Our Top Reads of 2025

About this episode

The hosts share their personal Top 5 favorite books read in 2025, mostly outside the usual reading list.

In this special year-end bonus episode, hosts Father Wesley Walker and Dr. Junius Johnson take a break from their usual Great Books discussion to share their personal Top 5 favorite books read this year—works that fell (mostly) outside of the main Classical Mind reading list. The Classical Mind is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Junius Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Phantastes by George MacDonald The Liberation of Jerusalem by Torquato Tasso The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty Wesley The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain by Ronald C. White Attack Upon Christendom by Soren Kierkegaard Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri Nietzsche is My Brother by Bridget Edman, O.C.D. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theclassicalmind.com/subscribe

People in this episode

Hosts: Father Wesley Walker, Dr. Junius Johnson

Topics covered

• book recommendations
• year-end review
• literature
• classical works
• personal favorites

Keywords

• book recommendations
• 2025 reads
• classical literature
• favorite books
• year-end review

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Junius Frankenstein, Phantastes, The Liberation of Jerusalem, The Lord of the Rings, The Daevabad Trilogy, The Meaning of Christian Brotherhood, On Great Fields: The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Attack Upon Christendom, Everything Sad is Untrue, Nietzsche is My Brother

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• Paradiso with Dr. Jonathan Juilfs · May 12, 2026 · 1h 25m
• Purgatorio with Heidi White · April 28, 2026 · 1h 24m
• "The Tapestry": A Conversation about a New CiRCE Language Arts/Grammar Curriculum with Buck Holler · April 1, 2026 · 14 min
• The Inaugural Classical Mind Battle of the Books · March 16, 2026 · 30 min
• Inferno · March 10, 2026 · 1h 16m