A Few Books to Grow With.

Be careful—these dangerous books will challenge your assumptions!

As Plato's Socrates put it, "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Fiction and Drama:

A Man for All Seasons, Robert Bolt
Enders Game, Orson Scott Card – and its sequels!
Animal Farm, George Orwell
The Space Trilogy, C.S. Lewis
Out of the Silent Planet
Perelandra
That Hideous Strength
On the Beach, Neville Shute
War Day, Whitley Streiber and James Kunetka
Diary of A Country Priest, Georges Bernanos
Cancer Ward, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"The Bear", William Faulkner
(Short Story, not novel/movie of same name)
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
The Bridge at Andau, James Michener
The Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
Lamy of Santa Fe, Paul Horgan

Personal Stories:

Confessions, St. Augustine
Flight to Arras, Antoine de St. Exupery
Wind, Sand and Stars, Antoine de St. Exupery
Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, Jacobo Timmerman
Waiting for God, Simone Weil
No Bars to Manhood, Daniel Berrigan
Isaiah, Daniel Berrigan
The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day
Being and Having: An Existentialist Diary, Gabriel Marcel

Philosophy, Religion and Culture:

Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper
Aristotle for Everybody, Mortimer Adler
Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton
The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton
Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine, Harold Bloom
Where Shall Wisdom Be Found, Harold Bloom
The Discarded Image, C.S. Lewis
Man Against Mass Society, Gabriel Marcel
How to Read A Book, Mortimer Adler
Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth), Pope John Paul II
Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), Pope John Paul II
Personalism, Emmanuel Mounier
Easy Essays, Peter Maurin
The Peasant of the Garonne, Jacques Maritain
Education at the Crossroads, Jacques Maritain

Politics, Ethics and Environment:

The Prince, Niccolo Macchiavelli
The Embers and the Stars, Erazim Kohak
The Green Halo, Erazim Kohak
The Fate of the Earth, Jonathan Schell
Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
Reflections on America, Jacques Maritain
Apology/Crito/Phaedo/Allegory of the Cave, Plato
The Republic, Plato
Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle
Politics, Aristotle
The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis
The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism, Leo Strauss
Persecution and the Art of Writing, Leo Strauss

Biography, History:

The Dumb Ox, G.K. Chesterton
How the Irish Saved Civilization, Thomas Cahill
Sailing The Wine Dark Sea, Thomas Cahill
The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill
The Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Thomas Cahill
The Holocaust, Martin Gilbert
Founding Brothers, Robert Ellis