Recommended Reading Lists

There's no better way to learn writing, grammar, vocabulary, and spelling than by reading good books. In the hope of introducing you to some good books you might not be familiar with, this page provides a set of recommended reading lists from staff and friends of Living the Answer. Books may be fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, long or short, and they are for a range of ages. They have only one theme in common: Each book is somehow memorable to the list's author.

You'll have heard of many of the books, but probably not all. Our hope is that the suggestions will encourage you to enlarge your library with books that will help to produce a generation of good readers, good writers, and good thinkers.

Note: Not all books on these lists will be suitable for all ages. Some books contains themes that could be upsetting or confusing to younger children. Parental discretion is advised.

And now, on to the reading lists...

David Vogel's List

• Anything written by Louis L'Amour, particularly the Sacketts series. As far as I'm concerned these are the best Westerns ever written, and I read and reread them growing up.
• The Midshipman Quinn Collection. Great historical fiction, set in the English Navy at the time of the Napoleonic Wars.
• Everyone is familiar with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, but he also authored a number of other excellent books, including The White Company, Sir Nigel, Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, and The Lost World (note: the theory of evolution figures prominently in this otherwise excellent science fiction work).
• The Chronicles of Narnia are C.S. Lewis' most famous fictional works, but he also produced enjoyable and characteristically thought-provoking science fiction with his Space Trilogy, consisting of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength.
• Jules Verne wrote a number of excellent books, most notably Around the World in Eighty Days and 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, but my two favorites were Michael Strogoff: A Courier of the Czar and The Mysterious Island.
• Albert Payson Terhune's classic dog stories. My favorite was always Lochinvar Luck.
• White Fang, by Jack London.
• Summer of the Monkeys, by Wilson Rawls.
• The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov.
• The Mouse that Roared, by Leonard Wibberley.
• The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy.
• The Adventures of Robin Hood, by Roger Green.
• Carry On, Mr. Bowditch, by Jean Lee Latham.