Books I Read in 2025

kenziedegraaf
3 days ago
11 min read

Photo of books-credit to Emily from Pexels

As the year came to a close, my brain started working hard to create my reading list for the year ahead. Often, I listen to what others I admire have read, to create my next reading list. Suggestions from freinds, podcasters, new books written by favorite authors etc.. A little bit of this and that, and viola, a list! So if you're interested in creating your next reading list too, and want to know what I hope to read this year to give you some ideas, I'm happy to share. This year I did a lot of reading, not as much as I would have liked, maybe, but I still got my hands on a number of books and learned a LOT!

To make things easier to review, I listed these in roughly the order I completed them. So lets jump right in, what did I read and what are they about?

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How to Win a Heart by Chad Johnson

Chad and Jenise Johnson, are parents to 11 children, including Katie Voetberg, who's podcast, Now That We're a Family, with her husband Elijah is one of my favorite. They run a marriage ministry course called, Marriage Maximizer. Jenise and Chad both have been on podcasts with Katie and Elijah and have encouraging content on Biblical Marriage. Chad authored this book, "How to Win a Heart" retelling the story or how he and Jenise met, how he pursed her in dating, and ultimately the events leading up to their marriage. I don't read a lot of fiction, so a real life story was such a fresh and fun change to my normal line up of titles. I read this book starting on New Years Day, I believe, and could barely put it down. The crazy way God crossed their paths, the growing up Chad had to learn to become a husband, were all so lively and fun. Written largely to young men, to encourage them to take the lead in relationships and to trust in God to direct their steps, I still found it a great read!

Glucose Revolution by Jesse Inchauspe

Caution, only read this book if you're open to some intersting ideas about how we eat. I read this book on vacation early spring, and it was another book I flew through and had trouble putting down. This book was truly fascinating learning about how different types of foods work, carbohydrates, proteins, and veggies. The whole concept of the book is that if we change the order of the things we eat, starting with a leafy green (fiber) first, followed by our protein, our starch/carb/sugars last, metabolisms should better digest food and stabilze blood sugar better. She has examples of this helping people lose weight, become healthy, and trying to avoid a genetic predisposition to diabetes. Very helpful tool if bloodsugar is something you are interested in or already monitoring.

*Not meant to be medical advide just my summary of what I read.

5 Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield

One of my favorite authors, Rosaria, knocks it out of the park calling out sin in our culture and how lies and coverups are happening especially behind science and psychology in the LGBTQ+ movement. A former lesbian, who was a huge feminist rights and LGBTQ+ advocate, who later converted to Christianity, now loves Jesus, is a pastor's wife and homeschooling mama, writes about the way the gospel speaks directly to the lies children and adults are believing about their design, their creator, and God's plan for their life. With amazing research and real life examples, including her own, this book is not meant to offend, but to offer God's love and a thoughtful and informed perspective to these hot topics in our culture today, and might be a helpful book for Christians who have loved ones in their life who are identifying LGBTQ+.

Habits for a Sacred Home by Jennifer Pepito

A fun read which I enjoyed starting over our spring vacation. Each chapter goes over a kind of spiritual practice or value, and includes a recipe at the end, along with a prayer, a Bible verse for memory and some quetions to chew on. It was a good book, I may want to read it again, I'm realizing I don't remember a lot of and I think it may be because we got sick on vacation and there were a few stressful moments. But I really like the layout.

Living Slower by Merissa Alink

Merissa shares their story of leaving a cult and finding freedom in Jesus and then how they made some big changes in their life to slow down after the perfectionism pressure of the cult was gone, and as some health issues she was facing forced them to re-examine their lives and the pace they were going. This book didn't present a lot of new info to me, I think our family probably already incorporates many of these concepts, but if slow living and its benefits are new to you, you would probably love his book even more. An adoptive family, who homeschools, and navigates and cares for special needs, her blog may be of interest as well.

The End of Woman by Carrie Gress

The most controversial book I read this year. Knowing little about the feminist movement I picked up this book, a brief history of both first and second wave feminism, and current feminism in the west today and was absolutely not ready for what I learned. Seaped in politics including major communist ideology, back to really broken sad realtionships closely linked with sadism, to pornography addictions and sexual addiction, each wave of feminsm has a dark secret attached to it no one is really talking about, until now.

The message received for me from this book is that the feminist movement is not what I thought- the leaders and proponents have had heartbreaking stories that did not lead to the happy endings they were antcipating, and the broken families, and lonliness that are closely connected to many of them shows. Straying far away from the right to vote, or "freedoms" that we think we have won, feminism seems to have very little to do with those issues, yet the real issues and new challenges that have arisen may be a huge reason for the breakdown we see today in the nuclear family. Don't believe me? Go check out this book for yourself-but be warned it's heavy. (Disclosure there is a very graphic section from a former employee of an abortion clinic that I couldn't read. The author is catholic and there is a strong prolife stance all throughout this book.). This book has sparked an interest in me to dig deeper into the history of feminism and compare and contrast both the good and bad ideaology.

The Connected Child by Karen B. Purvis, David R. Cross, Wendy Lyons Sunshine

This was my one audio book exception. We read this for adoption training for our homestudy and it was really a helpful resource. If you are considering adoption, foster care, or have a child with some emotional trauma in your life, this book was a very approachable way to gain some understanding of how trauma can impact a child and different parenting strategies that can be helpful in very practical ways. Not a faith based book, but I love learning new things and seeing for myself where the gospel touches psychology and science.

