A student recently asked for book recommendations, so I updated my list. Here it is in its most current form.
Fiction
- Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis (My favorite of his novels.)
- The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (The best!)
- Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen. (All of Austen's novels are excellent. I tell students that this one is a good place to start.)
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
- A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
- Howards End, E.M. Forster
- Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
- The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson
- I love Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, but it is too long.
- Whalesong, Robert Seigel (A great YA book.)
- Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Thought-provoking and prophetic about our technological society.)
- The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis
- The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis (Much wisdom for the Christian life, told using sort of reverse psychology.)
- Perelandra, C.S. Lewis (The whole Ransom Trilogy is very good, but this, the second in the series, is my favorite. Echoes of Paradise Lost.)
- The Giver, Lois Lowry (A profound reminder of the importance of history.)
- Henry IV, Part 1, Shakespeare (Shakespeare's plays are meant to be seen, but I love reading them. This one is hilarious but also a great coming of age story. I also love Hamlet, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, etc.)
I should note that sometimes when I read fiction, I read with help—Cliffs Notes, or a critical essay, etc. There's no shame in that!
Non-Fiction
- The literary criticism of Karen Swallow Prior, Leland Ryken, and Gene Edward Veith is excellent. All three authors have written extensively on literature/reading/books. Karen Prior has editions of some of the classics, such as Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, and Sense and Sensibility.
- Alan Jacobs always makes me think!
- Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand (Amazing story of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian and World War 2 prisoner. Even better for Christian readers.)
- The Boys in the Boat, Dan Brown (Awesome story of the 1936 Olympic Rowing Team. My favorite character is George Pocock, the sage-like British guy who builds the boats.)
- The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Morris (Fascinating account of Theodore Roosevelt's early years.)
- Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis (Excellent apologetics and practical advice for living the Christian life.)
- The works of Francis Schaeffer, especially How Then Shall We Live?
- The Christian Imagination, Leland Ryken (Fantastic collection of essays on literature, poetry, fiction, and writing.)
- What Are People For? Wendell Berry (IMO, you need to take what Berry says with a few shakes of salt, but he has helped me see the importance of local culture, problems with the consumer economy, etc.)
- Born Again, the biography of Charles Colson, is encouraging.
- Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher (I feel like this book helped me find a political home, although sometimes Dreher is slightly alarmist. I also enjoyed his books How Dante Can Save Your Life and The Little Way of Ruthie Leming.)
- Engaging God's World, Cornelius Plantinga (Helped me see that all of life is sacred, and a calling to so-called secular work is a holy calling.)
- Creation Regained, Albert Wolters (The best book I've ever read on Christian worldview.)
- Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis, George Sayer (My favorite bio of Lewis, written especially with an eye towards books that affected Lewis.)
- Augustine's Confessions is uplifting. I like the poetic translation of O'Rourke.
- Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman (A warning about how media has destroyed serious political discourse. A must-read to understand today's political situation.)
- Desiring God by John Piper was very important in my spiritual development when I was in college. I have enjoyed a number of his books.
- A couple of good books on writing: The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, and On Writing Well by William Zinsser.
Poetry
- Collected Poems, Wendell Berry (Great stress relief. Beautiful and thought-provoking poems.)
- The Angles of Light, Luci Shaw (Beautiful poetry from a Christian perspective.) I also enjoyed her collection of Christmas poems, Accompanied by Angels.
- Collected Poems, Gerard Manley Hopkins (Probably my favorite book of poems.)
- The poetry of George Herbert is excellent and very edifying.
- For the brave: Paradise Lost, Milton; consider reading along with C. S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost. And Dante's Divine Comedy is mesmerizing. There's a helpful podcast called 100 Days of Dante, which I found (mostly) very insightful.
- Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot (After multiple readings, I still don't get it all, but I have greatly enjoyed reading it. A helpful companion is Helen Gardner's The Art of T.S. Eliot.)
- I love The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneiad (Robert Fagles' translations are my favorite).
