My 40 Before 40 Reading List - Working on the Western Canon - BLOG
Release Date: 03/06/2026
Can You Really Raise a Large Family Well? - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
Rediscovering God’s design for family in a world that sees children as a burden I have mostly been off of social media entirely since early January when I got my new "dumb-ish" phone for my birthday. But even so, news reached me that Hannah Neeleman from Ballarina Farms had her 9th baby. And that the internet has imploded over it. I'm honestly not sure what is so shocking about a Mormon mom, who's had 8 previous babies, presumably every 1/5 - 2 years for over a decade, now having one more child. Like, don't you expect it by now? But nevertheless, baby #9 is here, and the interwebs have...
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My 40 Before 40 Reading List - Working on the Western Canon - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
For the first time in a couple of years, I've really been enjoying my reading list! I've set a goal of reading 104 books this year, at a clipped pace of 2 books per week. Here at the end of February, I've managed to stay on track with this goal and hope to see it through this year. Part of my renewed vigor with reading is that it has now been 4+ years since I've gone this long without being pregnant. In fact, 2026 might be the first year that I will not have a nursing baby or be pregnant since 2019 (7 years, wow)! In fact, I've only had two years (2013 and 2018) since 2011 that I have not been...
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How to Grow as a Homemaker (Without Feeling Behind) - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
When I first got married, I was behind. Admittedly, I was only nineteen. That alone explains part of it. But if I am completely honest, I do not think that five more years would have made much difference. Even if I had finished college as a single woman instead of a married one, even if I had waited until twenty-four or twenty-five, I do not believe I would have been significantly more prepared to run a home. Like many women of my generation, I had spent my teenage and young adult years focused on school, grades, college applications, part-time jobs, and preparing for a future career. I...
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My Garden Journal: February 2026 - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
I am deep in the part of my gardening year where I am SUPER excited… and also starting to wonder if maybe I did too much. If you garden, you know this feeling. January and February are all hope and seed packets and plans. Everything feels possible. And then suddenly your dining room table is covered in milk cartons and seed trays and you’re counting how many varieties of peppers you started and thinking, “Oh dear.” But here’s something I’ve learned in my still-limited gardening experience: I would rather feel like I did too much than look back in July and wish I had done more....
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A Trip to Pennsylvania, A Pause in Blogging, and Some Honest Reflections - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
The kids and I had the opportunity to go visit my family in Pennsylvania this past week, and I’m so incredibly glad we did. We’ve been trying to schedule a trip up there for ages, and it just never seemed to work out. There was always something — a launch, a deadline, a busy season, a reason to push it off. Finally, we picked a time that worked… except Jason was just too busy to take off work. So the kids and I went anyway. And I’m so, so glad we did. With the older boys getting so much older, it was actually such a fun and easy trip. An 8–9 hour drive used to feel monumental, but...
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Homemaking Is Not About Perfection, It’s About Faithfulness - S5, E8
Finding Joy in Your Home
In a world full of Pinterest-perfect homes and constant comparison, it’s easy to feel like our homemaking is never “enough.” In this short and encouraging episode, Jami offers a much-needed reminder: homemaking isn’t about perfection, it’s about faithfulness. She shares why social media can quietly distort our expectations, how God calls us to stewardship instead of performance, and why the quiet, repetitive work of home is deeply meaningful to Him. From folding laundry and stretching a tight budget to caring for sick kids in the middle of the night, faithfulness often looks ordinary...
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When the Work Feels Small: Homemaking as Kingdom Work - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
There are seasons when the world feels too loud. Too heavy. Too much. And often, that weight doesn’t stay “out there.” It follows us home. It shows up in tired bodies, overflowing sinks, loud kitchens, and hearts that feel stretched thin. In moments like that, it’s easy to wonder if the quiet, repetitive work we do every day really matters. This season, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it truly means to be a homemaker. Not just in the way we often picture it, but in the deeper, truer sense. Homemaking isn’t limited to a job title or a particular life stage. If you are a woman,...
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My reading for January 2026, with a goal of 104 books read this year - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
I have finally — and I mean finally — been really diving into my reading goals and actually enjoying them again. For the last few years, my reading has been a little lackluster. I’ve been reading far below my goals (which in and of itself is totally fine), but I was also lacking excitement and joy in my reading. I read a lot of fiction in ’24–’25, but most of it was throwaway fiction that, once I finished it, I never thought about again. It didn’t linger. It didn’t shape me. It didn’t spark anything. When I made my reading goal for 2026 and started pulling out the book stack...
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Welcome to My Garden Journal (and Journey) for 2026 - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
It’s been two long years since I’ve been able to grow a garden. Life shifted in big ways during that season. We relocated to North Carolina, and for a while I didn’t even have a yard, just a moving target and a lot of transition. Gardening simply wasn’t possible. And while that season held good things, I missed the soil deeply. Now, though, everything has changed. We’re on three-quarters of an acre. It’s flat. It’s usable. And my backyard is absolutely begging for a garden. Every time I look out the window, I can practically see the rows already forming in my imagination. I am...
