Only one book on your list that I’ve ever read, Lord of the Rings. Much as I enjoyed it, and still enjoy going back to it, I remain ambivalent. It smacks of stereotypes, it sometimes borders on racism in its selection of stereotype, and I don’t think its entirely coincidental portions of it were written in South Africa (a long time before Mandela became president). But still, I love the Shire, and the evil they fight against IS evil, the battle is heroic. Just, its not particularly applicable to our real world. People don’t come in such stark contrasts in real life. We all have grevious faults and significant potential.
Some of my off-hand favorites:
House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momoday.
Gabriel’s Rebellion: The Virginia Slave Conspiracies of 1800-1802 by Douglas Edgerton
A Find Old Conflict by Jessica Mitford.
All of Thomas Flanagan’s books on Ireland, but especially The Tenants of Time, which puts a very real struggle for justice against a very real oppressive empire in the complex context of individual humans who all possess some humanity — the opposite of Tolkien.
Stilwell and the American Experience in China (Barbara Tuchman)
Bruce Catton’s histories of the Civil War — still unequalled.
King Hereafter Dorothy Dunnett’s novel which freed MacBeathoc of Scotland from the political parody of William Shakespeare.
Three Ages of Lake Light an obscure book of excellent poetry by David Ross; for twenty years I kept a copy I got for 25 cents at a sidewalk sale, lost it, and eventually got a hardcover copy from a rare book dealer for $10.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Robert Heinlein’s best ever. TANSTAAFL!

Done quickly and honestly. I think I pay fast and loose with my definition of “worldview” too. I am sure that after sleeping on it that 3 or 4 might be different.
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott – too humanist I am sure for many but a childhood to teen favorite. Still, I cannot say it did not somehow shape my view of womanhood – for the better or the worse. ???
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle – I suppose the less hyped Harry Potter for my age group.
Walker Percy: A Life. – Patrick H. Samway – I discovered WP through Shelby Foote and have never been quite the same.
Lord of the Flies – William Golding – a school years “shocker” for a very sheltered girl.
Signposts in a Strange Land – Walker Percy (collection of essays) – I often go back to this book to re-read his words. I don’t always agree and I debate him in my head sometimes but I LOVE how me makes me think.
The Civil War – Shelby Foote (currently reading) – For a decade or two I avoided American history as recreational reading for the European that seemed much more enticing. I was suggested this set by a Civil War buff and close friend and find it amazing and very educational on this period of our development as a country.
A World Made Straight – Ron Rash – Fiction and RR is a favorite, but this was my first read of his Appalachian slice-of-life/history .
The Orthodox Way – Bishop Kallistos Ware on the recommendation of an Orthodox friend. Opened my eyes and my heart at a difficult time although I opted to stay with the RCC.
The Courage To Start: A Guide To Running for Your Life – John Bingham. When your soul is a gazelle but your body tends toward penguin. *waddle*
The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection – Michael Ruhlman I have no explanation – less snark than Bourdain’s books and gave me a peek into a world apart at CIA.

In approximate chronological order:
1. Mario Pei, Story of Language. Around age 11. Taught me the logic and history of language, showed me that the English teacher didn’t know what she was talking about. Learned to mistrust authorities.
2. Fletcher Pratt, Secret and Urgent. Around age 12. Learned basics of cryptography and by extension some basics of human nature. (War, secrecy, etc.)
3. George Gamow, 1-2-3 Infinity. Around age 12. Lively book on mathematics, intro’d many concepts of limits, calculus, etc. (Hadn’t thought of this book in decades, but oddly enough dreamed about it last night, so it must belong on the list!)
4. Edward Wallant, Tenants of Moonbloom. Around age 14. Taught me about human endurance, love, death.
5. Huxley, Brave New World. Around 15. Perfect vision of modern America, caution about my pseudo-intellectual pretensions.
6. Steinbeck, Cannery Row / Sweet Thursday. Around 16. Found a role model in Doc Ricketts, pretty much followed that role model for rest of life. Worked out well so far. (Found out later that the actual Ed Ricketts wasn’t the same character as Doc, but that didn’t really matter….)
7. John Muir’s VW guides. Around 21. Learned a new way to work on physical things, new way to think about imperfection.
8. Forrest Mims’s electronics books. Around 27. Same as Muir above.
9. Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon. Around 40. Not quite same level as other books, but still important … taught me how Wall Street Casino works, enabled me to avoid Wall Street Casino and thus avoid losing money in last 20 years.
10. WPA guides. 50 to now. Learning by example how to balance the subjective and objective, how to mix science and intuition.

