Fifty Favorite Books and What's Next

The list is complete. That is, as complete as such a thing can be. I have a lot of books on my to-read list, any of which could knock things out of order; if I were redoing it now, I would already move the Lord of the Rings books higher in the list.

Looking back over it, I find some of my choices awfully shameless. After all, I've read and enjoyed Les Miserables and think it a highly worthwhile book. Why didn't that make the list? Primarily because the massive Les Mis contained so many novella-length essays on things in which I had next to no interest, like the French sewer system. Therefore, it got beat out by a lot of innocent, non-depressing, non-boring tales for the (forever) young.

I have left out great books that I have read. Sometimes I included a book that I loved and wanted to talk about, but wondered later if it really belonged. My numbering system is flawed and vague, based on personal enjoyment without much reference to intrinsic merit; it is also downright arbitrary at times. Hopefully that helps explain most of the inclusions, exclusions, and relative placements that seem unreasonable.

Fifty is a large number, and drawing from the reservoir of books I have read, re-read, and loved, which have made some sort of impact upon my thought processes, I did what I could. I have written this list in the spirit of a pleasant exercise, a joyous fit of listing instinct. Enjoy! You can read through the whole thing here.

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Anyway, this blog is no longer slave to the Fifty Favorite Books feature, and I have plans: most of which involve conversation about reading and writing and other random life commentary. Stay tuned for the introduction of other regular features, interspersed as usual with whatever happens along.

#1. Orthodoxy

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"This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was sanity: and to be sane is more dramatic than to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of arithmetic.... It is easy to be a madman: it is easy to be a heretic. It is always easy to let the age have its head; the difficult thing is to keep one's own. It is always easy to be a modernist; as it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any of those open traps of error and exaggeration which fashion after fashion and sect after sect set along the historic path of Christendom--that would indeed have been simple. It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."

Author: G.K. Chesterton

Synopsis: Chesterton describes his adventure searching the world over for the truth and finding it in Christianity as contained in the Apostles' Creed, something he might have learned just as well "in the nearest parish church". Witty and sly, magical and brilliant, he points out the droll nature of error, the circular logic of running mad with only one idea, and portrays what the understanding of truth looks like from the inside.

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I do not think any writer has a better grasp of the English language than G.K. Chesterton did. Though his long paragraphs may come off as daunting, and the prose at first going may feel rather thick, the sentences are one after another loaded with the punch of aphorism and the whimsy of poetry.

Chesterton is my hero, as writers go, and in many ways also as Christian thinkers go. The man had an incredibly alive way of looking at the world. He saw the contradictory judgments made upon the church and pointed out the light and life and beauty behind the apparently forbidding gray walls. He had an equal gift for pointing out the deadness inside many a seemingly rational philosophy.

Reading his work helps my imagination, as well as my reason, keep me Christian. And in that blessed paradoxical vision the fairy under the hollyhock, the image in the mirror, and the rough unruly fishermen of the Gospels all alike point to Christ on the cross, the intersection of all existence.

#2. The Harry Potter Series

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"And his knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children's tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped."

Author: J.K. Rowling

Synopsis: Harry Potter was raised by his dreadful aunt and uncle, terrorized by his cousin and sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs. Strange things have always happened around him, but he does not know what it all means until a half-giant breaks down the door on his eleventh birthday, with explanations of how his parents really died and of who he really is.

Moving from the Dursleys' spidery cupboard to a tower room at a school of magic, Harry finds himself in a world where photographs move and portraits talk, where owls carry messages and the best game in the world is played on brooms--and where he is famous for something he hardly remembers. Throughout the seven books, Harry puts together the truth about what happened that Halloween night in Godric's Hollow, of why he was chosen to die and why he survived, and of what must be done to save his friends and people everywhere from the most powerful Dark wizard the world has ever known.

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You knew Harry Potter had to be in the list somewhere, right?

It's hard to know just what to say about these books. I've written quite a bit about them before, but there's so much to them that many a forum and website is devoted almost exclusively to the stories (and many of these are still going strong, more than two years after the release of the last book.)

