I suppose reading was almost always a part of my life: my mom read classics like The Chronicles of Narnia to me before bed each night, my elementary school best friend Beth and I shared both a birthday and a subscription to the The Baby-Sitters Club fan club newsletter, and my librarian knew me well enough to know when to take me by the literal and figurative hand and lead me from the kid section to the adult stacks. She told me to start with Little Women, by the way.
But somehow I didn’t realize I was a Reader until much later—one hot summer day in Tennessee, stretched out under the ceiling fan on the old family sofa when Charlotte Bronte addressed me as such: ”gentle reader.” I have searched for that thick, pebbly red library binding copy of Jane Eyre for so long to no avail, but the memory of my brain pinging “oh, that’s me” changed something in me forever. No longer did I select only three books from my English teacher’s suggested summer reading list; I made it my goal to chew through the entire list by the time school started back each fall.
I worked for my college bookstore all four years. I started stacking up hundreds of books and lugging them from house to house every time we moved after I married a Naval officer. I eventually found my way into the work that’s the joy of my life as the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club Community Manager.
Books aren’t part of my life; books practically are my life. My day revolves around books and talking about books. I read almost the first thing every morning, starting my day with philosophical and devotional reading like scripture and poetry. I finish the day reading—usually gentle things like letters and kidlit and more poetry. I take a tea break most afternoons to read a few pages of whatever classic I’m working my way through (25 in 2025), followed by whatever we’re reading next for book club. I check into my favorite bookish community forums throughout the day on the MMD Book Club app on my phone. I follow bookish creators on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok and Substack. I’ve made friends trading books and book recommendations and making pilgrimages to beloved bookstores and author talks in cities far and near.
On those bookstore shelves and library stacks, I’m drawn to classics or books that I suspect might become classics some day, especially literary fiction and narrative nonfiction, anywhere I can find a great story, whether that’s told through the lens of a precocious copper-headed orphan, a rugged mountain climber, a dogged journalist chasing down facts, an Oxbridge professor exploring myths in a new way, or a New England pastor and poet. I know some of you are the same because you are my friends and kindreds here.
The books that shaped Ginger
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Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin
Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale
Waiting on the Word: A poem a day for Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
What books have shaped you? Have you read any of these? Please tell us in the comments section!
P.S. Check out our team’s The books that shaped me series.
About the author
Ginger Horton is our Book Club Community Manager here at MMD. Her go-to genres are literary fiction and classics. You can find Ginger on Instagram at @gthorton or the MMD Book Club account @MMDBookClub.
54 comments
Oh, I love this! Thank you Ginger for sharing a special part of your life with us. I will definitely be checking out a few of these. The idea of rereading a book each year has been a thought, but this year I will start that tradition. The book that came to mind was C.S. Lewis’book Mere Christianity. We’ll see what I choose in the end, but I’m excited to start looking for “the book ” Blessings,
Christine
Finding the book was hard, but fun in the end as every book I read I wondered: is this the one?
In the end, I wondered if I’d regret getting “locked in” but it turns out I made the right choice and have not yet regretted it. I look forward to it more and more each year.
This is a wonderful list! Just added the ones I haven’t read to my TBR!
I have been rereading A Christmas Carol for many years and love it! Most recently My husband has been reading it to me and our kids and it’s a delight and new lessons learned every time!
Me too!!
Oh my gosh, that Buechner “listen to your life” quote is an absolute favorite (as is “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid”). Perhaps I should finally read the book it comes from!
I aim to be a completist of his someday!
Ginger, thanks for putting more of yourself in front of us MMD group. It good to feel you as someone I would like to meet.
Kate
So kind, Kate! I’ve loved getting to know you too!!
@joyfulsue and I are finishing a slow but steady reread of Little Women in the next few days! It’s a classic I loved, and still really like and appreciate.
I’m so thrilled to learn it holds up for you. I haven’t read it in many years!
Ginger, thank you! I love how each of our individual reading journeys are unique, but with delightful parallels and overlap. I will definitely be picking up some of your “foundational” books.
I love that thought of overlap yet uniqueness. I’ll be pondering that a long time. Feels so special about the reading life.
These ones are all my favorites too! (Liked Time Traveler’s Wife, but it didn’t shape me as much as the others). I reread a book from Buechner, Lewis, and Guite every year.
I’d love to hear more of yours, Laura since it sounds like there’s significant overlap in the Venn diagram of our reading lives. 🙂
I love this so much. I immediately put Waiting on the Word and Hellhound on His Trail on my TBR. Thanks for sharing this with us, Ginger.
I can’t wait to hear what you think, Julie!
I didn’t realize you worked at the college bookstore here. You probably sold me a book! That warms my heart. Frederick buechner’s Godric is a personal favorite and I heard Malcolm Guite speak last summer.. such a wordsmith! Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Oh that warms my heart too!! Small world. And I have still not gotten around to Godric!
