Literary Question of the Month - December

I volunteered for this month's literary question, and to give people something to chew on, I asked what books you would recommend to your children (or grandchildren or nieces/nephews or cousins or godchildren or whatever young people you have in your life) to read at least once in their lifetime. This question was met with a bit of controversy, as many of our members were literarily rebellious in their youth (imagine that!). However, taking the situation as a hypothetical, and not as an invitation to bully our youngsters into reading anything they don't want to read, here are some of the recommendations that our members came up with:


The Bible: the Bible was overwhelmingly on the list, for many reasons--not only is a great majority of Western culture firmly entrenched in Christianity, but there are great morals and life lessons to learn from the Bible, even if you are not a Christian.

Greek Mythology: Also highly influential in Western culture.

Grimm's Fairy Tales (and other fairy tales): Ditto the influence. Also fun to read!

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Shakespeare (Tinky voted for the entire works of Shakespeare, but even just hitting a few would be fine, I think ;)

In Search of Time (Proust) (probably for when they are a bit older, eh?!)

The Stuff of Thought (Stephen Pinker)


What about you--what books would you look back on as having been invaluable to your literary life, and recommend to a young person (should they attempt to beat it out of you)?

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