From the hermetic subtext to the repeated Christ-figure symbolism to the emphasis on self-sacrificial love and humility and fair treatment for all living beings, the messages of the Potter books are as powerful as the tales themselves--but if all you want is a great story, you'll find that too. Rowling's work is practically its own mythology. She has created a world that becomes lifelike in the minds of her readers, real enough that you can almost sense for yourself what it would be like to make friends with a hippogriff or face off with a boggart or look at a many-handed clock to locate the members of your family.

For me, the books came at a time of terrible confusion and doubt. I read and re-read, awed, as Harry's world made sense of mine and concepts like good and evil took on real meaning again. And as I wrote shortly after Deathly Hallows came out, "I am an adult. I am well acquainted with the feeling of despair pulsing through my heart, poisoning my mind and emotions. Because of this, I hold ever-so-tightly to the childish notion that good will always triumph in the end. It is my link to sanity."

RRR: Any of John Granger's and Travis Prinzi's books on the subject--they're all tip-top scholarship. Granger's Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader and Deathly Hallows Lectures and Prinzi's Harry Potter & Imagination: The Way Between Two Worlds are particularly helpful, and I'm about to read Harry Potter's Bookshelf (by Granger) from which I expect something of a college-level literature class. Prinzi and Granger also have the two best Potter-related sites, in my opinion, and I even get to blog at the former. :)

#3. Little White Horse

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Old Parson, a twinkle in his eyes, took the books, bowed to Miss Heliotrope, and offered her his arm. "Madam, may I have the honour?" he said to her. And to Maria he said, "Your Royal Highness, the deep-laid schemes of managing women have never until now commended themselves to me. But in yours I willingly entangle myself. For the witchery of the moon is in them, and so brave is the moon, confronting so great a darkness with so small a face, that a man who does not count himself her willing slave is a born fool."

Author: Elizabeth Goudge

Synopsis: Newly-orphaned Maria Merryweather travels into the country to live at Moonacre Manor, which is the Merryweather family castle and home to her cousin Sir Benjamin. Maria and her governess settle comfortably into their new home, but Maria is curious, and there is mystery and intrigue enough in Moonacre Manor and the village of Silverydew to keep any inquisitive young lady busy.

With the help of several magical animals including a mysterious little white horse, and with friends like Robin and Loveday and Old Parson and Marmaduke Scarlet and others, Maria sets out to right the wrongs of her ancestor, win over the Men from the Dark Woods, and reconcile the Sun and Moon Merryweathers once and for all.

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Lou and I, walking to St. Andrew's on our honeymoon in Victoria, B.C. last year, came across a bookstore: Munro's, on Government Street. In lieu of other souvenirs, we decided to each buy a book. I went searching in the children's/young adult section, as usual, and came upon this. The title would have been enough to make me pick it up, but the cover also contained a warm recommendation by J.K. Rowling--"I absolutely adored The Little White Horse"--and of course I pulled it from the shelf and flipped through it. The very first page, with its intricate descriptions and sense of fantasia, sealed the bargain. Lou bought Manssoni's The Betrothed, and I bought The Little White Horse.

I have now read it several times and usually find myself re-reading parts after I get through the whole. Sometimes I've barely put it down when I want to pick it up and read it again.

Having read John Granger's Unlocking Harry Potter, I had a basic acquaintance with the concept of alchemical story scaffolding, and was absolutely thrilled to be able to pick out point after point in Goudge's story. Even without that, though, I would have enjoyed it. The faerie-tinged world, the joyous narrative, the truly good characters, and the ending--which always makes me smile and cry--all combine for one of the best and most satisfying stories I've ever read.

#4. Pride and Prejudice

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"Come here, child," cried her father as she appeared. "I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Collins has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?" Elizabeth replied that it was. "Very well--and this offer of marriage you have refused?"

"I have, Sir."

"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is it not so, Mrs. Bennet?"

"Yes, or I will never see her again."

"An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents.--Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do."

