73 Books for every mood

Getting ready for some summer reading? Not sure where to turn?

The Refine Staff got together with their favorite titles to create this list of 73 books for every mood and season of life. Tell us what you think… and add your own!

Clare Hall

Homemaker & handyman

1. Theology of Home: Finding the Eternal in the Everyday - by Carrie Gress, Noelle Mering, and Megan Schrieber

2. The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook - by Ina Garten

3. How Your House Works: A Visual Guide to Understanding and Maintaining Your Home - by Charlie Wing

4. Gardening with Perennials: Creating Beautiful Flower Gardens for Every Part of Your Yard - by Sally Jean Cunningham

5. Home Body: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave - by Johanna Gaines 

Clare Hall

Suffering from Millennial nostalgia syndrome

1. Ella Enchanted - by Gail Carson Levine

2. Holes - by Louis Sachar

3. The Giver - by Lois Lowry

4. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone - by J.K. Rowling

5. The Boxcar Children - by Gertrude Chandler Warner

6. The Witches - by Roald Dahl

Clare Hall

Poetical

1. “The Ballad of the White Horse” - by GK Chesterton

2. “Complete Poems” - by Lewis Carroll

3. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” - by T.S. Eliot

4. “Sonnet 18” - by William Shakespeare

5. “Paradise Lost” - by John Milton

Patriotic 

1. Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates - by Brian Kilmeade

2. George Washington’s Secret Six: The Spy Ring That Saved the American Revolution - by Brian Kilmeade (yes, he’s that good)

3. Mayflower - by Nathaniel Philbrick

4. The Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy - by Edmund Morris

5. John Adams - by David McCullough 

Clare Hall

Sorrowful and ruminate

1. Eichman in Jerusalem - by Hannah Arendt

2. Anna Karenina - by Leo Tolstoy

3. Killer Angels - by Michael Shaara

4. The Complete Stories - by Flannery O’Connor

5. The Leaves are Falling - by Lucy Becket

6. A Farewell to Arms - by Ernest Hemingway

Clare Hall

Mysterious and downright criminal

1. The Name of the Rose - by Umberto Ecco

2. A Cloud of Witnesses - by Dorothy L. Sayers

3. Dracula - by Bram Stoker

4. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - by Mark Haddon

5. Mystery Mile - by Margery Allingham

Clare Hall

Seeking some R&R Miscellany

1. Code of Conduct: Tales of the Roller Coaster of Life - by Scott Freidheim

2. A Canticle for Leibowitz - by Walter Miller, Jr.

3. The Doomsday Book - by Connie Willis

4. Jeeves in the Morning - by P.G. Wodehouse

Clare Hall

Romantic

1. The Betrothed - by Alessandro Manzoni

2. Emma - by Jane Austen

3. Ivanhoe - by Sir Walter Scott

4. The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

5. Jane Eyre - by Charlotte Bronte

Clare Hall

Travel itch

1. Over the Edge of World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe - by Laurence Bergreen

2. Travels with Charley: In Search of America - by John Steinbeck

3. Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy - by Nathaniel Philbrick

4. Stephen Fry in America: Fifty States and the Man Who Set Out to See Them All - by Stephen Fry

5. A Tramp Abroad - by Mark Twain

6. The Path to Rome - by Hilaire Belloc

Clare Hall

Scholarly

1. Ethics for Beginners - by Peter Kreeft

2. Theology and Sanity - by Frank Sheed

3. After Stoicism - by Thomas Ward

4. The Abolition of Man - by C.S. Lewis

5. Awake Not Woke - by Noelle Mering

6. The Rights of Women - by Erika Bachiochi

Clare Hall

Homesteader aspirational

1. Little House on the Prairie - by Laura Ingalls Wilder

2. O Pioneers! - by Willa Cather

3. Self-Sufficiency for the 21st Century - by Dick and James Strawbridge

4. The First-Time Homesteader: A complete beginner's guide to starting and loving your new homestead - by Jessica Sowards

Clare Hall

Epic

1. The Long Ships - by Frans G. Bengtsson

2. Gates of Fire - by Steven Pressfield

3. The Odyssey - translated by Robert Fagles

4. The Lord of the Rings - by J.R.R. Tolkien

5. The Way of Kings - by Brandon Sanderson

Dystopias real and imagined

1. Postcard from a Volcano - by Lucy Beckett

2. Island of the World - by Michael D. O’Brien

3. Sex and the Unreal City - by Anthony Esolen

4. Prophet Song - by Paul Lynch

5. Human Acts - by Han Kang

6. Lord of the World - by Robert Hugh Benson

Fantastical and Sci-Fi

1. Red Rising - by Pierce Brown

2. The WingFeather Saga - by Andrew Peterson

3. The Tripods Series - by John Christopher

4. The Space Trilogy - by C.S. Lewis

5. The Falcon’s Children - by Ross Douthat (TIP: this one is serialized on his Substack)