Homeschool Bravely by Jamie Erickson

Ever think about homeschooling, but have a million questions, doubts, fears? I have. Even after experiencing years of being homeschooled myself, and making the decision in faith for our own children, there have been days where I have wondered if we're on the right path. But this book was extremely helpful and encouraging to me and God used it to bring further confirmation to our family.

The back of the book is filled with questions to ask mentors, and further resources for study. Jamie unpacks lies we tell ourselves, questions to consider, and guides you to understanding your "why" for choosing homeschooling. She uses personal helpful stories of her own, as an example of many of the concepts and doubts she dealt with herself as a homeschool mom of 5, even as a formerly trained teacher. If you have ever wondered about homeschooling, are considering it, or struggling in the midst of it right now, I think this book is a fantastic guide to asking the right questions, finding biblical wisdom, and encouraging you toward the goals and discerning God's will for you and your child(ren)'s education.

The Bread of Life by Abigail Dodds

If you like baking bread and you love Jesus, you'll love this book. Filled with tons of beauitiful pictures, and wonderful recipe instructions, Abigail shares her love of baking bread and the joy it has brought her as she has learned this skill in feeding her family, along with personal stories of God's work in her life and beautiful devotional content. Abigail was a new author to me, and I was a bit usure how the biblical content would be, but was pleasantly suprised by how solid it was, and learned that not only does she have her Masters in Biblical exegesis (which is how to correctly study and interpret scripture), she also attends John Piper's church, a pastor I highly respect, and known for his solid theology and Bible teaching.

This book is written as an 11 week long study that can be done individually (like I read it) or as a group. I didn't read it as a study, per se, but more like a book, and it was a wonderful read, one I would be open to doing as a study with a group in the future. So excited to try out some recipes from this book, especially the chocolate babka!

The Bible

I did the Bible Recap this year for the third time and loved it. It's a chronological reading plan of the whole Bible, both Old and New Testament that you can find for free on places like the YouVersion Bible app. You can start at any day of the year, but of course January 1 is very popular. Tara Lee Cobble, the founder of the minsitry has a podcast and multiple other optional resources that go along with it, and each day she "recaps" what you just read and adds a little commentary to it to help you understand the passages deeper. You can even listen to the whole passage read on the app if you are more of an audio book person or want to do your whole quiet time in the car or while washing dishes.

The Bible Recap by Tara Lee Cobble

Remember those resources I just mentioned? Well, a few years ago, I listened to the podcast version of the recap, and a small group leader at the time gifted our group the written version of the recap in a beautiful faux leather bond book. As I mentioned in my previous post earlier this year, I wanted to be on my computer less, and using physical books more, so I did that. I read the recap this year. Each day is a two page recap that helps unpack the daily passages a bit more, and I really really enjoyed it. I guess I never personally compared, but I think it reflects the same message in the daily podcast quite well. And a few ladies who listened to the podcast version included me in their group text as we read through this together this year, and it seemed like we were all on the same page, and it was even helpful that I could look back at the writing if someone had a question about something she said.

Not Quite Finished.....

I often am reading multiple books at once (usually about 4) and there are a few books I didn't yet finish in 2025, which I would like to complete in 2026. I have at least 4 that I started but I will share two here that are both a bit unique. Create Anyway, is a quick read and I own this book, I could have made myself finish it by the end of year but didn't feel the pressure to do so. The second book, Hannah's Children, I got about half way through and it was due-well overdue-to the library and people were waiting so, until I either borrow it again or end up buying myself a copy I'll have to wait-but look forward to finishing that one as it had been highly recommended.

Create Anyway by Ashlee Gadd

With the Subtitle being "Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood," this book caught my attention. Ashlee is a "make no excuses, get in there and create mama" encourager. Whatever creative hobbies you had before motherhood, or new ones you might discover, Ashlee uses her real life examples and those of other creative moms to remind you that if you wait for these large chunks of time to create, you might let a lot of time go by without ever getting to actually create. Motherhood, often gives us these little windows of opportunities to create and we should take them. It doesn't need to be grand or lenghty, use what we have. She even inlcudes examples of women who found hobbies after entering motherhood. You don't have to already have a creative or artistic abilitiy, you may find a new one along the way. God can take little moments of faithfully showing up with the desire to create and make something beautiful from it. An easy read filled with great story telling from Ashlee this book might just be the encouragemnt you need to get after it mama.

Hannah's Children by Catherine Pakulak

Harvard graduate with a Doctorate in Economics, and mother to 14, Catherine sets out on a research adventure to find out what drives large families to have lots of children? Her research was volunteer based from families of 5 children or more. From a large family herself, Catherine has always seen children as such a blessing, and even as a new and young grandmother already, she continues to be open to having more children herself. After marrying her widowed husband and loving on his already large family of 6 children, they went on to have another 8 children together. As you can imagine she has had interesting comments made to her in her own motherhood journey, and some of these have sparked deeper questions to pursue as assumptions fly.

Her unique understanding of business and economics really brings a refreshing spin to the conversation. As I have yet to finish the book, I can only reference this podcast interview here, where she shares her overall finding that even though she looked at birth rate incentives other countires have tried, the biggest explanation for the choice to have more children cannot be incentivized. The drive comes from mainly two areas, an internal perspective about children, and often a faith component. Though her partcipants' faith backgrounds varied, the general calling they felt, and attitude they had, about children rang consistent. They saw children as a blessing and often the desire for a large family came from some calling they felt outside themselves, sometimes hard to describe.

Reading List for 2026

My reading list for 2026 is coming soon....there were so many good books I learned about this year and tried to make mental and digital notes not to forget them! But I've been writing them down with my goals for the new year and can't wait to share those soon. When I post them, I'll put the link here, but for now, check back soon!

Happy New Year, and may God bless you richly in 2026.

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