Done with a quick glance over my bookshelves. Strange to think that I’ve set aside a lot of the books that influenced me in my teen-age years (Dostoyevsky, Hayek, Raymond Chandler), but I’d like to think I’ve moved beyond that sort of adolescent existential angst, individualism and self-absorption.
1. Alasdair Macintyre, “After Virtue”–for different reasons than Rod. A searching examination of why contemporary moral discussion seems so fruitless; the introduction of the notion of practices, a helpful way of figuring out what goods you are really seeking, and whether your life even makes sense.
2. Macintyre, “Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry”–a tour de force. A superb piece of intellectual history and a brilliant articulation of what adherents of moral traditions might offer the liberals and nihilists around us. Warning: dense.
3. Boyd Hilton, “The Age of Atonement.” From my academic days. A provocative, if dense, examination of how evangelicals came to grips with the rapid economic change during the Industrial Revolution. A warning that even the most well-intentioned ideas can allow one to ignore massive human suffering.
4. Mark Noll, “America’s God.” A much-lauded work of history, whose central notion of “Christian republicanism” gets at the simultaneous promise and frustration of American religious life.
5. John Henry Newman, “Parochial and Plain Sermons”–Some of Newman’s best work.
6. Francis de Sales, “Introduction to the Devout Life”–Once you get past the syrupy 17th century style, be prepared for a very wise and discerning examination of the ways we fail to live our faith and very practical suggestions on how to do better.
7. Wayne Booth, “Craft of Research”–Supposedly a manual introducing students to research methods, but really a reflection on what it means to be an educated person.
8. John Ruskin, “Unto this Last”–”there is no wealth but life.” Trollope likened it to being lectured by a “mad governess” and, indeed, his prose totters on the edge of sanity, but few books challenge readers to think about the consequences of their actions and what a good life really entails than this.
9. Joseph Roth, “The Radetzky March”–A sharp but compassionate satire of late Imperial Austria-Hungary that brilliantly illuminates how larger social and political forces play themselves out in the lives of a single family.
10. Evelyn Waugh, “Sword of Honor Trilogy”–Far better than “Brideshead Revisited,” which is still a great novel. In brief, a story of how individuals manage to find purpose and remain true to their ideals in dark times.
Some others worth a glance: Muriel Spark,”The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”; Anthony Powell,”A Dance to the Music of Time”; Thomas Mann, “Buddenbrooks”; W. Jackson Bate, “Life of Samuel Johnson” (better than Boswell).

Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads, by Gil Bailie. A superb summary of Rene Girard’s “Anthropology of the Cross.”
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Art & Scholasticism, Jacques Maritain
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day.
The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, Erik Voegelin
The Technological Society, Jacques Ellul
The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler
T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems

Rod,
I would recommend to you anything by Simone Weil (she was kind of a crunchy type avant le lettre, though she had both socialist and conservative aspects to her thinking and can’t be boiled down to being ‘conservative’).
Chesterton is good (though I certainly don’t agree with all of his thought)- I’d recommend ‘The Everlasting Man’.
If you want to look at a thoroughgoing critique of modern consumerist society from a decidedly left-wing perspective, Paul Sweezy’s ‘Monopoly Capital’ is good.

ooh, this is hard..and an interesting meme..in no particular order…
1) Macbeth…William Shakespeare…good and evil and how most of us contain both. brilliant characters, as with most of Shakespeare
2) One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich..Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn..and really, all of his books, essays and speeches..greatest writer of my time IMHO
3) Sense and Sensibility…Jane Austen..I’ve always preferred this to Pride and Prejudice, although both are elegant novels..brevity is the soul of wit.
4) Night..Elie Wiesel..darkness of the human soul
5) All of the Danny Dunn books..no idea who wrote them..but inspired my love of science.
6) The Foundation…Issac Asimov..tremendous science fiction..also see above.
7) An American Tragedy…Theodore Dreiser..very painful reading My Antonia…Willa Cather…gave women and the great plains of North America the exposure they deserved. One of the best American women writers that I have read.
9) The Good Earth..Pearl Buck..I find it hard to pick one of Buck’s novels; but once again, I am picking this one for the portrayal of a great and strong woman.
10) Vanity Fair…William Thackeray..this is one of the first books I ever read that was really satirical..for some reason, he seems to be less revered than Dickens (I really love Dickens, but he is a little sanctimonious).

not in any particular order and given time I could certainly come up with more – in fact – how does one only pick ten?
1. War and Peace – I would assert this choice needs no explanation.
2. Little Women and the rest of the series. As a 9 year old I was totally captivated and learned how to use the card catalog at the library so I could find other books by her. Yes – it did shape my views of what it meant to be a woman.
3. Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir. Not one of her most famous but it helped me to understand my life need not be defined by others expectations – especially that my life need not be limited by others expectations about women.
4. No Man is an Island by Thomas Merton. Read this at a difficult point in my life and the wisdom therein saved me.
5. The Celts by Nora Chadwick. Read this and knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.
6. The Collected Works of William Butler Yeats. The way he puts words together, the sense of longing and grief. The clarity of his ideas. I believe Yeats has no equal.
7. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century by Barbara Tuchman. Her Guns of August is also outstanding.
8. A History of the Crusades by Sir James Runciman. Romance, adventure, battles, courage and cowardice, intrigues, scholarly analysis – three volumes that are worth every second it takes to read them. Often called a magisterial work – it is truly one of the grand historical works.
9. Augustine of Hippo by Peter Brown. Brown is a great scholar and writer – perhaps his most famous book it makes that world come alive, makes Augustine’s humanity apparent – makes his theology and the early Christian world fascinating stuff. Cult of the Saints by the same author is also a very worthwhile book.
10. The Mabinogion and Beowulf. The way we see ourselves and the world now is not how it has always been understood – there have been other ways that have great worth.
11. LOTR/Hobbit/Silmarillion – well of course!
As a college kid I loved anything by Hermann Hesse, Solzhenitsyn or Dostoevsky – very dramatic at that age I guess. Of course Narnia and Lewis’ sci fi trilogy along with Ursula LeGuin and Asimov. And for sheer enjoyment – I love P.D. James and Bartholomew Gil mysteries.

