Some summer reading
Here’s a quick roundup of some of my fiction reading so far in 2026:
Louise Penny, The Black Wolf
Got this one for Christmas (from my wish list), and it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. Somehow, though, it seems that if you read one Louise Penny murder mystery, you’ve read them all. They’re all fine reading (though some of them are excessively grim), but after while it’s hard to tell one Inspector Gamache mystery from another. They all kind of blend together. (Didn’t he solve this case in the last book?)
Thomas Pynchon, Shadow Ticket
This was another Christmas book. I’d never read any Pynchon before, but I heard good things about this one, so I asked for it. Be careful what you ask for. This is my first and last Pynchon book. I won’t waste my time and yours describing it.
Bernard Cornwell, Stonehenge
Yes, another Christmas gift. I thought I might like Circle of Daysby Ken Follett, so I got it from the library but couldn’t make it past page 50. My first and last Ken Follett, I guess. But I wanted to read a Stonehenge novel, so I figured Bernard Cornwell would do better. Wrong. Bloody, grim, awful book. Had to skim it, it was so bad. Cornwell has always been good at creating bad guys, but in this story it’s hard to tell the bad guys from the worse guys.
James Patterson & Mike Lupica, 12 Months to Live, Hard to Kill, The Hamptons Lawyer
These are the first three in the Jane Smith thriller series, and the third ends with a setup for a fourth. All are very readable (and fast reads, two days per book). After three books, they are starting to sound the same. (Louise Penny syndrome?) But even “the same” is much better than most other books, so I’ll be on the lookout for that fourth one, probably next year.
Penelope Cress & Steve Higgs, Rev Jessamy Ward Investigates: The Isle of Wesberry Mysteries
OK, these are a guilty pleasure: a box set in Kindle format featuring a young female Anglican priest who can’t seem to turn around without discovering a murder. Light cozy mysteries, emphasis on the light, sometimes with solutions that don’t make much sense, with a dash of new age mumbo jumbo to make it sound dangerous, though not very.
Summarizing the nonfiction will take longer, and may not actually happen. Just one mention here.
Peter K. Stevenson and Stephen Wright, Preaching the Atonement
I have maybe half a shelf of books on atonement theology, and I’ve been working my way through them. Most will be moving on, but a few are keepers. The best so far, by far, is this one. It includes 10 sample sermons, and they’re mostly OK, but the introductions to them are outstanding. I learned more from this book than from several others that should have been half this good.