Author: Jane Austen

Synopsis: Elizabeth Bennet is the second of five daughters born to a mismatched couple: her father is brilliant and quick-witted; her mother is silly and ignorant. Of the entire family, only she and her elder sister Jane manage to conduct themselves in such a way as to appear truly respectable in society. When a rich young man moves to their town, bringing with him two arrogant sisters and a likewise proud and even richer friend, every mother with marriageable daughters begins to scheme. Good-natured Mr. Bingley takes to Jane right away, and before long the reserved and somewhat conceited Mr. Darcy finds himself attracted to Elizabeth. In "a family so deranged", however, there are many obstacles to the potential marriages, and an appealing young man connected with the Darcy family tells appalling stories about Mr. Darcy's character. To make matters worse, Mr. Bingley, his sisters and his friend disappear very suddenly to London without much explanation and apparently without intent of returning. Elizabeth, lively and intelligent, finds her emotions and her information more and more confused.

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Every time I read this book it gets funnier. Jane Austen's wit is subtle and dry and can be found in perfectly casual sentences, and it just never gets old. The above passage made me giggle for several minutes as I hunted for it and typed it, and that's after many, many reads of the book and many watches of the 6-hour A&E movie (which in my opinion is the only movie interpretation that really captures the spirit of the book.)

For complex characters and a solid love story in which the principals grow personally as they learn to love, this book has no superior as far as I know. I also adore quiet plots that take place in the minds and conversations of the characters, and again, Austen masters the genre.

Did I mention that I love this book? I read it about once a year.

#5. C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy

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He was thinking, and thinking hard because he knew, that if he stopped even for a moment, mere terror of death would take the decision out of his hands. Christianity was a fable. It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him--had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? He began to be frightened by the very fact that his fears seemed to have momentarily vanished.

Author: C.S. Lewis

Synopsis: Two scheming scientists kidnap Dr. Ransom and take him as a gift to the inhabitants of the planet Malacandra (otherwise known as Mars). Ransom manages to escape Weston and Devine, meets sentient creatures of several species, and after learning their language is taken to meet the Oyarsa, guardian spirit of the planet. From there, Ransom must protect Malacandra and later Perelandra (Venus) especially from Weston, who becomes possessed by an evil power and attempts to destroy the innocence of the newly-created first couple of Perelandra (Venus). After returning from Perelandra, Ransom has become Pendragon (a succession from King Arthur), and leads a little band of people and animals in the hunt for the still-alive wizard Merlin, working against a great evil on Earth.

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Lewis's interplanetary fantasy takes a ripping good tale and supports it with theology, morality, history and imagination and alchemical structuring. Over the last couple of years I've started learning about what really makes layered literature, and if there's anything out there more richly mine-able than this series, I don't know about it. But hey--it's Lewis. What else would anyone expect?

I have read Out of the Silent Planet once, Perelandra twice, and That Hideous Strength over and over. All of the books are fascinating, but I particularly identify with the characters, the ideas and struggles, of that final book.

#6. The Ender Wiggin Stories

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"It was the miracle of the wafer, changed into flesh in his hands. How suddenly we find the breath of God within us after all, when we thought we were only made of dust."

Author: Orson Scott Card

Synopsis: In Ender's Game, Andrew Wiggin is a Third--a government-permitted child beyond the acceptable two per couple. His sister called him Ender as she learned to pronounce, and the name stuck. He becomes a Chosen One, raised in a Battle School designed to teach interspace military technique to children in anticipation of the third Bugger war. Ender is pushed to and beyond his limits in the school, and after triumphing in all the war games is taken to another station where he practices tactics as a general in a game--a game with deadly consequences.

In Speaker for the Dead, after several thousand years of traveling at relativistic speeds, Ender is an adult of approximately 35. He lives temporarily on an icy planet with his sister Valentine when he gets a call for a Speaker for the Dead--a position inspired by a book he wrote all those years before. Accepting will take him away from his sister, but he cannot resist the tormented heart of the young girl who placed the call. Besides, the Hive Queen thinks the girl's planet, Lusitania, will be a good place to live. Ender travels to Lusitania and finds much more than a simple need for a Speaker: a dread disease that is merely controlled, a sentient species with the habit of murdering their top citizens by evisceration, and a family in great turmoil all await the understanding of Andrew Wiggin, who would be universally hated if he were known by the name of Ender.

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I have only read the first two of this series, and Speaker for the Dead brings the set to the top. That book works on my heart every single time I read it--even when, as I once did, I read it straight through twice in a month.

