Kevin's 12 Must Read Books of 2010-2011

#12. What at first seems like a remarkable waste of time upon finishing turns into material for which to make sense of 20^th century despair. Nothing happens, and indeed, “The Sun Also Rises.”












#11. This was my first taste of Faulkner. Though there is a sense of overall thematic banality, the rhetorical pressure cannot be denied. American English usually falls significantly short of British. But Faulkner breaks through the stereotype; truly a rare occasion in American Lit










#10. Both the opening and ending passages of this book make the whole thing worth reading. We love where we are going and where we end up. In its way, this novella succeeds, or so I think, unlike any other story in pure tragi-comedy. Usually these sorts of hybrids fail, but in Cannery Row the hybrid somehow manages to grant life to the whole story.









#9. Chesterton at his finest. His internal journalist and internal philosopher combine here to create what is undoubtedly his masterpiece. Unlike any other Christian literature, Chesterton offers an existential argument comparable in effect and antithetical in doctrine to Camus and Sartre. Although this is technically a book from the 2009-2010 season (and ranked #1), I could not help but include it here. I rarely write a word or read a book which does not in some way resonate with Orthodoxy.







#8. The ranking here will seem to some rather poor. But I stopped halfway through this book because I could not conceive of it getting better--I plan to finish it soon. The Grand Inquisitor chapter is probably the single greatest chapter in the history of the novel. It may very well be the finest passage in all of literature










#7. This was 450 pages of boredom which altered into 450 pages of existential satisfaction with one short, final paragraph. It is the best ending to a story I have ever encountered and I suspect ever will. I still read it with tears in my eyes












#6. One cannot consider himself educated unless he has read The Republic. This is the umpteenth time I’ve read it, and I’m still learning. Iris Murdoch says that Plato was our best philosopher. She may be right. His theory of education has never been surpassed, nor can we expect that our best and newest philosophers will ever escape the parameters set by his metaphysics.









#5. Percy’s connections between the philosophy of language and art cannot be ignored. His inclusion of Pierce’s dyadic and triadic distinction shall forever haunt my philosophy. It has been almost as influential to my thinking as Lewis/Hamilton’s distinction between the Contemplated and Enjoyed









#4. Wittgenstein, like Plato and Descartes, changed the world. It is conceivable that we will not have another thinker like him for millennia. One cannot do contemporary scholarship without at least a cursory knowledge of Wittgenstein. Reading The Blue Book was like learning the alphabet all over again. It’s one of those instances when you realize that you never knew what the world was like until now.









#3. American literature paled in comparison to Russian and British literature until I read “Call me Ishmael.” I can barely describe the relief of knowing that our American English does possess the inherent quality of poetry. Melville sweeps away a lifetime of skepticism toward even great Americans like O’Conner and Hamilton. Moby Dick is the premier American literature, and my favorite novel.












#2. I only wish that I had the taste for O’Conner’s short stories like I have a taste for her theory of art. She is the superlative Christian aesthete, and one cannot, and probably should not, attempt writing fiction or poetry without reading Mystery and Manners. Rarely does anyone read 200 pages of theory in less than two days. I could not put the book down, and still read sections once a week.












#1. I had never encountered a work which combined scientific inquiry and intellectual honesty so enchantingly until The Varieties of Religious Experience. William James places the incontrovertible facts in front of us, and offers a clear, satisfactory explanation, concluding with a kind of healthy agnosticism. It is a masterpiece, and influences my thought today more than any other work, particularly in the connections between psychology and spirituality.