Here is a list of books and other materials, studied by an ever-evolving small group originally started at Zumbro Lutheran Church.
The group began late in 2006 as a science fiction and Bible study. In the fall of 2008, focus changed to heroes, leaders, and disciples. By fall of 2009, group members decided that any books thought to be interesting to the group could be candidates to read and discuss.
I highly recommend the books marked with emphasis like this. Other group members would highly recommend a different subset of the books we've discussed.
| Title | Author(s) | Discussed |
|---|---|---|
| James: A Novel | Percival Everett | 2/2025 (Zoom) |
| Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation | Elaine Pagels | 1/2025 (Zoom) |
| The Wishing Game: A Novel | Meg Shaffer | 11/2024 (Zoom) |
| Liar in a Crowded Theater: Freedom of Speech in a World of Misinformation | Jeff Kosseff | 9/2024 (Zoom) |
| Lying Awake: A Novel | Mark Salzman | 8/2024 (Zoom) |
| A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot Book 1) | Becky Chambers | 7/2024 (Zoom) |
| Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod: A Conflict that Changed American Christianity | James C. Burkee | 6/2024 (Zoom) |
| The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 | Jane Poyntner | 5/2024 (Zoom) |
| Fingerprints of God: What Science Is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience | Barbara Bradley Hagerty | 4/2024 (Zoom) |
| Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know | Adam Grant | 3/2024 (Zoom) |
| Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life | Dacher Keltner | 2/2024 (Zoom) |
| Music of Silence: A Sacred Journey Through the Hours of the Day | David Steindl-Rast with Sharon Lebell | 1/2024 (Zoom) |
| West with Giraffes: A Novel | Lynda Rutledge | 11/2023 (Zoom) |
| The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder | David Grann | 10/2023 (Zoom) |
| Listening Point | Sigurd F. Olson | 9/2023 (Zoom) |
| The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America | Karen Abbott | 8/2023 (Zoom) |
| The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief | Francis S. Collins | 7/2023 (Zoom) |
| Bettyville: A Memoir | George Hodgman | 5/2023 (Zoom) |
| The Elegance of the Hedgehog | Muriel Barbery | 4/2023 (Zoom) |
| Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships | Nina Totenberg | 3/2023 (Zoom) |
| The God Who Sees: Immigrants, the Bible, and the Journey to Belong | Karen Gonzalez | 2/2023 (Zoom) |
| The Personal Librarian | Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray | 1/2023 (Zoom) |
| Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived | Rob Bell | 11/2022 (Zoom) |
| Paul and Jesus: How the Apostle Transformed Christianity | James D. Tabor | 10/2022 (Zoom) |
| The Book of Longings: A Novel | Sue Monk Kidd | 9/2022 (Zoom) |
| The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story | Douglas Preston | 8/2022 (Zoom) |
| State of Wonder: A Novel | Ann Patchett | 7/2022 (Zoom) |
| One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich | Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn | 5/2022 (Zoom) |
| Positive Words, Powerful Results: Simple Ways to Honor, Affirm, and Celebrate Life | Hal Urban | 4/2022 (Zoom) |
| Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage | Alfred Lansing | 2/2022 (Zoom) |
| This Tender Land: A Novel | William Kent Krueger | 1/2022 (Zoom) |
| The Earth Is Enough: Growing Up in a World of Flyfishing, Trout & Old Men | Harry Middleton | 11/2021 (Zoom) |
| The Midnight Library: A Novel | Matt Haig | 10/2021 (Zoom) |
| The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny | William Strauss and Neil Howe | 9/2021 (Zoom) |
| Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America | Stephen Mansfield | 8/2021 (Zoom) |
| Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Love, Loss and the Hidden Order of Life | Lulu Miller | 6/2021 (Zoom) |
| To Be Taught, If Fortunate | Becky Chambers | 5/2021 (Zoom) |
| What the Wind Knows | Amy Harmon | 4/2021 (Zoom) |
| Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States | Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry | 3/2021 (Zoom) |
| Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World | Fareed Zakaria | 2/2021 (Zoom) |
| Dear Church: A Love Letter from a Black Preacher to the Whitest Denomination in the US | Lenny Duncan | 1/2021 (Zoom) |
| God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America | Lyz Lenz | 12/2020 (Zoom) |
| The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel | P. S. Duffy | 10/2020 (Zoom) |
| Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel | George Saunders | 8/2020 (Zoom) |
| Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church | Megan Phelps-Roper | 7/2020 (Zoom) |
| The True Believer | Eric Hoffer | 2/2020 |
| No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us | Rachel Louise Snyder | 1/2020 |
| Educated: A Memoir | Tara Westover | 10/2019 |
| In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement | John Heminway | 9/2019 |
| The Cross and the Lynching Tree | James Cone | 8/2019 |
| Searching For Sunday | Rachel Held Evans | 6/2019 |
| God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible | Adam Nicolson | 5/2019 |
| Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life | Richard Rohr | 4/2019 |
| Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal | Ben Sasse | 3/2019 |
| I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou | 1/2019 |
| Long Way Gone | Charles Martin | 11/2018 |
| Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth | Reza Aslan | 10/2018 |
| The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen 83 ¼ Years Old | Hendrik Groen and Hester Velmans | 9/2018 |
| Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI | David Grann | 8/2018 |
| The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World | The Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Douglas Abrams | 7/2018 |
| The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic | Mike Duncan | 4/2018 |
| Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood | Trevor Noah | 1/2018 |
| Why the Reformation Still Matters | Michael Reeves, Tim Chester | 11/2017 |
| The God Theory: Universes, Zero-Point Fields, and What's Behind It All | Bernard Haisch | 10/2017 |
| Gilead: A Novel | Marilynne Robinson | 9/2017 |
| The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion | Jonathan Haidt | 8/2017 |
| Ordinary Grace: A Novel | William Kent Krueger | 7/2017 |
| Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People | Nadia Bolz-Weber | 5/2017 |
| The Relic Master: A Novel | Christopher Buckley | 3/2017 |
| Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis | J. D. Vance | 2/2017 |
| Kissing Fish: Christianity for People Who Don't Like Christianity | Roger Wolsey | 1/2017 |
| Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End | Atul Gawande | 12/2016 |
| Dear Committee Members | Julie Schumacher | 11/2016 |
| Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates | 9/2016 |
| Nine Essential Things I've Learned About Life | Harold S. Kushner | 8/2016 |
| The Source of Life | Jurgen Moltmann | 7/2016 |
| Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Bryan Stevenson | 5/2016 |
| First We Have Coffee | Margaret Jensen | 11/2015 |
| Orthodoxy | G. K. Chesterton | 10/2015 |
| One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World | Tullian Tchividjian | 9/2015 |
| Making Sense of the Bible: Rediscovering the Power of Scripture Today | Adam Hamilton | 5/2015 |
| Short Stories by Jesus: The Enigmatic Parables of a Controversial Rabbi | Amy-Jill Levine | 4/2015 |
| Just Jesus: My Struggle to Become Human | Walter Wink, Steven Berry | 3/31/2015 |
| The Book of Strange New Things | Michel Faber | 3/3/2015 |
| Stitches: a Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair | Anne Lamott | 2/2015 |
| Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now | Walter Brueggemann | 11/2014 |
| Jesus > Religion: Why He is So Much Better than Trying Harder, Doing More, and Being Good Enough | Jefferson Bethke | 10/2014 |
| Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion | Sara Miles | 9/2014 |