Ender's Game I have read twice, and it is fantastic and powerful. Speaker is even better. Fascinating character psychology, true love of many kinds, intricate plot, imaginative scientific fantasy, and strong meanings on the allegorical and anagogical levels are all present in both. They should be read in order--Ender's Game first--to get the full impact.

#7. Jane Eyre

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"Is it better to drive a fellow-creature to despair than to transgress a mere human law, no man being injured by the breach?--for you have neither relatives nor acquaintances whom you need fear to offend by living with me?"

This was true: and while he spoke my very conscience and reason turned traitors against me, and charged me with crime in resisting him. They spoke almost as loud as Feeling: and that clamoured wildly. "Oh, comply!" it said. "Think of his misery; think of his danger--look at his state when left alone; remember his headlong nature; consider the recklessness following on despair--soothe him; save him; love him; tell him you love him and will be his. Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?"

Still indomitably was the reply--"I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself. I will keep the law given by God, sanctioned by man. I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad--as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour: stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth--so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane--quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."

Author: Charlotte Brontë

Synopsis: Orphaned Jane was taken in as a baby by her uncle, who loved her; after his untimely death, she was raised by her aunt, who hated her. When confrontation with her aunt and cousins reaches a head, Jane is sent off to school, where she eventually becomes a teacher; from teacher to governess, at age eighteen she travels to a lonely country manor to manage the education of the little French ward of a rough and temperamental gentleman. Despite the inequality of situation, Jane learns to love Mr. Rochester, who is her match in looks and personality. He recognizes her as his match and beloved, but his unexplained past stands between them--far more thoroughly than Jane could ever have realized.

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I have called this my favorite book in the past. It is dark, mysterious, full of shadowy ideas and strange visions and wanderings in the night; Jane is plain and straightforward and Mr. Rochester brusque and unhandsome, but their romance is perhaps stronger for their sense of personal deficiencies.

The first read was difficult, but now I get through the long and painful Lowood days easily and move into the more interesting times that begin, for me, when Jane and Mr. Rochester fall in love. From thenceforward the tale of justice and mercy--of unyielding law and ultimate grace--moves with speed and passion and fascination. I don't often like modern-day romance, where shock value and sexual description provide the primary hooks; no, thank you. Give me a tale of restraint, where virtues and feelings work their natural tensions upon their subjects and true love wins in the end. Jane Eyre is such a tale--none better.

#8. Persuasion

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"If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence! I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!" pressing his own with emotion.

"Oh!" cried Anne eagerly, "I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you. God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures. I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives. I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression, so long as you have an object. I mean, while the woman you love lives, and lives for you. All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one, you need not covet it) is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone."

Author: Jane Austen

Synopsis: At nineteen, Anne Elliot fell in love and became engaged. Her baronet father thought the match beneath her, and her best friend thought she risked too much in marrying so young to a man with "nothing but himself to recommend him." Her best friend being almost in the role of a mother, Anne gave up the engagement, and still regrets it eight years later when her ex-fiancé reappears suddenly in her life. Captain Wentworth, determined not to forgive her for the past, is ready to marry any suitable woman, her excepted.

A serious accident, a highly eligible relative interested in Anne, and reverses in fortune play a part in the revival of their romance.

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As the love story here is between a couple in their late twenties--Anne is much older than any of Austen's other heroines--the sympathies are natural for someone who likewise married "late". I have read this book over and over, and the ending is just as perfect every time I read it.

I also have a lot of admiration for Anne, who, despite so many years of things not working out well for her, went about her days faithfully doing her duty. She pulled that off without grousing or bitterness, and that made her likeable. Props to Jane Austen for writing a complex character who makes her readers want to be better people.

#9. Emma

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"I shall not scold you. I leave you to your own reflections."

"Can you trust me with such flatterers? Does my vain spirit ever tell me I am wrong?"

Author: Jane Austen

Synopsis: Emma Woodhouse has the position--lucky or otherwise--of being richer and cleverer than almost everyone else she knows. Her father is too aged, shallow, and sedentary to keep up with her; her governess is more like a chum; the other well-educated girl in town is reserved and cool with her; and only Mr. Knightley, her friend and neighbor, ever offers her anything like straightforward correction. She does well enough till she makes a project of a pretty school-girl, however, and when her governess's new stepson comes to town with much charm and flirtation, she is high-spirited enough to play his games. Matchmaking and flirting nearly prevent Emma from gaining knowledge of her own heart and the one man who could hold it well.