My list, quickly and in no order:
1. Lord of the Rings
2. Barchester Towers
3. A Tale of Two Cities
4. The Count of Monte Cristo
5. A Journal of the Plague Year (Defoe)
6. The Napoleon of Notting Hill (Chesterton)
7. Crime and Punishment
8. Northanger Abbey
9. The Moonstone (Wilkie Collins)
10. Life of Christ (Fulton Sheen)
Yes, it’s nearly all fiction. I enjoy reading non-fiction on occasion, but I find a lot of it highly improbable.

In no particular order, with a bonus book:
The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore
The Cloud of Unknowing
The Orthodox Way by Timothy Ware
* A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Typee by Herman Melville
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Bonus book:
Shelter by Lloyd Kahn and Bob Easton

Just a quick comment to Siarlys–I don’t know where you got the idea that parts of The Lord of the Rings were written in South Africa, but it’s not so. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, but when he was four years old, his father died, and his mother returned to England with her two sons. He never revisited South Africa. All of LotR was written at his house in Oxford.

Cecelia; Solzhenitsyn for drama..really? Is that because he was not a fan of America? Otherwise, I don’t get it. I must say I prefer Agatha Christie and Rex Stout for mysteries. I really should re-read PD James.

1) One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical realism masterpiece that opened my eyes to the possibilities of fiction to explore many aspects of life in one work without boring you to death with allegory.
2) The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe – If you’ve ever wanted to see what a brilliant mind looks like when you break it open and splash it on a page, it’s in Poe. His poems, his stories, his wonderful criticism – this is where I learned to appreciate literature as a window into the mind.
3) A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking – If the first two in my list taught me about the depth and immensity of human experience, this book set me on the path to understanding where we fit in the immensity of the universe. The universe Hawking introduced me to here is grander and more wondrous than any myth or sacred text I’ve ever encountered. If God exists, it is greater than any religion has ever described.
4) A History of God by Karen Armstrong — I can no longer tolerate the biased, sloppy writing that passes for scholarship in this book by a quixotic former nun, but reading this in high school was my first step into religious studies as an academic pursuit. She has an axe to grind with Western Christianity and a dangerous blindness when it comes to Islam, but her ambition to explore how this thing the Abrahamic religions call God has actually been conceived of through history is a bold one.
5) Tao te Ching – Of all the sacred texts I’ve read from all over the world, none has captivated me like this little tome. I’ve read half a dozen English translations, even embarked on a trip through it in the original Chinese. The insights I’ve gained from the Tao are difficult to express –but that’s rather the point, according to Laozi.
6) The Dead Alive and Busy – A collection of poetry by Alan Shapiro mostly centered on his experience of caring for his aging and ailing parents. I had the good fortune to study under Alan at UNC, and reading this collection helped me understand his passion for the traditions, structures and forms of poetry, and why they remain vital and relevant. It has also helped me sort through my own life, as I’ve dealt with the deterioration and loss of my grandfather – a surrogate father to me in my teen years.
7) The Lord of the Rings/The Silmarillion – Tolkien has completely spoiled me as far as traditional fantasy goes. What other writer has ever created such a rich, vibrant world of the imagination? Dozens of languages, cultures, whole civilizations layered in a history thousands of years deep. It’s not beyond criticism, but it’s never been surpassed. Metamorphoses – Also known as The Golden Ass, this is the only complete novel of Latin Rome to survive to the modern day, and it’s damn funny. History as we learn it in school so often consists of lists of dates and great events and larger-than-life figures. Apuleius’ tale of a poor schlub caught up in the vagaries of magic and gods is where I started to understand that grief, anxiety, crude humor, silly vanity, bumbling ambition– all the mundanity if human personality has been here all along.
9) The Canterbury Tales – if The Golden Ass introduced me to the continuity of human psychology through time, Chaucer provides a rich exploration thereof. His characters are lively, bawdy, melodramatic, and utterly, believably human. Chaucer and Apuleius have made it very hard for me to think of any person as an Other.
10) Slaughterhouse Five – What is this? Satire? Farce? Science Fiction? It doesn’t matter – it’s shamefully funny, viciously smart, and served as my introduction to Vonnegut’s humanism — not a naïve idealism of wonderful human flourishing, but a critical and weary wisdom that we’ve got a lot of work to do as a species, but that we’re ultimately worth the trouble.
Sorry for the length — got a little carried away.