| Walking with the Poor | Bryant Myers | 8/2014 |
| Born Believers | Justin L. Barrett, Ph.D. | 6/2014 |
| We Sinners: A Novel | Hanna Pylväinen | 4/2014 |
| Kitchen Table Wisdom | Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. | 3/2014 |
| The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University | Kevin Roose | 2/2014 |
| The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism | Timothy Keller | 1/2014 |
| The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic | John Shelby Spong | 11/2013 |
| The Hammer of God | Bo Giertz | 7/2013 |
| Ragman and Other Cries of Faith | Walter Wangerin | 5/2013 |
| Pilgrim at Tinker Creek | Annie Dillard | 4/23/2013 |
| Making Sense of the Christian Faith | David J. Lose | 4/2/2013 |
| The Great Divorce | C. S. Lewis | 2/2013 |
| The Dangerous Act of Loving Your Neighbor: Seeing Others Through the Eyes of Jesus | Mark Labberton | 1/2013 |
| All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir | Brennan Manning | 11/2012 |
| Your God Is Too Small | J. B. Phillips | 9/2012 |
| A Place on Earth: A Novel | Wendell Berry | 7/2012 |
| Crossing the Bar: Home By Another Way | James G. Johnson | 5/2012 |
| A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story | Diana Butler Bass | 4/2012 |
| The Gospel of Grace | Mark Wickstrom | 1/2012 |
| The Pilgrim's Progress | John Bunyan | 11/2011 |
| Jayber Crow | Wendell Berry | 8/2011 |
| The Freedom of a Christian | Martin Luther (translated by Mark D. Tranvik) | 6/2011 |
| Confessions | Saint Augustine | 5/2011 |
| If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat | John Ortberg | 4/2011 |
| The Secret Teachings of Jesus: Four Gnostic Gospels | Marvin W. Meyer | 3/2011 |
| Love Leadership | John Hope Bryant | 2/2011 |
| The Year of Living Biblically | A. J. Jacobs | 1/2011 |
| Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White | Adam Hamilton | 12/2010 |
| Beyond Fundamentalism | Reza Aslan | 11/2010 |
| The Gift of Years | Joan Chittister | 10/2010 |
| Prayer: A Primer | Henry F. French | 9/2010 |
| The Sunflower | Simon Wiesenthal | 8/2010 |
| Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff | Christopher Moore | 7/2010 |
| Amish Grace | Donald Kraybill, et al | 5/2010 |
| Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography | John Dominic Crossan | 4/2010 |
| Making Sense of Scripture: Big Questions About the Book of Faith | David J. Lose | 3/2010 |
| Reading the Bible Again for the First Time | Marcus J. Borg | 2/2010 |
| The Human Being | Walter Wink | 1/2010 |
| unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity...and Why It Matters | David Kinnaman, et al | 12/2009 |
| Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life | Winifred Gallagher | 11/2009 |
| The Powers that Be | Walter Wink | 10/2009 |
| Manna and Mercy | Dan Erlander | 9/2009 |
| Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light | Mother Teresa, Brian Kolodiejchuk | 6/2009 (not discussed) |
| Living a Life that Matters | Harold S. Kushner | 5/2009 |
| The Seven Storey Mountain | Thomas Merton | 4/2009 |
| How Then Shall We Live? | Wayne Muller | 3/2009 |
| Desmond Tutu: Rabble Rouser for Peace | John Allen | 2/2009 |
| A Life Worth Leading | Eric Burtness | 1/2009 |
| The Long Loneliness | Dorothy Day | 12/2008 |
| Let Your Life Speak | Parker Palmer | 11/2008 |
| A Canticle for Liebowitz | Walter Miller | 5/2008 |
| Star Trek: The Next Generation, "Half a Life" episode | Peter Allan Fields, Ted Roberts, Gene Roddenberry | 4/2008 |
| Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency | Douglas Adams | 2/2008 |
| The Children of God | Mary Doria Russell | 1/2008 |
| selected Bible passages, discussion questions about space and the potential for life on other planets | Bible authors, Sue Jenkins | 10/2007 |
| The Sparrow | Mary Doria Russell | 5/2007 |
| That Hideous Strength | C. S. Lewis | 4/2007 |
| Perelandra | C. S. Lewis | 3/2007 |
| Out of the Silent Planet | C. S. Lewis | 2/2007 |
| Dr. Who TV episodes | not known | 1/2007 |
| Ender's Game | Orson Scott Card | 12/2006 |
| Stranger In a Strange Land | Robert Heinlein | 11/2006 |