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Emma did not start off as my favorite Austen novel, but it has grown on me a lot in the last few years. Perhaps the lead character's growth in understanding the vital importance of honour, both in self and in the person chosen as a spouse, have raised it in my esteem. Is it weird that I like "the moral of the story" so much? I don't know. Morals work in story only if the story takes precedence in both author's and readers' minds, and nobody did this better than Miss "Manners and Morals" herself, Jane Austen.

Mr. Knightley is right up at the top of my "Great Fictional Heroes" list. He is honest, good-natured (most of the time), and has solid opinions which he is not afraid to voice when necessary. He also has the invaluable skills of being a gentleman when others are fools and jerks and of drawing boundaries and making sure they are not crossed.

I enjoyed the Kate Beckinsale movie adaptation and have seen it several times, but did not so much like the Gwyneth Paltrow one (though I don't really remember why).

#10. The Chronicles of Narnia

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"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Author: C.S. Lewis

Synopsis: Sent to a magnificent old house in the country to escape the air raids in London, the four Pevensie children discover a path through a wardrobe into a different world--a world of magic and danger, where even children must be heroes. Throughout the seven books, the Pevensies turn out to be neither the first nor the last of Adam's sons and Eve's daughters to visit the world; the Seven Friends of Narnia (and the eighth) between them see its beginning, explore its farthest reaches, and witness its end.

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The first time I read Narnia was in the back seat of the family car as we moved from Florida to Montana when I was seven. I got through six and a half of the books on that six-day trip. Since then, I've read all of those books multiple times again, taken one seven-week class on their meanings, and seen two different partial sets of movie adaptations. Now I just need to read Michael Ward's Planet Narnia, and I'll be all set.

Few writers match C.S. Lewis in ability to communicate through their chosen medium. I'll be pretty happy if I do half as well. Lewis understood mythology and Christianity, logic and imagination, and had mastered the tricky art of communicating great complexity with real simplicity. I call that genius.

The Horse and His Boy is probably my favorite of the Chronicles; I've certainly read it the most times. But The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is powerful, too, and The Silver Chair speaks to me very personally. The quote above is from The Silver Chair.

#11. The Twilight Saga

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I'd had more than my fair share of near-death experiences; it wasn't something you ever really got used to.

It seemed oddly inevitable, though, facing death again. Like I really was marked for disaster. I'd escaped time and time again, but it kept coming back for me.

Still, this time was so different from the others.

You could run from someone you feared, you could try to fight someone you hated. All my reactions were geared toward those kinds of killers--the monsters, the enemies.

When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt that beloved one? If your life was all you had to give your beloved, how could you not give it?

If it was someone you truly loved?

Author: Stephenie Meyer

Synopsis: Bella Swan has exiled herself to the tiny peninsula town of Forks, WA, which gets as much rainfall as anywhere in the continental U.S. She expects a quiet life with her reserved father, along with a frustrating but hopefully unexceptional last year and a half of high school. On her first day, however, she is confronted by the open and clearly personal hatred of Edward Cullen, who is inhumanly beautiful and somehow set apart from his classmates. Not long afterward, he saves her life under impossible circumstances. Determined to know his secret, Bella finds herself caught up into a strange existence that is half horror story and half fairy tale--a tale that before long she could not escape, even if she wanted to.

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I've written about Twilight before, at some length. But to sum up: I had to be talked into reading the series, after laughing out loud at the excerpt on the back cover of the first book (it was meant to be romantic, not funny); once I got going, though, I read all four books four times in five months. How did a teen vampire romance wind up in my top 50? The short answer is that it proved far more than a teen book or a vampire genre story or a romance.

The books are outselling almost everything else for reasons: They are speaking to people on a deeper heart-level than most of what's out there is managing. Without overt religious content, Twilight--like Harry Potter, Narnia, and other great fantasies--offers something to starving souls. Starting with a return of the concepts of mystery and restraint in things that could be called sacred. Then there's a scene in New Moon that expresses what battling agnosticism was like for me so perfectly--but there, I'm getting ahead of myself.

