Reading books

"I believe that we should read only those books that sting us. If a book we are reading does not rouse us with a blow to the head, then why read it? What we need are books that affect us like some really grievous misfortune, like the death of one whom we loved more than ourselves, as if we were banished to distant forests, away from everybody, like a suicide; a book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us." - Franz Kafka

I came across in my files an old list of recommended books to read. I thought of storing it through a blog post. So, here it is:

1. Imaginative Literature
   1. Light Reading
      1. Giovanni Guareschi, Don Camillo series
      2. P.G. Wodehouse, Jeeves series, Blandings series, Golf stories, Ukridge stories
      3. Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes series
      4. G.K. Chesterton, Father Brown series
      5. C.S. Forester, Horatio Hornblower series
      6. C.S. Lewis, Science Fiction trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength
      7. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
   2. Fairy Tales and Children's Literature
      1. C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, The Horse and His Boy, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Prince Caspian, The Silver Chair, The Last Battle
      2. Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
      3. Oscar Wilde, "The Happy Prince", "The Nightingale and the Rose", "The Selfish Giant"
      4. Antoine de-Saint Exupery, The Little Prince
      5. Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass
   3. Light Classics
      1. Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol
      2. Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days
      3. Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
      4. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
      5. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
      6. Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
   4. Profound Classics
      1. Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
      2. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Hamlet, The Tempest, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Othello, King Lear, Richard II
      3. Dante Aligheri, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso
      4. Fyodor Dostoyevski, Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov
      5. Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
      6. George Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest
2. Intellectual Literature
   1. Light Reading
      1. C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters
      2. Jean Guitton, A Student's Guide to Intellectual Work
      3. Mortimer Adler, How to Speak, How to Listen
   2. Medium Reading
      1. G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, St. Thomas Aquinas, St Francis of Assisi
      2. C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
      3. Victor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
   3. Profound Reading
      1. St. Thomas Aquinas
      2. Jacques Maritain
      3. Etienne Gilson
      4. Christopher Dawson
      5. T.S. Eliot
      6. St, Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
      7. Josef Pieper, On Hope, In Tune with the World: A Theory of Festivity, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, The Four Cardinal Virtues
      8. Plato, The Apology, The Symposium, Crito, Phaedo, The Republic