almost reverently; he knows what these churches represent, and he is ever mindful of the place they occupy in England’s history. 

 

Five of the churches are in London; I’ve visited two of them. 

 

The Round Tower of Temple Church

The Temple Church was largely destroyed during the Blitz in World War II, but it was beautifully and faithfully reconstructed. The tombs of knights are in the entrance of the nave area, entered after you walk through the church’s domed round tower. The church dates to 1162, and it was here that the Magna Carta was negotiated. It’s considered to be the birthplace of American law as well. The church’s round tower is modelled after that of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem; the Knights Templar intended it to be a “recreation of the holiest Christian pilgrimage sites on English soil,” Sherlock says.

 

St. John’s Chapel is in the White Tower of the Tower of London. I’d first seen n in 1983; forty years passed before I saw it again, this time with my youngest son. Commissioned by Wiliam the Conqueror “as the spiritual heart of his glistening, domineering White Tower,” Sherlock writes, it was “eccelesiastical architecture to make a statement.” When you’ve seen the big cathedrals and abbeys and even some of the more recent churches, St. John’s Chapel seems almost austere, stripped bare of all the ornaments, stained glass, and decorations. 

 

Luke Sherlock

Sherlock is a writer and owner of Sherlock & Pages, a bookshop in Frome, Somerset in England. He has a passion for landscape, heritage, and art. He reports (and photographs) his travels across England on Instagram under @englishpilgrim. 

 

You might expect Forgotten Churches to be an oversized, coffee-table took with lavish photographs. But it is 6 ½ by 8 ½ inches, and instead of photographs, it is fully illustrated with beautiful drawings by Ioana Pioaru, in keeping with the book’s reverent tone. It’s not intended to be a travel guide; you’ll need to look up your own directions to reach the various churches. Instead, it is a lovely collection of responses and reactions to some of England’s most visible (and oldest) architecture.

Top photograph: St. John's Chapel, White Tower, Tower of London.

 

Some Monday Readings

 

The Switch and the Clore: Modern Extensions to Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the Holbourne – Andrew Eberlin at Photos, photographers and photobooks.

 

The Great American Travel Book – Thomas Swick at The American Scholar.

 

Worse than woke, Smithsonian art is bad – Gage Klipper at The Spectator World.

 

“Songs My Mother Taught Me,” by Antonin Dvorak – Debra Esolen at Word & Song.

 

The Return of the Family Doctor – Brewer Eberly at Plough Magazine.

Saturday Good Reads

Recently, I joined two online friends to undertake a project for 2021 to read all of Shakespeare’s plays, sonnets, and poems. I’ve already started reading the first assignment – the play Twelfth Night, or What You Will. Suddenly, everything starts coming up Shakespeare. I root through a kitchen drawer to find a dishcloth to cover rising bread dough, and I find a British Museum tea towel from 2012 for the exhibition “Shakespeare Staging the World.” Or I’m looking through stories at Literary Hub, and the site features “Lessons from Shakespeare: How to Survive a Pandemic with Humor.” I’m sure there’s a scientific reason for this serendipity. 

Is it possible to revive a dead language? There was one language that had virtually disappeared, at least in its spoken form, by the 19^th century. Livia Gershon at JSTOR Daily has an account of how it was revived. The language? Hebrew. 

 

Understandably, parents have had a lot of anxiety about the quality of education delivered online versus in the classroom. Russell Arben Fox at Front Porch Republic reviewed a book called The Cult of Smart by Fredrik DeBoer and discovered that the structure of schooling may actually play only a very small role in children’s education. 

 

More Good Reads

 

Writing and Literature

 

T.S. Eliot’s “The Cocktail Party”: The Language & Doctrine of Atonement – Daniel Sundahl at The Imaginative Conservative. 

 

Falling Letters – Brian Miller at The South Roane Agrarian.

 

Nick Offerman on the Essential Wisdom of Wendell Berry – Gary Lovely at Literary Hub.

 

Life and Culture

 

If Mr. Kristof Is Taking Names, Apple Should Be Next – Anthony Barr at Mere Orthodoxy.

 

Is 2021 the Year of Populism? – Andrew L. Gardner.

 

Poetry

 

Longfellow's Christmas Bells and a Better America – Joshua Whitfield at Church Life Journal. 

 

Forgotten places: on Marianne Moore – David Warren at Essays in Idleness.

 

Faith

 

Tidings of Comfort – Seth Lewis.

 

Beauty and Imagination in Christian Witness – Sam Clark at Front Porch Republic.

 

Architecture

 

Norway’s Stave Churches – Micah Mattix at The American Conservative.

 

British Stuff

 

Salisbury Water Meadows – Barb Drummond at Curious Historian. 

