2025 Reading list

Looking for book ideas?  Check out our 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014  reading lists!

The graphic above shows what I had planned to read this year.  I made it through a good number of them but I didn't make it to some notable reads: The Showman and Tattoos on the Heart in particular.  

Below is a graphic showing what my wife and I actually read:

Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools: An Invitation to the Wonder and Mystery of Prayer.  Author and Pastor Tyler Staton (of Bridgetown Church in Portland) lays out a persuasive call for the church broadly, and the believer personally, to return to the prayer practices of the early church and Jesus. Incredible read: "Prayer is a journey that starts in need and ends in relationship."  My full review is here.

Cutting for Stone (Libby, Ethiopia. Jack and Emily both read).  This has been on my reading list since it's publication in 2009.  Listening to it over the course of 20 hours completely pulled me back into Ethiopia where we lived for over 2 years--it also made me wish I'd read it while I lived there.  The author creates a world so immersive that it inhabits your thoughts to the point that you find yourself pausing unexpectedly during the day to consider Shivah's plights or Genet's betrayal.  Verghese's ability here brought echoes of Mafouz's mastery in creating an entire world across generations in the Cairo trilogy.  The unique aspect of this novel is the way in which the the author can present fascinating surgical details in a manner the average lay person can at least pretend to understand--all the while weaving a tale with multiple layers of betrayal, intrigue and redemption.

The Life Impossible (Spain). In the vein of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Matt Haig's latest tale is magical realist amble into the intersection of mathematics, environmentalism, science, philosophy, extraterrestrial life, loss, and grief--and the fact that it all takes place in Ibiza makes this story shine.  While Haig's third novel doesn't rise to the level of his Midnight Library, it still stood out as a guilty pleasure of a read--one that doesn't demand too much of the reader (most chapters are only a page or two) while delivering beautiful writing at the same time.  My full review is here.

Right-Hand Shore.  Reading Tilghman's writing is effortless--which means he's both incredibly talented and works hard at it.  His 2012 tale (one of 4 in a series I found out later) of a family's doomed (cursed?) farm on the Eastern shore stretches across generations from the Civil War and through to reconstruction.  My full review is here.

How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Story Ever Told (Libby/Jack and Emily both read).  This book's power comes from humorist author Harrison Scott Key's  fearlessness in revealing the most raw, intimate emotions surrounding his wife's infidelity. My full review is here. 

May the Wolf Die (Libby, Italy). Named one of the New York Times "best crime novels of 2024"--this debut novel from scientist/researcher/author Elizabeth Heidler nails all the gritty Naples details down to the trash strewn highways that contrast with the breathtaking coastal waters.  Her experience living in Naples for 3 years more than a decade ago—working as a research analyst at the US Navy base in Capodichino—shines through with her careful eye for all things Bella Napoli.  Having lived there for three years myself-I can attest she gets it right.  One disclaimer: We should have read this instead of listening--the narrator's Scottish? accent trying to do dialogue in Italian was VERY distracting.  

Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco  (Libby). I accidentally got the abridged version (~3 hours) instead of the unabridged (~22 hours) which ended up being a good call as this book was just okay for me--not being super into business and deal-making--I shouldn't have been surprised.  It's well written and the details and conversation reflect the incredible work put in by the authors. 

A Death in Brazil (Brazil).   Published in 2004, in the second year of Lula’s long-fought-for-presidency, “A Death in Brazil” delves in the background of Brazil’s first popularly elected president Fernando Collor de Mello and the murder of his campaign treasurer/criminally corrupt money launderer Paulo Cesar Cavalcanti de Farias (known as “PC")--that’s the obvious death in Brazil.  In telling the story of Fernando and PC’s rise he contrasts it with current President Lula’s populist ascension and ambitiously lays it all across a selected violent history of Brazil–that’s the broader metaphorical death in Brazil. My full review is here. 

Reasons to Stay Alive.  I’ve enjoyed reading Matt Haig’s novels over the last several years and when I saw that he had written a very raw memoir of sorts I was eager to read it.  That it turned out to also be a “how to be a friend to someone suffering from depression” guide made it an especially powerful and necessary read. 

Necessary in the sense that chances are all of us will know someone battling with depression–Haig labels these people as “depressives.”  Ideally, the reader closes the book with a heightened sense of empathy but also an expanded menu of tools to help be a better listener and a more thoughtful (and more diminutive speaker/responder).  My full review is here.

Our Missing Hearts.  Celeste Ng (author of Little Fires Everywhere) has penned a beautiful and thought provoking dystopian (?) story about a United States where blind allegiance to country has stamped out any criticism or dissent--no matter how constructive.  "The Pact" is published and encapsulates this ethos to the extent where children are taken (aka the missing hearts) from any families not deemed appropriately loyal to the Pact. Far-fetched perhaps but no longer something unimaginable.

