Book Girl: A Journey Through the Treasures & Transforming Power of a Reading Life by Sarah Clarkson.
Book Girl Discussion Question #7: The author gives her ‘Beloved Dozen’ list in chapter 3. What titles would you include on your must-read list?
I have a list of 79 of the best fiction books I’ve ever read. To narrow that list down to 12 will be difficult, but I’m game. Note that these are only fiction, not nonfiction.
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I read this tome long before there was a musical version, and I devoured it. I stayed up until I fell asleep after 2:00 AM, reading Les Miserables in my dorm room bed, exploring the convents, battlefields, and sewers of Paris and of France, even though I had an 8:00 class to attend that same morning. I recommend plunging headfirst into an unabridged version and enjoying every single minute detail of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Such a good story. I wish I could find time to re-read it.
The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis. The Chronicles of Narnia may be my favorite C.S. Lewis books, but The Great Divorce is the one that I would recommend that everyone read. Just remember that it is fiction, not theology, a supposing, not a prophecy.
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton.
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien. I also read these books as a teen, long before Peter Jackson made them even more famous than the books already were.
No Graven Image by Elizabeth Elliott. A young missionary finds that God is trustworthy, but not necessarily fathomable. I find the same to be true in my Christian life. This novel and the book of Job are my mainstays in the time of suffering and difficulty.
Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.
Kristin Lavransdattar by Sigrid Undset. So surprising and so right. Actions and decisions have consequences, and living out the aftermath of good decisions and bad ones is how we learn and grow.
Well, actually the final two books that everyone should read are nonfiction:
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Such a good autobiographical story of a family that followed Christ into hard places, step by step, in World War II Holland.
Joni by Joni Eareckson (Tada). Joni was also led into some very hard places, but she found the Lord already there.
I also made this list of “10 books that shaped or defined me.” It includes both fiction and nonfiction.