RRR: The Forks High School Professor website. John Granger made a name for himself writing about the Christian hermetic meanings of Harry Potter, and now he's working on (the Mormon-themed) Twilight as well.

#12. Ben-Hur

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"Fair Egyptian," the merchant replied, nodding with grave politeness, "your father is a good man who would not be offended if he knew I told you his Persian lore is the least part of his wisdom."

Iras's lip curled slightly.

"To speak like a philosopher, as you invite me," she said, "the least part always implies a greater. Let me ask what you esteem the greater part of the rare quality you are pleased to attribute to him."

Simonides turned upon her somewhat sternly.

"Pure wisdom always directs itself toward God; the purest wisdom is knowledge of God; and no man of my acquaintance has it in higher degree, or makes it more manifest in speech and act, than the good Balthasar."

Author: Lew Wallace

Synopsis: Judah Ben-Hur lives with his mother and sister in a beautiful home, proud to be a Jew but interested in becoming a soldier. When his childhood friend betrays him, throwing mother and sister into a leprous prison cell and putting Ben-Hur himself into chained service at the oars of warships, Ben-Hur develops a desire for revenge. During a great battle, Ben-Hur saves Arrius the duumvir's life and is adopted as his son, becoming a Roman, but his heart is still full of zeal for the Jewish people and bitterness at the wrongs done him. Encounters with one of the Magi--Balthasar--and daughter Iras, with a Sheikh from the desert, and with family servant Simonides and daughter Esther, prepare him for the greatest encounter of all: finding the Messiah.

* * *

I love this book. It took me a long time to pick a quote; there were at least three that I thought worthy of inclusion, not counting my favorite part (where Ben-Hur figures out which of the beautiful young women he really loves).

There is an awful lot of focus on revenge in the story, and the portrayal of Christ is certainly subjective, but it is an interesting tale drawn from history and tradition and told with all the grand old glories of love and war.

#13. L.M. Montgomery's Anne Books

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"When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes--what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows--what new landscapes--what new beauties--what curves and hills and valleys further on."

Author: Lucy Maud Montgomery

Synopsis: Orphaned Anne Shirley is brought by mistake from the orphanage to brother-and-sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who had planned on taking in a boy. The mistake proves a turning point for all their lives, and Anne brings new life and love to Green Gables. Her talkative nature, her sensitivity, and her imagination get her in trouble from time to time, but she makes many a true friend and becomes particularly loved by one of them.

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I loved all the Anne books--but if the truth be told, Rilla of Ingleside is probably my favorite. It tells the story of Anne's youngest daughter, who grows up during World War I, and L.M. Montgomery's capacity for humor and pathos are thoroughly developed in that book. Still, I've read and re-read the lot; Anne of the Island and Rainbow Valley are two others I particularly enjoy.

Like Fanny Price, Anne appeals to me through her love of books and nature. Her starry-eyed delight in life and her imagination have been a strong influence over my mind, and I tend to see the world almost as much a magical place as she does.

#14. The Little Princess

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Here was Lavinia's opportunity.

"Ah, yes, your royal highness," she said. "We are princesses, I believe. At least one of us is. The school ought to be very fashionable now Miss Minchin has a princess for a pupil."

Sara started toward her. She looked as if she were going to box her ears. Perhaps she was. Her trick of pretending things was the joy of her life. She never spoke of it to girls she was not fond of. Her new 'pretend' about being a princess was very near to her heart, and she was shy and sensitive about it. She had meant it to be rather a secret, and here was Lavinia deriding it before nearly all the school. She felt the blood rush up into her face and tingle in her ears. She only just saved herself. If you were a princess, you did not fly into rages. Her hand dropped, and she stood quite still a moment. When she spoke it was in a quiet, steady voice; she held her head up, and everybody listened to her.

"It's true," she said. "Sometimes I do pretend I am a princess. I pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one."

