The Summer Reading List: 2026

A 2025 YouGov poll revealed some interesting factoids about Americans’ reading habits—or lack thereof. 40% of us didn’t read a book last year. About a quarter of the country read one to four books in 2025, and 13% clocked in at between five and nine books in all formats (print, electronic, audio). 19% of us did 82% of America’s book reading.

So let’s up our game. Herewith, some suggestions for your own reading pleasure this summer, which I hope you’ll pass along to friends:

Erik Varden, Alight with Hidden Glory (Bloomsbury): A Trappist monk and the bishop of Trondheim in Norway, Varden was invited by Pope Leo XIV to give the 2026 Lenten retreat to the Roman Curia. It was a wise papal decision, as there are very few Catholics who can break open the riches of biblical faith like Bishop Varden, whose command of sources ranging from literature and music to theology, philosophy, and the lives of the saints is amazing. That he writes in a crystalline prose accessible to all makes this small book, composed of Varden’s papal retreat conferences, a spiritual feast worthy to stand with Karol Wojtyła’s Sign of Contradiction in the history of the genre.

Carl Trueman, The Desecration of Man (Sentinel): When the New York State legislature, with time on its hands and nonsense on its mind, decides that the terms “mother” and “father” are transphobic and should be replaced on state birth certificates with “gestating parent” and “non-gestating parent,” you know we’ve gone far beyond Alice’s Wonderland. Carl Trueman, America’s most scintillating Protestant thinker and a veteran pastor, explains how the rejection of God in Western high culture led to the self-harming and self-degrading deconstruction of the human now evident in Albany and elsewhere.

Matthew Mehan with illustrations by John Folley, The American Book of Fables (Sophia Institute Press): As its back cover suggests, this book “invites you to rediscover the beauty and goodness of America” in a transcontinental romp “from the Everglades to the Great Lakes [and] from the sequoias of California to the rocky islands of Maine,”  accompanied by a treasure trove of stories, historical texts, lyrics, letters, nursery rhymes, and poems that make this handsome volume perfect for family reading during the national semiquincentennial.

Joseph Carola, Dragons: A Roman Requiem (Sophia Institute Press): Father Carola is one of Catholicism’s most gifted teachers. In his first novel, he recreates the tense political, cultural, and spiritual atmosphere of Rome as the forces of an aggressively secular Italian Risorgimento closed in on the rump of the Papal States. Dragons is also a poignant reminder of what the Society of Jesus once represented in the Church and what we must hope it comes to embody again: dynamic orthodoxy in service to the conversion of the world.

Carter Griffin, Reclaimed: Win the War of Freedom, Self-Mastery, and Holy Purity (Scepter): Father Griffin is a wonderful priest and a masterful spiritual guide, who offers in this brief book a primer for men wanting to live chastity as what Pope St. John Paul II called “the integrity of love.”

Samantha Kelley’s Be Fierce is published by FIERCE Athlete, an innovative apostolate that works with women athletes to integrate their athletic and spiritual lives, thereby growing into a more complete humanity. Author Sam Kelley, founder and president of FIERCE Athlete, was a D-1 soccer player in college and continues to compete in rowing, triathlon, and, yes, pickleball. She knows of what she writes.

Sergei Chapnin, Religious Communities Under Pressure: Documenting Religious Persecution in Russia 2022-2026 (available at Amazon): Through dozens of case studies, an expert on Russian Orthodoxy describes the corruption of the Church he loves by its willful self-subordination to the power of the Kremlin. Give it to anyone you know who fancies Czar Putin a defender of Christian values and to any Catholic integralists in your circle. Additionally, Bishop Robert Barron suggests practical ways to support persecuted brethren around the world in What Do Their Deaths Demand? Christian Persecution Today (Word on Fire).              

Charles Fountain, The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball (Oxford): The infamous “Black Sox” scandal of 1919 previewed the inevitable outcome of today’s rampant sports betting—a no-win addiction now idiotically supported by MLB, the NFL, the NBA, and the NHL: to the further, and perhaps terminal, corruption of our games.

Benedict XVI, The Lord Holds Us by the Hand (Ignatius Press): Pope Benedict was arguably the greatest papal preacher since St. Gregory the Great. This marvelous collection of mini-sermons, preached to his small post-papal household on different feasts and during various liturgical seasons, demonstrates that his homiletic gifts did not lie fallow in his retirement.