Joseph F. Radosevich

Our local library has tables with recommended books on all sorts of topics. One of my dreams in life is to curate one of those tables.  A good book is worth so much because it can change your life. I'm starting this series as a digital version of those tables. I'm going to take pictures and share a few words about books in different categories.  My first in this series is on fiction worth rereading. This is literary fiction. All of these are books that I first read in college. I've reread all of them in the last three or four years, except O'Conner. We only read some of the stories of Flannery O'Connor in college, but I have read the whole book recently. These are not necessarily uplifting books or beach reads, but I've enjoyed all of them at least twice.  Cry the Beloved Country is probably my favorite from these right now. It's a beautiful book. Very hopeful too.  The Plague and All the King's Men  are the most cynical and jaded. I still think of the...

I remember the first Honeycrisp apple I ever ate. My wife and I were newly married and somebody in our church told us about this new apple that we should try. It was the largest apple that I had ever seen and cost more than I'd ever paid for a piece of fruit. When we cut it up and I took one bite, my world changed. I tried eating apples off and on over the years. I remembered eating good apples. If I got an apple at the grocery store, though, like a Red Delicious or a Golden Delicious, it was always soft and gross. The Honeycrisp apple changed that for me. After that giant, sweet, crunchy fruit, apples were not just apples. I looked for names. All these years later, I still look for new apples and try different ones at the grocery store or the local orchard if I can find one. I can tell you about Cosmic Crisp, Mutsu, Opal, Envy, Wild Twist, Ludacrisp, Winecrisp, Evercrisp, Ashmead’s Kernel, Snapdragon, Sugarbee, Lady Alice, Ruby Lee, and Crimson Crisp. That apple changed more than ...

I attended a seminar on pastoral burnout several years ago by mistake at Exponential Conference in Orlando. The organizers changed the topic without notice. I don't remember what seminar I expected, but a pastor got up and said that he was asked to speak on burnout. He shared that he recently (as in that week) finally hit a wall in ministry after being warned by a good friend for along time that it was about to happen. He described his life as a pastor and confessed that he had no authority to speak on the topic assigned to him. He asked his friend (also a pastor at his church) to share on that topic. Everyone seems to be talking about pastoral burnout. There are books, podcasts, seminars, etc. I find it revealing when the pastors with big platforms give interviews where they explain their breakdown after they spent the last 10-20 years telling pastors how to pastor like they do. Brian Croft and James Carroll share an original insight into burnout in their book Pastoral Perseveranc...

Last year, I started preparing sermons four weeks in advance. Now that I've done it for a while, I thought I would write on why I started, how I began, and what I think about it. I decided to try it while reading Paul David Tripp's book Dangerous Calling . He writes in one section about the seriousness of the pastor's calling to preach and warned against preaching without meditation and personal application. He strongly advised preparing further out.  I never did the Saturday night rush sermon. I thought I was doing well since I prepared on Monday (all day) and Tuesday (morning). That felt as far out as I could do. I decided to try it anyway and see what the results were. I always use a checklist for sermon prep. I have it broken down into 10 or so steps. I decided that I could do the first half of my checklist four weeks out and then the second half the week I will give the sermon. The first half of my sermon prep involves translating, outlining, rereading, studying notes,...

Emma recommended A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus after she read it to the kids as part of their school. I wrote down the recommendation, but thought I would read it on vacation this spring. Then, I noticed that my little ones listened to it three straight times after my wife finished it for school. I thought something must be up that they love it so much and decided to read it. It is a sweet, beautifully told, meaningful story set in World War II England about three orphans trying to gain a family in the evacuation of children from London. I thought about it for days. It even inspired some conversation around the dinner table tonight. I can't believe it didn't win the Newbury Award in its year.  It would be a great book for bed time, family read-aloud, or vacation. How to Learn Any Language by Barry Farber describes a system and several methods to learn a language. It's not about one language but about the skills involved in any language. I sounds too good to be tru...

Mid-February is late winter around here. We can still have cold weather and snow for at least two more months, but the worst of the sustained winter weather is now behind us. We will probably have up and down weather in March and April. It was really pretty today, though. Someone asked me this morning if I was ready for gardening, so I thought I'd write about gardening topics. I finally got around to cleaning out my tomato plants from last year. I was really busy with church and family things from early November on. Since we had such a warm fall all the way until the temperature dropped like a rock Thanksgiving weekend, I never got a chance to clean that part of the garden out. It was an ugly sight every time I looked at it. I'm happy to have that cleared out now. The rest of the garden had layers of mulch with oats planted as a cover crop. It is good to be caught up now. Right now, we have taps in our maple trees for gathering syrup. We had two good days of collecting, before ...

In January, I sorted through my pile (piles, really) of books to find books that I wanted to read but hadn't found the time. I organized them from shortest to longest, and then I started a book sprint so that I could make a dent in that pile before moving on to books that I wanted to read more slowly because they are important. Some of the books in my book sprint were there for 3 years. Life is too short to read everything. Most of the time I prioritize important authors and subjects to me like J.C. Ryle, biblical studies, Robert Caro, John Piper, history, Newbury Award winners, D.A. Carson, etc. There are other books and topics that I like to dip into from time to time or books that people give me that I want to give a chance. My January book sprint helped me read 9 books from my list that were getting buried beneath other books. I spent about 3 days per book. It was well-worth doing, but I was ready by the end of January to slow down. I like to read several books at a time and di...