Author: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Synopsis: Sara Crewe, the only child of her rich, widowed father, had everything a little girl could ever want until her father's ruin and death left her a pauper on the hands of her boarding school. The cruel headmistress, Miss Minchin, puts her to work in the scullery, but Sara continues to pretend she is a princess in rags. Meanwhile, her father's close friend searches the world over for her.

* * *

I've enjoyed all three of Francis Hodgson Burnett's most popular books--Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Secret Garden, and The Little Princess--but this one is my favorite by far.

I'm not a big fan of the author's "Beautiful Thought" (a variant on the unhealthy "New Thought" philosophy), which shows up most clearly in The Secret Garden; on the surface and moral levels, however, I found The Little Princess an engaging tale and one I have emulated to some extent all my life.

#15. Madeleine L'Engle's Time Series

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"It's much too wild a night to travel in."

"Wild nights are my glory," Mrs. Whatsit said. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course."

"Well, at least till your socks are dry--"

"Wet socks don't bother me. I just didn't like the water squishing around in my boots. Now don't worry about me, lamb." (Lamb was not a word one would ordinarily think of calling Mrs. Murry.) "I shall just sit down for a moment and pop on my boots and then I'll be on my way. Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."

Author: Madeleine L'Engle

Synopsis: Meg Murry doesn't fit in at school. She can ace any math work but doesn't care much about other subjects; she also spends a lot of time in the principal's office, and is always ready to physically defend her little brother, prodigy Charles Wallace. Her father has disappeared. When Charles Wallace introduces her to three unusual women, and fellow genius Calvin O'Keefe joins the adventure, Meg finds herself on many-dimensional journeys to save her father and brother, in which she must learn to move beyond herself through love.

* * *

I've only read the first three of the Time quintet, but loved those. A Wind in the Door is my favorite, probably due to the concept of Naming. It has been years since I read the third installment--like, probably 20 years--so I ought to read that again, and I should probably look up the last two, but A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door are so good that the series had to make this list.

#16. The Christmas Carol

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Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capricious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas!

Author: Charles Dickens

Synopsis: Miserly, unfriendly Ebenezer Scrooge has been making money and shunning family and friends for so long that no one remembers him as anything but a miserable, mean old man. As a last effort toward his redemption, the ghost of his old business partner appears to him one Christmas Eve and explains that he will be visited by three spirits. The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future appear to Scrooge in their turn and work their Christmas magic over him, offering him a thorough change of heart and soul.

* * *

We've all seen variations on this, of course. Among my favorites are the Muppet Christmas Carol, the play "Scroooooge!", and Bill Murray's hilarious movie version "Scrooged", as well as the version my department did for the company Christmas decorating contest a year and a half ago ... good times!

The book is one of the sweetest stories I've ever read. Without being a theological treatise on the afterlife, it manages to be thoroughly Christian--human, redemptive, beautiful; as Dickens stated in his preface, "My chief purpose was, in a whimsical kind of masque which the good humour of the season justified, to awaken some loving and forbearing thoughts, never out of season in a Christian land."

I love Christmas, myself--not the commercialized nonsense we practice as a society, but the real thing, solemn and joyous, full of family and feasting and wonder at the Incarnation. I'd cheerfully give up the exchange of presents for the return of such a thing. As for my family, we do our best, and our Christmases--even the painful ones--have always been blessed.

#17. The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings

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"And then we can have some rest and some sleep," said Sam. He laughed grimly. "And I mean just that, Mr. Frodo. I mean plain ordinary rest, and sleep, and waking up to a morning's work in the garden. I'm afraid that's all I'm hoping for all the time. All the big important plans are not for my sort. Still, I wonder if we shall ever be put into songs or tales. We're in one, of course; but I mean: put into words, you know, told by the fireside, or read out of a great big book with red and black letters, years and years afterwards. And people will say: 'Let's hear about Frodo and the ring!' And they'll say: 'Yes, that's one of my favourite stories. Frodo was very brave, wasn't he, dad?' 'Yes, my boy, the famousest of the hobbits, and that's saying a lot.' "

"It's saying a lot too much," said Frodo, and he laughed, a long clear laugh from his heart. Such a sound had not been heard in those places since Sauron came to Middle-earth. To Sam suddenly it seemed as if all the stones were listening and the tall rocks leaning over them. But Frodo did not heed them; he laughed again. 'Why, Sam,' he said, 'to hear you somehow makes me as merry as if the story was already written. But you've left out one of the chief characters: Samwise the stouthearted. 'I want to hear more about Sam, dad. Why didn't they put in more of his talk, dad? That's what I like; it makes me laugh. And Frodo wouldn't have got far without Sam, would he, dad?' "

"Now, Mr. Frodo," said Sam, "you shouldn't make fun. I was serious."

