The 5 Best Books I've Read (so far) in 2025
I've made reading a large part of my 2025 Word of the Year, and I'm sharing my favorites so far. Make sure to let me know what you are reading too!
A reminder for you before I begin today’s post.
I began the year with a series of posts on the Word of the Year project. If you missed those, I encourage you to go back and read them. There is a ton of great information on how to choose, start, and learn from choosing one word for one year (no, it’s not too late to start!).
In late January, I hosted an online meet-up to discuss your Word of the Year and how you can learn from it. We shared our Words with one another and what we hoped to gain from them.
This coming Thursday, May 22, I will host a short gathering to encourage you and hear from one another about what we are learning from our individual words. We will meet at 7 pm CDT. See the connection details below.
Everyone is welcome. Let’s grow together!
Word of the Year 2025
Each month, I try to outline my posts for the month. Sometimes it’s an outline for each week, but most times it is a general idea. For today’s post, I simply noted:
“Word of the Year update”
That was a great idea weeks out, but not as easy when the moment comes to write words. Adding to the stress, I just shared a collection of quotes I’ve been gathering in response to my 2025 Word of the Year. What do I say today?
As a reminder, I chose the word KNOWLEDGE to focus on for all of 2025. Specifically, I’ve tried to work on the areas of life that will grow my knowledge in lots of areas. This means more podcasts and less music or talk radio. It also means reading more books than spending time on my phone or in front of the television.
A million pages in…
Can you relate to this:
“I spend so much time on the Internet...I feel like I'm a million pages into the worst book ever, and I'm never going to stop reading."
- Aziz Ansari
Sometimes the information online is profound, poignant, and useful, but usually, it’s just a waste of my time. More often than not, I consume information that I have no control over, creating anxiety.
Books aren’t perfect, but they tend to go deeper into one subject, feeding my soul in ways an article on Google news, a post on Instagram, or a tweet on X can’t do.
I've read twenty-two books just shy of five months into the year. If that seems impressive to you, I agree (haha). I’ve never counted the books I’ve read in a given period of time, but I think this may already be a record for me in a year. With help from author and speaker, Jon Acuff, I’ve chosen to include every book I’ve read — fiction, non-fiction, business, biography, spiritual, etc.
Today, I want to share my top 5 books from this point in 2025. I’ve placed them in order of finishing each. I’ve learned something from each, but these five have had the biggest impact on me.
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
This book was written over fifty years ago, and at times, I felt like it was more applicable for today than the audience it targeted in the 1970s. J.I. Packer was a top theologian who valued God's glory above all else. This led him to write about what it meant to know God (if we know God, we can better behold his glory).
As reading goes, this was a bit more heavy lifting than I’m used to, but it challenged me to think deeply about who God is, and I was forced to wonder about the character of God as portrayed in the Bible versus who we’ve reduced God to in popular culture.
A wonderful example is Packer’s chapter on the wrath of God.
Your ears are perked, and your eyes have widened a little. We don’t talk about God’s fury or wrath, but you can’t miss it when you read through the Old and New Testaments (Isaiah 13, Jeremiah 6, Romans 1, John 3 are just a few). It’s not popular in our culture, but a characteristic of God is wrath. Thankfully, his wrath is paired with a long-suffering and slow-to-anger nature.
So, if there will be a moment in time when God unleashes his fury (as he did with his chosen people in the Old Testament), then how can I share God's grace and mercy, which are available to everyone today? Again, this message isn’t popular in 2025. Somehow, reading Knowing God helped me be okay with the dichotomy.
Big Takeaway: The depth of God’s character is beyond what you or I can understand. Each time I think I know him, there is more to see.
Simple Money, Rich Life by Bob Lotich
My wife, Kia, loves to think and talk about money. I don’t. As I process money, there is a sort of shame attached to it. If I have money…I shouldn’t be so lucky. If I don’t have money…I shouldn’t be so foolish. Damned if I do; damned if I don’t.
