Mid-year Spiritual Development Book Review

Have you heard of the mid-year book freak out tag? It's a set of questions to help you review what you have already read in the first six months of the year and to plan the next six months.  It's usually done for ALL reading (and I did that on my Creativity blog), but I thought it could be interesting to do for my spiritual development/leadership reading on this blog.

• Best book you've read so far - This is difficult, because I've read some good books this year so far.  Let's go with The Gospel of John by Amy-Jill Levine.
• New release you haven't read this year but want to - I don't know of anything yet, but will keep my eyes open
• Most anticipated release for the second half of the year - I've already pre-ordered Genesis: A Beginner's Guide to the Beginning by Amy-Jill Levine.  It's coming August 4
• Biggest disappointment - Two of the books I read this year have been disappointing.  I was not as engaged in Invest in Transformation by Tod Bolinger as I was in his other books.  I had to soft DNF Sacraments and Discipleship by Mark Stamm; I did go back and finish it, but it was disappointing.
• Biggest surprise - I was really impressed by Rachel Billups' book, An Unlikely Lent: Extraordinary People of the Easter Story.  I'm not sure why I found that surprising, but I did.
• Favorite new author - One of my favorite books this year was Between a Rock and a Holy Place by Rev. Tom Nolan. It is a series of sermons - just excellent.  I supposed we can also add Rachel Billups to this list - I would read another of her books if the opportunity arose.
• Books you want to read by the end of the year - Right now I'm reading The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross by Jon Meacham. I hope to finish that in July.  In August, I'll work on reading the Amy-Jill Levine Genesis book.  Other than those two, I'm sure I'll pick something up during Advent to read. I purchased A Child is Born: A Beginner's Guide of Nativity Stories by Amy-Jill Levine but didn't find the time to read it. I think I'll add that to my Advent TBR.

My goal for 2026 was to read at least four Spiritual Development books.  I read five in the first half of the year, so maybe I can get to eight by the end of the year?

This link is to my online "Spiritual Development books" library - a list of the books I've read and reviewed (mainly) on the blog. I don't update it very often (although I do update it), so it might be behind.

 

2026 Reading Goals

Each year, for the past few years, I have set reading goals for the year. Here they are for 2026:

1. Read 50 books.  Last year I read 150 books; my goal was 50. As I read my way through the year, the idea of 100 books approached pretty easily. At the beginning of October, 150 books was within reach. That's a pretty great goal to have reached, but it did cause some "reading pressure." I'm not going to try to do that this year. I'm setting my goal at 50 books, and then not worrying about it. That gives me the freedom to read some longer books, etc.
2. Read 15,000 pages. That's an average of 300 pages per book, which feels reasonable. Last year I averaged 280 pages per book.
3. Read at least 30% new books.  I really like re-reading books, but I do want to read at least some new books.
4. Read 4 Spiritual Development books in the year. Last year I read 6, so this seems reasonable.

Mainly, I want reading to be enjoyable. That's my main goal. With that said, I do better writing blog posts for this blog if I have the "fuel" of reading spiritual development books and taking classes.

I'm keeping updated accounts in both Good Reads and Story Graph.  So far that hasn't proven to be an issue at all. I like what each one provides even though at first blush it might seem duplicative. 

I love data!

PS - The bookcase in the picture is one of two new bookcases at our house. Last year sometime I went through all of my books, weeding out ones I would never read again. We gave six boxes of books to our local library, assembled these bookcases from Ikea, and organized the books.  I'm loving it!

2025 Reading Stats

Here are my reading stats for 2025

I read a total of 150 books in 2025.  I didn't start out intending to read that many, but around the beginning of October, I realized it was possible, and set monthly goals to achieve it..  This compares to 56 books in 2021, 35 in 2022, 52 in 2023 and 67 in 2024.  

The graph above is from my Story Graph account - an account I started in 2024 for its statistical tracking.