"So was I," said Frodo, "and so I am. We're going on a bit too fast. You and I, Sam, are still stuck in the worst places of the story, and it is all too likely that some will say at this point: 'Shut the book, now, dad; we don't want to read any more.' "

Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

Synopsis: The peaceable little hobbit Bilbo Baggins sets out on an adventure, and among his discoveries is a magic ring that will affect the destiny of hobbits and elves, dwarves and men, and all Middle-earth. Bilbo's young relative Frodo receives the task of carrying the ring to its destruction, accompanied by his loyal friend Sam. The evil forces of Sauron must be fought, and the heroes and heroines of the epic include immortal Elvish royalty, a rightful king questing for his throne and his beloved, a desperate maiden from the land of horses, a tree-shepherd, and many others.

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I have immense respect for Tolkien's work. He created, not a mere story but a mythology--a world with languages and history and unheard-of creatures described with intricate detail. Unfortunately, for me Tolkien's narrative is almost more work to get through than Dickens', especially after the great war is won in Return of the King. Also unfortunately, I find it difficult to sympathize with any of the female characters except for Eowyn, and she can be downright frustrating.

Men love LOTR, probably because it qualifies as epic adventure with lots of battling and almost Gothic portrayals of beauty and horror; there's just not quite enough relational psychology for us girls, I suppose. Despite all that, the set still belongs in my favorites, partly because there are so many great thoughts in the tale.

I am currently re-reading it (am right in the middle of the Council of Elrond); it might wind up higher on my list after a second read, since the first trip through a good story is always the hardest.

RRR: Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories". It's on my list-of-things-to-read too, but I hear great things about it.

#18. Heidi

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"Oh, I have the same dream every night. I always think I am with my grandfather again and can hear the fir-trees roar. I always think how beautiful the stars must be, and then I open the door of the hut, and oh, it is so wonderful! But when I wake up I am always in Frankfurt."

Author: Johanna Spyri

Synopsis: An orphaned Dutch child is taken to live on the side of a mountain with her grandfather, who has withdrawn from society. The little girl freely loves her angry hermit grandfather, her jealous friend Peter the Goatherd, the blind shut-in Grandmother, sickly Clara and sorrowing doctor; she loves her home on the mountain so much that when her aunt forces her into service in Frankfurt she becomes ill with missing it; she learns piety and makes her few blunders by being simple and compassionate and searching for her home.

* * *

The title character belongs in a list of my favorite fictional characters; I sympathize with her more than almost any other character in novels anywhere. Her simple life and delights--her few and faithful friends, her roaring fir-trees, the goats and the eagle and the meadow full of flowers, her plain food and quiet routine--these are the sorts of things that make me happy as well.

The loved-to-pieces ancient translation I have is my favorite. Elisabeth P. Stork attempted to translate the story "as Johanna Spyri would have written it had she been writing in English." The copy I have has my grandmother's maiden name inscribed in the front, dated Christmas 1934.

#19. Eats Shoots & Leaves

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Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else--yet we see it all the time. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks.

Author: Lynne Truss

Synopsis: Baffled by society's inability to produce a decently punctuated sign or email, British wit Lynne Truss wrote this book to instruct the world on the proper use of the little marks that make our language read comprehensibly.

* * *

As a stickler myself, I get the biggest kick out of this book. I well know the suffering of coming to the end of a sentence only to find that the period was left off, or of spotting lonely, out-of-place apostrophes in "BOOK'S FOR SALE" signs. The tranquillity of reading can be shattered by a misplaced comma, while the lack of a comma can induce the uncomfortable feeling of having gone a block past where you were supposed to turn.

Ms. Truss is the queen of sticklers, and her writing is punctuated with hilarity as well as all the proper marks.