A Reader’s Valentine

Ten Books I Loved from 2025

and Why I Loved Them

February 14, 2026

Spirituality

Hannah Reichel. For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2025.)

A spiritual guide I keep on my bedside table. It’s packed with practical wisdom for these perilous times written by a brilliant professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Rowan Williams. Luminaries: Twenty Lives that Illuminate the Christian Way. (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2019).

I found inspiration and insights from saints of the past in this slim and accessible volume by Anglican theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

Fiction

Rita Bullwinklel. Headshot: A Novel. (New York: Penguin Random House, 2025.)

Here’s a book friends might be surprised to see on my list, but a review in Alta Journal led me to Rita Bullwinkel’s novel about teenage girls in a boxing tournament. It is a testament of how an entire world—far from this reader’s experience—can be constructed so that it remains vivid and memorable.

Sally Rooney. Intermezzo. (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2024).

I don’t know why it took me so long to pick up a book by this acclaimed Irish novelist, but once I started reading Intermezzo, I couldn’t put it down. This novel is a deeply moving and well-crafted narrative about two grieving brothers and the people they love.

History

Clair Hoffman. Sister, Sinner: The Miraculous Life and Mysterious Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson. ((New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2025).

There is no individual in the religious history of American cities that has fascinated me more than the Los Angeles evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson who reached the peak of her influence in the 1920s. Her ability to draw crowds and her reputation as a faith healer, along with sensational accounts of her life, made her a legend in Los Angeles and nationwide. Of the many books about her accomplished and complicated life that I have read, this is the best.

Obbie Tyler Todd. The Beechers: America’s Most Influential Family. (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana University press, 2024).

This family saga begins with the puritan revivalist Lyman Beecher and continues with his children including the novelist and antislavery writer Harriet Beecher Stowe and the preacher Henry Ward Beecher. Here is a book that offers a unique window into the intersecting spheres of religion and family life as they evolve over time.

Graham Tomlin. Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made The Modern World. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2025).

Ever since I encountered Pascal in an undergraduate history of philosophy class that explored, I have wanted to know more about his life. Best known for his famous wager concerning God, this book provided a window into the life of a polymath that was both rewarding and surprising.

Alissa Wilkinson. We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2025.

This is a book about Joan Didion and Hollywood by a New York Times film critic. It’s all about the stories we tell and how celebrity culture entered the public square.

Social Commentary

Chris Hayes. The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource. New York: Penguin Press, 2025.

Chris Hays helped me pay more attention to what I pay attention to.

Second Reading

Dorothy L. Sayers. The Mind of the Maker. (New York: HarperCollins, 1941).

This is a book I first read during my undergraduate days. I turned to it again in 2025 for its valuable insights into the creative process. This process is surprisingly seen through the lens of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and this doctrine in turn is seen through the lens of the creative artist.