Choose Hard for Body, Mind, & Soul
A PODVIG READING LIST
Books Worth Peddling
Books that deserve to be read, returned to, and passed from hand to hand.
Some books belong in more than one place. They should be carried, recommended, given, and placed into the hands of another reader.
Books Worth Peddling is a growing collection of books that have helped form the Podvig world—books worth reading slowly, returning to, and passing along.
WHY PEDDLE BOOKS
A Good Book Should Travel
My godfather, Warren Farha, understood that bookselling was never merely about keeping shelves stocked. It was about knowing books well enough to place the right one into another person’s hands.
That is the spirit behind Books Worth Peddling. This is not a comprehensive reading list or a parade of whatever is new. It is a collection of books I have read, returned to, carried with me, and found myself pressing upon other people.
Some have formed the Podvig world. Some have changed how I understand the Church, the human person, language, work, place, or the good life. All of them are here because they are worth carrying and passing from hand to hand.
Eighth Day Books in Wichita, KS—the bookstore Warren Farha built and the place thta formed my life among books.
BOOKS, COMMERCE & CONSCIENCE
Buying Books in the Jungle
Warren called Amazon “The Jungle.” He had spent his life building something altogether different: a real bookstore, in a real place, filled with books chosen by people who knew why they mattered.
I believe in that kind of bookstore. I also have a wife, children, a household budget, and a lifelong inability to stop wanting books. Sometimes admiration collides with arithmetic.
Buying Books in the Jungle is my attempt to live honestly inside that tension: supporting Eighth Day Books and independent booksellers while recognizing that cost, availability, and household stewardship sometimes send readers into the jungle.
BOOKS, MEMORY & FORMATION
Building a Personal Library
A personal library is not a collection of books one has finished. It's a place of return: books read, marked, remembered, abandoned, rediscovered, and kept nearby because we may someday need what they contain.
Umberto Eco called the unread portion of a library an “antilibrary.” C. S. Lewis freed me from the compulsion to finish every book simply because I had begun it. Together, they helped me understand that a library exists not to display what we have mastered, but to keep us in the presence of what we have yet to receive.
The developing Podvig Study, home to Dr. Doom's working library—books read, marked, returned to, and kept near for the work still ahead.
FROM DR. DOOM'S SHELF
Featured Books Worth Peddling
Irenaeus of Lyons
John Behr
A substantial scholarly study of how Irenaeus identifies Christianity through Scripture, the rule of faith, and the crucified and risen Christ.
Man and the Incarnation
Gustaf Wingren
A rigorous and illuminating study of Irenaeus’s vision of humanity, tracing how creation, sin, the Incarnation, and redemption belong to one coherent biblical theology.
The Scandal of the Incarnation
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
A carefully chosen collection of passages from Irenaeus’s Against Heresies that reveals the coherence, beauty, and scope of his theological vision.
Becoming Human
John Behr
John Behr’s brief, richly illustrated meditation on what it means to become human in Christ, guided by Irenaeus’s vision of creation, growth, and glory.
Eternity & Time
Dumitru Staniloae
A brief but profound Orthodox meditation on time as God’s gift: the arena in which human freedom learns to answer divine love and temporal life opens toward eternity.
The Love of Learning and the Desire for God
Jean Leclercq, O.S.B.
A luminous account of monastic culture in which literature, learning, prayer, memory, and the desire for God belong to one integrated life.