1) Sword of the Imagination – Russell Kirk
2) LOTR
3) A Life of My Choice – Wilfred Thesiger
4) The works of HR Haggard (especially “She” and “People of the Mist”) and John Buchan (especially “Greenmantle”)
5) John Julius Norwich’s Byzantium and Normans in Italy histories
6) The Devil Drives – Fawn Brodie
7)The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath – HP Lovecraft The Blue Nile/The White Nile – Alan Moorehead (which is why I am writing this from somewhere in Central Africa right now).
9) The novels of Charles Williams (War in Heaven, The Greater Trumps, etc.)
10) And…, honestly, Crunchy Cons – Rod Dreher (for eloquently showing me that I was not alone in thinking something was wrong).

In no particular order:
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, because I knew there was immense brokenness in the food industry and Pollan revealed it all in a great journalistic read.
The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, great fantasy that points to Christ.
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien because it was THE books that made me fall in love with the fantasy genre.
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Brilliant! It really helped me come to faith in college. Thank you Mr. Lewis.
Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher – because in college I could care less about any thing political. However, after reading this I cared much more and knew where I fit. Thanks Rod!
The French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller. This is Keller’s first of several books and his passion and immense understanding of food and cooking is communicated immensely well through this book. He is very thorough and helps you to understand why you do certain things when cooking instead of just giving you a mindless recipe and not explaining it like many cookbooks do. Even if you don’t make any recipes from this book it is good to read.
The Bible.

The Closing of the American Mind, 1984, Lord of the Flies, And the Band Played On, Mere Christianity, Moral Man and Immoral Society, any number of collected essays by George Will and William F. Buckley, hundreds of Batman comics. Must be more. These days I spend as much time reading things from opposing perspectives as I do fortifying my own worldview, but these were the books from high school and college that set me on my current path.

In no particular order:
Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
Small is Beautiful – EF Schumacher
Orthodox Christianity and the English Tradition – Fr Andrew Phillips
The Servile State – Hilaire Belloc
Love in the Ruins – Walker Percy
The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O’Connor
The Folklore of the British Isles series – edited by Venetia Newell
The Wessex novels of Thomas Hardy
Spellcraft – Kathleen Herbert (a former student of Tolkien who retells the Anglo-Saxon myths and legends that inspired him)
The 10th slot is reserved for “The Restoration of the Guilds” by AJ Penty, which I have downloaded in PDF format but haven’t read yet. I want to see for myself whether it belongs on that list or whether something else should go on there.

Off topic, but I’ve always wondered how someone can look at a overly large dimwitted brute covered in scales and filth and muck, an Ork, think ‘boy, those sure remind me of black folks’…
…and then accuse the author of being racist.

Manfred,
Wow, I thought I was just the only person out there nowadays who was a devoted Charles Williams fan…:)
‘War in Heaven’ is great, but ‘Many Dimensions’ is just as good.
Re: Erin Manning, ‘Tale of Two Cities’ is great too.

After a quick review of the recesses of my mind …
1. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo – Sin, redemption, grace, brilliant!
2. Management, Peter Drucker – If you buy Drucker’s argument that WWII was a failure of proper management in business, government, and non profit, suddenly management becomes a moral exercise and a calling. Also, he points out that, if people put their hope in capitalism, it becomes as destitute as communism. Why? Because humans cannot save humans – we need a savior! And this was from a business thinker!
3. To Kill A Mockingbird, – Sin, redemption, grace, brilliant!
4. Narnia Series, CS Lewis – Sin, redemption, grace, brilliant!
5. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer – “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
6. Mere Christianity, CS Lewis – When you say, “Dude, that’s not cool,” you acknowledge the Almighty whether you realize it or not.
7. Romans, St. Paul – “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
8. The Winds of War/War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk – These books have kept me spellbound since junior high. The descriptions of the Pacific battles are riveting.
9. Love Thy Neighbor, Peter Maass – A chronicle of the war in Bosnia. This book will haunt you.
10. Lincoln’s Melancholy, Joshua Wolf Shenk – When Shenk makes the argument that only a chronically depressed person could have led the country effectively during the Civil War, it gives purpose to our inner battles.

Rod, I could not agree with you more about Chesterton. His prose is too florid for my taste as well. You are the third person to mention Ideas Have Consequences so I need to read that one soon. Like you I enjoy Flannery O’Connor, but I am not a fan of her fiction. I love her collection of letters; she truly shows how to remain devout and committed amidst a life of serious difficulty. And though I am an Orthodox Christian, her sacramental view of the world really resonates with me. I tried some of the essays by Wendell Berry, and I find him to be a fine writer, but I have a hard time relating to his emphasis on the agrarian life.
Boz, your list of books has some good ones on it. I must read After Virtue, and I have read more than half of Bates’ work on Johnson, and I find it really allows us to see into the person of Johnson; plus it is written well.
And, Erin, I love your list! I, too, read nearly all fiction, but I am starting to read more nonfiction. I want to read more of Collins and Trollope. And I have The Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen. I have read parts of it, and I find it to be better than The Lord by Romano Guardini.