Here are how the stats worked out:

Question 1: What was the format of the book?  Hard copy? Kindle? Audiobook?  Audiobook is the winner, at 62%.  I read 19% on Kindle and 17% print.  I also read 2% "hybrid" - a combination of methods.

Question 2: Had I read the book before?  Again this year, to make sure I didn't get in a rut of only re-reading books, I set a goal of at least 30% new books. 62% were new books to me.  

Question 3: What was the genre of the books I read?    The winner this year was romance, at 37% followed by mystery at 21%.  Another one of my goals for 2024 was to read at least 4 "spiritual development" books.  I read 6; that category came in at 4% .

Question 4: When were the books published?  58% of the books I read were published between 2020 and 2025;  17% of the books from 2010-2019. 

Question 5: I gave each book a star rating of 1-5.  I gave each star rating a definition (which is too much stuff to share in this post) - fiction and non-fiction had different rating definitions.  My average rating was 4.0.  My lowest rating was 1, and the highest was 5.  

This is my Goodreads profile if you are interested in seeing what I've read.  This page is my Blog Library.  I list faith books here (or other books I've blogged about) with links to the posts.

Perspectives: TBR Stack

 This is the classic "To Be Read" (TBR) post from my bookshelf at work. I doubt I ever read most of these books.  I have read the John Meacham book about Abraham Lincoln, and I highly recommend it. 

Reading Statistics 2024

For the past few years, I have shared my reading stats.  Maybe it makes me a little nerdy - but I'm not.  I'm very nerdy, and I like statistics.  So here we go for 2024. 

I read a total of 67 books in 2024.  This compares to 56 books in 2021, 35 in 2022 and 52 in 2023.  This is higher than any of the previous years that I have tracked.  I'm not sure why. I seemed to have read more at the end of the year:

The graph above is from my Story Graph account - an account I started in 2024 for its statistical tracking.

Here are how the stats worked out:

Question 1: What was the format of the book?  Hard copy? Kindle? Audiobook?  Audiobook is the winner, at 80%.  I read a lot as I drive to work, using audiobooks, so this is not surprising. I started reading from my Kindle more at the end of the year, using a 5% of the book per day goal.  Amazingly enough, when you read a book, you eventually finish it.  :-)

Question 2: Had I read the book before?  Again this year, to make sure I didn't get in a rut of only re-reading books, I set a goal of at least 30% new books. 52% were new books to me.  This is down from last year, but I'm OK with that.

Question 3: What was the genre of the books I read?    The winner this year was romance, at 36%. followed by fantasy at 25%.  Last year's  "winner" was mystery.  Another one of my goals for 2024 was to read at least 4 "spiritual development" books.  I read 6; that category came in at 9% .

Question 4: When were the books published?  39% of the books I read were published between 2020 and 2024; close behind that was 30% of the books from 2010-2019. 

Question 5: I gave each book a star rating of 1-5.  I gave each star rating a definition (which is too much stuff to share in this post) - fiction and non-fiction had different rating definitions.  My average rating was 4.0.  My lowest rating was 1.5, and the highest was 5.  

This is my Goodreads profile if you are interested in seeing what I've read.  This page is my Blog Library.  I list faith books here (or other books I've blogged about) with links to the posts.

Reading Goals for 2025

 Each year I try to set some reading goals. Here are the ones for 2025.

1. Read 50 books.  So far this year (as of December 19), I've read 64 books.  I've already met the 50 book goal, but 64 books seems like an anomaly compared to previous years.  I'm going to keep the number at 50 for 2025.
2. Read 18,000 pages. My average book size this year was 360 pages.  If I read 50 books, that will be 18,000 pages.  Number of pages is a new goal for me.  I'm able to do it because I have created a Story Graph account.  Story Graph will convert audiobooks to number of pages.  
3. Read at least four Spiritual Development books.  This goal helps with my spiritual growth - not a small thing. It also feeds my post-writing for the blog.
4. Read at least 30% new books.  As of today, 53% of the books I have read have been new to me.  I like re-reads, but I don't want to only re-read.  Hence this goal.

