Which book should I read for 2016?
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Thursday, April 30, 2026
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
Let's Bust a Recap : Carry On, Jeeves
2023 was definitely the year that contributed the most books to my current book list. There were seven books from my list that year that I never got around to reading, and Carry On, Jeeves was one of them. After my first introduction to Wodehouse in 2022, he got an automatic spot on my 2023 book list. The Inimitable Jeeves provided no end of laughs and considering that I dropped a pretty significant amount of good American money to add the Bertie and Jeeves collection to my personal library in 2020—ah, the year of massive online book shopping for me, how were you coping with the madness?—I wanted to make it a habit to read some Wodehouse each year.
Alas, here we are, four years later before I finally picked up the second installment in my Wodehouse collection. And if we're being realistic, it'll probably be another couple of years before I pick him up again seeing as next year I'll be tackling My Life In Books project—have you voted yet?—and Wodehouse lived and died well before I was born. But not because I didn't enjoy Carry On, Jeeves. It was just as much of a riot as The Inimitable Jeeves, and I found myself laughing aloud again during every outrageous story.
This collection of ten short stories which were popping up in the Saturday Evening Post were published together in London in 1925, and in New York in 1927. In this anthology, we get the origin story of how Jeeves came to be in Bertie's employ. Jeeves is enlisted, again, numerous times, to help Bertie's friends out of all manner of scrapes, particularly those having to do with maintaining good standing with wealthy aunts and uncles who bankroll their nephews' lives, and, of course, the frequent romantic entanglements they find themselves in. To give you an idea of how disastrously things turn out when Bertie tries to manage these conundrums without Jeeves' help, in this collection he inadvertently kidnaps a child, among other things. And this collection ends with a story from Jeeves' perspective in which he arranges for Bertie to give a talk at a girls' school after Bertie gets a wild hair to invite his aunt and three nieces to come and live with him. Jeeves is having none of that, and Jeeves always knows best.
Another rip-roaring, laugh-out-loud good time. Douglas Adams said that "Wodehouse is the greatest comic writer ever" and I think I might agree with him. I have one more collection of short stories to read before I get to an actual novel in my Bertie and Jeeves library, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing how Wodehouse's novels compare to his short story collections. If you haven't read Wodehouse yet, move him up your TBR.
What books or authors do you turn to for a good laugh?
Thursday, April 23, 2026
2015 : My Life In Books
Which book should I read for 2015?
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Tuesday, April 21, 2026
Let's Bust a Recap : Anxious People
Fredrik Backman exploded onto the scene in 2012 with the publication of his debut novel A Man Called Ove. If you haven't at least heard of it, you're probably not a big reader. I finally got around to reading it myself ten years later in 2022 and joined the legion of fans Backman has garnered the world over. Despite the fact that I've had two of his other books—Britt-Marie Was Here and My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry—sitting on my shelf for five years now, I found myself purchasing a copy of Anxious People a few weeks ago and diving right into it when my book club chose it for our April selection. And may I just say: Backman has done it again.
On opening this book, the first thing I read, of course, was Backman's dedication:
This book is dedicated to the voices in my head, the most remarkable of my friends.
And to my wife, who lives with us.
Are you kidding me? I'm already sold.
Chapter one opens with a bank robbery and a hostage drama. In his second paragraph, Backman writes, "This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it's always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is. Especially if you have other people you're trying to be a reasonably good human being for." So begins an investigation into this bank robbery turned hostage drama. Father and son Jim and Jack are the two police officers on the case, interviewing the hostages who were all released from the apartment viewing they attended the day before New Years Eve after being held there by an armed bank robber who had just tried to rob a cashless bank across the street.
A cashless bank.
Backman has this uncanny ability to capture the strange messiness of being human in such a profound and profoundly funny way. His books make you laugh out loud, they make your heart ache, they make you nod your head in agreement thinking "yes, that really is what it's like!" Anxious People in particular is one giant reminder to remember that the people around you are going through their own stuff. Stuff you may never know about. But stuff that compels them to make the choices you've deemed idiotic. And they are idiotic. But the choices we make may seem just as idiotic to the next guy who doesn't know our stuff.
So be kind.
It's just brilliant. Anxious People came out in 2019 and the English translation by Neil Smith in 2020. While A Man Called Ove is still easily my favorite of the two, I absolutely loved Anxious People. Given the nature of the police investigation and the host of colorful characters, Anxious People feels very scattered in a somewhat disjointed way, and Backman did a great job of keeping me guessing the entire novel. There isn't really a main character to anchor the story so you constantly feel like you're being pulled in different directions from beginning to end. But it just works.
If you haven't gotten around to reading Fredrik Backman yet, add my voice to the chorus of people recommending you move his books to the top of your TBR. He's becoming a favorite and it will not be another four years before I pick up another one of his books.
But which one next? Britt-Marie, or My Grandmother Sends Her Regards and Apologises?
Thursday, April 16, 2026
2014 : My Life In Books
Which book should I read for 2014?
