Books and Songs for Fall 2025

Gentle readers, this weekend I sat down and read 400 pages while sitting on the couch. It feels like it’s been a while since I had a slow weekend morning without running errands or plans. Given my enjoyment with reading lately and my musical obsessions, I venture to share with you my books and songs for fall 2025.

Books for fall 2025

To Be Where You Are by Jan Karon

“She thought that one of the hardest parts of marriage was being loving when both partners were exhausted or wounded at the same time. When you had the least strength, that’s when you had to dig beyond your limits and grab whatever could be found and give it away.”

If you need a book to lift up your heart, try the Mitford series. This one is book 14! I definitely feel like with this book, the point of views are scattered and the book feels more all about different people in the town, as opposed to from Father Tim’s perspective. I do miss the Father Tim-centric perspective (similar to how the later Anne of Green Gables books focus less on Anne when she’s older). There are fun threads—like what the former mayor is up to and how Dooley and Lace faring with their adopted kid and how the local grocer is doing health-wise. 

Moral of the story: At the end of the day, life is about forgiveness and joy and you need prayer to get both.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

Praying was a way to interrupt your own habitual thinking, she told me. It’s admitting yourself into otherness, cracking open your prejudices. It’s not chitchat; it’s hard labour. She spoke as if all this were obvious. I longed to understand her. It feels always that I am on the edge of some comprehension here but never breaking through to the other side.”

It felt slightly strange and interesting to read a book about a woman who becomes a nun (which I love) but she doesn’t necessarily believe in God (interesting). She is drawn in by the quiet. The book meanders through memories and observations of the land, of the other nuns. A convent must be a good place to wrestle with inward griefs and learn to forgive ourselves for what we didn’t know before.

Moral of the story: Sometimes you have to get away from your life to make sense of your life.

Related Post: the murky waters of living 💧

The Crow Trap by Ann Cleeves

A murder mystery. Not very cozy but place-centric. We become so numb in our modern life but the places we live shape our context more than we readily acknowledge (unless we leave and return). This book introduces the audience to Vera Stanhope – a clear detective with a mellow history of her own. The Crow Trap is about women, their dreams, their hopes, their fears, their misunderstandings, their longings. What sticks with me (after pretty much reading this in one sitting) is the awkward, stilted first date two of the characters have. Somehow, there is more honestly in that particular awkward, where charm actually is an act or deceptive. Imperfections ground you in reality and that tethering force can be alluring in an understated sort of way.

Moral of the story: Not everything is as it seems.

Songs for fall 2025

Winds that Delay by Rachel Morley

Another day here 

I thought that by now

We’d be gone by now

I don’t want to stay here

I won’t beg but

Can we quicken this pace?

If any song fits the season, it’s this one here. I want things to change but things haven’t. I feel like a hamster running in circles. But this song is an honest prayer to God about how it feels to be stuck.

Whim by Hayley Williams

Baby take it easy

You’re always on the move

Something in the stillness

Gets you to the truth

And I know you took a beating

I know it’s all a risk

But listen how the heart beats

Lying next to him

This song is my favorite song on Hayley’s new album. It feels like what I imagine being in love to be like. Fun, makes you want to dance, makes you believe in something greater.

Related Post: two tales on love

Dangerous by Gracie Binion

Let them call me crazy

Let them say I’ve lost my mind

No critic could change me

I’ve left logical behind

And I don’t care if it’s stupid

If You want me to, I’ll do it

Though it’s risky, call it useless

I love You and I’ll prove it 

(best drum beat ever!)

This song is for the Lord (and for the girls who miss BarlowGirl). As a rock lover, I’ve long felt that worship was missing that element, and this song fits the bill so perfectly. You just have to go and listen to it!

House of Prayer by Mitch Wong

In Your House we pray for the sick

In Your House we move in Your gifts

In Your House Your Spirit pours out and there’s always more

There’s always more

In Your House the bound are set free

In Your House the enemy flees

In Your House we witness a gospel worth dying for

Worth dying for

Mitch Wong is an incredible songwriter. This song moves me everytime I hear it. It’s so easy to turn God into a genie to get what you want – when in reality, that’s not how He works AND that’s not the point of the gospel. House of Prayer is a song about the real role of the church and how God moves when the church is doing as she is called.

Fear of the Lord by Mitch Wong

Keep me on the narrow road

My life above reproach

…

Lead me by the Holy Ghost

 I won’t go where You won’t

Everything that Mitch Wong has released this year was everything I was hoping Steffany Gretzinger would release. (Her Psalms album is great but I was hoping for more!) Highly recommend listening to his new album IT NEEDS TO BE SAID.

Let me know what you are listening to and/or reading! I always take book recommendations!

Signing off,

Gigi