09/03/2026
I don’t have a great deal of experience with Wendell Berry yet, but he has been on my reading list for a long time. My Goodreads is stacked with Berry books I’d like to read, particularly his novels set in the fictional community of Port William, Kentucky.
My introduction to Berry came a few years ago when I listened to Nathan Coulter. I had heard that, as someone who loves Marilynne Robinson, Berry might be an author I would enjoy.
Since then, I’ve read a handful of his essays, listened to him speak, and heard several conversations and podcasts about his life and body of work. Our Only World has been sitting on my bedside table for the past six months or so, and I’ve dipped into it here and there.
I was sad to hear of Wendell Berry’s passing this week. But what an extraordinary thing to have been given 92 years and to have spent so many of them thinking deeply, paying attention, and putting those thoughts into words for the rest of us.
One of the things I’ve found most intriguing about Berry is that his thinking was so deeply rooted in his Christian faith, and yet he could never be packed neatly into a single political or ideological box. His ideas could frustrate people on both the left and the right. He seems to have been a genuinely independent thinker, willing to follow an idea where it led rather than first asking which “side” it belonged to.
I’m eager to read much more of his work.
If you’ve read Wendell Berry, do you have a favorite? What should I read next?