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OR
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Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Let's Bust a Recap : When God Writes Your Life Story
I distinctly remember receiving When God Writes Your Life Story along with two other books by the Ludys as a gift in high school. Around that time, I read one of the other books, When Dreams Come True. I liked that one. It was the couple's love story told from both their perspectives. Very sweet. I think I started this one shortly after finishing that one, but didn't get very far into it. Probably not even past the first chapter. (I never picked up the other one, When God Writes Your Love Story, so I have no comments about it.)
Years later in 2015—and now that I'm thinking about it, that would have been a solid ten years after receiving these books as gifts—when I decided to make my very first book list, When God Writes Your Life Story got a spot. And I even started reading it again. But once again, I didn't make it past the first chapter before setting it aside.
So obviously, it got a spot on my 2026 book list along with three other books from that very first list and I wasted no time in dusting it off to read in March. And it turned out to be a 50/50 book. I 50% couldn't roll my eyes any harder, and 50% thought it could actually be a very helpful resource. So let's get into it.
Basically the premise of this book is when we're kids, we dream big, like, superhero big dreams for our life. But as we get older, we settle for mediocrity. So if you want to make your life count and live a thrilling existence, read our book to make it happen.
Do you see me rolling my eyes?
Eric and Leslie Ludy published When God Writes Your Life Story back in 2004. It's the sixth in a long line of books they've published together. I am genuinely happy to report that the Ludys are still married and active in ministry, and seem to be a pretty unproblematic couple. A lot of spiritual leaders from the Y2K "purity culture" era have fallen from grace hard, and for me, that taints their work—however founded in truth it may be. But the Ludys seem to be the real deal, and I'm sincerely glad about that.
But their writing. Boy oh boy. When I say the first two-thirds of this book is some of the cheesiest, most trite, "Christian-ese" nonsense I've ever read: it legitimately made me want to hurl. If you've been around or know me in real life, you know I grew up in a pastor's household. Maybe you think that means I grew up with this kind of sunshine-y, Christian-speak, climb God's Everest, Jesus loves me, kind of vocabulary. But if you actually know my dad, you know he won't stand for what he calls "Sunday school answers." We never got let off the hook with a "because the Bible says so" answer around the family dinner table. My dad is quick to cut through the BS and tell the truth plain, especially when it's hard. As a result, I have grown into an adult who can't stand this "churchy" way of talking. It makes my skin crawl. And so for the first 140ish pages of When God Writes Your Life Story, I was wincing. A lot. The Ludys don't out-and-out lie or say anything blasphemous, but they also don't say things that are particularly helpful, practical, or that give a full picture of life. This book is geared to a younger demographic—nothing wrong with that—but they go so far as to say that older people have criticized them and their message as being naive and overly optimistic and that those naysayers are part of the mass of people who have settled for mediocrity in their lives.
As one of those older people reading their book, let me add my two cents. While I would agree that there can literally be nothing in life more ultimately rewarding than living for God wholeheartedly, I think the Ludys are setting young people up for major disillusionment by talking about the Christian life as if it is a thrilling adventure every. single. day. And they do talk about it like that. What will happen to the teenager who joyfully embraces this ideology when she grows up and realizes that the bills have to be paid every month, the dishes have to be washed every day, the laundry never ends, and she actually has to buy the groceries and cook the meals day in and day out? Her kids will throw tantrums and things will break and she will get sick when it's the most inconvenient. Learning to live a quiet, faithful life through all that doesn't always feel exciting. Some (most?) days it feels exhausting. Is she still doing it right when she doesn't feel like she's living on the mountaintops? I think if she swallowed the Ludys message, hook, line, and sinker when she was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed twenty-two year old, fresh out of Bible college, she might become a sad statistic of another kid raised in church who walked away from it all as an adult.
But Hannah, you said this was a 50/50 book? What is helpful in all that?
When God Writes Your Life Story is sectioned into three parts: Part One—Dreaming the Impossible; Part Two—Living the Impossible; and Part Three—Frontier Field Guide. If you're anything like me and have a low tolerance for BS, those first two parts will be painful. But if you want to skip all that and go straight to the Field Guide, that's where I think this book actually has something helpful to offer. While the first two parts read like, "The Christian life is such an adventure, keep reading to learn how to climb the Christian Everest!" (I wish I was kidding), this third part gets into practical, real-world application of how to confront and confess sin and live a holy life. A how-to for setting achievable goals, creating healthy habits, and getting involved in community. When God Writes Your Life Story offered some of the most balanced, practical advice I've ever read about finding and joining a church. That part especially resonated with me as someone who has had a very difficult time finding a church as an adult now that my dad (you remember him, the straight-shooter?) is no longer pastoring a local church.
So there's good stuff in there. You just have to wade through a lot of cheese to get to it. My advice? If you find yourself with this book in your hands, skip straight to the "Frontier Field Guide" and go from there. If you want to get a feel for what you're missing in parts one and two, just read the little "In a Nutshell" page at the end of each chapter. I promise, the chapters themselves aren't any deeper than what you get there. While I did feel like a lot of my time reading this book was wasted, I can honestly say that I could see myself referring back to that third section in the future.
On to the next.
Thursday, April 9, 2026
2013 : My Life In Books
Which book should I read for 2013?
OR
OR
For more background on what this is all about, click here.
To vote on Goodreads, click here.
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