The 20 most important books you must read before you die.

[C. Matthew McMahon]

1. The Holy Bible
2. The 1647 Westminster Standards
3. Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
4. Christ Inviting Sinners to Come to Him for Rest, by Jeremiah Burroughs
5. Christ’s Righteousness Imputed, the Saint’s Surest Plea for Eternal Life, by Michael Harrison
6. Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin (outline)
7. The Glory of Christ (Volume 1 of Owen’s Works), by John Owen (excerpt)
8. The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (out of the 2 Volume Works online at APM)
9. A Treatise on Hell’s Terror, by Christopher Love
10. The Marrow of Theology, by William Ames
11. Gospel Worship, by Jeremiah Burroughs
12. The Death of Death in the Death of Christ by John Owen (Volume 10 of his works)
13. The City of God, by Augustine
14. The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, by Herman Witsius
15. The Existence and Attributes of God, by Stephen Charnock
16. The Bondage of the Will, by Martin Luther
17. The Order of the Causes of Salvation and Damnation, by William Perkins
18. The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination, by Loraine Boettner
19. Penses, Blaise Pascal
20. The Christian’s Reasonable Service, by Wilhelmus a’Brakel

Keep in mind, this list leaves out a lot of excellent works (i.e. Turretin, etc). See here why.

 

[Logan]

I see a couple people have put Don Quixote on their list and I'm curious to know why. I didn't care for it myself.

 

[Logan]

I'm hard-pressed to come up with a list because while there are definitely retrospectively 20 books I should read, I don't know if there are that many that everyone should read.

A few that I feel would be of almost invaluable use to Christians:
Schaff's History of the Christian Church
Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
Gouge's Of Domestical Duties
Henry's Commentary (at least the book of Genesis to get into a benefiting mindset)
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress

According to goodreads I've got at least 1300 books I've read, 250 of which I've rated 5-star, and picking from those is awfully hard for the above-mentioned reasons.

My favourite classics are probably:
Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov
Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
Hugo's Les Miserables
Dumas' Count of Monte Christo
Verne's Mysterious Island

Fantasy:
Hobb's Farseer Trilogy
Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles (if he ever finishes the third book)
Sanderson's Stormlight Archive
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings

Non-fiction:
Mukherjee's Emperor of All Maladies (it's superb)
Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (yes, it can happen here too, folks)
(additionally, I do have Gibbons on my to-read list)

Dystopian:
Orwell's 1984
Huxley's Brave New World

 

[greenbaggins]

Logan, good to see another Sanderson fan on the PB. In my opinion, he is the best fantasy writer alive today.

 

[fredtgreco]

Logan, good to see another Sanderson fan on the PB. In my opinion, he is the best fantasy writer alive today.

Why would you say that? I'm completely unfamiliar with him. To whom would you compare him (in style)?

 

[greenbaggins]

Fred, Brandon Sanderson first came to fame by completing Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time. In style, I would say that he has some similarities with Jordan, though he has a more natural understanding of conversation, in my opinion. Very similar in style to Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn. However, he can vary his style. For instance, the Mistborn series is dystopian fantasy that has a certain wistful and tragic quality about it, whereas the Stormlight Archive is more Arthurian and heroic, but set in a very non-Arthurian world. The later Mistborn novels have a more Western and even steam-punk style. Sanderson has many different series and stand-alone novels that are all part of a much larger world called Cosmere, a project of such ambitious dimensions that it takes your breath away. He himself is a Mormon, and teaches English at Brigham Young. If you want a taster, get the series of short stories called Arcanum Unbounded, which has the very best novella (in my opinion) ever written: "The Emperor's Soul." Sanderson's genius is in his magic systems, which are simultaneously enormously inventive, and yet never overly obtrusive. He writes the most epic of epic fantasy, and he avoids the grittier stuff that Martin writes. Sanderson still knows right from wrong, a quality disappearing from some areas of fantasy writing today. My favorites of Sanderson are Elantris, the Stormlight Archive, "The Emperor's Soul," and the absolutely hilarious Alcatraz series (which I highly recommend for reading to children about 7 years old and up).

 

[Logan]

Logan, good to see another Sanderson fan on the PB. In my opinion, he is the best fantasy writer alive today.

I'm assuming that includes Robin Hobb? I'm hard pressed to decide because I really love her books, particularly the way she captures emotion.

I got into Sanderson around 2011 and since then I've read single everything he's published, including the stuff only on his website. I agree about Emperor's Soul, I recommend it constantly. And about the Alcatraz series. And waiting patiently for the Rithmatist sequel...

 

[greenbaggins]

Logan, I've read a decent amount of Hobb, and I really like her, especially, as you say, her treatment of the character's emotions. However, Sanderson is just more epic than Hobb, no matter how you slice it. And when it comes to epic fantasy, it has to be epic to grab me: the bigger the canvas, the better I typically like it (though this isn't always true).

 

[Logan]

Fair enough, I guess I find Hobb's writing beautiful, though I like some of her books much better than others.

The 16 books in her Elderlings world was pretty impressive in its scope though: a first trilogy in one part of the world, a second in another part, a third back in the first part, then a set of four in the second part, and a final trilogy that ties up all the loose ends, character arcs, and foreshadowing that began way back in the first book. It stunned me, honestly, though Sanderson may yet beat that with his Stormlight Archive, which is certainly more "epic".

Have you read Malazan Book of the Fallen? I read the first book and gave up on the series when I was told it wouldn't start making sense until the third or fourth book. But I still hear fantastic things about its intricacy and scope.

 

[greenbaggins]

I have read into book 4 of Erikson. He is a magnificent author in many ways. If you get to book 4 or so, then you should start over, and Gardens of the Moon makes SO much more sense. The problem with the series is that it focuses way too much on the military. While I don't mind having some battles (looking at you, Helm's Deep and Pelennor Fields!), having all military is a bit too bloody (not to mention the fact that the magic always serves the military). Erikson does have some of the best humor in fantasy, though. Dry and sly. It is very disorienting, though, to feel like you're right in the middle of the story in volume 1, and he doesn't explain anything!

 

[RamistThomist]

I've read Robert Jordan's stuff, most ofit, at least 7 or 8 times. Not every book is great, and he overplays the "Men are from Mars/Women Venus" theme to exhaustion, but some passages are simply glorious.

 

[WRB]

Just a newbie here and to the Reformed persuasion as well, but (and I know this response is not in the exact format as requested);
Scripture - KJV, NASB, and now enjoying ESV
Dogmatics - Bavinck, Calvin
Commentaries - Calvin
Human Condition - Dostoevsky, Hemmingway, Kipling, Cheever, Bronte, Marquez, Wiesel, Solzhenitsyn
Reformed - Luther, Calvin, Owen, WCF (LC/SC too), Schaeffer
Fathers - Augustine
Poetry - Snyder, Plath, Levertov, Frost
Catch All - The American Tradition in Literature, Norton's Anthology of English Literature
Biographies - Any of the U.S. Presidents, Cicero, Napoleon, Bonhoeffer, Churchill, Augustine, Calvin, Oecolampadius, Luther
History - Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Creeds and Confessions, Colonial Presbyterianism, Undaunted Courage, Thud Ridge
On Christianity - Lewis, a Kempis, Bunyan
Technical - USAF F-16 C/D Dash 1

Not included of course, are so many not yet read but with a desire to, not to mention so many more I have yet to be introduced to.
Thanks for the thread! "Books are my friends."