This isn't a reading goal, but I also want to revamp how I track my reading in my bullet journal and in my reading journal, so I'm giving that some thought. 

I'm keeping updated accounts in both Good Reads and Story Graph.  So far that hasn't proven to be an issue at all. I like what each one provides even though at first blush it might seem duplicative. 

I love data!

By the way, this is an image from UnSplash of someone else's library. Do you love to look at pictures of wonderful libraries?  I do.

One more "by the way."  I keep a library page for the blog that lists the Spiritual Development books I have read linked to the posts I've written.  I haven't updated it in 2024, but I'll do that late this year or early next year.  It's part of my end-of-year routine.

Reading Stats 2023

For the past two years, I have shared my reading stats.  Maybe it makes me a little nerdy - but I'm not.  I'm very nerdy, and I like statistics.  So here we go for 2023. 

I read a total of 52 books in 2023.  This compares to 56 books in 2021 and 35 in 2022.  In 2021, I was preparing to teach a CLM course.  I'm not sure why this year is higher than last year, but yippee.

Here are how the stats worked out:

Question 1: What was the format of the book?  Hard copy? Kindle? Audiobook?  Audiobook is the winner, at 71%.  I read a lot as I drive to work, using audiobooks, so this is not surprising.  It's down from last year (91%); books I read for classes are usually kindle or paperbacks.  

Question 2: Had I read the book before?  This year, to make sure I didn't get in a rut of only re-reading books, I set a goal of at least 30% new books.  This was not hard to achieve.  69% were new books to me.  This is up from 57% in 2023 and a 50/50 split in 2021.

Question 3: What was the genre of the books I read?    The winner this year was mystery, at 32%.  Last year's  "winner" was fantasy.  Another one of my goals for 2023 was to read at least 4 "spiritual development" books.  I read 14; that category came in at 27% .

Question 4: When were the books published?  50 percent of the books I read were published between 2020 and 2023; the rest were spread out between 2019 and 1975.   I'm re-reading the Elizabeth Peters books which were published beginning in 1975.  The second largest category was 1990-1999, at 17%.  

Question 5: This is a new one.  I gave each book a star rating of 1-5.  I gave each star rating a definition (which is too much stuff to share in this post) - fiction and non-fiction had different rating definitions.  My average rating was 4.1, which the median and mode at 4.0.  My lowest rating was 2.5, and the highest was 5.  

This is my Goodreads profile if you are interested in seeing what I've read.  This page is my Blog Library.  I list faith books here (or other books I've blogged about) with links to the posts.

Readings Stats 2022

Last year, I reported by reading states for the first time.  Since I still love statistics, here we go again.  I read a total of 35 books in 2022, down from 56 books in 2021.  I'm certain this is because I read many books as I prepared the CLM curriculum for the Conference CLM Class.  I didn't re-read them this year.  

Here are how the stats worked out:

Question 1: What was the format of the book?  Hard copy? Kindle? Audiobook?  Audiobook is clearly the winner, at 91%.  I read a lot as I drive to work, using audiobooks, so this is not surprising.  It's up from last year, because the books I read for the CLM class were not audiobooks.  I read paper books or kindle books for the class.

Question 2: Had I read the book before?  Interestingly, to me, because I feel like I re-read a lot of favorites, 57% of the books were first time reads. This compares to a 50/50 split last year.

Question 3: What was the genre of the books I read?    The winner this year was fantasy, at 40%.  This is different from last year, where 41% of the books were about faith.  I don't expect to read 41% in a normal year, but I have set a goal of at least 4 books this year in the faith category.  

Question 2: When were the books published?  I changed the categories this year, moving all of the '20s to their own grouping.  Forty percent of the books I read were published between 2010 and 2019, but 27% percent were new, published from 2020 to 2022.  That's a high percentage for only three years, when the other categories were 10 years each.  Last year, 59% were published 2010 or later.

This is my Goodreads profile if you are interested in seeing what I've read.  This page is my Blog Library.  I list faith books here (or other books I've blogged about) with links to the posts.