Majoring in the humanities was probably the best academic decision I ever made. I have always enjoyed reading, but what I soon found was that reading great books well doesn’t just entertain us or teach us useful facts. It helps us rely less on ourselves—with all of our faults and blind spots—by listening to and engaging the minds of others through their written works.

In other words, reading the great books helps realign ourselves with the wisdom of the ages, rather than the spirit of the age. As Russell Kirk often argued, what modern society requires is to reclaim “the moral imagination”—“that power of ethical perception which strides beyond the barriers of private experience and momentary events,” and “aspires to … right order in the soul and … the commonwealth.” And, “To the unalterable in human existence, humane letters are a great guide.”

Of course, true knowledge and true wisdom, comes only from above (Jam 3:17-18) and is revealed fully in Christ (Col 2:13) and in his word (1Co 2:6-16). But to grasp the difference between the wisdom of Man and the wisdom of God, it helps to understand something of them both. Ancient wisdom, then, serves as a good introduction into what God has revealed more explicitly in his word (which is just one reason why preachers should read good literature).

It was Mortimer Adler who first introduced me to the skills required to read well. One of the assigned readings in my first humanities course was his 1972 classic, How to Read a Book. In its pages Adler not only tells you how to do this well, he also gathers the experience of the ages in his list of 137 Great Writers and their greatest works.

​But as Adler would also warn us, no list is the “end all, be all” of any education. Instead, I am reminded of the elegy offered by Fadiman and Major in The New Lifetime Reading Plan. By reading great books well, we begin “to fill our minds, slowly, gradually, under no compulsion, with what some of the greatest writers have thought, felt, and imagined” (xix). Of course, even this is merely a beginning:

The question then becomes, Which list to use? I have some experience with four, but each is quite different from the others, often expressing the interests and views of its compiler. So Adler’s list reflects his extensive background in philosophy and Western civilization, and essentially stops with what had been recognized as ‘great’ by 1972. Clifton and Fadiman, Harold Bloom and Leland Ryken help immensely by adding many non-Western or newer works, but they are lighter on nonfiction than Adler’s (in fact, Ryken only includes two!).

​Not surprisingly, however, some books make it onto three or even all four lists. And though I don’t think we should make too much of this (building a canon within the canon), these commonly-received works give us a good starting point for our literary endeavors. And though the resulting list is much shorter than the one thousand works recommended when these three lists are compiled, it still represents a substantive goal: fifty-three authors and over one hundred individual works.

Next week, Lord willing, we’ll see what the resulting list looks like. Until then, check out Russell Kirk’s lecture, “The Moral Imagination,” which is still one of the best introductions to the ethical function of literature I’ve ever read. For the even braver soul, read slowly through Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, especially chapter 10, “The Virtues of Heroic Societies.”

Current as of December 19, 2022

I fell in love with books before I could even read them. Some of my earliest and best memories are the times I spent in Granny’s lap with Dr. Seuss. And though the good doctor and I don’t get together much these days (our children prefer dragons, Jedi, and The Jesus Storybook Bible), my affection for books has only grown. So after an ill-fated semester as a student in Ancient and Classical History, I decided to ‘specialize’ (if it can be called that) in the humane letters. And having wrapped up another phase of my academic career, I’m glad to be returning to what I know best: the Good Book and the great books.

In previous updates to this list, I included just about everything—if I had read it, it was here. However, I decided to clean house, eliminating about 70 works in the process. To be retained a work had to be good (reading me as I read it), true (both informative and imaginative), and beautiful (a joy to read). And though there are still some hard reads that made the cut, each will hopefully (to paraphrase Kirk) stimulate your heart and mind for the proper study of the human condition, and point you further into “the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:10).

So here are the books I’ve read and reread for entertainment and edification. And in case you’re looking for an even shorter list to start with, I’ve marked my top five with an asterisk (*).

Life Together Under the Word
​The Big Story by Justin Buzzard
Churches in the Shape of Scripture by Dan Chambers
Common Prayer, eds. Shane Clairborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hargrove & Enuma Okoro
The Confessions by Augustine
​The Cruciform Church by C. Leonard Allen
Early Christians Speak (esp. Vol. 1) by Everett Ferguson
​*The ESV Study Bible, ed. Lane T. Dennis & Wayne Grudem
Follow Me: A Call to True Discipleship by Kevin W. Rhodes
​The Gospel: How the Church Shares the Beauty of Christ by Roy Ortlund
​The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis
Letters to the Church by Francis Chan
*Life Together and Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
On the Love of God by Bernard of Clairvaux
Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas & William Willimon
Simple Church by Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger
Why Trust the Bible? by Greg Gilbert

Stories & the Moral Imagination
The Aeneid by Virgil
Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
​Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
The History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth
The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
*The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrún by J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Moral Imagination” by Russell Kirk
The Oresteia by Aeschylus
​Piers Plowman by William Langland
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Tales of Beedle the Bard, eds. Hermione Granger & Albus Dumbledore
The Theban Plays by Sophocles

Creation & the Wonders of Nature
The Classic Hundred Poems, ed. William Harmon
Dependent Rational Animals by Alasdair MacIntyre
Early Christian Readings of Genesis One by Craig D. Allert
​Embracing Creation by John Mark Hicks, Bobby Valentine & Mark Wilson
Four Views on Creation, Evolution, and Intelligent Design, ed. J.B. Stump
Galileo’s Commandment: 2,500 Years of Great Science Writing, ed. Edmund Blair Bolles
​Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary and Theological Commentary by C. John Collins
Jesus, Beginnings, and Science by David & Kate Vosburg
The Language of God by Francis Collins
“Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany” by Galileo Galilei
*Surprised by Meaning by Alister McGrath
Thriving with Stone Age Minds by Justin Barrett with Pamela Ebstyne King

Wisdom & the Commonwealth
*The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Counter Culture by David Platt
Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher
Do Morals Matter? Presidents & Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump by Joseph Nye
Flourish by Martin Seligman
God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible by Adam Nicolson
​Grand New Party by Ross Douthat & Reihan Salam
How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill
How the Scots Invented the Modern World by Arthur Herman
”Letter From a Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke
The Republic by Plato
Start with Why by Simon Sinek
​Viking Economics by George Lakey
“Washington’s Farewell Address,” with Alexander Hamilton