Note: A theologically liberal offers this valuable list, from his liberal theological stance. My ‘progressive evangelical’ list can be located at http://jmm.org.au/articles/8073.htm Rowland.

MY BEST BOOKS

What would you say are the 100 essential books a literate Christian should read?

My list (… these are not referenced properly but you should be able to get copies easily)

FICTION

The Canterbury Tales – Chaucer

Le Peste – Albert Camus

L’Estranger – Albert Camus

Les Miserables -Victor Hugo

The Idiot – Dostoevsky

The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky

Anna Karenin – Leo Tolstoy

Gargantua & Pantagruel – Rabelais

The Screwtape letters – C S Lewis

The Lord of The Rings – J R R Tolkein

Oscar & Lucinda – Peter Carey

Bliss – Peter Carey

The Lord Peter Wimsey Casebook – Dorothy L Sayers

Don Quixote – Cervantes

Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury

Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

Candide – Voltaire

The Trial – Franz Kafka

The Castle – Franz Kafka

The Divine Comedy – Dante

The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

La Morte D’Arthur – Malory

Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D H Lawrence

Sons & Lovers – D H Lawrence

Le Petit Prince – Antoinne de Saint-Exupery

Down & Out In Paris & London – George Orwell

Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell

Animal Farm – George Orwell

Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

Ulysees – James Joyce

Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce

Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathon Swift

A Tale of a Tub – Jonathon Swift

A Modest Proposal – Jonathon Swift

The Book of Bebb – Frederich Buechner

Complete Works – William Shakespeare

Complete Works – Lewis Carroll

Complete Works – Oscar Wilde

Complete Works – Henry Lawson

POETS

Donne

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Henry Lawson

T S Eliot

Rimbaud

Gerald Manley Hopkins

William Blake

Dylan Thomas

Les Murray

HUMOUR

The Dilbert Pinciple – Scott Adams

Complete Works – Michael Leunig

Complete Works – Barry Humphries

NONFICTION

A Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking

The Universe In A Nutshell – Stephen Hawking

The Mind of God – Paul Davies

God and the New Physics – Paul Davies

The Matter Myth – Paul Davies & John Gribbin

Walden – Henry David Thoreau

Civil Disobedience – Henry David Thoreau

Wowsers – Keith Dunstan

The Myth of Male Power – Warren Farrell

The Second Sex – Simone de Beauvoir

Areopagitica – John Milton

The Prince – Machiavelli

The Measure of Man – Martin Luther King

Strength To Love – Martin Luther King

Chaos & Community – Martin Luther King

Confessions – St Augustine

Hope & Suffering – Desmond Tutu

Mere Christianity – C S Lewis

Orthodoxy – G K Chesterton

Letters To Theo – Van Gogh

Rescuing The Bible From Fundamentalism – John Shelby Spong

A New Christianity For a New World – John Shelby Spong

A Theology of Liberation – Gutierrez

Does God Exist? – Hans Kung

On Being A Christian – Hans Kung

The Letters – Abelard & Heloise

Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire

Waiting On God – Simone Weil

Gateway To God – Simone Weil

Christian Letters To A PostChristian World – Dorothy L Sayers

The Greatest Drama Ever Staged – Dorothy L Sayers

Primitive Christianity – Rudolph Bultmann

Jesus Christ and Mythology – Rudolph Bultmann

Existence and Faith – Rudolph Bultmann

The Shaking of the Foundations – Paul Tillich

The Courage To Be – Paul Tillich

On The Boundary – Paul Tillich

Heretic – Peter Cameron

Honest To God – John A Robinson

A History of God – Karen Armstrong

The Gospel According to Woman – Karen Armstrong

Memories, Dreams and Reflections – Carl Jung

Voltaire’s Bastards – John Ralston Saul

The Unconscious Civilisation – John Ralston Saul

On Equilibrium – John Ralston Saul

The Varieties of Religious Experience – Wiliam James

Letters and Papers From Prison – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Stages of Faith – James W Fowler

Becoming Adult, Becoming Christian – James W Fowler

The Essential Erasmus – Erasmus

The Feast Of Fools – Harvey Cox

The Lessons of History – Will and Ariel Durant

Man’s Search For meaning – Viktor E Frankl

BIOGRAPHIES

The Lives of the Artists – Vasari

Elizabeth Barrett Browning – Margaret Forster

In God’s Name – David Yallop

Such a Strange Lady (Biography on Dorothy L Sayers)- Janet Hitchman

No Easy Road To Freedom – Nelson Mandella

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King – David J Garrow

Oscar Wilde – Richard Ellman

Higher Than Hope :Nelson Mandella – Fatima Meer

G K Chesterton – Dudley Barker

Speaking Their Minds: Intellectuals & Public Culture in Australia – Robert Dessaix

PHILOSOPHERS

Plato

Wittgenstein

Foucault

Pascal

Sartre

Kierkegaard

Nietzsche

Voltaire

John Macquarrie

Martin Buber

Gabriel Marcel