 

The king of cakes – Carolyn Hart at Standpoint Magazine.

 

American Stuff

 

Barnum’s Christmas Show in 1864 – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

 

Canon in D (Pachelbel’s Canon) for Cello and Piano – Brooklyn Duo

 Painting: Woman Reading, oil on canvas by Robert James Gordon (died 1893).

Saturday Good Reads

Louvain University in Belgium was founded in 1425, and over the centuries its library had accumulated all kinds of rare and important books and manuscripts. On Aug. 25, 1914, invading German troops burned the library, an act that so provoked international outrage that Kaiser Wilhelm sent a letter of explanation to Woodrow Wilson and a group of prominent German intellectuals protested. The library was rebuilt after the war, and then came round two, its destruction on May 16, 1940, again by invading German troops. Richard Ovenden at Literary Hub has the story. 

November marked the 400^th anniversary of the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock. It’s also the 400^thanniversary of the Mayflower Compact, a document signed by the passengers that was, despite its brevity, the official birth of religious freedom in what would become the United States. Eric Patterson and Rebecca Blessing at Providence Magazine describe what is the first American covenant.

 

If you haven’t noticed, a small flood of people have begun to migrate from Facebook and Twitter to MeWe and Parler. Most are conservatives, reacting to the heavy-handedness of the big tech platforms in censoring posts. I haven’t experienced that personally, but I’ve seen it happen to quite a number of people. Twitter is generally clumsier at it than Facebook, but neither could be accused of finesse. Eric Geiger has some advice, especially for Christians but applicable to all, about consuming and contributing to social media responsibly. And the advice comes from the Book of Proverbs.

 

More Good Reads 

 

Poetry

 

Bandages – Sonja Benskin Mesher.

 

Passage in Venice – Royal Rhodes at Society of Classical Poets.

 

Noel – Anne Porter at Kingdom Poets (D.S. Martin).

 

Who Exactly Was Rilke’s Young Poet Correspondent? – Damien Searls at Literary Hub.

 

Saving String, Kicking Leaves: Donald Hall’s Elegies – Steve Knepper at Front Porch Republic.

 

The life you have given me – Troy Cady at T(r)oy Marbles.

 

Waiting – Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

 

Architecture

 

Holy Corners Revisited, West Side of Kingshighway – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

 

Stanford White’s Surfaces – Michael Lewis at New Criterion. 

 

Writing and Literature

 

Six Actions for the Silent Weeks – Terry Whalin at The Writing Life.

 

The Psychological Benefits of Writing by Hand – Aytekin Tank at Fast Company.

 

Mood is the Most Underrated Literary Device – and the Most Valuable – Kelly Jensen at BookRiot.

 

It Isn’t Genre That Matters—It’s Story – Clare Macintosh at CrimeReads.

 

Life and Culture

 

Dorothy at the Window – Esther O’Reilly at Plough Quarterly.

 

Why cinemas are worth saving – Samuel James at Letters & Liturgy.

 

British Stuff 

 

The Man Beneath Trafalgar Square – Spitalfields Life. 

 

News Media

 

Social media and expert culture – Jason Thacker.

The Problem with Journalism and New Media -- Andrew Gardner.

 

Faith

 

Let the Little Dogs Come – Christopher Gordon at Tabletalk.

 

Christmas Nativity Mistakes: Cybertrucks and Overbooked Inns – John Dyer.

 

Were Early Christian Scribes Untrained Amateurs? – Michael Krueger at Canon Fodder.

 

The God Who Sees – An Oratorio by Kathie Lee Gifford and Nicole Mullen

Painting: Young Man Reading, oil on canvas by Eugen Isper (1909-1974).

Saturday Good Reads

The study of literature at American universities is in trouble. And it's not only because of declining enrollments in degree programs. The Chronicle of Higher Education published a rather lengthy series of essays about what’s been happening, and it starts by saying that the academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of collapse – the collapse is already well underway. The catastrophe is happening before our eyes. Read “Endgame: Can literary studies survive?”

Sir Roger Scruton dies this past week. The prolific writer, essayist, novelist was called the last conservative intellectual in Great Britain. He also got himself arrested by the Czechoslovak communist regime back in the 1960s. At The Imaginative Conservative, Paul Krause wrote a memorial of the man. And the publication posted a transcript of his last speech, “A Thing Called Civilization.”

In the last few months, I’ve been following a blog called “A London Inheritance.” The unnamed author focuses on a particular area or feature of London and then takes a deep, often historical, dive. This past week, for example, the focus was the Hungerford stairs on the Thames, and comparing what it looked like in 1985 with 2020. Then the author took a winter walk along the Thames from Tower Bridge to Westminster. I’ve done that walk along the South Bank many times. 