“Off topic, but I’ve always wondered how someone can look at a overly large dimwitted brute covered in scales and filth and muck, an Ork, think ‘boy, those sure remind me of black folks’…
“…and then accuse the author of being racist.”
I assume the poster meant the Southrons, who are dark-skinned humans and not orcs.

Here is mine in no particular order
The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Because valor still has value and small people can accomplish much.
All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque. I read this as a child and then many times thereafter. Shame on you if you have not.
Starship Troopers, by Robert A. Heinlein. A masterpiece of military science fiction and an early entry in the libertarian science fiction genre as well. If ever there was a case to be made that the book is better than the movie, this is it.
Hamlet, By Shakespeare. No introduction necessary here, I would think.
One Day In the Life of Ivan Denosovitch, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A voice from the depths of the Siberian gulag…it is both an indictment of the ‘cruelty and absurdity of Stalinism’, as well as a testament to human perseverance. Chilling and utterly unforgettable, where the people you meet on a train out of Moscow are also the people you meet in a slave labor camp 5 years later.
The Coming Anarchy:Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold war., by Robert Kaplan. This is a series of essays that bring together cultural anthropology, history, geopolitics and modern well armed tribalism into one of the most remarkable and clear eyed visions of our near future that I have encountered. Kaplan visits and lives in the places he writes about, and the pictures are often grim beyond anything that well fed and air conditioned Americans can imagine. If we are the equivalent of a stretch limousine, then most of the rest of the world is dwelling in the muddy, pot holed streets that we pass by without a thought…watching us in envy as they scrabble in the grime.
The October Country, by Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is a true master of the short story, and The October Country finds him at the pinnacle of his craft with a treasure chest of gems to behold. His stories range from the macabre to the heartbreaking, and sometimes all at once. The Emissary never fails to chill with its scents of autumn, and something else brought in by a dog to his bedridden owner. Homecoming still leaves me in tears along with the neglected, all too mortal child who is the youngest son in an immortal family of vampires who both fear and shun him. Don’t take my word for it. Read them yourself.
HMS Ulysses by Alistair MacLean. Another book from my youth, this is based on the infamous convoy PQ-17 bound for Murmansk during WW II. The book borders on nightmarish, with scenes of men frozen to death at their gunnery posts, or praying to be killed when their oil tanker is sunk and leaves them to burn in the otherwise frigid North Atlantic. It was almost shocking to me when I read the first time, and the imagery has stayed with me over the years.
Guns, Germs and Steel, by Jared Diamond. A spectacular tour through human history that demolishes previous racist assumptions and forces the reader to challenge much of what they ‘know’ about race and culture. Take the best and most engaging college course you ever took and add your favorite teacher and favorite authors all together and mix well, then sprinkle with lots of awards and a Pulitzer Prize. This book is what you get. Read it, and read it again.
Hiroshima by John Hersey. I read this in middle school and learned what nobody was willing to talk about concerning nuclear weapons and what they do to real, living people who feel pain.

1. Dickens’ novels: read to me by my mom while I was fairly young. Probably foremost among them: The Pickwick Papers.
2. C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.
3. C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.
4. C.S. Lewis’ “space and time trilogy”: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.
5. Wendell Berry’s essays and nonfiction. I was totally blown away when I read The Unsettling of America in college in 1975, and was permanently hooked.
6. Wendell Berry’s fiction concerning the Port William membership, especially Jayber Crow.
7. The Autobiography of John Muir, read to me by my mom.
8. Crime and Punishment, by Dostoevsky.
9. The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
10. A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold.

Dang the Captcha. The 10:04 post was mine.
Y’know, I drafted my post before I read any of the preceding 23. Really interesting to see so much overlap among the posts in this thread. A fascinating exercise.

The Good News Bible, reading this plus the church of my youth made me the agnostic I am today. I’m not joking either.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The human condition is absurd and Adams nails it.
Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez.
The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan.
Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, by Stephen J Gould
Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science by Martin Gardner and his other writings. I wish I was 1/70th as productive as him.
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. An interesting and misunderstood book.
6502 Assembly Language Programming by Lance A. Leventhal. I know this will strike people as a odd and perhaps sad choice, but this book set in motion a sequence of events which determined the course of my adult life.
The magazine articles in Scientific American and Popular Electronics, and the circuits books of Forrest M. Mims III.. Yes I know he’s a creationist and of the Mims-Pianka controversy, but his writing is worth reading anyway.

