My Favorite Books from 2025

My Favorite Books from 2025

 I had a solid year of reading in 2025. It was not as robust as in the past, but I still managed to read close to 30 books.

Below are the ones that I found most helpful. I’ve broken them into three categories:

Spiritual/Theological/Philosophical,

Entrepreneurial/Leadership,

Bob Dylan biographies.

The first two categories represent my typical reading. The last category marked my renewed enjoyment of Bob Dylan and his music. If you wonder why I’d even include these Dylan books, check out my video: "Seven Lessons the Church Can Learn from Bob Dylan."

Spiritual/Theological/Philosophical

Rueben P Job and Norman Shawchuck (Eds.), A Guide to Prayer (Upper Room, 1998). https://amzn.to/4hpAH5S

I’ve owned this devotional for years but never used it much. One of my former colleagues highly recommended it, but at the time, it didn’t resonate with me. Anyway I gave it another shot in January 2025, and wow, I love it. There are daily Scripture readings, a prayer, a hymn to sing, and a collection of spiritual reflections from prominent authors through the ages. I continue to use it in 2026.

Joseph Dongell, The Most Excellent Way: John Wesley’s Theology of Love (Seedbed, 2024): https://amzn.to/4gXN74e.

The Most Excellent Way is a fantastic introduction to the core of the Christian faith: growth in love for God and neighbor. Dongell has reflected long and deeply over John Wesley’s entire corpus and has distilled its riches into the pages of this book. If you are interested in deep spiritual formation and desire to experience holiness of heart and life. Read this book in 2026. You won’t be disappointed. Plus you can finish it in less than 2 hours.

John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way: Be With Jesus. Become Like Him. Do as He Did. https://amzn.to/4kr6GV9

Many of my friends and clients have recommended this book. I finally read it in late Spring of 2025. Comer offers a compelling vision for a robust practice of spiritual formation and growth. His writing style is clear. Practicing the Way packs powerful practices wrapped in excellent contemporary illustrations along with quotations from classic contemplative sources. This book is excellent for pastors and spiritual leaders to rethink their rules of life. It is also a perfect book to use to grow and implement a disciple making disciple culture within local churches.

Arianna Molloy, Healthy Calling: From Toxic Burnout to Sustainable Work. https://amzn.to/3QGNNAa 

Molloy has written one of best if not the finest book on burnout and building sustainable work habits that I’ve ever read. She grounds her writing in a robust biblical/theological reflection on calling. What is really means to have a calling and why it’s critical to remember one’s relationship with the Caller. She also covers the the danger of overwork for the spiritual life of persons with a calling. She includes practices to help persons who are running dangerously close to toxic burnout or have already fallen into it. One the features I found most helpful was her link of burnout to shame and also how humility is critical for finding sustainable ways to live out our calling for the long term. I highly recommend this book.

Ben Gosden, Grace Rediscovered: Finding Hope and Healing through Faith and Recovery. https://amzn.to/4i0RBYU 

Gosden has written a powerful testimony of the power of God’s healing grace. I know him personally and he is legit. Gosden is a pastor who faced the challenge of alcoholism while serving in ministry. His book describes the healing and growth that he experienced through God’s faithfulness and the insights of 12 step recovery. I found his reflections on “right sizing” and learning to feel comfortable in one’s own skin to be particularly helpful. Gosden writes with clarity and vulnerability. His insights are not just for person’s struggling with alcohol, but for anyone who seeks acceptance and approval externally. This book book pairs well with Molloy’s book mentioned above.

Chuck DeGroat, Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself—and to God—When You're Wounded, Weary, and Wandering https://amzn.to/4mnZ7P8

DeGroat uses the classic story of Adam, Eve and the Serpent as the backdrop for a deep dive into healing. n particular, he uses the three questions that God asked Eve and Adam after they’d eaten the fruit: Where are you? Who told you? Have you eaten? These questions form the structure of the three parts of this great book. DeGroat offers compelling narratives as he teaches various healing modalities. He then anchors them in embodied practices and ways to take action on the content. Healing What’s Within is one of those books that I wish I had found years earlier. DeGroat published it in 2024.

