In making my son a book on becoming a man, I wanted him to read books. Reading is a discipline we need to fight for and, even though he’s doing pretty well, it is by no means certain that the place of reading in his life is assured.

I found choosing the books tricky because, you know just 12. I’m both happy and also not happy with the list. I may well steal the book back and add another list of fiction books which are conspicuous by their absence.

Why’s that? I think because I used this list as a means for helping him learn about a mixture of the knowledge, character, practices and to acquire those things from novels takes a bit more skill. Maybe I should have added How to Read a Book¹ on there, but I haven’t read it myself.

Also no old books. Not even the CS Lewis choice qualifies as old, so chronological snobbery on show.

Every time I look at the list I think it’s inadequate but then I try to remind myself the goal here was to think of it as a set of primers. A strating point. Nothing more. Hopefully pointing towards the value of the topic or to help develop some practices that at this stage in his life will hopefully pay dividends for years to come. So with all those caveats in mind, here’s the list and my short justification to my son for why I picked them.

1. All links are affiliate links. I get a commission, you get a recommended book ↩︎