Bookstack: The First Quarter of 2025

From fiction to productivity to Christian living and memoir, there's a little bit of everything for you.

It’s been a while since I posted a bookstack, so here is a little sampling from the widely eclectic tastes of a midlifer. I read in broad genres, sometimes because I want to understand someone who is different from me. Other times, it’s for pure entertainment.

I’ll add a few thoughts on each book, and I’d love to know if you’ve read any of these books. Let me know your thoughts in the comments!

Kathrynn Springer is a delightful storyteller, and I loved that Christmas at Spruce Hill Farm was set in my home state of Wisconsin. It was just the sweet read I was looking for on a relaxing winter afternoon. I could totally see it made into a Hallmark movie.

I’m always a sucker for books on productivity, and when I posted about intutive productivity, someone recommended this book. Slow Productivity sounded like it fit with my focus on letting my plans unfold gently, without rigid goals.

Overall, I found some things to like about it. But I also didn’t find that it has a universal fit for many readers. The author gives a lot of examples from scientists, writers, and artists on how they accomplished what they did, but many of the other examples were from business ventures. It has more anecdotes than practical steps, which probably aligns more with my intutive leaning. However, it had more to do with boundaries than productivity.

The main focus is on meaningful work at a natural pace, where distractions are mininimal or intentional. But it’s tailored toward knowledge workers who have the freedom to set their own schedule or pace, not for worker bees who have been given tasks by an employer.

This is my favorite of all of my recent reads! I’ve long struggled with the term “prodigal” and how it’s used in Christian circles. It’s been used as a label for wayward children, and I appreciate that Tim Keller makes it clear that this is not the meaning of the word. “Recklessly spendthrift” is the true meaning.

I highlighted SO MUCH in The Prodical God. Keller shows how the story is really one of two sons, not one, and their father. Jesus’s parable begins in Luke 15, where tax collectors and sinners were gathered with Pharisees and teachers of religious law to hear Jesus speak. The latter was complained about Jesus affiliating with the sinners. The parable begins with “a man had two sons,” which is a parallel between these two groups of people.

Keller spends the book showing the contrast between the two sons and how the father reacted. The elder son was indignant about how the father loved the wayward son when he returned home. When framed in the full context of the setting, this changes everything about the story!

This is a short read, and solidly addresses pride about good deeds, self-righteousness, and what happens when we base the gospel on achievements or performance. Inner heart motivation is everything.

I picked up Rift after hearing Cait West in For Our Daughters film. The author’s story is sadly all too common, and the fundamentalist background she was raised in is notorious for not only patriarchy and abuse but also “worm theology” of Calvin and other Reformers. My heart breaks when I read books like this, and I’m not sure I can take another book in this genre for a while.

I’ve read all sorts of deconstruction and church abuse stories lately, and it has a tendency to make me voyeristic and not someone who takes action to make change because I don’t know what to do! This book is truly a memoir and not a Christian living book. The author shares a lot of perosnal story, and sometimes with details that sound more like reading someone’s journal.

It isn’t the author’s job to educate me on how to make change, and yet I long for something that doesn’t end with someone leaving faith altogether or leaving behind any church fellowship while still loving Jesus. There has to be a place for wounded people to love Jesus together and not get wounded even more.

It makes perfect sense why people like Cait West are guarded in Christian circles after escaping this subculture. Flavors of it are everywhere, even if not as extreme. The author is vulnerable with her story, and others who are trying to heal or escape from something similar will find camaraderie in Cait’s story.

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What’s on your bookstack right now? I want to know!