The 108 “Books” that Rocked and Shaped My World

A writer becomes a writer by reading other writers. In other words, writers are first readers. I’m always reading, which means I’m either always working or never working, depending on how you look at it. Some of the best hours of my life have been spent beavering away in the bowels of libraries. I can go into monk-mode and not come out of my study for days. If books are “cigars of the brain”, my favorite metaphor for books, I’ve got a stogie at hand at all times.

In the Hebrew tradition, an hour of study is in the eyes of God as an hour of prayer. To read a book is to participate in the active work of God. To write a book is to join in God’s activities of creation. Could the Talmudic notion that scholars are the successors to the prophets be right?

In life, each one of us is given but a handful of chances to choose where we are going, how we are going to get there, and what we are leaving for our children and successors. Part of that “handful of chances” is our chance encounters with books. In composing this list, it has hit me how “first reads” have a powerful influence in shaping a life. This would be an exciting conversation for us to have: to grow a soul for the cruciform life, what might the ideal “first reads” be? Every great work of art faces two directions at once: towards its own time, and towards eternity. What are these Janus-faced creations that disciples of Jesus of all times need as part of their “first reads”?

Some of these writers I have enjoyed, this side of idolatry. Others of these writers have annoyed me and clawed my soul, my life a reaction formation against what they’ve composed. Still others of these authors didn’t get much right except one thing. But has anyone in history ever gotten it right the first time? Or gotten it all right?

I live under the spell of books, and understand completely what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein meant when he talked about “living in the pages of a book.” My hope is that as you are reading these, you will compile your own list of books that help shape your life, or think about those books that will be shaping your children’s future.

After putting together this list, and then thinking about my own meager attempts at writing, I identify with 18th century Edward Gibbon’s famous words in the opening pages of his first book: “Unprovided with original learning, unformed with the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.”

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I have always imagined paradise
as a kind of library.
-writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)
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