Reading Lists

TheGreatBooks.com is a website designed to assist educators involved in the the Rhetoric stage (grades 9-12) of the Trivium model. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I have read many of the books on their list, however, am a bit embarrassed by what I have not read. Perhaps those who are engaged in building their theological library need to stop and consider how many of these titles should be added.

9th Grade – Ancient Civilization

1. Aeneid, The
2. Antigone
3. Basic Works of Aristotle, The
4. Bhagavad Gita
5. Compact Guide to World Religions, The
6. Creation and Change
7. Darwin On Trial
8. Early Christian Writings
9. Epic of Gilgamesh, The
10. Everlasting Man, The
11. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
12. Greek Way, The
13. How to be Your Own Selfish Pig
14. Iliad
15. Journey of the Magi
16. Julius Caesar
17. Mythology
18. Odyssey
19. Oedipus Rex
20. On the Incarnation
21. Perelandra
22. The Republic
23. Roman Way, The
24. Roots of American Order
25. Simple Tools for Brain Surgery
26. Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy, by Jostein Gaardner
27. Tao Teh Ching
28. Turning Points
29. What the Buddha Taught
30. Works and Days
31. Worldview Academy Lecture Series – Worldviews

10th Grade – Medieval Civilization

1. Aquinas: The Dumb Ox
2. Art of Courtly Love, The
3. Beowulf
4. Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, The
5. Canterbury Tales
6. The City of God
7. Compact Guide to World Religions, The
8. Deadliest Monster, The
9. The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, by C.S. Lewis
10. Essential Erasmus
11. Everyman’s Talmud
12. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs
13. How the Irish Saved Civilization
14. Imitation of Christ, The
15. Inferno, The
16. Koran
17. Le Morte Darthur
18. Magna Charta, The
19. Medieval Philosophy
20. Murder in the Cathedral
21. Pastoral Care
22. Piers Plowman
23. The Prince , by Niccolo Machiavelli
24. Roots of American Order
25. Selected Writings
26. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
27. The Song of Roland
28. St. Benedict’s Rule for Monasteries
29. Turning Points
30. Utopia

11th Grade – Reformation and Enlightenment

1. A Modest Proposal and Other Satirical Works
2. Against Slavery: An Abolitionist Reader
3. Autobiography and Other Writings, The
4. Canons of the Synod of Dordt
5. Causes of the American Discontents
6. Common Sense
7. Compact Guide to World Religions, The
8. Complete Works of John Donne
9. Concerning Christian Liberty
10. Doctor Faustus
11. Don Quijote
12. Early American Poetry
13. Essay on Criticism
14. Federalist Papers
15. How Now Shall We Live?
16. Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin
17. Lend Me Your Ears
18. Letters Concerning the English Nation
19. Leviathan
20. Life and Diary of David Brainerd, The
21. Meditations on First Philosophy
22. Mercy of Pocahontas, The
23. New Atlantis
24. Of Plymouth Plantation
25. Othello
26. Paradise Lost
27. Pensees
28. Pepys Diary
29. Political Writings of John Locke
30. Preface to Paradise Lost
31. Protestant Reformation: Major Documents, The
32. Reformation, The
33. Roots of American Order
34. Social Contract, The
35. To Honour God: the Spirituality of Oliver Cromwell
36. Turning Points
37. Worldview Academy Lecture Series – Apologetics

12th Grade – Modernity

1. A History of the American People
2. A Kierkegaard Anthology
3. Amusing Ourselves to Death
<
span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">4. Basic Writings of Nietzsche
5. Billy Budd
6. Book of Mormon, The
7. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
8. Candles Behind the Wall
9. Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
10. Classic Mystery Stories
11. Compact Guide to World Religions, The
12. Cost of Discipleship, The
13. Death of Ivan Ilych, The
14. Democracy in America, by Alexis de Tocqueville
15. Emerson’s Prose and Poetry
16. Essential Works of Lenin
17. Existentialism and Human Emotions
18. Gambler, The
19. God Who is There, The
20. God’s Politician: William Wilberforce’s Struggle
21. Grand Illusions
22. Gulag Archipelago: 1918-1956, The
23. Hard Times
24. Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation
25. Letter from Birmingham Jail
26. Life of Johnson
27. Man Who Was Thursday, The
28. Man’s Search for Meaning
29. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
30. Natural Theology
31. On The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
32. Philosophy: Basic Readings
33. Plague, The
34. Poor Man’s Earl, The
35. Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Mormons
36. Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Other Poems
37. Robespierre: Selected Speeches
38. Screwtape Letters, The
39. Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure
40. Shelley’s Poetry and Prose
41. Transcript of the Scopes Monkey Trial
42. Turning Points
43. Understanding the Times
44. Up from Slavery

And, just in case you have already read all of the books above, TheGreatBooks.com also shares this Additional Reading List:

* The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
* Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling
* Silas Marner by George Eliot
* Watership Down by Richard Adams
* Loving God by Charles Colson
* Phantastees by George MacDonald
* Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan
* The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
* Animal Farm by George Orwell
* Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
* Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
* To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
* A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken
* Abide in Christ by Andrew Murray
* Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
* The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers
* The Club of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton
* The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov
* Emma by Jane Austen
* The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
* Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
* Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
* Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
* The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
* One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
* The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
* The Samurai by Shusaku Endo
* Walden by Henry David Thoreau
* An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde
* Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
* The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton
* The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
* The Journals of Lewis and Clark
* The Fall by Albert Camus
* Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton
* The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
* Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
* Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
* Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy
* Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
* Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
* Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
* First Circle by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
* Cancer Ward by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
* Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold by C.S. Lewis
* War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
* The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
* The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
* Macbeth by William Shakespeare
* King Lear by William Shakespeare
* Moby Dick by Herman Melville
* The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
* The Confidence Man by Herman Melville
* Hamlet by William Shakespeare