Rereading my rather bald list, it occurs to me that maybe I should say something about *how* these books influenced my worldview so, in a nutshell…
Phillips: An important book to me as a half-English and half-Greek Orthodox Christian. It showed me that Orthodox Christianity wasn’t something I had to file under “Greek half”.
Belloc and Schumacher: despite it’s datedness, reading The Servile State was the first time I really “got” Distributism, though Small is Beautiful pointed the way.
Tolkien and Herbert: introduced me to the stories told to each other by my Anglo-Saxon forebears.
Hardy and the folklore books (specifically the volumes relating to Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire and the Cotswolds): Put me in touch with a sense of place for Wessex, the region of my birth, and led me inexorably towards localism and regionalism as a philosophy.
O’Connor and Percy: The same, but for the American South, where I lived for 6 years.

In no particular order.
1. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – loved the story of how this pastor father’s religious hubris was his downfall and its effect on his family.
2. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – just fun and weird. Life can be amusing.
3. Night by Elie Weisel – devastatingly simple.
4. No god but God by Reza Aslan – probably the best history of Islam that I’ve read.
5. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan – along with Omnivore’s Dilemma, has helped trigger changes in the Maherian diet and view of food.
6. Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein – a brilliant exposition of military fascism and the state.
7. The Cassini Division by Ken MacLeod – explores the extreme ends/evolutions of capitalism and communism.
8. Vacuum Diagrams by Stephen Baxter – an expansive, galactic/universe-wide set of stories. puts one in his place.
9. Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water by James Novak
10. A New History of India by Stanley Wolpert – last two are two histories of the motherlands that I’ll never get out of me head.

Addendum:
My list really should include two others that have influenced me.
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis. Lewis’ quill and wit were never shaper then when he penned this masterpiece of devilish advice to as junior temptor. I try to read this at least once a year, and I am always amazed to see where new insights are to be learned as I grow older.
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. This is a thinly fictionalized autobiographical novel that first exposed me to the reality of growing up as an African American in mid twentieth century America. Unflinching and brutally self aware, think of this as Angela’s Ashes set in Harlem.

I love Douthat’s comparison of Chesterton and Greene.
I don’t think I could come up with 10, but here are a few, in chronological order:
1) The autobiography of Lee Iaccoca. I read this in seventh grade and for the rest of my teen years I was obsessed with wanting to work in the automotive industry. I thought there was little higher calling than working in automotive. The way Iaccoca told the story about going to work for Chrysler for the annual salary of $1, and then saving Chrysler, made teen-aged me think that it was practically patriotic to work for one of the Big 3.
2) The Unbearable Lightness of Being-This was the first adult book I read that my parents hadn’t. My tastes in fiction were theirs, and I would just regurgitate their opinions(to this day I still haven’t read much Dickens because mom didn’t like him like) I read it in college and lived under its influence for years to come. It took me years to recover myself.
3) Tropic of Cancer–I wonder if I read it today I would still like it. Really reinforced my suspicion of the inherent bad in the apparently good. Again, years to recover.
4) Seven Storey Mountain–”At last!” was all I could think when I read this. Really helped to counter lasting effects of 3 & 4.
5) The Eucharist by Alexander Schmemann This book changed my life. Read it for a grad school class and gave it as an Easter present to several friends that year. No, I’m still not Orthodox and neither were any of those friends at that time, but THANK GOD I will never be the same again.
6) Atticus by Ron Hansen–I think this book made me consider the unique relationships between fathers and their sons for the first time, something I never considered much. I don’t think I can articulate it well enough, but after reading this book (twice in 24 hours) something about my thoughts and ideas changed. And it is just so beautiful
7) There a couple of books-about-China that I’ve been reading that could make this list, but I don’t know yet–Factory Girls, Oracle Bones, and Country Driving. My worldview is still being shaped in that respect.

The Bible
Catechism of the Catholic Church
The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas
Collected Works of Aristotle
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Writings of Flanner O’Connor
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton
Elements of Geometry, Euclid
Witness, Whittaker Chambers
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

To say that my worldview has been constantly shaped and reshaped by what I read may seem trite, but for me it’s true. However, there are some authors or works that do stand out. Also in no particular order…
Frank Herbert, starting with “Dune” and his Jorj X. McKie series “Whipping Star” and the one that stands out above the rest of his books, as a major influence on me: “The Dosadi Experiment”. Theology, philosophy, politics, ethics, ethnicity and culture, just to name the highlights.
J.R.R. Tolkien. “The Lord of the Rings” was just the starting point for me, and extended into The Mythopoeic Society and a once-and-future publication called “Parma Eldalamberon” (I’m not going to fill this post with links, so the reader should search on his/her own).
Carl Jung, especially his writings about the collective unconscious.
Joseph Campbell and the commonalities of myth.
Robert A. Heinlein, who wrote plenty of mainstream science fiction but whom I personal think of as a writer of speculative fiction. The most influential of them is “Starship Troopers” (and please, do not cite the movie version! Gah!)
Orson Scott Card, two books: “Ender’s Game” and “Songmaster”. I hate his personal politics, but he has an insight to human relationships that touched me.
To round this out, I’ll mention that I’ve read much non-fiction that caused me to think, but nothing (so far!) that I would categorize as having that much impact on my worldview. However, there is one I must mention that is included in my list, and that’s the Don Juan series by Carlos Casteneda. One may rightly argue whether they are fiction or non-fiction, but the concept of “non-ordinary reality” affected me profoundly.