Leaf by Niggle. A good friend gave me a copy of this J.R.R. Tolkien short story that is ostensibly about an artist and his painting of a tree but which of course is about much more. Tolkien wrote it as he struggled with his own anxiety over whether he'd be able to ever finish the Silmarillion. In Leaf, the main character xxx realizes (eventually)

Nathan Coulter (Audible).  The first novel from Wendell Berry's Port Williams series.  I regret not having read anything from Berry's considerable compendium until this year.  I recall virtually rolling my eyes years ago when my mother raved about his Memory of Old Jack--it sounded like a lethargic and boring premise.  Then earlier this year I was watching a sermon from pastor Tyler Staton on the Beatitudes where he talked about Berry's incredible life in an illustration on being 'pure in heart.'  This got me hooked and led me to the first in the series of 9 books about Berry's imagined town across many generations.  This first novel is a richly detailed and contemplative story about one family and a father's relationship with his son and the land they work.

Elizabeth Ritchie and the Kingdom of Whatnots.  A young girl gets called into another world in a plot to assassinate an evil king--chaos ensues (My 12 year old daughter Betty's next book which she'll self-publish).

James.  My full review is here.   This is an incredibly imaginative retelling of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" that boldly centers the narrative on the character of Jim. More than just a new perspective, it's a searing indictment of the institution of slavery and a powerful reminder of the terror of everyday life for enslaved people. Through Jim's narrative, the reader is forced to confront evil in all its iterations.

For an author as prolific as Percival Everett, "James" feels like a magnum opus of sorts—perhaps even a catharsis. If not a total cleansing of the soul, then at least an unburdening of the anger, outrage, and generational injustice that he would argue make up the Black experience in America. His acknowledgments section sums it up best, adapting a well-known Twain quote: "Heaven for the climate; hell for my long-awaited lunch with Mark Twain."

Rumors of Another World: What On Earth Are We Missing?  (The full review is here) This is a weighty book and not one you can breeze through quickly but rather calls the reader towards a meditative examination of how society models and sells life today is the antithesis of the contemplative path God intended.  The book seeks to answer three basic questions: 

1. What does the current world tell us about heaven?
2. Why is the world so bad then?
3. Where are the natural + supernatural intersections - and what’s their effect on our daily life?  

The Covenant of Water (India). Spanning nearly a century (1900-1977), Covenant takes place in southwestern India in the Kerala region and focuses on a Malayali Christian family and a mysterious drowning affliction that affects someone in each generation.  Of course, like all great novels it’s about much more than  one challenge–its encompasses love, betrayal, and secrets–” this is the covenant of water: that they're all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone ... all is one. "My full review is here.  

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (Emily and Jack read). The book is a product of decades of conversations with mentors and biblical study.  In one conversation with another pastor/mentor, that man shares some bad news:

"The #1 problem you will face is time. People are just too busy to live emotionally healthy & spiritually rich & vibrant lives." 

The solution, Comer argues, lies in a "slowdown spirituality," a deliberate embrace of ancient spiritual disciplines (see also Tyler Staton’s “Praying Lke Monks, Living Like Fools"–my review is here). He emphasizes that "attention is the beginning of devotion," and "what you give your attention to is the person you become." Time, our universal limitation, demands intentionality, and sometimes, as Anne Lamott wisely puts it, "No' is a complete sentence"—a thousand "no's" for every "yes."  What we’ve seen in the U.S. over the last century is an inversion of money and time.  Unlike in the past where leisure and rest were valued, we spend time to get more money.

All the Light We Cannot See (France). "Who knew love could kill you?" the main character, a blind teenager named Marie-Laure, questions as the Nazi Paris invasion uproots her comfortable and predictable life in there.  What unfolds is a story that seesaws between shocking and inspiring, horrifying and redemptive and which stands as a stark reminder of what a world at war looks like at the most visceral level.  As I tore through this novel is 3 quick days, I lamented that I'd let it waste away for so long on our bookshelf.    

A Place on Earth.  Berry's writing is somehow comforting–that’s a strange thing to say about a novel--it's the rare book that is more observation than narrative. Ostensibly the novel is about a town during World War II.  A town whose youth have gone to fight and who families go on living in the limbo that is war abroad.  But the novel is actually about the land, the environment and seasons, the floods and droughts, the earth and woods–somehow Berry has written a story where the people are the scenery.  My full review is here.

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (Brazil)  Author Jorge Amado is one of the best known Brazilian writers so I thought it was high time that I read one of this novels.  Gabriela is a story of a 1920's Bahian cacao town struggling against modernity whose entire arc is upended by a poor and beautiful young woman from the northeast. For a novel written in the 1950's, the storyline is surprisingly salacious at times as Gabriela proves to have an intoxicating effect on every man she encounters. Despite some racy scenes, the narrative remains in realm of literature teetering on magic realism and flirting with beach read status.  For this reader, I likely won't revisit Amado but it was a good data point on Brazilian literature. 

Hannah Coulter. Hannah Coulter, the penultimate novel in Wendell Berry's Port Williams series, offers a touching first-person account of its title character's life from her childhood to WWII’s aftermath to the turn of the century.  So while it was published 45 years after his first novel Nathan Coulter  (my review is here) from a narrative chronological aspect Hannah spans the life of Berry’s Port Williams corpus and reflects the maturity of an American literary master in ways his earliest novels might not.  It’s a deep narrative, full of sorrow and triumph, heartache and love, pain and healing–stretching across the human experience while also recounting the decline of the American farming sector’s way of life. My full review is here. 