In the evangelical church world, Dave Ramsey is the king of money talk and teaching. I’ve gone through his course, and it’s helped us a ton. I would encourage anyone to read his books and take his courses if you need help getting out of debt. Thankfully, debt isn’t our issue, but figuring out what to do with what we have is.
Enter Bob Lotich’s Simple Money, Rich Life. I’ve read a few of Bob’s devotions through the YouVersion Bible app, so I bought his book earlier this year. I’m glad I did because it helped me reframe saving, spending, and being generous with my money.
Big Takeaway: Bob and his wife gave away over $1,000,000 before the age of 40! The takeaway for me was their view of generosity. I have narrowed my generosity to the gifts I can add to my annual tax report. However, Lotich tracks every bit of giving — charitable gifts, birthday gifts, anonymous giving, and dropping a few dollars in the homeless guy's cup on the corner.
Kia and I probably haven’t hit $1,000,000 yet, but we’ve come much further when using this calculator. This would include the $50 here and $5 there I give to writers here on Substack (yes, this is a shameless plug for your support 😀)
Every Moment Holy by Douglas McKelvey
I am a child of the American evangelical church. Mostly, I don’t mind this, but there are times I miss the richness of the liturgical traditions of the Anglican, Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, and Methodist churches. The depth of prayer is one of the things I missed from that form of high church.
Early this year, I heard an interview with Douglas McKelvey, who, among other things, is a sexton (pastor) at St John’s Anglican Church. In his interview, McKelvey talked about the power of having a prayer in written form when you didn’t have the ability to form the words on your own. His series of books aims to do just that…provide words when the words can’t be found.
I’m now halfway through Every Moment Holy for the second time. It is divided into sections and covers the mundane (laundry and morning coffee), new beginnings (a new job or new home), difficult goodbyes (the death of a pet and the loss of a home), and everything in between. Each prayer is divided into sections meant to be read individually or in groups.
Big Takeaway: Here’s a line I haven’t been able to shake:
O God, who shrank not from danger
but willingly entered the chaos of our world,
walk with me now as I enter the hard moments of others.
-Douglas Mckelvey
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
This is the one fiction book that made my top five list. Before adding it to my list, I knew nothing about the book or the author. I had no expectations, but I was impressed. I shouldn’t be surprised since Patchett is an award-winning author with multiple best sellers.
The best fiction books make you think beyond the story being told. Great fiction (in my mind) makes me introspective. I have a few books on my “read” list that take me away, but don’t make me look inward. The Dutch House made me introspective. It is a story of a brother and sister who are drawn back to the house of their youth to both remember the amazing times and horrific memories.
That is childhood: a mix of amazing and horrific.
Big Takeaway: We often don’t understand the expanses of amazing or the depths of horror until we grow into adults. Then we’re forced to grapple with this mix. The Dutch House did a great job of balancing the two. I wonder if it will take you back to your childhood like it did me.
Pray Like Monks, Live Like Fools by Tyler Stanton
Prayer is not a strength of mine. I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but it is true. One of the things I want to know more about and become better at is prayer. Knowing God touches on prayer, and another book I read this year, The Divine Conspiracy, includes thoughts on prayer, but Pray Like Monks is the first book I’ve read that focuses solely on prayer (outside of Every Moment Holy, of course, which is itself a book of prayers).
Big Takeaway: Stanton does a great job of framing the heart and structure of prayer. He provides specific practices to help you expand your prayer life and see how simple it can be, which leads me back to the true difficulty…simply praying.
Your Top Reads
What have you been reading this year? Do you have any books I should add (whether you read them in 2025 or before)?
Share your favorite books, and a big takeaway from that book. I’d love to add a few of your suggestions to my list for 2025 (and beyond).
FYI: The links to the books above all lead to Amazon, where I receive a small kick-back if you purchase.
Here’s my list of books I’ve read in the past year
“The Boys in the Boat” by Daniel James Brown
“The pump house gang” by Tom Wolfe
“Meaningful Work” by Shawn Askinosie
“Faster” by Neal Bascomb
“The stranger in the lifeboat” by Mitch Albom
“The Boys” by Ron and Clint Howard.