Every January I post the previous year’s reading list. Here is 2020’s list:
- Out of the Ashes — Anthony Esolen
- Be Obsessed or Be Average — Grant Cardone
- Lucifer’s Hammer — Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
- Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari
- Extreme Ownership — Leif Babin and Jocko Willink
- King of Capital — John Morris and David Carey
- The Return of the King — J. R. R. Tolkein
- Your Blue Flame — Jennifer Fulwile
- Father Elijah — Michael D. O’Brien
- Elijah in Jerusalem — Michael D. O’Brien
- Live Not By Lies — Rob Dreher
- Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
- Angels in Iron — Nicholas Prata
I didn’t start out 2020 thinking an apocalyptic novel about a Catholic Carmelite priest who’d converted from Judaism would be my favorite read of the year, but O’Brien’s Father Elijah and Elijah in Jerusalem were the most engrossing of the bunch. Angels in Iron was a fun blend of the warrior ethos (a la Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire) and Catholicism. Esolen’s Out of the Ashes was a great mental follow-up (with practical advice) to the diagnosis of the problem by Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option.
Trying to read 120 good books this decade, so I need to up the level of the books to be a bit more. Having young children means time is at a premium so I want to invest that time into actually good books; one or two of these were fluff.
I’ve never read the Bible cover-to-cover. That and the Catechism of the Catholic Church are both to be done in 2021. Mark it down. Also adding The Brothers Karamazov.
