Skip to main content

What I Read in 2024: Towards Structured Self-Learning

Intro: focusing on re-reading and *trying* to slow down to avoid book gluttony, but I still exceeded my 2023 count by a lot. It was very helpful to have 4-6 books going at once (a Mother Culture idea), so I always had one available that would fit my mood and energy.



Here's what I finished reading in 2024, organized by month but highlighted by topic. (Key: 👂 Audible, 🔖 Re-Reads, ✟ Christian Faith, 🧪 Science/Autism and Evolution, 💤 Lighter Fare, 📚 Education)

January

Books finished: 

  • J. R. R. Tolkien. Two Towers. 👂🔖
  • P. Magness. Church Music for the Care of Souls. ✟
  • M. Bird. Religious Freedom in a Secular Age. ✟
  • J. R. R. Tolkien. Return of the King. 👂🔖
  • S. Cain. Bittersweet. 💤
  • J. Polkinghorne. Belief in God in an Age of Science. ✟ 🧪
  • D. Venema & S. McKnight. Adam and the Genome. ✟ 🧪
  • D. O. Lamoreux, J. H. Walton, C. J. Collins, & W. D. Barrick. Four Views on the Historical Adam. ✟ 🧪

February

Books finished: 

  • J. Walton & N. T. Wright. The Lost World of Genesis One. 👂✟ 🧪
  • J. Walton & T. Longman III. The Lost World of the Flood. 👂✟ 🧪
  • S. J. Swamidass. The Genealogical Adam and Eve. ✟ 🧪
  • C. Keener. Miracles Today. 👂✟
  • J. Wilkin. Women of the Word. 🔖✟ 💤
  • P. Sprinkle. Embodied. 👂✟
  • S. McKnight. The King Jesus Gospel. 👂✟

March

Books finished: 

  • M. Adler. How to Read a Book. 👂
  • R. Bauckham. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 2nd ed. ✟
  • M. Grabor. Debunking Howard Zinn. 💤
  • T. Muehlhoff & R. Langer. Winsome Persuasion. ✟
  • A. Wilson. Spirit and Sacrament: An Invitation to Eucharismatic Worship. ✟
  • D. Bonhoeffer. Cost of Discipleship. 👂 🔖 ✟
  • J. Vuolo. Becoming Free Indeed. 💤
  • M. Kaplan et al. (Eds.) Using Reflection and Metacognition to Improve Student Learning. 📚

April

Books finished: 

  • A. Podany. The Ancient Near East: A Very Short Introduction. 👂
  • A. Northedge. The Good Study Guide. 💤 📚
  • D. Foster. Celebration of Discipline. 🔖✟

May

Books finished: 

  • M. Noll. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. 🔖✟
  • M. Licona. The Resurrection of Jesus. 👂✟
  • Bishop et al. Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins. ✟ 🧪 📚
  • N. T. Wright. The New Testament and the People of God. ✟

June

Books finished: 

  • C. R. Browning. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. 💤
  • A. Curzan. How Conversation Works: 6 Lessons for Better Communication. 👂(Great Course)
  • R. Bucknam & G. Ezzo. On Becoming Babywise. 🔖
  • D. Groothius. Walking Through Twilight: a wife's illness--a philosopher's lament. 💤
  • K. Glass. Consider This: Charlotte Mason and the Classical Tradition. 📚

July

Books finished: 

  • G. Hunt. Honey for a Child's Heart. 📚
  • N. T. Wright. Galatians commentary. ✟
  • D. Memering & W. Palmer. Discovering Arguments. 📚
  • W. Webb. Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals. ✟

August

Books finished: 

  • R. Fitzpatrick. Write Useful Books. 🔖
  • J. R. R. Tolkien. Smith of Wooton Major and Farmer Giles of Ham. 💤
  • K. Vanhoozer. Is There a Meaning in this Text? ✟
  • S. Engelmann. Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. 💤 📚
  • C. S. Lewis. The Magician's Nephew. 👂🔖
  • A. Halberstadt. M is for Mama. 🔖 ✟

September

Books finished: 

  • J. Trelease. The Read-Aloud Handbook. 💤 📚
  • C. S. Lewis. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. 👂 🔖
  • S. Shafer. This Anguishing Blessed Journey. 💤
  • S. Schaeffer Macaulay. For the Children's Sake. 📚
  • A. Plantinga & N. Wolterstorff (eds). Faith and Rationality. ✟
  • C. S. Lewis. The Horse and his Boy. 👂🔖

October

Books finished: 

