Things we loved reading in 2025

End-of-year lists are not just a signal that everyone is winding down for Christmas. The best ones can fuel our reflection, reading or research. We asked the Crosslands faculty, who read a lot for pleasure as well as academic work, to share a few highlights from their reading in 2025. The titles include theological works alongside fiction, nature writing and other kinds of treasure. .

By the Renewing of Your Minds: The Pastoral Function of Christian Doctrine, by Ellen T. Charry

Jonathan found this book both edifying and instructive, and he described reading it as one of the highlights of the year. Charry opens with a beautifully composed reflection on how God is ’not only good to us but good for us’, and then takes the reader through a rich account of how different eras of the church have responded to the task of ensuring that doctrinal investigation connected with the spiritual lives of Christians. In other words, how theologians such as Athanasius (‘Defeating the Fear of Death’) and Calvin (‘By the Renewal of Your Minds’) saw doctrine as necessary for the flourishing of souls as well as the necessary task of clarifying what is true and false teaching. Not everything is persuasive, but the foundational thesis is and it is a delightful thing to read a theologian so confident with her vast material and able to describe God and the gospel as truly good news.

Where Prayer Becomes Real by Kyle Strobel and John Coe

Tim commends this book, describing it as a practical grace-filled invitation to be honest with God in prayer.

Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton

Jen picked this up after overhearing colleagues describe it. It’s the beautifully-told, true story of how Chloe Dalton, a foreign policy specialist, ended up sharing her home with a wild hare during lockdown. Dalton’s curious, tender, intelligent observations of the leveret (baby hare) she inadvertently ends up raising produces a rich natural world narrative threaded through with personal reflection on how we relate to that world.

From the Garden to the City by John Dyer

Nathan has read a lot over the past few years on the relationship between technology and Christian discipleship, and thinks this is the best popular-level book in that category (narrowly pipping Andy Crouch’s The Life We’re Looking For). It’s an accessible, rich, and pastorally applied biblical theology of tech. Nathan highlights this quote as the one that made him shout ‘yes!’ the loudest: ‘The guiding principle is this: technology is for the table. In other words, everything we do with our tools — scheduling appointments on our phones, heating up meals in the microwave, reading updates from friends and family on social media — should all be directed toward enriching the few, precious face-to-face encounters we have in our busy world.’

James by Percival Everett

Jonathan loved this novel for its creativity and challenging moral vision. It is a sequel to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and tells the story of James (‘Jim’) seeking to escape slavery and reach the ‘free states’. Very much an homage to Twain’s account, it manages to weave into a well paced narrative reflections on the nature of slavery and ideas of freedom, without drawing back from the sheer horror of the slave trade. Really fascinating representation of speech patterns among the enslaved population (and prompt to think about how the language we use is connected to our identity) and a massive plot twist at the end!

Tom Brown’s School Days by Thomas Hughes

Nathan described this as his most surprising read of the year. ‘I took it on holiday expecting something light and amusing, and indeed there are plenty of Victorian schoolboy hijinks if you like that sort of thing (I do). But what I didn’t expect was a hugely moving story of two lads coming to repentance and faith in Jesus through faithful teaching and the powerful example of one small and timid young believer. It knocked me sideways’.

Greek Lessons by Han Kang

This is a novella by the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature winner, and is a beautiful description of the development of a relationship in a Greek language evening class in Seoul, between a student who has lost (or abandoned) the ability to speak and a teacher who is losing his ability to see. Jonathan found it a moving read and lots to reflect on about the nature of speech, sight and touch; and some really fascinating insights about the nature of language and, in particular, the intricacies of Ancient Greek and modern Korean!

Life on the Silent Planet by Laverty et al

If you’ve never read C S Lewis’ Cosmic Trilogy, Nathan urges you to do so as a matter of urgency. But, he says, ‘All three are brilliant, but the second (entitled either Perelandra or Voyage to Venus depending on where you get it) brought home to me the horror of sin more than any other book I’ve read, and not just because the personification of evil in the novel is called Weston… Once you’ve read those, read Life on the Silent Planet — a collection of thoughtful and often provocative essays on the Trilogy which set my mind haring away in all sorts of directions’. You won’t agree with everything, but then again what’s the point of reading something you already agree with?

The Place of Tides by James Rebanks

Tim commends this beautiful description of a summer spent on a remote Norwegian island with one of the few remaining women who collect and care for eider ducks and collect their down for duvets.

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers

‘This was the year I discovered, and devoured, the Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels of Dorothy Sayers’, says Nathan. ‘Unlike many murder mysteries, they’re not exactly easy reading. Sayers assumes that you’re as intelligent and well-educated as both herself and her protagonist, and I am absolutely not; but reading above your level is a great way of raising your level, if you’re prepared to follow up the things you don’t know’. This novel is peppered throughout with one of my favourite things — the beautiful and impenetrable jargon of a subculture, in this case bell-ringing. You’re not expected to understand it, but the first chapter is called ‘A Short Touch of Kent Treble Bob Major’ and if that doesn’t thrill your heart I don’t know what to tell you. Wimsey is not one of those annoying detectives who immediately know whodunnit and how as soon as they walk into a room — he makes mistakes, leaps to wrong conclusions, follows false trails — so when the (satisfying, horrifying) solution is revealed, you feel like you’ve worked it out with him.