This is one of the best “shaped by” lists I’ve encountered. I appreciate that some are the lesser known books by the author or the lesser known book about the subject. Great variety and a great explanation for each read. I’ll look for the MLK book and Guite is a favorite of mine and this sounds lovely.
That’s so kind, Faith! I hope you enjoy the MLK title.
Ginger, thank you for this list! I’ve not read a single book on your list, but the way you describe them all I know I MUST add them to my TBR…like, immediately! Also, would you be willing to share some of your favorite follows for bookish creatives?
I hope you find some on this list you enjoy, Kaylee!
Sure thing! I love Darling Desi and Trinity Forum on YouTube; Anne Helen Peterson, Shauna Niequist, and Karen Swallow Prior on Substack; Shawntaye Hopkins and Kari Sweeney on Instagram. Those are the first ones that come to mind but if I think of others I’ll report back!
I am interested in Till We Have Faces because I love myths, but I have a question. I am not Christian. Since two of your five books are specifically Christian, and because I know CS Lewis wrote many Christian books, what is the level of Christianity I can expect in this book? I am comfortable with stories inspired by Christianity, such as The Chronicles of Narnia. I’m just not interested in reading books that either assume I am Christian or that preach Christian homilies.
Great question! I you’ll find Till We Have Faces as Lewis’s least explicitly Christian book—there are traces of the religious or philosophical in the mythical retelling but I think if you’ve enjoyed the Chronicles of Narnia, you’d enjoy Till We Have Faces. It’s first and foremost just a great story, well told.
Thank you for response Ginger. Adding it to my list!
Ginger,
I’ve felt for some time now that you and I are kindred spirits in many ways. I think that if we lived closer, we would be face-to-face friends. I am grateful that we can interact via the internet and hope that someday our paths will cross in person.
Your childhood favorites are similar to mine, particularly Jane Eyre and Little Women and The Chronicles of Narnia. I’m a little too old for The Babysitter’s Club, but I devoured Nancy Drew books in much the same way.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is a book I read a long time ago, an early version of a genre I really gravitate towards (magical realism, time travel, complex narrative structure, romantic elements). I may have to revisit this early favorite of mine.
C. S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors, as well. I am long overdue to replace my tattered childhood set of Narnia with new copies. I’ve read many but not all of his other works, but two favorites are The Screwtape Letter and The Four Loves. Till We Have Faces has been on my TBR for some time now, and your review reminded me of why I have been wanting to read it.
I really appreciate your theological recommendations. Buechner and Guite sound right up my alley. Advent is my favorite church season, so I am planning to order Waiting on the Word so I can use it as my daily devotional.
I’m looking forward to some more readerly conversations with you!
Oh this thrills me too, Melinda because I feel the same way—I know we’re kindreds (magical realism and The Screwtape Letters and advent!) and I love chatting books with you. Thanks for sharing these thoughts and I’m looking forward to more conversations with you about these and many more in Book Club.
Hellhound was so good. I read it after a trip to MLK sites in Atlanta and was honestly disappointed. For anyone interested if AA history, you must visit the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, AL.
The most amazing museum I’ve ever been to.
Thanks for that recommendation! I’m in Atlanta often visiting family and I’ll have to look that one up.
This post was joy to my soul. You are a wonderful and inspiring wordsmith and apart from A Time Traveller’s Wife, I have just added them all to my waiting list on Goodreads.
I have a book which I read every year, it’s The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater. It’s part memoir and part cookery book, I read it every October to prepare myself for the Christmas season.
Ooooh this sounds DELIGHTFUL. My best book of 2024 was Nigel Slater’s A Thousand Gifts and that was my introduction to his writing so I’m adding this to my Christmas (reading) list this year!
Given your story and the books you referenced, I think our shelves may be very similar. I love all of these books/authors that I’ve read before. Thank you so much for sharing, and for leading me to a couple that I have yet to read—I am sure those will be added to my stacks soon because of these recommendations.
I love hearing that, Hannah! I hope you enjoy and since our shelves are so similar, I’d love to hear a few of your favorites if you care to share??
What a wonderful list. Coincidentally, I am working my way through Narnia again for the first time in a number of years. Just finished “A Horse and His Boy.” I have read most of his other books at least once, although I blunted my sword on “Till We All Have Faces.” I’ll have to give it another try. I’m going to put “Telling the Truth” at the top of my “to read” pile. I have Buechner’s book “Secrets in the Dark” on my Kindle, but haven’t read it yet. I love finding books of poetry and devotions for the liturgical seasons of the year. I have used “Waiting on the Word” during the past two Advent -> Epiphany seasons.
What a wonderful expression—blunted my sword! I’ll have to use that sometime.
While I think Telling the Truth was more impactful to me as a reader, Secrets of the Dark is probably my favorite Buechner. He’s at his finest in his sermons. You’re in for a treat!
I have a loose goal that I’d reread Narnia every 7 years, but I think I’ve overshot that so a reread is in order for me too.