I would hesitate to pin myself down to these as THE ten that have influenced me most. However (aside from the Bible):
The Book of Concord (16th-century Lutheran doctrinal confessions)
Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances
C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and other books
Damascene Christensen’s Not of This World (biography of Orthodox monk Seraphim Rose)
Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov
E. B. Pusey’s Tract for the Times on Scriptural Views of Holy Baptism
Tolkien’s Hobbit, etc.
Jeremias’s Infant Baptism in the First Four Centuries
Bo Giertz’s Lutheran novel The Hammer of God
Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed

Schumacher’s discussion about the fourfold ontological hierarchy really made an impression on me.

Mary Margaret – I meant dramatic in the sense of grand, philosophical, sweeping, tragic, epic stories that capture so much about human existence – I suspect any novel set in Russia is going to be grand and sweeping simply because of the nature of Russia. But the remark was not meant to be denigrating – I think Solzhenitsyn is the finest writer of the 20th Century – my favorite by him is Cancer Ward. I have no problem with his mistrust of the US way – it is part of what makes his novels so impressive. Not a big Rex Stout fan but I have read and re-read Christie many times – have a bound set of all her books and my love for her stories led me to the whole English mystery writers genre.
How could I have forgotten Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy! I have converted my own kids and nieces to Adams. Obviously I think any Catholic would be deeply influenced by the Catechism – but for me it was the Baltimore Catechism which was still being used in my formative years.
Celtic Dragon Chick -yes I agree about All Quiet on the Western Front and I would add Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as a “shame on you” if you haven’t read it book.
Nick the Greek – oh yes – Servile State and Small is Beautiful should be on everyone’s list.
Siarlys – I have Flanagan’s Tenant’s of Time sitting on my desk – I find these books about Ireland to be- difficult – so I am working up to reading it.
This was a great idea – I have added a bunch of books to my reading list – so thank you all!

Kipling’s Jungle Books– first read to me by my mother– gave me a lifelong love of the underrated author, and England.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The Once and Future King– best book I read as a kid. I collect White 1st eds and did a foreword for one of his reprints.
Hemingway– weirdly my first on my own was Islands in the Stream. Fist modern “lit” that clicked.
Heart of Darkness: EVIL.
Waugh: Brideshead. 1st “Catholic” novel.
In Patagonia– travel writing that influenced me, and 92 in the Shade, novel ditto, by near predecessors.
Leigh Fermor Between the Woods and the Water: ULTIMATE travel writing.
E O Wilson Biophilia: explained that phenomenon.
Patrick O’Brian: BEST historical series.
Ted Hughes poetry: first living poet to knock me out.
Yeah, more than ten.

Here are my 10, ordered by when (I think) I read them. As an aside only the last two on the list were books I read after I turned 21.
1. The Gospel Acording To St John:
The earliest meditation not just on what Jesus did but on who he was and what this means. Arguably also the best, but then it helps having the Holy Spirit for inspiration
2. Gone With The Wind:
Yes, it’s racist, soap-operatic and hideously biased in its Civil War and Reconstuction portrayal. But Scarlett O’Hara is the quintessential American heroi(ine), both in her flaws and in her strengths. A Russian or French author would have written the story as a tragedy, but not an American, since “After all, tomorrow is another day.”
3. LOTR:
Like so many others here I fell in love with this work (when I was 12). The tale has its defects, but of course, but I would disagree about racism. Maybe we could have a LOTR discusson thread someday soon?
4. Creation:
Gore Vidals’ novel portraying the origins of several of the world’s great religions through the eyes of a (fictional) Persian diplomat and explorer who meets Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu (Taoism), Mahaviro (Jainism), and eventually Socretes and Democritus. A fair amount concenrning the Persian Empire and its wars with Greece is also included, all told with Vidal’s acerbic and sometimes snarky wit.
5. The First and Second Chonicles of Thomas Covenant:
Starts out in a Tolkienian vein, with a beautful fantasy world, a malicious dark lord and a magic ring. But it goes in a very different direction almost from the start: in one of the earliest chapters there’s an episode so unexpectedly yet casually brutal that many readers stop right there (if you’ve read it you’ll know what I mean). A very different (and powerful) view of sin, evil and redemption by an author (Stephen R Donaldson) who may have rejected his family’s fundamentalist Christoinity, but can’t escape the overtone of Christian themes.
6. The Persian Boy:
Mary Renault’s portrayal of Alexander the Great at the height of his power, as seen through the narration of his catamite. The ancient world comes to rich life here, and Ms Renault enchants the reader with Alexander and the what-if’s of a distant past.
7. History of Western Philosophy:
Bertrand Russell’s thorough and highly readable overview of a vast subject. Russell may have been an atheist and secularist, but he does a great job of covering the subject in a way accessible to the ordinary reader. Also, when he interjects his own views, he is honest about distinguishing them as such.
8. Mistress To An Age, A Life of Mme de Stael.
Biography of a brilliant, turbulent but largely forgotten woman. She was involved in almost everything that happened in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and everyone who mattered in tha era, from Jefferson to Goethe to Napoloen, was either her friend, her lover or her enemy. Her personal life however was so chaotic a soap opera would not dare use it for plots. She transmitted the values of moderation, humanity and liberty from the Enlightenment to the 19th century, synthesizing them with what was up and coming in political and aesthetic thought.
9. Guns, Germs and Steel:
Jared Diamond explains the differing trajectories of the world’s cultures as a function of location– geography, climate, native biota, and natural resources. The thesis is very well supported, and works very well for prehistory and early civilziations. When Diamond tries to extend it further it begins to fall apart, and his ignorance and lack of affinity for religion and philosophical thought show through the cracks in the system. Still, a very informative read.
10. The Orthodox Church:
Bishop Kallistos Ware’s highly readable work on the Eastern Church was the first lure enticing me into Orthodoxy.

