I am 39 years old. It’s not forty, but it’s close. For a while it was just hazy peaks in some far off land. But I am at the foot of them now. And as I climb to the cliffs of midlife, I have been pondering the man I am and the man I want to be. This evaluation has led to a challenge of sorts. As I walk to forty years of age, I want to read the forty books that have made me who I am.
Forty years. Four decades. To be fair to the passage of time I am reading 10 books from every decade. From youth, adolescence, adulthood, and whatever the crap they call our thirties. I have one year to read these forty books. Here they are, grouped by their decades.
I will be releasing reviews on each book and reflecting on its place in my life. The ones from childhood should be pretty funny.
0-10 (Childhood)
- Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J Sobol
- The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- The Great Brain by John D Fitzgerald
- Tales of a fourth grade nothing by Judy Blume
- Where the sidewalk ends by Shel Silverstein
- Scary Stories to tell in the dark by Alvin Schwartz
- X-Men: God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont
- The Death of Captain Marvel by Jim Starlin
- The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
11-20 (Middle and High School)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
The Stand by Stephen King
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The New Testament
Mere Christianity by CS Lewis
More Than a Carpenter by James MacDonald
God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew
Home by Rich Mullins
21-30 (College and The Beginning of Life)
The Brothers Karamasav by Fyodor Dosteovsky
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
Brave New World by Aldoux Huxley
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
The Old Testament
The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee
The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning
The God Who is There by Francis Schaefer
Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton
31-40 (Marriage, Ministry, The Raising of Children)
The Wingfeather Saga by Andrew Peterson
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard
In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen
Just As I Am by Billy Graham
Investing with Purpose by Mark Aardsma