I started giving blood in 2025. I thought I would reflect on that and write why I think more people should donate blood. I considered donating blood for a while. I'm a healthy 41 year-old and saw the ads about why it was needed for a long time. I thought about the need and how I could help with it for a while before I finally did it. I wasn't scared of needles, because I gave plasma years ago (don't tell my mom). My main obstacle was that didn't know how long it would take or if I could fit it into my schedule. I haven't been deferred or had any slow downs since I started (I have seen people deferred). It takes me less than 30 minutes from the time I walk in the door to walking out. You can only donate blood once every 2 months or so, but you can donate platelets more often. I didn't know anyone who talked about donating blood. I have been surprised by the number of people I know that I see when I donate.  I found it really meaningful after I donated blood the f...

I use kanban-type systems to organize my work in my office and thought I'd share about that here.  As I understand it, Kanban is a system developed by someone at Toyota for managing projects. I learned a version of it at a church planting training. The basic format allows you to see the parts of a project and what needs to be done for each part of every project. I use a type of kanban system, but I don't know the official method. I use two boards: one for sermon prep and one for church organization. They help me see at a glance what needs doing. Here are my two boards: This is my sermon prep board. Each week, I finish the main sermon for the current week and study the passage for the sermon 4 weeks out. I'm planning to write a post on this method someday. This is my projects board. I try to spend a little time each week preparing for events or projects 3 months out, 2 months out, and 1 month out. I learned the 3/2/1 method from Karl Vaters in his book Small Church Essential...

Every year I build several playlists. I thought I would link to some of them here and talk about some music highlights. Each of my playlists is done in reverse order so that newer songs show up at the top. I make a new playlist on YouTube Music each year for when I cook. I listen to it at other times, too.  https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn_jAxBP__YK3Ce4H4rIQ_uU4ZtKaYbVr Our vacation playlists are intended to introduce my kids to pop music history. Our spring staycation playlist: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn_jAxBP__YLQAbgI0F6MgwnOsSjo_P7a Our fall vacation playlist: https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn_jAxBP__YITg0i5Cu2OP1OdZfuOPypx I also update a worship playlist that I use when I get away for a day or an afternoon to pray and fast. https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn_jAxBP__YKISjoVo-whqCQMcSL0gfPI A few of my musical highlights: I discovered Jon Guerra at the end of the year. I love his music. His music is both artistic, deep, and catchy a...

We have filled out "goal sheets" with our kids on New Year's Eve for the last 10 years. Our older kids read through them in the lead up to the New Year. There are four categories on the sheets along with frames and pictures to color. The four categories are: What I want to read, what food I want to try, what I want to learn, and what I want to do. We personalize them in different ways. Some people write down multiple goals in each category. Some write down a food like lobster, tomatoes, or buffalo. Others write down dishes or international cuisines. Some write down a book to read. Other write down a number of books to read.  What I love about these New Year goal sheets is that they focus on this we want to learn and do. Goals work better if they are about skills to learn. I've learned from 10 years of these sheets that I can learn new things and these sheets are best if I focus on skills not outcomes. Last year, I relearned to write in cursive. I learned all the notes...

My father-in-law makes amazing pour-over coffee. I can't find a coffee shop that makes drip or pour-over coffee that good. It took me years to figure out his secret even though he told and showed me everything. I married his daughter 17 years ago. It was right in front of me the whole time.  He gives me bags of coffee to take home from time to time. I couldn't replicate the flavor at home with the exact pour-over cone that he had, so I started asking questions.  First, I thought it was the water. Nope Then, we thought it was the amounts, or the temperature, or the speed. Still no. The entire time, I thought it couldn't be the grind. I use whole bean coffee and grind it fresh. All the guides and gurus say to grind pour-over coffee medium-medium fine. I found it always brewed too quickly and came out thin and acidic or it channeled in the cone. The taste was never right. It wasn't the rich, flavorful cup that he got. I gave up on using the cone at home and marveled at eve...

 What I learned last year. I turned 41. I learned that my body can get stronger and do more exercise than ever before, but I will pay a price if I don't rest enough. I enjoy my workouts. I enjoy training 5 days a week, and I love kettlebells. I often did 5 days of kettlebells per week if I was feeling good. I learned that if I train hard 5 days a week, my body won't recover ,and I'll gain weight from it. I'm stronger and fitter than I've probably ever been, but I gained 10 lbs this year and my waist is bigger. Geoff Neupert helped me understand what was going on because he focuses on helping 40-50 year old men. He said that this is normal, so you have to cut down on the workouts.  I thought it was the food that I ate, so I cut out cheese and peanut butter and limited portions. None of that worked. I enjoyed the workouts from Pat Flynn's book Strong On! , but those workouts don't work for my body anymore. The reps and stress were just too high for my 41 year-...

These are the entries in my reading journal from the last year. As I finish a book, I write down a few thoughts. I've found that I read a lot of four star books because I choose carefully and because I put down books that I'm not enjoying.

Here are my favorite books that I read this year. Some of them, I've read before. I went through my reading log and found all of the books I rated a five on a one to five scale. I'm planning on posting my whole reading log for the year later this week. One thing you may notice is that none of the books on this list are new to 2025. I've written before on my guideline to read books 5 years old or older. I think if a book can't last and be worth reading for 5 years, then it's probably not worth my time. I've only got time to read around 65 books a year, so I have to be careful with what I choose to read. I don't know how many books I read this year that were published this year, but it is very few. 1057. Holiness , J.C. Ryle. 1/8/25 * * * * * (This book is dynamite. The last chapter alone is one of the best sermons I’ve ever read--I think most chapters are sermons. The book title sounds like code for “legalism.” It is not, and it is well-worth your reading.) 1...