There are many books out there. Some of them are worthless and just plain bad. But others are good. And some can even be classified as great books. The first one you need to know about is the Most Important Book ever written. You can read about it in my post from earlier this week. But After reading the Most Important Book, what else should you read?
There is plenty of junk out there to fill your time. If you are going to read, shouldn’t you want to read great books that can have an enormous impact on your thinking and on your life?
Charlie Jones: “You will be the same person you are today in five years but for two things:
1) the people you meet and
2) the books you read.”
So, follow the advice of Henry David Thoreau:
“Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.”
There are bad books,
decent books,
good books, and
great books.
However, even if we throw out the bad and decent books, there are still so many good books that we can’t get to them all. Life is too short for me to spend it reading only good books. I want to read the great ones.
So what would those be?
Some great resources from Christianity Today for finding Great Books to consider:
The 100 Christian Books of the Century
The Top 50 Books that Have Shaped Evangelicals
CT’s Yearly Book Award List
These are some great places to start.
I have been going through those first two lists the past few years and have enjoyed reading many of them. Some of my favorites have been:
Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline
A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Rosalind Rinker, Prayer: Conversing With God
J. I. Packer, Knowing God
Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger
Catherine Marshall, Christy
Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial
Rebecca Pippert, Out of the Saltshaker and into the World
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.” –Haruki Murakami
“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t just read good books (and certainly don’t read bad or decent books).
Go for the great ones.
Read great books, because:
“The things you read will fashion you by slowly conditioning your mind.” –A. W. Tozer
What books have you read would you consider putting into the “great books” category?