I read 22 books of biography, autobiography or memoir in 2021. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot was probably the best of the lot, although The Hiding Place is a timeless classic worth reading over and over again.

• The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (re-read) If I had a book I read every year, this one would probably be worth the re-reading. I was inspired once again to live for Christ where I am in the situations and with the people where God has placed me.
• When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story. Singer, song writer, and worship leader, Laura Story writes about her husband Martin and his struggle with a brain tumor, but also about her life as the wife of a man with short term memory loss and other issues as a result of the brain tumor. We did a study of this book at church, and it was excellent and encouraging, even though it’s about “Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can’t Live Without.”
• Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn. Fantastic, not hagiographic at all, but also not a tearing down of a woman I greatly admire. Reading this story of the first half (approximately) of Elisabeth Elliot’s life made me anxious to read promised sequel as well as wanting to re-read Ms. Elliot’s books, especially her one novel, No Graven Image. Or I might want to read some of her books that I haven’t read before.
• Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Long, but worth the time and effort. I learned more about Chambers and Alger Hiss and the Communist Party and spying in the 1920’s in the the U.S. than I ever dreamed of asking.
• Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. Good stuff about Laura Ingalls Wilder, made me even more anti-Rose Wilder.
• The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh by Candace Fleming. Excellent biography of a flawed man.
• The Best Cook in the World: Tales From My Momma’s Table by Rick Bragg. Humor, with recipes.
• To Live Is Christ by Beth Moore. A biography of Paul, the apostle, as well as notes on the book of Acts. Ms. Moore write good, well-researched, accessible Bible commentary.
• The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin. I guess (???) it’s autobiographical, somewhat fictionalized, told from a child’s point of view, about the author’s childhood and family growing up in Soviet Russia. I’m not sure how much is fact and how much is fiction. I did like it, but Yelchin is an odd writer for me. Maybe there’s a culture gap? I’m not always sure when he’s joking and when he’s serious.
• Autobiography by Fanny J. Crosby. Not the best writing I’ve ever read, but some of the best, time-tested, Christ-infused ideas.

“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives . . . and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”

~Nate Saint in Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

“[Communist faith] is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.”

~Witness by Whittaker Chambers

“At that end, all men simply pray, and prayer takes as many forms as there are men. Without exception, we pray. We pray because there is nothing else to do, and because that is where God is—where there is nothing else.”

~Witness by Whittaker Chambers

“The mind appears to me like a great storehouse into which we place various articles for safekeeping and sometimes even forget that they are there, but sooner or later we find them; and so I lay aside my intellectual wares for some future day or need; and in the meantime often forget them, until the call comes for a hymn.”

Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography

“Kindness in this world will do much to help others, not only to come into the light, but to grow in grace day by day. There are many timid souls whom we jostle morning and evening as we pass them by, but if only the kind word were spoken they might become fully persuaded.”

Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil.”

~Anne Lindbergh, quoted in The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh

“Am I going to let my circumstances determine my view of God, or am I going to let God determine how I view my circumstances?

~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story

“Look at the Psalms. David wrote many of them when he was broken; and in them he poured out some painful and intimate questions. Sometimes David got answers. Sometimes he got silence. But even when David’s questions weren’t answered, his faith in God was stronger than his need to know.”

~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. It is easier to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence, than to wait patiently.”

~Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn

I love making reading plans. I like lists of books, books in categories, reading challenges, lots of reading plans. And I do follow through to some extent. However, I always get more ideas for books to read, both inside and outside the plans’ parameters, than I have time to read them all. So, my success a reading lots of books is good, but my success at reading strictly what I planned to read is bad.

Nevertheless, I have lots of reading plans for 2022. First of all my Facebook (private) page, Cultivating Beauty and Truth, which boasts 64 members, did a fall feast Charlotte Mason-style study including literature, poetry, art, music, hymns, Bible study, and psalms, and it was well received. So, I am planning a “Spring Picnic” of the same kind of study, and if you would like to join the group on Facebook, you can request to do so with this link.

For Cultivating Beauty and Truth, we will be reading The Hobbit, studying Romans and the first eighteen chapters of Exodus, looking at the art of Vincent van Gogh, reading poetry by Longfellow and Poe, and more, beginning in late January and lasting over the course of twelve weeks. I’ll try to remember to post the schedule here on Semicolon for those of you who are not on Facebook and who would like to join in. But most of the discussion will take place on Facebook or in person here in southeast Houston.