Here’s my list in no particular order and always subject to change:
1.Lord Jim, by Joseph Conrad
2. LOTR by JRR Tolkien
3. Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
4. The Narnia Series by C.S. Lewis (okay, more than one book, but there you go).
5. Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
6. The Mask of Command by John Keegan
7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. Have Spacesuit Will Travel by Robert Heinlein
9. The Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
10. Goodnight Moon by Clement Hurd

Manfred and Hector, nice to see I’m not the only Charles Williams fan out there…I picked Descent into Hell because of that wonderful image in the book, but, really, all of his supernatural thrillers tilted my world.

10 books that have influenced my worldview
#1 (by a mile) Seven Story Mountain, Thomas Merton
#2 Hero with a Thousand faces, Joseph Campbell
#3 Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankel
#4 Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher
#5 Iron John, Robert Bly
#6 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Prisig
#7 Man and His Symbols, Carl Young
#8 The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli
#9 Kilimanjaro, Hemingway
#10 The Crack-up, F Scott Fitgerald

Jon, Guns, Germs, and Steel was a good book, as was Collapse.

The Sea Brings Forth by Jack Rudloe.
Complete works of Louisa May Alcott.
Modern poets of Britain and America.
Chronicles of Narnia by Lewis.
Of Men and Whales by R.B. Robertson.
City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge.
My Wife and I by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty.
Moo by Jane Smiley.
complete works of George Macdonald

MH: I included “Guns, Germs and Steel” on my list so obviously I thought it was a good book. My only complaint was with the very last chapter where Diamond tried to extend his thesis into areas where it didn’t work.
“Collapse” on the hand was so riddled with errors of fact that (IMO) it’s worthless.

The Survival of Civilization – John Hamaker
In The Deserts of This Earth – Uwe George
The Essene Gospel of Peace – E.B. Szekely (a series)
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ – Leo W. Dowling
Kabloona – Gontran de Poncins
Black Elk Speaks – John Neihardt
Biological Transmutations – Louis Kervran
Acupuncture – Felix Mann

Jon, I’m interested, what errors did you find in collapse? I’m not an anthropologist, but I am aware those civilizations collapsed. But not the reasons why so I took the book at face value.

Weighing in a little late on this.
1. Brave New World – first “serious” book I read that wasn’t assigned back in junior high school
2. Illusion of Technique by William Barrett- terrific discussion of 20th century philosophy and technology for the general reader. The epilogue is a personal statement that I found particularly moving and to which I return again and again, almost like a sort of secular devotional reading. Also influenced by his classic exposition of existentialism – Irrational Man.
3. Everything by Helmut Thielicke, especially The Waiting Father and Our Heavenly Father. These are collections of sermons, delivered in Germany many during WWII.
4. The Unfolding Drama of the Bible by Bernard Anderson. Slim little booklet that frames the entire biblical narrative in a drama of three acts with a prologue and epilogue. Very helpful for getting hold of the big picture of the Bible.
5. Saint Emmanuel the Good, Martyr by Miguel de Unamuno. Powerful short story on the struggle of faith and doubt.
6. The Call of Stories by Robert Coles. An invitation to read great narratives; shows the power of literature to influence lives.
7. The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts. A sad reminder of what we stand to lose in the electronic age.
8. War and Peace. Read it in the compact Oxford World Classics edition while waiting on the gas lines during the mid ’70s. The masterpiece’s characters are still vivid and alive in my imagination after all these years.
9. Homer. Odyssey first, then the Iliad. Kindled a love affair with the ancient Greeks.
10. Brothers Karamazov. Found the gospel in Dostoevsky.
And of course the Bible.

My list is at the link above…