The Cloud of Unknowing https://amzn.to/47PjfGg

Written by an anonymous contemplative in medieval England, the Cloud of Unknowing is one of the main sources used by Thomas Keating and his fellow monastics to formulate the ideas behind the contemporary practice of centering prayer. The author of the Cloud uses the imagery of a cloud of forgetting and a cloud of unknowing to describe the silent spaces between our thoughts/feelings/mental-tapes in which we may encounter the God who loves us in deep contemplation. You’ll be inspired by the descriptions of the inner-world of spiritual growth as well as the practical wisdom for deepening your prayer life with God. The edition linked here is a readable modern one that also includes a selection of other writings presumably by the same author. The first is a paraphrase of a work by the early medieval writer Dionysius the Areopagite.

John Gray, The Seven Types of Atheism https://amzn.to/3MVb02X 

Most of us only know atheism via the loud and “evangelical” atheists of the early 21st century: Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens. Gray dismisses these authors immediately as uninteresting. He then takes the reader on a deep dive into various streams of atheist thought through the centuries. You will find a full spectrum of atheists here: from truly god haters to more mystical thinkers. The point in common is that atheism is often just as “religious” as Christianity. Most atheist systems are just as interested in salvation, purpose and ethics as modern religions. I’ve actually read this book 5 or 6 times including another reading through it in 2025. I highly recommend it. Gray is an excellent writer and simply exploring atheist thinking will help you grow in your faith as well as in your ability to listen and communicate the Gospel in our divided and confused 21st century world.

Entrepreneurial Thinking

Charlie Munger (ed. Peter Kaufman), Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger https://amzn.to/4sdkRkI 

Charlie Munger is best known as the longterm partner of Warren Buffett. He was more in the background, but his razor sharp mind and the thought models he built for key drivers of the decades long growth of Berkshire Hathaway. Poor Charlie’s Almanack is a collection of Mungers speeches and essays curated with introductory materials to help the reader understand Munger’s ideas. What you will come away with is a deep understanding of the types of critical thinking tools that Munger used to make decisions that literally ended up being worth billions of dollars. I highly recommend this book as a means of building your decision making muscles. Any leader knows that challenge and cost of making decisions. It is always easy to be swayed by pure emotion. Munger teaches us how to set up guard rails so that our decisions are rooted in logical and critical thinking.

Naval Ravikant and Babak Navi, How to Get Rich: (Without Getting Lucky) https://amzn.to/4sampMh 

Eric Jorgenson, The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness https://amzn.to/4skK8cY

Like Munger, Naval Ravikant’s mind is fascinating. If you want to learn how to think and take action from first principles, both of these books are excellent. I’d recommend starting with the The Almanack. The ideas that Ravikant shares are not merely about “getting rich.” They are really about ordering one’s life and mind for mission and creating systems that punch way above their weight. Spiritual leaders often struggle with how to change culture and build systems that truly help those whom we serve to grow in grace and holiness. Reading truly great entrepreneurial thinkers will help you in this regard.

Bob Dylan Biographies

Elijah Wald, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties https://amzn.to/4p77KyF

Howard Sounes, Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan https://amzn.to/3N37pQe

I’ll treat these two books together. I’ve been a Dylan fan since 1986. My enthusiasm for his music renewed after seeing the biopic “A Complete Unknown” in late December 2024. In January 2025, I decided to do a deeper dive into Dylan and read multiple biographies about him and the times out of which he arose. These two books were the best ones. Wald only covers the early years of Dylan and sets his music within the context of the folk scene on the early 1960s. Sounes covers Dylan from birth through his multiple career reboots through roughly 2010.

What were your favorite books that you read in 2025? I'd love to see your list.

Peace,

Brian

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