“Mom, what’s a frigate?” Finn asked, laying on Grandma’s living room floor. His language arts binder was opened in front of him.

“There is no frigate like a book!” I quoted. “Have you heard that yet?”

He shook his head.

Kav looked up and raised his eyebrows.

My cousin pondered for a second, and then shook his head, too.

But across the kitchen Chamberlain smirked, because she knew. She spent quite a bit of last year immersed in Emily Dickinson.

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears the Human Soul –

– Emily Dickinson

(Anyone who can express ideas this brilliantly has earned the right to capitalize and punctuate however they choose.)

Out of the 58 frigates I traversed last year, here are my favorites:

Something Fresh/Leave it to Psmith by P.G. Wodehouse

This was the year I got Vince addicted to reading Wodehouse. High five. We each read several of his books last year and these two were by far our favorites; I also managed to get Something Fresh into Gaining Ground’s list of books, which means I read it twice in six months and still loved it. These are the first two in the Blandings series and the plots are pretty similar, but both are such hilarious chaos that you won’t even care.

…he took the entire staircase in one majestic, volplaning sweep. There were eleven stairs in all separating his landing from the landing below, and the only ones he hit were the third and tenth.

— P.G. Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith

That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis

This was also the year I finally read The Space Trilogy, of which That Hideous Strength is the final book. All three were good and opened my eyes in new ways. But this one reads more like a typical novel (not really sci-fi at all, and can be read as a standalone), and I could not put it down.

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.

― C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

To use modern terms that parallel our times, the plot revolves around a normie couple who finds themselves on opposite sides: One is lured by pride and insecurity into the deepest of deep state corruption, and the other stumbles into an eclectic group of (mostly) ordinary faithfuls taking refuge together and watching for their moment to intervene.

I loved almost all of it, didn’t understand quite a bit of it, and was mindblown by the last third of the book which will forever change how I see God. It is not a kids’ book by any means; Vin read the first two (Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra) aloud to our ten-year-old, but this one starts right off with adult themes and continues into violent, disturbing concepts.

She Deserves Better by Sheila Wray Gregoire, et al

Yep, it looks like a liberal feminist book – which no doubt had something to do with our local library’s decision to carry it – but the full title is She Deserves Better: Raising Girls to Resist Toxic Teachings on Sex, Self, and Speaking Up, and it is a Biblically accurate book (with the exception of when concepts like spiritual warfare are discussed, which are not the author’s wheelhouse; when the authors stay in their lane – 99.8% of the time – the information is excellent) that reviews where the Church (including youth groups, conferences, and media aimed at teens and couples) has veered astray, pressing girls/women into ideologies and double standards that the Bible never intended.

Even though I didn’t attend youth group until my senior year of high school, these teachings were familiar to me and we even taught them 20 years ago when we first led younger couples. We have since repented because they don’t reflect what the Bible actually teaches, nor do they bear fruit that Christians can be proud of.

We gave copies of this book to our daughters for Christmas. If I could, I would buy copies for you, too. Resolving these issues and teaching them correctly moves us far upstream to prevent a host of tragedies later on. You can read a related post here by Vince.

“Our job is not to raise obedient daughters who won’t make waves. Our job is to raise daughters who will run after Jesus without worrying if they’re faster or slower than the boys around them.”

– Gregoire et al, She Deserves Better

Keep Your Love On by Danny Silk

This was the second time I read this book, and for the record, I didn’t like it the first time. That was about 12 years ago when I was living in the midst of chaos and depression; I was trying to do everything right with our special needs kids but feeling like I must still be doing everything wrong because nothing seemed to be working. I felt so, so helpless and overwhelmed, and we had a lot of healing that just needed to work out over time. So reading a book about powerful choices in difficult relationships while still feeling so extremely powerless to change our family’s situation was not the best timing, probably.

But! By this time around, I’d learned that feeling powerless and being powerless are two separate things…and also, life is so much easier than it was then. So much healing has come…sometimes it just takes a long time to see it. So what am I saying? If your life is falling apart, this may (or may not) be the best book for you. But it’s worth a shot. The principles in it are solid, and Kingdom culture is lived out through them.

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Do I even have to tell you why this is worth reading? Because it’s Jane Austen, that’s why.

Not good enough? You don’t know what that even means? Fine. Persuasion is a remarkable example of wit and observation on human nature, and a scathing rebuke of hypocrisy and vanity:

Also, it’s shorter than most of Austen’s other novels, so you should try it.

Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton

File this under “books I should’ve read 30 years ago, but somehow missed.”

The first thing I noticed in this one was the odd punctuation. There are no quotation marks for dialogue, and somehow that makes the tone of the book feel so much gentler and quieter, even as the story covers hard things. (The Road is another example of this.)

Cry, the Beloved Country is about a minister in South Africa who needs to find his estranged sister and son in Johannesburg. In that journey, he finds unlikely allies and unlikely opponents. My big takeaway from it: Regardless of our how other people revere us, our strongest, most impactful ministry is to our own family, whether they choose to receive it or not.

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

I think I’ve read this epic five times now, and it still holds up. I’ve written why here. If you start it now, you have a good chance of finishing it by 2027. (grin)

Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause by Jeff Shaara

In spite of being married to a history nerd who owns over a dozen books by this author, I had never read any of them until 2025.

These two are about the Revolutionary War and I liked the first, loved the second, and felt like I finally got an understanding of the main people, events, and strategies of that time in history. They read like fiction, and the examples of leadership and integrity illustrated in this series are lessons we and our children need.

Made In China by Amelia Pang

This is one of a very few books that I think everyone — especially Christians — should read and be aware of.

After working eight hours a day in the quarry, prisoners had to manufacture artificial flowers for six more hours at night. Chen folded adhesive labels to garish lilies, tulips, and poppies. He glued fake stems to polyester and silk flowers. The mustiness of the silk mingled with the strong glue, covering the iron scent of blood.

— Amelia Pang, Made in China

Do you know how all the cheap made-in-China goods are made? Do you know why they’re so “affordable?” It’s because the labor isn’t paid for. Or it is, but only by the slaves — many of whom are Christians and other religious minorities — and the price they pay is often their lives. We have no excuses and we need to stop profiting from slave labor.

I wrote a longer write up on this here (scroll down to “books I loved this month”).

The Awe of God by John Bevere

There’s revival within these pages: personal, corporate, national, global. Such an important message. I talked about it more in this post also, and Vince wrote a longer review here.

A Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt

If you’ve never read a play before, this is a good one to start with. It reads surprisingly fast, is filled with humor, and tells the story of Thomas More, who refused to compromise his principles and capitulate under pressure to Henry VIII when he desperately wanted More’s sanction/blessing/passive approval/thumbs up to divorce Catherine of Aragon (wife #1, whom he was married to for 24 years) so he could marry Anne Boleyn (wife #2, whom he had beheaded after 3 years).

You probably already know that Henry’s love life continued to plunge downhill from there, and he should’ve just listened to Thomas.

Man and Woman, One in Christ by Phillip Payne

Great book with important information that Christians — especially pastors — need to know. Yes, there’s some Greek in here, but we can do hard things, and those who teach the Bible surely ought to take the time to do them. :) The book is a little repetitive in places but even the repetition is helpful because there’s so much information to absorb. (Payne has a simplified version called The Bible Vs. Biblical Womanhood that I’ll be reading this year. If Greek makes you nervous, that might be the book for you.)

Teachers will be held to greater accountability. Those who promote Biblically-illiterate notions that women should be silent in churches and cannot lead or teach need to take the time to learn the original language, context, and culture of Biblical passages before they promote false teachings out of laziness, ignorance, or bias, and oppress half of God’s image bearers in the process.

Some honorable mentions…meaning, I really liked these books too, but not enough to write another paragraph about each one because I’m tired of fighting Bingley for the keyboard:

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge
Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne
Changes That Heal by Henry Cloud

One of the nerdy-fun things we do with our reading is we have this chart on our fridge. I’ve mentioned it before, and we adjust the categories every year. But still, even with all that tweaking and all the books we read this year, a few of last year’s categories didn’t get marked off because the books we were finishing toward the end of the year didn’t quite fit the ones that were left. We’ll keep trying.

By the end of the year, our list looks like this:

And currently, our new list looks like this:

If you’d like to do your own version of this challenge with some friends or your family, here’s a free download of the list we’re using this year. Feel free to copy and adjust it to your own interests.

And! If you’d like to read more classics this year, we’d love for you to join us at Gaining Ground, where we’re currently in the middle of At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald but you are welcome to jump in anytime.

Want to see my previous years’ favorites? Here you go, in reverse order: 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021.

Praying that you journey on so many incredible frigates this year,

Shannon

P.S. Want to get these emails directly to your inbox? Subscribe here. If you want to learn more about our ministry, our about page is here. If you’d like to support our ministry, our give page is here. Thanks!