“We do not live to read; we read to live, and to live in the most exalted sense.”

John W. Simons

“Grace Before Reading”

This list is by no means comprehensive, nor are we claiming that these are required readings of a person interested in the intellectual life. What follows is a list of our favorites, and it is only meant to serve as a starting point for your exploration.

Essays, Speeches, and Letters

  • “Learning in War-time” and The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis

  • “Reading” from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

  • “The Author’s Account of Himself” and “The Mutability of Literature” from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving

  • “In Defense of Rash Vows” by G. K. Chesterton

  • “Speech in the Virginia Convention” by Patrick Henry

  • “To His Daughter Margaret” by St. Thomas More

  • “Challenge to the Privy Council” by St. Edmund Campion

  • “A World Split Apart” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  • “A Plea for Intolerance” and “The Dignity of Labor” by Fulton Sheen

  • “What Is an American?” from Letters from An American Farmer by Michel-Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur

  • “Self-Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • “Farewell Address” by George Washington

Short Stories & NovellaS

  • “The Blue Cross” and “The Queer Feet” by G. K. Chesterton

  • “A Hint of an Explanation” by Graham Greene

  • “Tommy’s Burglar” by O. Henry

  • “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens

Poems

  • The Aeneid by Virgil

  • Beowulf

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo

  • Sonnets 29, 30, 55, 65, 71, 73, 94, 116, 129, and 146 by William Shakespeare

  • “Lepanto,” “The Ballad of the God-Makers,” “The Return of Eve,” “Medievalism,” “The Convert,” and The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton

  • “Mythopoeia” by J. R. R. Tolkien

  • The Temple by George Hebert

  • “Guardian Angel” by John Henry Newman

  • “Charitas Nimia” by Richard Crashaw

  • “As Kingfishers Catch Fire” and “God’s Grandeur”by Gerard Manley Hopkins

  • “Dream of the Rood” and “The Seafarer”

  • “No Coward Soul is Mine” by Emily Brontë

  • An Essay on Criticism by Alexander Pope

  • Divine Comedy by Dante

  • “The Vision of Sir Launfal” by James Russell Lowell

  • Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  • “The Rosary” and “Prayer of a Soldier in France” by Joyce Kilmer

  • “To the Reader” and “Saint Peter’s Remorse” by St. Robert Southwell

  • “In Memory of My Beloved Master, William Shakespeare” by Ben Jonson

  • “Death, Be Not Proud” and “Thou Hast Made Me, and Shall Thy Work Decay?" by John Donne

Novels

  • The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

  • Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini

  • Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

  • North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

  • The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

  • The Chronicles of Narnia, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, and Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

  • The Ball and the Cross and A Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

  • Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

  • Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

  • All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

  • Island of the World by Michael O’Brien

  • A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

  • The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  • To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Plays

  • A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

  • Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot

  • The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

  • Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard II, Richard III, and Henry IV (Parts I and II) by William Shakespeare

  • The Jeweler’s Shop by Pope St. John Paul II

  • Everyman

Theology

  • First Apology by St. Justin Martyr

  • On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius

  • Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis

  • The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton

  • Theology for Beginners by Francis Joseph Sheed

  • Fides et Ratio, Veritatis Splendor, Mulieris Dignitatem, Christifideles Laici, and Evangelium Vitae by Pope St. John Paul II

  • Life of Christ by Fulton Sheen

  • The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

  • A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament by John Bergsma and Brant Pitre

  • The Case for Jesus and Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary by Brant Pitre

  • Rome Sweet Home, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, Reasons to Believe, and Romans by Scott Hahn

  • Is God a Moral Monster? by Paul Copan

  • The Eucharist by Lawrence Lovasik

  • Symbol of Substance? A Dialogue on the Eucharist with C.S. Lewis, Billy Graham, and J.R.R. Tolkien by Peter Kreeft

  • His Angels at Our Side by Father John Horgan

  • Searching for and Maintaining Peace by Father Jacques Philippe

  • 33 Days to Morning Glory by Michael E. Gaitley

  • Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese

  • With All Her Mind: A Call to the Intellectual Life by Rachel Bulman

Philosophy

  • Love and Responsibility by Pope St. John Paul II

  • Apology and Phaedo by Plato

  • Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

  • The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius

  • Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy and How To Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler

  • The Universe Next Door by James W. Sire

  • Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

  • The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis

  • Philosophy of Tolkien by Peter Kreeft

  • Further Up and Further In and Literary Converts: Spiritual Inspiration in an Age of Unbelief by Joseph Pearce

  • Common Sense: Lessons from G.K. Chesterton and The Story of the Family by Dale Ahlquist

  • The Heart: An Analysis of Human and Divine Affectivity by Dietrich von Hildebrand

  • Leisure: the Basis of Culture and Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power by Josef Pieper

  • The Privilege of Being a Woman by Alice von Hildebrand

  • The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods by A.G. Sertillanges

History & BiographY

  • History of the Church by Eusebius

  • Friendship and the Fathers: How the Early Church Evangelized and Villains of the Early Church by Mike Aquilina

  • Rebel in the Ranks by Brad S. Gregory

  • Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History by Rodney Stark

  • Rethinking the Enlightenment by Joseph T. Stuart

  • 10 Battles Every Catholic Should Know About by Michael D. Greaney

  • Trianon: A Novel of Royal France by Elena Maria Vidal

  • Benedict XVI: Defender of the Faith by Joseph Pearce

  • 1776 and John Adams by David McCullough

  • The Pope and the President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century by Paul K

  • Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred McClay

  • Storm of Steel by Ernst Junger

  • All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

  • He Leadeth Me: An Extraordinary Testament of Faith by Walter J. Ciszek

  • Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain

  • Catherine of Siena by Sigurd Undset

  • Lay Siege to Heaven by Louis de Wohl

  • Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Thomas Aquinas by G. K. Chesterton

  • Now reading is the universal means of learning . . . We never think entirely alone: we think in company, in a vast collaboration; we work with the workers of the past and the present.

    A.G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, and Methods