Books We’re Hoping to Read This Year (2025)
I hope your year is off to a great start, as ours is. For this one my fiancée sat down with me for a quick, fun conversation, nothing academic, about what we're hoping to read this year. We'd love to hear what you're reading too!
Davis
- Church history. I haven't done much with church history, so I'm starting Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church. I began volume one in December, so I have a head start, and I'm hoping to make my way through all seven volumes this year.
- John Witherspoon, again. I read him back in 2021, and I got too excited and started rereading in December, picking up in volume two where his sermons on sin and the gospel begin. He's one of my favorites.
- Beeke's Reformed Systematic Theology. My fiancée gave it to me. I'd stopped at the existence and attributes of God, since I'd just spent a year and a half studying Charnock on that very subject. If I finish Schaff before the end of the year, which isn't entirely likely, I'll pick back up with Beeke.
- Beeke and Jones's A Puritan Theology. A systematic theology built on quotations and citations from Puritan writings, a very cool concept. If there's time left in the year, that's where I'm headed.
- Books to review. Behind me is a stack I'm hoping to review, most of which I haven't read yet: books on revival (I'm hoping to do a series on revival), Erroll Hulse's The Doctrine and Practice of Holiness, and a few Bonhoeffer books, maybe for a mini-series. I haven't read any Bonhoeffer yet. (My fiancée loves Bonhoeffer.)
- Spurgeon's Majesty in Misery. I think I've read the first volume, but not all three. Hopefully I'll review it around Easter, which seems like the proper time.
My fiancée
- Missionary biographies she picked up at Banner of Truth last spring: John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, an autobiography she started over the summer but didn't finish with all the traveling, and a memoir of Alexander Moody Stuart.
- William Jay's Domestic Duties Considered. It was on her list, but since she was borrowing it from my library she had to finish it, so it's already checked off!
- Berkhof's Systematic Theology. She's been meaning to read it for a year and a half, and says it feels deceptive not to, since it's partly what our relationship is built on. (Story for another time.) It took me six months of daily reading. It's just chunky!
- C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, again. She got her own copy for Christmas and it's been a few years. (I need to read those. They're on my 2030 list.)
- Machen's Christianity and Liberalism. She hadn't heard of it until I recommended it, and picked up a copy over the summer.
- Tolkien's The Silmarillion. She's begun it too many times to admit (she's a bit of a Tolkien nerd), but we don't own a copy, and it's too long to get through from the library unless you devote three weeks to it.
There isn't enough time in the year to read everything on the list, but those are our hopes. And of course, these are books outside the Bible. We should be reading the Bible all the time. What are you reading this year?
Soli Deo Gloria!