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Finding Joy in the Ordinary Days of Home - BLOG
Finding Joy in Your Home
Do you ever have one of those days? The kind where you wake up already irritated, before anything has even happened. You’re short on patience, easily overwhelmed, and it feels like joy is nowhere to be found. If I’m honest, when I was a young mom those days came more often than I care to admit, and I usually felt a little ashamed that my attitude could sour so quickly. But motherhood has a way of pressing on every weak spot at once. The needs are constant. The to-do list never truly ends. The house doesn’t stay clean for long, sleep is often interrupted, and a quiet moment to yourself...
info_outlineFor the first time in a couple of years, I've really been enjoying my reading list! I've set a goal of reading 104 books this year, at a clipped pace of 2 books per week. Here at the end of February, I've managed to stay on track with this goal and hope to see it through this year.
Part of my renewed vigor with reading is that it has now been 4+ years since I've gone this long without being pregnant. In fact, 2026 might be the first year that I will not have a nursing baby or be pregnant since 2019 (7 years, wow)! In fact, I've only had two years (2013 and 2018) since 2011 that I have not been pregnant or had a baby under 1. Holy moly, when you put it that way, I need to give myself a lot more grace for my failing routines. I say that partially in jest and partially in truth.
Only the Lord knows what is ahead but my focus this year is building back up my body, my strength, and hopefully some braincells while I'm at it! It feels like a year wide open for good routines and nurturing parts of my health that have gotten neglected as of late.
I know you landed on this post to read my 40 before 40 list of classics I'm attempting to tackle over the next 4 years, but for me, the context matters. I think I'm finally ready to tackle some of these more daunting reads. And more than that, I'm excited to!
Jason and I have each taken on a big reading goal. We will turn 40 and 42 just 3 weeks apart from each other. So I made my 40 list and he made a 42 list. We have a lot of overlap but many changes too (books either of us has already read and he replaced the homemaking books on my list with others). This gives us just under 4 years to complete this list. So at a pace of 10 books per year, I think we can do it!
Now technically, my list is actually 44 books long. I counted C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy in one spot an then ended up adding two more books to the end of the list. I'm on a big classics binge right now and I want to read those anyway, so might as well add them to my list!
My reading list is based on working through the entire Western Canon. Also refer to this article for a crash course in the classics or for starting your own 40 before 40 list. I'm already looking forward to my 50 before 50 list.
Jami's 40 Before 40 Reading List:
Classic Literature & Story:
1. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
2. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
3. East of Eden – John Steinbeck
4. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
5. Middlemarch – George Eliot
6. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
7. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
8. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
9. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas and Auguste Maquet
10. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
11. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
12. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
13. Gullivers Travels - Jonathan Swift
14. Silas Marner – George Eliot
Epic & Philosophical Literature:
15. The Divine Comedy – Dante Alighieri
16. The Aeneid – Virgil
17. The Odyssey – Homer
18. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
19. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
20. The Faerie Queene – Edmund Spenser
21.L es Misérables – Victor Hugo
22. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes
Christian Faith, Family, & Home:
23. The Hidden Art of Homemaking – Edith Schaeffer
24. What Is a Family? – Edith Schaeffer
25. A Chance to Die – Elisabeth Elliot
26. Orthodoxy – G.K. Chesterton
27. Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
28. The Space Trilogy – C.S. Lewis
29. Life Under Compulsion – Anthony Esolen
30. How Should We Then Live? – Francis Schaeffer
31. On the Incarnation – Athanasius
History, Philosophy & Formation:
32. Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
33. Pensées – Blaise Pascal
34. Plutarch’s Lives – Plutarch
35. Church History – Eusebius
36. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs – John Foxe
37. In Defense of Tradition – Richard Weaver
38. The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
39. Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
40. Kristin Lavransdatter - Sigrid Undset
42. Canterbury Tales - Geoffrey Chaucer
Another goal that I will slowly be working through (without a timeline) is reading all of the works of a few particular authors including:
- George McDonald
- C.S. Lewis
- J.R.R. Tolkien
- Jane Austen
- Charles Dickens
- Edith Schaeffer
- Franics Schaeffer
- G. K. Chesterton
- John Steinbeck
Jason and I both just got our lists finalized and I'm off to a good start! I just finished Pride & Prejuide and then dove into Emma. Emma isn't on my list but I am working on reading all of Austen. I took a break from Emma though because my book club is reading Cranford, another book not on my list but well worth a read! I will be diving into What is a Family by Edith Shaeffer next. I started this years ago and never finished it.
I'll add some 40 before 40 reading updates for you throughout the year! Have you created a similar reading list? I'd love to know what you think I need to start adding to my 50 before 50 list!