  • M. Ramsey. The Gospel and the Catholic Church. ✟
  • G. Lukianoff & R. Schlott. The Canceling of the American Mind. 💤 📚
  • R. Dreher. The Benedict Option. ✟ 📚
  • F. Cline & J. Fay. Parenting with Love and Logic. 💤 📚
  • C. S. Lewis. Prince Caspian. 👂🔖
  • S. Silberman. Neurotribes. 🧪 💤

November

Books finished: 

  • A. Schmemman. For the Life of the World. ✟
  • T. Ware. The Orthodox Church. ✟
  • C. S. Lewis. Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 👂🔖
  • A. Louth. Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology. ✟
  • M. Licona. Why are there Differences in the Gospels? ✟
  • J. Meyendorff. Marriage: An Orthodox Perspective. ✟
  • F. Mathewes-Greene. Welcome to the Orthodox Church. ✟
  • J. Nerenberg. Divergent Mind. 🧪
  • C. S. Lewis. The Silver Chair. 👂🔖
I did not finish V. Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. The style and sentence structure were too reminiscent of the semester I spent trying to learn French, and that does not work with my brain.

December

Books finished:

  • D. Hummel. The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism. ✟
  • J. Glowacki. Oh Crap! Potty Training. 💤
  • C. S. Lewis. The Last Battle. 👂🔖
  • C. Mason. A Philosophy of Education (vol. 6 in the Home Education series). 📚
  • Athanasius. On the Incarnation. ✟
  • C. Paolini. Inheritance (#4 in the series). 💤
  • M. Adler. The Paideia Proposal. 📚
  • C. Allert. Early Christian Readings of Genesis One. ✟
  • D. Levitin. The Organized Mind. 🔖 📚
Overall, this year was my best in terms of volume (74 books completed). Toward the end, as the Bibliovore and I were lookinag at 2025, we both found ourselves wanting to be more structured in our reading. For me, my planned minimal reading falls into several categories: (1) Charlotte Mason education, focusing on her remaining volumes plus some curricular and historical resources; (2) Intelligent Design/Evolution and theological implications; and (3) early church history including some broader and narrower writings.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rationales for Bible Reading Plans: Which is Best for You?

If you're a Christian, chances are you read from the Bible (somewhat) regularly. To help oneself make it through the entire Scriptures rather than just " Bible-dipping ," many people use a reading plan of some sort. If you've found one you love, stick with it--but check out the rest of this post for some ideas in case you're ready for a change! No pins for this post, because a Bible reading plan takes up too much space if it's written in legible font size! 😂 Why Read the Bible Outside of Church? Short answer: "Give us this day our daily bread " part of which is Scripture meditated upon. As a pastor from my childhood once said, this reading can be very ordinary, without any mountaintop experiences, but still benefit you, because "it's our daily bread, not our daily croissant." Ancient Literacy As I explored in a post from The Renaissance Biologist last year, literacy rates in the ancient world were fairly low. I'll reproduce N. T. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts on Composition and Grammar Education in the Home

Depending on the time of life, this post's topic is either my favorite or my least favorite! Grammar and composition, specifically in English, was my least favorite subject growing up and being homeschooled--but it has grown enough so that I was able and happy to use it in part-time work for several years during college, in the academic resource centers at two different institutions. Because I didn't  like it when I was going through the childhood-era education years, I'm putting this post toward the end of my homeschooling-thoughts series. You can check out previous posts in the series here:  health education ,  life sciences ,  history ,  geography , math , and foreign language . Here's a related tidbit about my upcoming book: one of the later chapters will address how neurodiverse parents can address practical skills instruction if they're not necessarily strong in those skills themselves. In parents with autism spectrum disorder, language skills can be impai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Basic Philosophical Vocabulary

One part of learning about a subject is learning its vocabulary. It's been an uneven road for me as I have learned bits about philosophy over the last few years, starting with semester 1 of the PhD program where a course introduced the terms ontology  and epistemology . Somehow, I confused these terms for the next couple of years. I hope this post can prevent that for you, and introduce you to some of the most helpful terms to be familiar with if you're diving into philosophy! Selection Process: History of Philosophy One of the first problems in philosophy that I learned about when starting to read about it in earnest, was related to vocabulary. Reading philosophy as a neophyte is like learning a new language--with a twist! Over the centuries of philosophical writing, especially in the modern and postmodern eras, philosophers use many of the same terms as their predecessors and contemporaries do, but they'll also develop their own and use different definitions of some ...
Post a Comment
Read more