Reading Year in Review 2023

Some of my reading goals for 2023 were sidetracked by the unexpected rabbit trail of the Arthurian legends, but it was a happy detour. Of the five versions I read, Howard Pyle's The Story of King Arthur and His Knights was the one that most captured my heart, making it my favorite book of the year. Some of my other top picks were:

Best devotional book: My Utmost for His Highest. I dust off my copy every few years for a re-read. Chambers doesn't pull any punches about the cost of being a disciple. Very heart-strengthening.

Most difficult, but worth the effort: Norms and Nobility by Hicks. Although it is a book on education (the classical tradition), it is also a book on what it means to be fully human. Lots of food for thought. 

Non-fiction: Supper of the Lamb by R.F. Capon. I loved this cooking memoir for its "joie de vivre." Life is beautiful (and hard). Don't waste it.

YA books that were delightful: Miracles on Maple Hill by Sorenson and The King's Equal by Katherine Paterson

Biggest surprise and second favorite: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. (No one ever told me how wonderful this 1928 Pulitzer prize winner is. Review is forthcoming.) 

What about you? What were your favorites of the year?

All 84 books that I read this year are listed on my Goodreads page. 

Blessings,

Satan's "Nothing" Strategy by Tony Reinke

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

In order to keep my earlier review of 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You from being too long, I opted to put this lengthy quote in a separate post. In this passage, Reinke recounts scrolling through his newsfeed after a tiring day of work. 

On and on I flicked down a list of disconnected and fragmented items, most of them only barely important or interesting. I was not edified or served, only further fatigued because of missing a nap I should have had or a walk I could have taken.... What I am coming to understand is that this impulse to pull a lever of a random slot machine of viral content is the age-old tactic of Satan. C.S. Lewis called it his "nothing strategy" in Screwtape Letters. This nothing strategy is very strong, strong enough to steal away a man's best years - not in sweet sins, but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why in the gratifications of curiosity so feeble that the man is only half aware of them. A hamster wheel of what will never satisfy our souls. Lewis' warning was prophetic to our digital age. We are always busy, always distracted, diabolically lured away from what is truly essential and truly gratifying. In our digital idleness, we fail to enjoy God and we fail to love our neighbor. We give our time to not what is explicitly sinful, but also to what cannot give us joy or prepare us for self-sacrifice. Satan's nothing strategy aims at feeding us endlessly scrolling words, images and videos that dull our affections instead of invigoration our joy and preparing us to give ourselves in love. 

(This is the exact same thing that Francis de Sales addressed in my previous post on his advice to Philothea: It is a pity to sow the seed of vain and foolish tastes in the soil of your heart, taking up the place of better things, and hindering the soul from cultivating good habits.) 

Lots to think about!

Blessings,

Reading as a Spiritual Discipline - Quote from Jessica Hooten Wilson

Reading is a spiritual discipline akin to fasting and prayer and one that trains you in virtues, encourages your sanctification, and elicits your love for those noble, admirable, and beautiful things of which St. Paul writes in his Letter to the Philippians. We read because without books our world shrinks, our empathy thins, and our liberty wanes. We read for the same reason that people have read - and shared poems and stories - for thousands of years: because our eyes are not enough by which to see. The time and place in which we live blinds us to other perspectives and ways of being that are not our own experience. We read because we have been given the gift of imagination and intellect, and we exhibit our gratitude by using it.

(from p. 62 of Reading for the Love of God by Jessica Hooten Wilson)

Blessings,