The Best Books I Read in 2021

YOU ARE READING: The Best Books I Read in 2021 | Emily P. Freeman AT PhebinhvanhocEN

home another way by barbara brown taylor

“The problem is that the people we can’t stand are loved as much as we are by a god with an unsettling sense of community.” page 45

This was one of my morning books. I read a short chapter in the morning during November and December. It is a collection of BBT sermons, beginning with Advent and moving through the season after Pentecost. reading it has reminded me once again why it is one of my favorites.

in the pádraig Ó tuama refuge

“hope is a song sung when everything else says you shouldn’t be signing. hope is joy. hope is a testimony that says ‘even if it doesn’t come true, I will live as I could’. hope is what helps us survive. hope is little light.” page 178

As a poet, storyteller and theologian, the Irish writer pádraig Ó tuama writes about finding a home in the world, about greeting the here, the beginning, the imagination, the body and the shadow. this book was a good companion for me at a time when i desperately needed it. highly recommended.

walking in wonder by john o’donohue

“There is great wisdom in perspective and distance. Usually when we’re short-sighted and we get close to something and we can’t see its outline and all that, it’s that it completely imprisons and controls us. whereas when you take a step back, you get another view and choose a way of relating to the situation that is predominantly liberating”. page 155

After John O’donohue’s death, author John Quinn edited and collected several of O’donohue’s writings and lectures and compiled them into this beautiful book. John O’donohue has long been one of my favorite voices and this book is a beautiful collection of the way he saw the wonder in the world.

hannah coulter of wendell berry

“After she left, the house slowly filled with silence. [his] absence from her entered him and filled him. I suffered my hard joy, I gave my thanks, I cried my tears. and then I went back again to that other world that I had been taught to know, the world that is neither past nor to come, the present world where we are alive together and love sustains us.” page 166

my first reading of wendell berry was jayber crow and i fell completely in love with port william, the fictional city in which the story takes place. This is the seventh book in the series and I loved it very much. Unlike other fictional series, these are not necessarily meant to be read in the order they were released. this may have been really good to begin with. tells the story of hannah and his life with the men he loved, the land he farmed, and the losses he took along the way.

everything happens for a reason by kate bowler

“Sometimes this ability to live in the moment feels like a gift. my pain feels connected to the pain of others in some way. I see the exhausted expression on the young mother’s face in the supermarket and help her with her cart. I give money more freely, less reluctantly. Now I can see how hard people work to stay together, but the walls that keep their lives from falling apart are fragile. And I have two months to live. again.” page 144

I recommend you listen to this audiobook if you have it available. I always enjoy hearing an author read his own work, but especially when it comes to memoirs and especially when it comes to kate. At age 35, he was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer and given only months to live. In the years that have followed, he has honestly struggled with the reality that has befallen him and the terrible advice he has received along the way, like everything happens for a reason.

Yours is a voice I never want to stop hearing. She also has a new book that she just published, There is no cure for being human, which is a continuation of her story as she explores the question: what happens when the life you hoped for ends? suspended indefinitely?

Bonus: Listen to my conversation with kate bowler on the next right thing podcast here.

dear white peacemakers by osheta moore

“white supremacist culture thinking influenced my anti-racism work as I struggled on both sides of the spectrum: offering too much grace to white people that didn’t require them to change or grow. operating with too much determination towards whites, expecting them to work for change but offering no room for healing or empathy. It was time for him to forge a third way.” page 81

this book is that third way and osheta moore has done us good. she takes all of her wisdom and lived experience of her as a writer, a christian, a black woman and a person that she sees below the surface of things and shares it with us. this is a love letter to god’s beloved community where work is hard but all are welcome to participate and belong.

honest advent by scott erikson

“It is a surprise that nothing can separate you from the love of God. nothing can separate you from love. their assumptions believe that there must be something that can. . . but surprise! nothing can. may you thank god with joyous surprise for how much you have wrongly assumed.” page 93

It’s written for the advent season, but I’m here to tell you I could read it all year. he may be most familiar with scott erikson as scott the painter on instagram, where his black, white and yellow artwork tells a powerful story with bold and true statements about the nature of god, people and life . What I liked most about this book is the way that Scott gets right to it, he doesn’t beat around the bush and he doesn’t have time to fake it. It’s a beautiful and refreshing take on the ancient god story.

a hidden totality by parker palmer

“the shadow behind the ‘solutions’ we offer for problems we can’t solve is, ironically, the desire to keep ourselves in check.” it is a strategy to abandon each other by learning to care. perhaps this explains why one of the most common laments of our time is that “no one really sees me, hears me or understands me.”

How can we understand another when instead of listening deeply, we rush to fix that person to avoid further involvement?” page 117

Maybe I’m a secret Quaker? Or maybe it’s not so secret. This book is a gold mine for anyone who wants to learn how to lead listening groups. it has reawakened my old complaint that we have communications classes in college and are always required to speak in public. and old lady emily throws her hands up in the air: where’s the public listening class!? Why is communication limited to talking only?! If I ever teach Public Listening 101, this book will be at the top of my must-read list.

out of it by sarah bessey

“Your favorite guardian is not the only arbiter of the Christian faith: there is more complexity, beauty and diversity of voices and experiences within the followers of the way than you think. remember, your view of christians, your personal experience with christians, is a pretty small sample – there are a lot more of us here than you think.

many of us are on the other side of that change of faith, eschewing scare labels and tactics, boundary markers and tribalist thinking. . . tags can be helpful. now, perhaps, they are not. our particular tradition does not earn our allegiance: that allegiance is to our jesus.” pages 84-85

I missed this book in 2015 when it was published. I had my own book launch that year (just Tuesday) and that was the year we started writing hope*writers and my kids were in various stages of growth and I just missed a lot of voices at the time. but I firmly believe that books find us when we need them most, and that’s how I felt about this one. I knew I could turn to Sarah’s voice in the midst of my own personal desert season over the past two years, and I am deeply grateful that she took the time to write about her experience.

try softer by aundi kolber

“Learning to love my body instead of just asking it to perform has certainly been a journey. It hasn’t happened by accident, frankly. trying to be softer in this way has been one of the most fundamental aspects of my journey because my body is the home that sustains me.” page 158

Bonus: Listen to my conversation with Aundi Kolber on the Next Right Thing podcast here.

If you like this list of books, subscribe to my monthly newsletter where I share questions for reflection and a list of books I read all year.

Other content

The Best Books I Read in 2021 | Emily P. Freeman

Leave a Reply Cancel reply