My Favorite Books from 2025

Show Notes:Chase Replgole — My Favorite Books from 2025

Every year at this time, I go back through my Amazon orders, my Audible subscription, and my bookshelf to reflect on everything I’ve read. It is a fantastic exercise to see what has occupied your mind over the past twelve months. Reviewing also helps me form a loose plan for what I want to dive into in the coming year—focusing more on the topics I’d like to explore further.

This review always helps me curate a list of my favorite reads. I’ll keep the intro short and jump straight into the books with a brief description and a few thoughts on each.

Biography

Each year, I try to tackle one long biography. My previous lists have often included works by the poet T.S. Eliot; I keep his Four Quartets on my nightstand. This year, a friend gifted me a two-part biography of Eliot’s life. Since there are no rules for reading, I started with the second volume, which chronicles Eliot’s later life and conversion.

• Eliot After The Waste Land by Robert Crawford Crawford explores T.S. Eliot’s life and work from the publication of The Waste Land onward. Rather than treating Eliot as a figure frozen in modernist despair (the primary theme of his earliest and most well-known work), Crawford shows a poet continually changing—emotionally, spiritually, and artistically. The book traces Eliot’s conversion to Anglican Christianity, his evolving views on culture and society, and the development of later works such as Ash-Wednesday and Four Quartets. Crawford presents Eliot as a disciplined craftsman seeking order, tradition, and meaning after personal breakdown and cultural fragmentation.

  Host Note: It’s a long read, but one of my suggestions for reading is to find a writer you like and read absolutely everything they’ve written—and everything written about them. I’ve been on an Eliot binge for a few years now.

Study on the Theology of the Body

In 2025, I’ve been working on a new book project that I hope to share more about in early 2026. As part of my research, I have been reading extensively about health, fitness, and a theology of the human body. For such a universal topic, it is surprising how rarely Christians think about it deeply. There is often a subtle “Gnosticism” that imagines the spirit as sacred while the body is just physical material to be replaced by something better. That isn’t actually what Christianity teaches. While I’ve read many books on this topic this year, these four were particularly helpful:

• The Theology of the Body by Jean-Claude Larchet Larchet presents a distinctly Orthodox account of the human body grounded in patristic theology. He argues that the body is not a temporary shell for the soul but an essential, God-given dimension of the human person. Drawing on Scripture and the Greek Fathers, he explores creation, the fall, illness, ascetic practice, and resurrection.

  Host Note: It is a very small book, but Larchet makes a concise case for why Christianity should value the physical body more than any other religion.

• The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology by J. A. T. Robinson This is the most academic book on the list—a monograph from the 1950s. Robinson examines the Apostle Paul’s understanding of the body against common misconceptions of Christian dualism. He argues that Paul does not oppose body and soul but views the human person as an integrated whole. The book traces how sin, redemption, and resurrection are worked out in and through the body.

• Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey Pearcey critiques modern cultural views that separate the “self” from the body. She argues that contemporary debates over sexuality, gender, and bioethics are rooted in a dualistic worldview that treats the body as disposable. As she does so well, Pearcey contrasts this with a Christian vision of the human person as an integrated body-soul unity.

• Your Brain on Porn by Gary Wilson Wilson is a secular scientist; while he avoids making moral judgments, he tracks the catastrophic destruction pornography is having on real people. While consumed digitally, it has very real physical and neurological consequences. Wilson argues that high-speed, novelty-driven sexual imagery exploits the brain’s dopamine system, leading to tolerance and addiction. It also documents recovery, showing how abstinence can allow the brain to “rewire.”

Biblical Study

I’ve been publishing a lot of content on YouTube around Biblical study lately. I also spent time studying in Turkey this past year, which led me to do much more reading on the first-century Roman world.

• The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era by James S. Jeffers Jeffers introduces readers to the political, social, and religious world in which early Christianity emerged. He surveys daily life—family structures, economics, and imperial power—to show how these forces shaped the language of the New Testament. This is a great place to start if you want to understand the broader Hellenized culture of the first century.

History

A couple of history books made the list this year. Being in Turkey, I had the chance to visit ancient Nicaea on the 1,700th anniversary of the first church council held there.

• Decoding Nicaea by Mark Edwards Edwards reexamines the Council of Nicaea (325 AD) by analyzing its language and political context. He challenges simplified accounts that frame Nicaea as a blunt clash between orthodoxy and heresy, arguing instead that the debates were shaped by shared philosophical vocabulary and competing interpretations of Scripture.

• The First World War by John Keegan Many of my favorite writers—C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Eliot, and Hemingway—were shaped by the trenches of WWI. While many focus on WWII, it was the Great War that fundamentally changed Western culture and the religious landscape. Keegan offers a comprehensive narrative that integrates strategy and politics with the lived experience of the soldiers.

For Fun (and Culture)

• Art and the Bible by Francis A. Schaeffer Schaeffer argues that Scripture provides a robust foundation for artistic creativity. He contends that art is rooted in creation itself and that the Bible affirms the legitimacy of art even when it depicts brokenness.

  Host Note: It’s a short, simple book that you’ll enjoy if you do any creative work or simply appreciate the work of artists.

• The Bonjour Effect by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoît Nadeau I’ve been working on learning French this year. I’m slow at it, but I love the culture and the food. This book examines the social logic behind French interactions, using the greeting “bonjour” as a window into their world. It explains how rituals of politeness structure French public life—something I’ve really come to recognize after spending time in France.

That’s my list for the year! I’d love to hear what you’ve been reading. Taking a moment to look back and make your own list is a great way to track how your reading has shaped you over the past year.