C.S. Lewis in An Experiment in Criticism proposed the test of a good book is that it rewards return visits.
Based on this, I've began in recent years to build a library of books that I read each and every year. I read new books as well and the good ones make their way into the re-read library, but the idea is to get to know a few really good books really well instead of a lot of decent books decently.
Here are a few of the permanent fixtures on my re-read library shelf:
The Bible - Holy Spirit
Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
The Three Philosophies of Life - Peter Kreeft
Just Do Something - Kevin DeYoung
The Plan of Salvation - B.B. Warfield
Pilgrim's Progress parts 1 and 2 - John Bunyan
The Abolition of Man - C.S. Lewis
The Four Loves - C.S. Lewis
The Screwtape Letters - C.S. Lewis
Future Men - Doug Wilson
My Utmost for His Highest - Oswald Chambers
How to Be Free From Bitterness - Jim Wilson
Beowulf - Seamus Haney
Marine Corps Doctrinal Publication, 1: Warfighting - U.S. Marine Corps
"Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. A student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by twenty books which he has merely skimmed." -- Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students: To Workers with Slender Apparatus
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