When the Cranes Fly South.  The book very well could have been called "Things Unspoken" given the main character's intense interior monologue of emotions, outcries and thoughts that he largely keeps locked up throughout the entire novel. The book’s unique narrative construction consists of alternating rambling first -person chapters of an old aging man’s thoughts and conversations, punctuated by shocking staccato entries in a journal kept by the various caretakers and family who look after the old man.  The effect is striking. The 89 year-old old man–Bo–is awash in memories and emotions, and each day is often a struggle–these chapters are rich and then you turn the page are slapped with a dry, clinical sentence-long summary of Bo’s life that day.  It’s powerful.  It’s sad.  It’s a purposeful choice that author makes.  Review Pending. My full review is here. 

A Moveable Feast (Paris). Hemingway's novel hit different this time around reading it at the midpoint of my life.  Having walked the same Parisian streets and cafes.  Having lived nearly a decade of my life overseas, I feel Hemingway's emotions and insecurities in a much more visceral way.   Certainly of course, Hemingway's Paris no longer exists but it's beautiful to hear his young writer's voice developing itself as he describes, the city and its country and the expats that inhabit it.  My full review is here.

Andy Catlett: Early Travels. My third Wendell Berry novel this year.  This was a quick, light read covering the childhood experiences of a young 9-year old Andy Catlett as he spends time on his grandparent's farm and learns about his family's deep connection to the land.  Every story I read from Berry's fictional "Port Williams membership" draws me deeper into the author's beautiful, introspective writing.  His novels don't have driving narratives but instead the characters--the people--are the narrative.  

Someone Like Us (Ethiopia) This novel is far less sweeping that his previous novels, it still builds out Mengestu's tapestry of the immigrant experience in America by focusing on an Ethiopian father and son's evolving relationship.  Told against scenes shifting from Ethiopia to France to Chicago and times past and present, Mengestu doesn't shy away from difficult topics like mental health and substance abuse and the toll they take on memory and relationships.  In an era where terms like "immigration" carry a charge weight, Someone Like Us adds important context and hopefully develops increased empathy in the reader on the myriad struggles faced by immigrants by everything from police stops to just not knowing how America works.  Books like these are important in personalizing difficult topics and allowing the reader to grapple with a story in which there are no easy answers. My full review is here.  Also see my review of his amazing third novel: All Our Names, a book that I call the Great African Novel.  See his other beautiful novel: All the Things That Heaven Bears here--my review is here.

Street Girls: Hope on the Streets of Brazil. This is British author/journalist Matt Roper's first of four books highlighting the child-trafficking and child-prostitution problem in Brazil. Rather than an extensive review I typed out verbatim the contents of one letter from a street girl that Matt worked with through MeninaDanca.  The book is also filled with letters from the girls--their heartbreaking tales--many pushed into prostitution by their families as pre-teens. My full review is here.

East of Eden. While his earlier Grapes of Wrath may have earned him a Pulitzer, East of Eden is widely acknowledged as a better and more mature novel and I was surprised at how readable it was 70 years after its original publication.  Sadly, I don’t believe that I ever read East of Eden back in high school but I’m glad I finally grabbed it off my book shelf where it had languished gathering dust the past 14 years!

Certain novels continue to be widely read because they capture and bring to life timeless themes and ideas, such as family, loss, original sin, forgiveness, rivalry, greed, and daring.  East of Eden covers all of these but most importantly it captures the great divide between the East and the West at the turn of the century with the narrator observing that: “I always found in myself a dread of West and a love of East.” This notion would be captured once again by another virtuoso author named Chris George Latore Wallace some 45 years later in his seminal album Life After Death.  It is here in his single “Going Back to Cali” that Mr. Wallace opines “If I got to choose a coast, I got to choose the East I live out there, so don't go there.”  There too in Chris Wallace’s West lied uncertainty, foreboding, and in his case–death–that same year. My full review is here.

Meh

Caste: The Origin of our Discontent.   The book is at itks most powerful in her research on how the Nazi party/government studied the caste system in the United States and sought to emulate it in its systemic subjugation and extermination of the Jewish population.  Most shameful (for the United States) though is her keen observation that in post-WWII Germany you don’t find echoes and monuments and memorialization of Nazi heritage, i.e., you don’t have monuments to Rommel or colleges and highways named after Hitler.  This distinction is a striking one and worth considering as relics still remain despite the recent shifting political winds.  Ultimately, even an unconvinced reader must acknowledge the the troubled history and origins that Wilkerson lays out, and that while an outright caste system may no longer remain in the United States, vestiges of it echo still today across the spectrum of the black existence here from health challenges to the stories told to children on how to survive even today (for more on this read Coates’s “Letter to My Son). My full review is here.

Duds

Fresh Water for Flowers.  Was listening to this novel on Libby.  But I think we gave up.  Not our cup of fresh water tea.