More Good Reads

Writing and Literature

Do writers really need to do *all the things* for a successful career? – Ann Kroeker, Writing Coach.

Rupi Kaur is the Writer of the Decade – Rumaan Alam at The New Republic.

Is this the most powerful word in the English language? – Helene Schumacher at BBC.

Flannery O'Connor: Prophet in Her Own Land – Sean Johnson at Forma Journal. 

Vive Maigret! – Adam Kirsch at Airmail Weekly,

Faith

New Year, New Fears – Eleazar Maduka. 

Significant Lights – Rebecca Martin at The Rabbit Room.

Life and Culture

No, George Will, Individual Freedom Is Bigger Than Market Choice – Josh Hawley at The Federalist.

Education and Men without Work – Nicholas Eberstadt at National Affairs.

Marxism Died in the East Because It Realized Itself in the West – Augusto Del Noce at Church Life Journal (Notre Dame). 

British Stuff

A Walk Through Dickens’ London – Spitalfields Life.

Poetry

Norther – Daniel Leach at The Chained Muse.

An American in Rome: Five Sonnets – Peter Bridges at Society of Classical Poets.

Desk Clerk – R.S. Gwynn at E-Verse Radio.

Art and Architecture

Details of the Spire, St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Oratory – Chris Naffziger at St. Louis Patina.

Mondrian Before Abstraction – Tim Keane at Hyperallergic.

American Stuff

A Portrait of John Cuppy – Gabriel Neville at Emerging Revolutionary War Era.

Life of the Civil War Soldier in the Army – Sharon Denmark at American Battlefield Trust.

Be a Mr. Jensen – Clint Pulver

Painting: Woman reading a book, oil on canvas by William Oliver (1884). 

Saturday Good Reads

The first time I tried to visit the Charles Dickens House Museum in London was in 2012. It was the 200^thanniversary of his birth. Through an inexplicable act of bad timing, the museum was closed for renovation. But I did go back, four times, in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2017. If I return to London, I’ll visit it once again. Yes, I’m a Charles Dickens fan.

Not so fast, David Heddendorf at Front Porch Republic might say. He makes an argument for the fiction of Anthony Trollope over Dickens, and even this Dickens fan thinks he has some good points to make. You can read about it in Puppets and Portraits: Two Victorians.

Josh Hawley, a U.S. Senator from my state of Missouri, barely had time to catch his breath as the state’s new attorney general before he was catapulted into the U.S. Senate. A Republican, he’s struck something of an independent path, criticizing the tech giants before it became fashionable in Washington and opposing a Trump-nominated candidate for a judiciary position. He also surprised a lot of people with his maiden speech in the Senate – calling for a revitalization of the “great American Middle” (guaranteed to offend both parties but especially Republicans).

Imagine my surprise to discover a column this past week in Christianity Today on The Age of Pelagius – on how an ancient heresy continues to plague contemporary culture. And it was written by U.S. Senator Josh Hawley. 

Exactly 130 years ago, Vincent Van Gogh was in an insane asylum, and in the space of one week painted five pictures, including two of his most famous works, Starry Night and Olive Trees with Les Apilles. Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper tells the story of that week.

More Good Reads

Life and Culture

Alone: The decline of the family has unleashed an epidemic of loneliness – Kay S. Hymowitx at City Journal. 

Competence of Character – Matthew Hosier at Think Theology.

What Really Happened to Malaysia’s Missing Airplane – William Langewiesche at The Atlantic.

Touch – Stewart McAlpine.

Writing and Literature

Preserving the pleasures of the bookshop – Alexander McCall Smith at The Scotsman.

Sherlock Holmes, Hardboiled Detective – Alexis Hall at CrimeReads.

Noir Tropes Are Alive and Well – and Powerful as Ever – Kelsey Rae Dimberg at CrimeReads.

Poetry

On the banks of a quiet creek (poetry as prompt) – Kelly Belmonte (and others) at All Nine.

Sugar on Snow – David Yezzi at The Atlantic.

American Stuff

Seeds of Home: The Story of the Real Miss Rumphius – Elizabeth Harwell at Kingdom Come.

“My Responsibility For These Men”: A Leadership Letter from Petersburg – Sarah Kay Bierle at Emerging Civil War.

Faith

Foot Washing Words – Eileen Knowles at The Scenic Route.

Art and Architecture

Patrick Dougher – Maureen Doallas at Escape Into Life.

This 16th-Century Italian Church Is Built into the Side of a Cliff – Jessica Stewart at My Modern Met (and see the video below).

Santuario Madonna della Corona

Painting: Woman Reading the Newspaper, oil on canvas by Carl Vilhelm Holsoe (1863-1935).