What’s So Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey
I have a hard time choosing between Yancey’s book and Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality by Donald Miller.
I found both books to be profoundly moving examinations of and challenges to the way I live my faith.

Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel by Diane Schoemperlen, also published under the title Our Lady of the Lost and Found: A Novel of Mary, Faith, and Friendship.

“This is a work of fiction,” readers are told on the first page of this book. It is also one of the most insightful and enjoyable philosophies of history I have encountered.

Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America by David Hackett Fischer
I read this as a graduate student and it changed the way I thought about the past.

Fischer’s reflections on the significance of the folkways of four different groups of Britons in creating persistent regional patterns in American culture were fresh, and his model for interpreting cultural history is one I still consider important.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Barbery is a French philosopher; her novel is a commentary on philosophy, social hierarchies, and the search for beauty. I think her sarcastic description of phenomenology is brilliant. Academics really can take themselves too
seriously.

Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw: Travels in Search of Canada by Will Ferguson
As a Canadian who has ancestors in almost every major transatlantic migration to North America, I appreciated Ferguson’s humorous examination of the quirkiness and uniqueness of this place. As an historian, I appreciated Ferguson’s grasp of story. As he says, “Canada is more than just a country: it is a sum of its stories. We are all orphans, are all survivors of shipwrecks, and we carry these stories of exile and renewal within us, whether we are aware of it or not.”