You Shall Know Our Velocity.  Do NOT recommend.  It very mysteriously appeared on our bookshelf when I was organizing and I thought it must be some type of sign--it was not.  This is early Eggers from 2002 about a pair of friends who set about on a haphazard journey around the world to give away $32,000.  It's a catchy premise but doesn't deliver--the characters aren't particularly likeable and much of the action is mired in dense philosophical ponderings.  Instead read some of his other excellent tomes: What is the What?, Hologram for the King, and The Circle.   The first I read in 2011 and the latter two I read in 2014.

To Read List

The Showman: Inside the Invasion That Shook the World and Made a Leader of Volodymyr Zelensky

Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good.

The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother

The Barn 

There and Then. 

People Like Us. 

Embarrassing List of Books I've said I'm going to finish for several years:

Tribe of Mentors.  Currently reading for the last four years. My full review will be here...one day

The Italians. Was reading but misplaced the book.  If I find it I will finish it.

Kruse's Key: Read Deere's "Surprised by the Spirit" to Learn About Healing Today

Jack’s Deere’s “Why I Am Still Surprised by the Spirit: Discovering How God Speaks and Heals Today” walks the fine line of personal testimony and historical/theological analysis as he tackles the subject of the Holy Spirit, “signs and wonders”, and healing in today’s church. At one time Deere was an avid naysayer of healing in the modern church–as a seminary professor he scoffed at what he viewed as snake oil salesmen purporting to heal amidst overwrought theatrics and questionable motives. All that changed when a pastor named Dr. John White led a prayer service at his church that culminated in a miraculous event after which Deere clearly heard God’s voice call him to repentance for his arrogance and lack of faith. Shortly thereafter he was introduced to John Wimber and “praying for the sick became a permanent part of [his] life.”

As someone who has spent several years in Africa and befriended many missionaries, I’ve never doubted that God still heals today but I’ve never considered it as something attainable in my own life or for my own loved ones. Deere’s story has changed my mind because he doesn’t focus on healing or miracles except in the context of an intimacy with God the creator. These things should glorify God–should focus people’s eyes upward–never on the person or on self-gratification

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2024,  2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Notes

98 Rebuttal against Hebrews 2: 3-4 used by cessationists.

114 Scriptural reasons that God heals:

Because he is asked

Because he has compassion and mercy on the sick

To bring glory to himself

In response to his promise to the elders

In response to faith

To lead people to repentance and open doors to the gospel

To remove hindrances to ministry and service

To reach us about himself and his kingdom

To demonstrate the presence of his kingdom

For sovereign purposes known only to himself


120-121 We tend to doubt God’s goodness, especially when we are asking for something big. We believe Satan’s lies that God only heals us or heals people when we/they are good. “We overcome the accuser by placing our confidence in the blood of Christ.


143 N.T. mentioned 7 specific demonic inroads:

Anger and unforgiveness

Sexual immorality

Violence

Hatred (envy, jealousy, & selfish ambition)

Occult practices

Long term idolatry

Blasphemy (attributing evil to God)


172 Part of his daily prayer:

Now Lord consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.


173 1949 Scottish Hebrides revival


182 Every day I pray to be like Barnabas: “a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith” through whom “a great number of people were brought to the Lord.” (Acts 11:24)


205 A spiritual gift: an endowment of grace empowered by the Holy Spirit to build up the people to God


215 Best translation of the bible: “The one that says to love your enemies.” …”we don’t fail because we can’t defend our view of the millennium, we fail because we want some things more than we want a friendship with God.”


216 Pray Psalm 119: 18

Pray for God to open your eyes.

“Open my eyes so that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.”

AsK God to dazzle me with his beauty (Psalm 27:4)

Ask the Father to grant me a work of the Holy Spirit to love his Son like he loves his Son.

Ask God to grant me grace to one of his friends

Ask God to let me be one of his best friends

The goal is is to enjoy God, not endure Him.


217 Before he preaches any command, he gives them a person to enjoy.


222 Christians are to focus on three things:

Prayer

Love

Spiritual gifts


227 Leaders in the church today are burning out because they are crushed by the bulk of the ministry of the church, a ministry that the church members are supposed to be doing.

2024 Reading List

Looking for book ideas?  Check out our 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014  reading lists!

The Extraordinary Mountain Creatures of North America.  My 12 year old daughter Betty's first (self) published novel.  

Brazil: A Biography (Audible).  Just finished listening to this 28 hour history of the country. I can't imagine living or working in Brazil and not having read this comprehensive history that dates back to Brazil's "discovery" in the 1500s.  I plan to read the book itself over the next few months and take copious notes! Essential Brasil read.

The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections.  This book is a collection of essays by reporter Eliane Brum.  In it she sheds light on different facets of Brasilian society normally buried in darkness: Os povos indígenas, minorias sociais, os povos que vivem à margem da sociedade, longe dos núcleos de poder.  Essential Brasil read.

Why I am Still Surprised by the Power of the Spirit: Discovering How God Speaks and Heals Today.  Great read--my full review is here. 