I also have a reading challenge for every one at Cultivating Beauty and Truth: 12 books for 2022. I’m challenging those who want to participate to read at least 12 books in 2022, in the following categories:

• Read a book of the Bible, any book, as long as Genesis or as short as III John. I’m looking at either Exodus or Romans for our Spring Picnic, or maybe parts of both. Read it slowly and carefully and prayerfully, and it might be the best book you read in 2022.
• Read one book that encourages you to pray. There are many books about prayer, but not all of them actually get a person praying. Suggestions anyone?
• Read one book that makes you laugh. I think we all need to laugh.
• Read one biography of an inspiring person. If you need suggestions, I can certainly give you some.
• Read one book meant for children: a picture book, a fiction book for older children, or even a Young Adult novel, or a nonfiction book for children. There are so many good children’s books, both classics and recently published.
• Read one book of poetry. Read it slowly, one poem a day or read it all in one day. I’ll be posting, and soliciting, suggestions for this category. We need more poetry in our lives.
• Read one book about art or music. Read about an artist (our Spring Picnic artist is probably going to be Van Gogh) or a musician, or read about how music works or how to draw or how to look at paintings or whatever fits into this category.
• Read one book about the Bible or commentary on a portion of the BIble or Bible study book. 
• Read one book that challenges your thinking, one well written book that has ideas that you disagree with or think you disagree with. Try to understand the opposing point of view thoroughly before you discount it.
• Read one classic book, fiction or nonfiction, that was published over 100 years ago. Get out of the rut chronological snobbery, and listen carefully to what someone from another time period had to say.
• Read one book that your spouse or friend wants you to read.
• Read one Christmas book.

If you’re interested in joining my reading challenge, you can sign up here or at the Cultivating Facebook page.

I’m also participating in the Literary Life (podcast) Reading Challenge: Two for 2022. I’ve already started reading Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth for my “book about an Inkling” category in this challenge. It’s a bit dry starting out, but I have learned some things about Tolkien that I didn’t know or had forgotten. For instance, I had forgotten that Tolkien was orphaned at the age of twelve when his mother died after having lost his father when Tolkien was very young, three or four years old.

One more reading challenge that I’m taking is the Spread the Feast Challenge from my new friend Crystin Morris at Delightfully Feasting who also does seminars on Charlotte Mason homeschooling and philosophy and has lots of online and print resources for CM educators. I plan to begin reading The Children’s Own Longfellow for my poetry book for this challenge, and it will fit into the Cultivating challenge and the Literary Life challenge, too.

I also have a Big Plan to do a century of reading, one book published in each year from 1851-1950. This will necessitate reading a couple of books a week on the list I’ve made, if I’m going to finish reading all 100 books by the end of 2022. So, for January, I have the following lined up:

• 1851: The King of the Golden River by John Ruskin.
• 1852: The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
• 1853: Ruth by Mrs. Gaskell.
• 1854: Hard Times by Charles Dickens.
• 1855: The Warden by Anthony Trollope.
• 1856:
• 1857:
• 1858: The Courtship of Miles Standish by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
• 1859: Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy.
• 1860: The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

As you can see, I don’t have anything for 1856 or 1857. It had better be something short for both of those years since the other books are mostly rather long and dense. If you have suggestions for something good and short, published in ether 1856 or 1857, please comment.

If you think I’m crazy to make all of these reading plans, in addition to my regular impulse reading, you’re right. But crazy is fun. What are your crazy reading plans? Happy reading to all in 2022!

• The Ark by Margot Benary-Isbert. Set in post WW2 Germany and published first in 1954, The Ark tells the story of and the Lechow family and how they began to rebuild their lives two freezing attic rooms in Mrs. Verduz’s house on Parsley Street.
• At the Seven Stars by John L. Beatty.
• A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus (published in 2021).
• The Alley by Eleanor Estes.
• Cartwheeling in Thunderstorms by Katherine Rundell. This British author was recommended to me when I was in Ireland a couple of years ago, and this book , set partly in Zimbabwe and partly in England, is about a girl who grows up wild and free on a farm with very few rules and very little “civilization”. However, about one third of the way through the book Wilhelmina’s life changes drastically when she is sent to boarding school in England.
• 365 Days to Alaska by Cathy Carr (published in 2021)
• Across the Pond by Joy McCullough (published in 2021)
• The Elephant in the Room by Holly Goldberg Sloan (published in 2021). Sila’s mom has been in Turkey trying to resolve her immigration issues for a whole year, and although Sila’s dad is great, both Sila and her dad miss her mom a lot. Sila makes a couple of new friends, an old man named Gio who lives in an old house with high walls around it and a boy named Mateo, who is autistic and very interesting. Then the new friendships and the advent of an elephant named Veda help Sila to deal with the absence of her mom.
• The Clay Marble by Minfong Ho. “Fleeing war-torn Cambodia in 1980, Dara, her mother, and her older brother find sanctuary in a refugee settlement on the Thailand border, but when fighting erupts, Dara finds herself separated from everyone and everything she loves.”
• The Swallow’s Flight by Hilary McKay. Another World War II book, the story takes place in several different threads with characters, both German and British, who all come together in the final chapters of the book. The characters, two German boys, two British girls, and their families, are all well drawn, quirky, and full of life.

I read a total of 48 middle grade fiction books this year. 35 of those were middle grade realistic fiction. 13 were fantasy or science fiction.