Ginger, I love your bookish bio. I’m curious who made the suggestion about choosing a book are re-reading each year. I once heard John Mark Reynolds say something similar … coincidently at a C.S. Lewis conference.
I dearly wish I knew! It was someone in person, someone I didn’t know well, and a female—but I cannot for the life of me remember the when or the where or the who! It’s entirely possible they heard it somewhere and the context was “I just heard this at a C.S. Lewis conference” and I’ve forgotten all the relevant details other than “reread a book” but I would love to find out someday that it came full circle for me to Lewis! 🙂
“If you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Where your feet take you, that is who you are.”
You had me at Buechner. I’d add Anne Lamott, M. Scott Peck and Phillip Yancey. Sprinkle a little Beth Moore on top. Who needs sprinkles?
Oh my stars, I’ve never read M. Scott Peck, but in that good company, now I intend to!
Ginger, it was so fun to learn more about you! But two things surprised me – I only knew the phrase “gentle reader” from the Mitford series (even though Jane Eyre is my favorite all-time single novel.) You wrote me once when I asked if there was anything in the same vain as Mitford and recommend some things that might fill the gap. And so therefore, since you said how much you loved it, I was surprised that it was not on your list of the books that shaped you! Also, do you know that Jan Karon has book number 15 of the series coming out in October called My Beloved? I’m so excited and I’ve pre-ordered it on Amazon already. It’s nice to be able to tell another Mitfordian fan! You go, girl!
I rejoice that Jan Karon has a new one this fall!
And I truly agonized about including Mitford. While I adore adore adore them, I feel like I was a more fully formed reader when I came to Mitford, so they mean so much to me in my current reading life, but I tried to stay with books that shaped my reading life. Now, maybe I should write a post called Just My Pure Favorite Books, Please Everyone Read These. 🙂
That list would for sure include Mitford, and also My Life in France, Atonement, David Copperfield, Bel Canto, Tuck Everlasting, Let the Great World Spin, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Home Fire, Dark Matter…
Oh Ginger, please write this list! I also LOVED Time Traveler’s Wife, and the Hampton Sides (love that name) book about MLK. The Narnia books definitely shaped my reading life, along with Agatha Christie mysteries – I made it a goal to try and read every single one of them when I was in Middle School. Other key books for me were Mere Christianity, East of Eden, Atlas Shrugged, Trinity, and Gone With the Wind. I’m rereading Mere Christianity now; I last read it about 20 years ago and my daughter asked to borrow it, but then she added “…it would be great if it had your notes and thoughts in it…”. So I am adding my notes and thoughts this time through for her, and will give it to her when I am finished. I’m rambling now… Love hearing from you on the blog, Ginger!
Happy Reading!
Thanks for the thoughtful list. I’ve ordered “Telling the Truth” because I trust your recommendations!
I can’t wait to hear what you think, Richelle!
I love this so much! I love Malcolm Guite’s work and am doing my part in spreading the love by having my online literature students memorize his poem “O Sapientia.” 🙂 I’ve been meaning to read some Buechner. I tried some of his fiction first and I think it wasn’t the right place for me. You inspired me to put this one on hold at my library.
I’ve been trying to memorize his poem “God’s breath in man” and recite it to myself whenever I need to breathe.
Buechner’s fiction is much harder for me for some reason too! I’d like to read more… someday.
I didn’t read Narnia until I was an adult Heidi being one of my most often read significant books as a kid — I loved the way she stubbornly believed even when the adults the authority figures insisted it couldn’t be done and yet she managed it. I must have read that book 20-30 times.
I added the Telling the Truth to my TBR though I usually avoid books that even sniff like they might lean toward proselyting. I was surprised that Lillian Boxfish was on your list though….
I’ve never read Heidi, can you believe it! Adding it to my TBR.
And you’re so right – if I were going to give Lillian Boxfish a category it would be the book that made a character a friend.
Oh, Ginger, you must read Heidi! I read it with my best friend and her mom who is my adopted mom and we read it aloud. It was one of our favorite things that we had ever read, and we were all 60 and above! I did not find it to be a kids book at all, but it touched my heart so deeply. I think you would love it, especially with your love of Mitford.
Thank you, Ginger, for sharing. I can’t wait to explore some of these!
This is such an inspiring article! Thank you for the window into your soul.
I love this series – it’s a wonderful way to get to know someone and a great question for self-reflection. I’m so intrigued by the yearly reading idea. I’ve rarely re-read anything as an adult, including the Narnia books that were favorites in childhood. The one book I have re-read (on my third pass now) is Middlemarch, but I think it’s a bit too long for an annual spot on my list 😉. I’d love to know if you think you gain more new insights about the work or about yourself from the reread of the C.S. Lewis book. Thanks for your thoughtful list!
Ginger, this is amazing! I am definitely adding some books to my TBR. Thanks for the glimpse into your reading life! 🙂
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