Beartown. Recommended to me as "Friday Night Lights" except with hockey.  That's a pretty fair description for this fast-paced read.  Set in the backwoods of a dying hockey town in Sweden--it's got sports, betrayal, and possibly murder--sports noir at its finest.  And it's a trilogy!

Clandestine in Chile.  Don't recommend.  I really looked forward to reading this novel since I've always loved the magical realism of author Gabriel Garcia Marquez.  To be clear, Marquez has some beautiful writing but this journalistic retelling of filmmaker Littins secret mission to film inside Chile and expose the brutality and horror of life under Pinochet reads less like a spy novel and more like an ambling fait accompli/much ado about nearly nothing.  

Brazillionaires (Audible).  Incredible Michael Lewis-style tale of the rise of the 21st century rise (and fall for some) of a billionaire class in Brazil told against the backdrop of corruption, favelas, soccer stadiums, kidnappings and Miami real estate. This book offers keen insight into the Brazilian psyche and society writ large.  Essential Brasil read.

Greenlights (Audible).  Don't read this, I repeat, don't read this.  LISTEN TO IT! The audible version is narrated by author Matthew McConaughey and he's phenomenal: vulnerable, funny, self-deprecating, raw, and at times outrageous!  The book is partly autobiographical and partly self-help as he shares his struggles, failures, triumphs and lessons for the reader. 

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Seen (Audible). A phenomenal and important read.  I listened to it on Audible and about 1/3 of the way through I found it so incredible that I ordered a physical copy so I could reread it make extensive notes.  Author David Brooks offers a framework by which one could be not a better leader but a more caring and empathetic friend and person in general.  I particularly enjoyed some of the questions he uses to better understand where people come from.  One example: In your family what was one thing you could never do?

How to Stop Time (Libby).  By the author of Midnight Library (my review here).  Author Matt Haig is a gifted storyteller and I loved his tale of this secret society of quasi-immortals who through a genetic anomaly age only 1 year for every 14 years on earth.  It contains all the best elements of historical fiction as the main character's life span centuries, as well as love and loss, and humor.  But what it as good as Midnight Libary?  Not quite.  Toward the novel's end if fizzles a bit, almost as if the author had grown weary--along with the main character--of living and loving across centuries.  

Dancing with the Devil in the City of God: Rio de Janeiro and the Olympic Dream (Brazil book).  Prodigal daughter/Journalist Julianna Barbassa returns to her home city after a childhood spent largely abroad.  Part memoir, part expose, part investigative journalism that covers the national and city politician's ill considered efforts to prepare the city and populace to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics. Her thorough reporting brings the reader behind the fabric of Brazilian government and societal machinations, triumphs, and dysfunction. Essential Brasil read.

A Promised Land (Libby).  It's riveting. This 700 page (29 hours!) memoir was recommended by a high school classmate of mine in his bi-monthly book newsletter: Mountain Prairie.  Here's a quote from his writeup: 

What I look for in a memoir: Fun-to-read writing; laugh-out-loud humor; deep dives into the “why” of pivotal decisions; a detailed understanding of the people/places/experiences/cultures that shaped the author’s worldview; enlightening historical context; the author’s most brutal challenges and how they were overcome; opportunities to evolve my thinking on a few topics; humility; passion; purpose; commitment; optimism; self-doubt; extreme hard work; and crazy behind-the-scenes stories. What I don’t look for in a memoir: To have my preexisting opinions confirmed; to agree in lockstep with the author’s ideas/choices/worldview; surface-level boringness; or prose obviously written by a team of insufferable PR suits. Conclusion: This book met and/or exceeded all of my criteria and now sits alongside Acid for the Children and Shoe Dog as an all-time favorite memoir.

This memoir delivers--engrossing and full of insights into what a president goes through on a daily basis--from thought process, to congressional politics to family dynamics.  No matter your politics you'll enjoy this humble and thoughtful retrospective.  It ends right after they kill Osama so I cant wait for the next book!

The Invisibles (Brazil book).  Came across this book on a colleague's bookshelf and he kindly let me borrow it.  I liked it so much that I ordered a copy of my own!  A British woman and a Brazilian man fall in love in the 70's and have a child.  Unfortunately, he falls on hard times and ends up jailed under the military dictatorship.  His wife and child flee to England and never return believing him dead...until some 30 years later when a news clip give his son hope his father might still be alive in Rio.  Thus begins a journey for one man's father but also his long lost country--all against the backdrop of a class/tranche of society that often feels invisible--hence the name.   Brasil read.

Demon Copperhead (Libby).  My friend who pastors at Doxology Church in Arlington (amazing place by the way) mentioned this book during a sermon in which he was talking about timeless stories.  He discussed this novel in the context of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield as a story that tells a story and a struggle that transcends time periods and locales.  This Pullitzer prize winning tale is a HARD read that lays bare the realities of the foster system, rural America, the opiod crisit and growing up as a teen today.  The narrated version is INCREDIBLE to listen to--HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

A City in Ruins (Libby).  This is the third in the Danny Ryan trilogy by crime writer Don Winslow.  Racing narrative--great beach read/listen.

