February and March 2026 Reading

For Reasons, I have lumped together my February and March reading and I’m posting it before March is over because there is no way I’m finishing another book today.  It’s my reading log and I make the rules.  One of which seems to be that I have to keep keeping one even though I no longer have to do it to keep my kid on track with his.  Anyway:  I read or listened to 14 books in the last two months.

Audio first.  I finished out the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander by listening to Taran Wanderer  and The High King.  The former was a much better book than I remembered.  I have a feeling it has to do with where I am in my life more than the book itself.  It’s always a challenge to figure out who we are, which is what that book is about.  The second one is about what happens when it’s time to be an adult, when we can’t rely on our heroes any longer.  It is, of course, also inspiring.

 

Then I listened to Jean Ferris’s Once Upon a Marigold.  It’s a funny and satisfying fairy tale with a runaway, a kind troll, an evil ferret, and more.  Love triumphs.

 

Walter Moers is probably more creative than is allowed.  The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear is hard to describe because it just has so MUCH in it—a carnivorous island, a headless giant, the headless giant’s head as landscape, a genius with multiple brains, a dimension covered in carpets, pterodactyls that perform last minute rescues, and I have hardly got started.  It’s a great ride.  My kids loved it when they were younger and yours might, too.  (I mean, I still love it, so…)

 

Finally, I listened to Dealing with Dragons by Patricia Wrede.  This is perhaps the most feminist revision of fairy tale ever.  Don’t want to marry a prince just because you’re supposed to?  Run away to the dragons!  Hijinks ensue.  And the happy ending is not a marriage.  I am impatiently waiting for the next book to be available at the library.

 

Various reading schedules for different church groups or independent studies had me finishing up a ton of nonfiction around Christian topics.  The big achievement was finishing Diarmaid MacCullough’s Christianity:  The First 3,000 Years.  It is a tome.  Fortunately, MacCullough is often snarky and funny as he describes centuries of Christians behaving badly toward each other and the rest of the world.  On one hand, it’s pretty disheartening to see how much killing has gone on in the name of God, or at least putatively in God’s name.  On the other, I appreciated the continual cycle of renewal as human systems became corrupt and reformers worked to clear the slate and begin again.  I would not say this is light reading, but it was informative and entertaining.

 

Mark Allan Powell’s Introducing the New Testament is a textbook.  It’s informative, of course, but not always the most fun reading.  And, unfortunately, Powell has to spend a chunk of time explaining that the New Testament is a collection of texts that can be read in a variety of ways with a variety of tools.  Even so, I’m sure there are folks out there who think he is a heretic for outlining the textual history behind the collection of works in our current canon.  Spoiler alert:  the authors in the titles are not always the actual authors.

 

God’s Joyful Surprise by Sue Monk Kidd was intended as an interim reading for a program I’m not continuing with, but I read the book anyway.  It came out in 1987 and 1987 me would have been all over it.  It addresses the problems of performative Christianity, the role of women, and other issues.  It was fine, but not life changing and I doubt I’d read it again.

 

(This next one is not nonfiction, but it was for my church book group, so I’m sticking it here.)  James Runcie’s The Road to Grantchester is a prequel to the Grantchester mysteries that may be familiar to many of us through the TV series (hot vicars!  solving crimes!  Woot!).  It delves into Sidney Chambers’s war experience and how that trauma drew him to God.  There was lots to think about and lots to talk about as we discussed guilt, grace, and calling.  Content warning for war.

 

The book we’re about to start talking about in book group is Richard Rohr’s The Tears of Things.  I finished early because I got started and then I was done.  I haven’t read that much of his work, but I liked this book a lot.  He tackles the prophets and discusses why they are relevant to our times.  They begin in anger and outrage and eventually end up at the grace of God.  So should we.  It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the gist.  Prophets lead us back to God when things in the world get corrupted.  We need them.  We need to be them.  Let’s get to work.

 

I read one more nonfiction book, which was definitely not for church.  It’s called Unfuck your Habitat and it’s by Rachel Hoffman.  I spend a lot of time thinking about what makes home home.  I am the primary home-maker in my home.  I always want more ideas for how to do that better.  This book was not really targeting me as its audience.  I do, in fact, know how to clean and I do keep a reasonably tidy house.  However, the underlying philosophy that we all have habitats, we all have responsibility for them, and we all deserve to have unfucked habitats is a good one.  I’m all about small habits that make big differences and that’s the general principle here.  This would be a great off-to-college gift for someone who will be in charge of their habitat for the first time.  Oh yeah:  it has swear words in it.  I think that’s kind of a feature, but your mileage may vary.

 

Even the fiction I read this last two months came in big books.  I continue to work my way through Ursula K. Le Guin’s work.  The Unreal and the Real is a selection of her shorter fiction.  I had read some of the stories before, but the one I really wanted to read was “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.”  It is a thought experiment for our time and personally, I feel called to do more than walk away and I’m trying to figure out how to do that.  Read it and let’s talk.

 

Her novel Always Coming Home is one of the most interestingly structured novels I’ve ever read.  It’s kind of an anthology of anthropological studies, oral histories, poetry, folktales, and more.  It’s fascinating, rich, and satisfying.  Highly recommend.

 

Finally, I read The Rose Field by Philip Pullman.  It’s the conclusion of The Book of Dust trilogy and continues to follow Lyra’s story.  It’s exciting, satisfying, and well-written.  Go check it out.

 

February and March total:  14

Spring to date:  18

2026 to date: 18