Because of Winter. Amazing debut novel by author Nikki Brochetti.  

Kruse's Keys: Read (don't listen) to "Uncertain Ground" to Better Understand What it Means to be an American Citizen

Need book recommendations? Check out all 301 (and counting) books that I've read at Dad's Bookshelf.

I regret ever listening to Phil Klay’s 2022 collection of essays Uncertain Ground: Citizenship in an Age of Endless, Invisible War—I should have read it instead. As I listened to his 20 essays (divided into 4 sections: Soldiers, Citizen, Writing, and Faith) driving back and forth from the Licola suburbs to the U.S. Naval Base at Capodichino, I muttered countless complaints that there’s no way to take notes or make highlights in the Libby or Audible app! If I’d had a paperback version its margins would be scribbled with notes, quotes, and highlights…and this review would be a much stronger one.

For the uninitiated, Phil Klay is part of a slim company of writers (e.g., Ben Fountain, Atticus Lish, Roxana Robinson, Nate Fick, Andrew Exum, Gavin Kovite, Christopher Robinson, Elliot Ackerman) who grapple with America’s invisible conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and places most Americans don’t even realize we’re fighting. When I read his two earlier novels, Redeployment and Missionaries, I remember thinking every American needs to read these books. My hope being that his stories might wear away the calluses of an American public largely ignorant of the military service members’ sacrifices and scars. I observed that reading Redeployment could serve as a cathartic communion of sorts for the reader, a chance for those who haven't served to break bread with those who have sacrificed so much.

As I read Uncertain Ground, however, I continuously thought every service member needs to read this book. Klay’s essays focus on yes, what it means to serve, but more so what it means to be an American citizen. Quick note: It's to Klay’s credit that the author makes it quite clear that he never saw combat as a Marine Corps public affairs officer—he must have mentioned this fact some twenty times in the book. Countless other service members obfuscate their historical service leaving the public to guess or infer the nature of it. Klay’s clarity lends credibility to his writing as he is at times a marine once removed, an outsider listening and digesting all of his fellow marines’ combat trauma to shake the military reader awake to her responsibilities to be an active citizen engaged in the political process. One point he made that struck me, in particular, was the way he highlighted the knee-jerk military reaction that devalues anyone’s opinion on war who hasn’t served. I’m guilty of this. Klay makes a strong argument that the constitutional call for every American is to grapple with and hold our legislative and executive branches accountable for the lives of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

This is a book that I’ll order a paper copy of—I’d like the chance to read it again and mark it up, and discuss it with colleagues. He shares so many phenomenal insights (e.g., his approach to writing, his Catholic faith), that I want to be sure to capture them to refer to in future writing and conversations.

My 2015 review of Redeployment is here.

My 2021 review of Missionaries is here.

Kruse's Keys: Don't Read "The Passenger"--You'll Thank Me For Saving You the Time

If you loved McCarthy’s writing in All the Pretty Horses, well, you won’t encounter it here.  This is less a novel and more of a scientific, philosophical thought experiment put to paper.  Buoyed by only the scarcest of plotlines we follow the wonderings of main character Bobby Western, an increasingly paranoid salvage diver plagued by a familial guilt over his father’s central role in the creation of the atom bomb.  The Bobby chapters are interspersed with italicized encounters between Bobby’s sister and an hallucinatory array of mishapen, circus-like characters.  Unfortunately, the conversations are so non-sensical that I skimmed through them after their third appearance. In Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing he advises writers to “try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.”  McCarthy fails to heed any such advice and stocks this novel full of skippable pages.

To top it all off, there’s a weird quasi-incestual relationship implied between Bobby Western and his decade younger sister.  From what I could tell, it doesn’t represent anything–it’s not a metaphor for some lofty idea–it’s just weird and sick and makes me question McCarthy all together.  

Of course, I’m just a clanging cymbal since the novel continues to receive accolades from most critics.  Reader beware.

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

Key Quotes: 

69  I knew that freedom was just lke it says in speeches. It's worth whaetever you have to pay to get it.

93  Tugs don't break up.  Tugs are forever.

137  Coming upon a certain book in the library and clutching it to you.  Carrying it home.  Some perfect place to to read it.  Under a tree perhaps...And of course it's true that any number of these books were penned in lieu of burning down the world--which was the author's true desire.  

141  What a man seeks is beauty, plain and simple.  No other way to put it.  The rustle of her clothes, her scent.  The sweep of her hair across his naked stomach.  

143  Having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood. 

180  Beauty makes promises that beauty can't keep.

The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America From 1890 to Present (notes and quotes)

 Note: My poem review of the book is posted here.

It’s hubris to believe that the American history we learned in high school and college is sufficient.  As foreign area officers, it’s imperative that we be experts in our own nation’s history and be humble enough to acknowledge its shortcomings. The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee’s central thesis is that American Indian history did not end in 1890 (the massacre’s date) but instead was a low point from which modern Indian life emerged.  In its title, the author takes issue with Bury My Heart’s fatalism for the American Indian’s future–he argues that the massacre was NOT a signpost pointing back to an Indian past and forward to an American future.  This is the history of modern American Indian that you never knew.  

“Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought.  They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it.  Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool  or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight.  Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers.  As farmers and soldiers in the Great War.  But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home?  What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival?  What to do with that patrimony.” 

• Strength in this book is his liberal peppering of anecdotes

• Federal government went around Indian leaders who wouldn’t sign treaties and made up other leaders who would sign. 

• Successive wars of under and overreach illustrate a lack of relationships and that Indians were treated as a monolithic people.  

Looking for book ideas? Check out our 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 and 2014 reading lists!

10 Wounded Knee massacre used as convenient signpost of an Indian past and American Future (i.e., no

Indian future)

11 Authors takes exception to bury my heart at wounded knee’s narrative of the fatalism of 

the American indian’s future of hopelessness and squalor on the reservations

15 Thesis: the last 128 years of Indian history.  1890 (Wounded Knee Massacre date) was 

A low point–but it was a point from which the modern Indian life emerged–often and 

mainly  painfully.  

31 3 constants of 1st contact: spread of disease, attempts at slavery, and the spread of 

Information.  Disease, slavery, starvation and disruption.  

32 2 moments in American Southeast standout: Removal and Seminole Wars

35 the real motive: Birth and growth of U.S. wasn’t driven by superior technology, or 

overwhelming numbers but rather “the chief cause was the colonialist setter-state’s willingness to eliminate whole civilizations of people in order to possess their land.” 

58 Spanish modus operandi: slavery, subjugation, and extermination

62-3 unique southwest: that absorbed every wave of immigation (Spanish, Mexican, and 

American) that shaped “the culture and fabric of the place, so much so that to be in the SW is to feel the continued lived presence of Native America.”

64 CA densely populated: before settlers first arrived more Indians lived in CA than the rest 

of U.S.--500 distinct tribes, 100 different languages–more densely settled than Europe.  Had been that way for 17,000 years.  

80 bison annihilation: pre 1800: 60 million Bison.  By 1900: only 541 left!

82 comanche most feared  and horse: by 1800, 2 million wild horses.  Comanche had at 

least 100K in their care–super skilled at breaking wild horses.  Universally feared by Mexicans, spanish and americans.  

84 Osage exceptionalism: sold land in Kansas and bought their own reservation land in 

Oklahoma to include mineral and underground rights.  Fierce negotiators.

94 How the west was won: by blood, brutality, and terror.

105 Oneida role in american revolution and U.S. betrayal: During washington’s winter at 

Valley Forge, the tribe brought them supplies and showed troops how to prepare Indian corn.  Congress rewarded them with a treaty guaranteeing their lands forever.  30 years later, it was already vanished. 

114 post 1871 Assimiliation policy even worse than treaty breaking and warfare that 

preceded it. 

146 1887 Dawes Act passed without consent of Indian tribes.  In retrospect it sold Indian land  

under the guise of allotting the land, and used that money to create boarding schools that stole indian children.  

149 only indian VP: Charles Curtis from Kansas (Herbert Hoover’s VP from 1929-1933).  He 

also passed the Curtis act which he later regretted: brought allotment to Oklahoma but 

did it differently where they had autonomy living in settlements with ability to levy taxes and hold state level public office

168 singular/unique resistance of Ponemah: even to today it remains absolutely pagan with 

no christian churches there.  This doesn’t appear to be accurate–there’s been a Wah-bun chapel there for 30 years! https://centerforindianministries.org/ministry-outreach/ 

172 4 decades post Wounded Knee: a siege against Indian way of life and life

188 Wounded Knee Medal of Honor Recipients (20! For killing women and children)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/23/us/politics/tribes-medal-honor-wounded-knee.html 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/11/27/soldiers-got-medals-honor-massacr

ing-native-americans-this-bill-would-take-them-away/ 

Disgusting response: https://homeofheroes.com/remove-the-stain-act/ 

197 Joseph Oklahombi: Most decorated Indian hero of WWI. https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=OK091  One of the original code talkers but also received Silver Star and France’s Croix de Guerre for his valiant action at St. Etienne where he reportedly killed 79 German soldiers.  The most daring, though, was Pvt. Joseph Oklahombi, a Choctaw. At Saint-Étienne, Oklahombi was among a group that rushed across 200 yards of open ground. Together they commandeered a German machine gun and turned it on the enemy, killing 79 Germans and taking 171 prisoners. They held them for four days before reinforcements arrived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/magazine/ojibwe-big-drum.html 

200 1924 all remaining 300K Indians became American citizen but still retained the treaty abrogated aspects of tribal sovereignty–a unique positions.(they weren’t included in the 1868  14th Amendment 

202 “Lost in all accounts of the years between 1918 and 1956 is the knowledge that the only reason there were any Indians left all was that they had fought.  They had fought against the government, and they had fought with it.  Deprived of every conceivable advantage or tool  or clear-heated advocate, they had continued to fight.  Nor just in the ways [Dr. Joseph Kossuth] Dixon and people like him imagined, as warriors astride horse roaming free across the Plains, but rather as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. As writers and thinkers.  As farmers and soldiers in the Great War.  But what to do when the actual fighting stops and pressures bear down back home?  What to do when you can’t find the fight beyond the one for daily survival?  What to do with that patrimony.” 

217 Acoma story illustrates Indian’s fight to remain Indian and  “American on our terms”

231 On the disease of powerlessness that so many Indians fight “That disease is more potent than most people imagine: that feeling that we’ve lost, that we’ve always lost, that we’ve already lost–our land, our cultures, our communities, ourselves.  But it’s one we’ve managed to beat again and again–in our insistence on our own existence and our successful struggles to exist in our homelands on our own terms.”

244 New deal effects were positive for the Indians in step with rest of the country

246 Post WW2 great migration which brought turkey vulture to the rest of the US as they followed the new interstate system

252 Tribes in the early 20th century began to determine how to navigate and bring suit against the state and federal governments for broken treaties and lost lands but the Ho Chunk case was illustrative of its efficacy–the Court of Claims dismissed their case not because it lacked merit but because the land they lost was too great to place a value to determine a difference from their current reservation!

255 “Indian problem” was always a “federal government problem” 

263 On reservations as both a positive and negative place.  Positive in their function as a home base to promote a sense of community for Indian peoples–however, in the 40s and 50s the fed gov sought instead to terminate–beginning with Menominee of Wisconsin.

277-8 reality of termination: by 1960’s “clearly a catastrophe” with unemployment through the roof and half of Indians living in urban areas by 1970–a huge shift.  Most horrible: 1.37M acres taken out of trust status and 12K Indians losing tribal affiliations.  Later Nixon would say “this policy of forced termination is wrong…”

279 Positives of relocation: mixing of tribes inside cities removes intertribal “bigotry” and helped them to find the common ground they previously ignored.  Intertribe networks strengthened

287 Positives of termination: due to the mixing with other tribes when some returned to reservations, they started to understand themselves as Indians and not just their specific tribe. Previous to 1950, most would never use the term “Indian” to describe themselves

306 In 1972, the American Indian Movement (AIM) tookover the Bureau of Indian Affairs building in DC.  WHile it was highly publicized, it achieved little  but AIM for all its faults was showing that being an Indian was something for to be proud of.

339 “Let me tell you what separates man from beast.  Here it is: salt.”  Indian survivalist Bobby on salt’s necessity when trying to survive, otherwise everything tastes awful.  

364 Many Indians refer to B.C. = Before casinos (i.e., tribal gaming) because it had as profound an effect on Indian life as did the mass migration of Indians to the cities

378 Indian kind of living: “It’s not an American kind of work, but it is an Indian kind: a patchwork of opportunities that are exploited aggressively and together add up to a living.” 

380 On blood quantum: “has always been about ‘the stuff,’ and it has always been about exclusion.” The stuff being offices, annuities, casino profits etc.

401 Language, culture, and religion.  On language: “when a community is whole, language grows out of the web of relationships that make that community; it is a by-product of intergenerational togetherness.”  But many of the these communities lacked the wholeness, generational abuse fracturing them.  “Language has a special role as a carrier of culture.” Some Indian religions could not be separated from their language and couldn’t be practiced in English.  So without a language, there could be no soul, no ceremonies.

405 what we learn from Indians: author posits that the central questions posed and pondered by America’s founding fathers can be found in examining the country’s Indian communities which have always grappled with federal government overreach, individual rights vs. societal ones, how to grow and preserve the middle class etc.  

412 1992 Turning point.  By this point Indians had grown strong enough to resist–physically, politically, and academically.  Indians were harnessing technology, Western education, and wage labor and using them.  “Indians don’t waste what we kill: we use all the parts of the computer.”  p. 417 this was also an inward turn away from the USG and instead occupying “cultural, social, and political space” to 

415 Food–a history/culture.  Sean is an Oglala Lakota (the Sioux Chef)  who is a chef who is making”archival food” –that’s traced and mastered to its roots in Minneapolis through a non-profit that includes restaurants https://sioux-chef.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Eater-Vox-Sioux-Chef-Video-Short.mp4

416 “the story of “the Indian”--has been a story of loss: loss of land, loss of culture, loss of a way of life.  Yes, Indians remain…but inwardly we wonder: How much of our culture remains? “ Sean’s food answer that there is much that remains and only needs to be reached out and grabbed

450 Living and adapt as a central tenet of Indian identity (e.g., Black Elk’s latter years converting to Catholicism etc.

451 Point of the book: “Indians lived on, as more than ghosts, as more than the relics of a once happy people.  We lived on increasingly invested in and changed by–and in turn doing our best to change–the American character.”  Takes issue with Dee Brown’s book that he contends its telling robs the 150 victims of their humanity..they are a tragedy but not a person with dreams and lives…”the victims of Wounded Knee died twice–once at the end of a gun, and again at the end of a pen.”