Ficion (will always be subjective): Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, Flowers for Algernon, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and some Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe throw in some travel memoirs.

Non-fiction: Thucydides, Hobbes, Locke & Rousseau

Everyone should read Descartes as a teenager, to allow for plenty of recovery time. The adolescent mind with its craving for a logic not yet ingrained will be briefly intoxicated by Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, and probably need a dousing from Kant’s antinomies to sober up at some point.

Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding might be a bit of a reach for most teens, but his Of Civil Government (the second treatise) is solid stuff. It’s the discursive flesh for which Bastiat is the barebones polemic.

One should know about Hobbes and Rousseau, but reading them is supererogatory. I did read them as a teen, but don’t recommend them to anyone, really.

If you really want to inoculate you kids against socialism, have them read its most devastatingly effective critic: Karl Marx. Das Kapital pays dividends at least three ways: Marx clobbers socialism definitively; Marx’s own ideas in his own words are hard to swallow; and having read a whole volume of Marx is a chic credential to flash in the eyes of the kiddies.

Sproul–ugh. If you must indoctrinate using the name Calvin, at least do so using writers who treat church history with integrity. And insist that they read Arminius’s commentary on Romans 9 somewhere in the vicinity of reading some Warfield or Machen. (Warfield himself is such a Calvinist triumphalist it’s hard to take.) Edwards is also a hundred times more worth reading than Sproul, though I think his “affectionate theology” has key flaws.

Then give them Donne’s Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions and Holy Sonnets to get the taste of disputation out of their mouths, and confront them with the grit of grace in their need for Christ throughout their sojourn, here.

Peace,
PGE

What’s your take on A Patriot’s History of the U.S.? I haven’t read it, though it’s on our bookshelf and in my mental queue. It might not be perfect, but it’s the only thing I’m aware of that addresses the whole of American history from a generally conservative worldview — something sorely needed.

“confront them with the grit of grace in their need for Christ throughout their sojourn, here.”

Even your prose is poetic, pg. . .

Adrian-

Thucydides is someone I’ve been meaning to read for ages. I know Kagan likes him a lot. Still haven’t read Canticle yet either. I can definitely see Hobbes and Locke, but do you think Rousseau has contemporary relevance?

My eleven-year-old read Fahrenheit earlier this year and went crazy for it. He’s on 1984 now. I’m not mentioning cyberpunk to him for another five years or so — with his taste for dystopian novels I think he’d go crazy for Gibson. I’m not quite ready for that. . .

PG-

I was approaching the list less for academic settings and in more of a “here, read this” kinda way. I’m not sure that handing straight Descartes to the avergage teen will do much good. I think reading the Great Books is great, but like poetry, reading the Greats is an acquired skill, a way of thinking that needs to be developed progressively.

I also find your distaste for polemics a bit short-sighted. The teenage mind is very much structured with very sharp lines and strict dividers. Practically every thoughtful teen I’ve known inhabits a world of good guys and bad guys when it comes to the intellectual or political world. Childhood and adolescence are very much the time for catechisms, systematic approaches to a subject, and polemical writing. In my opinion, anyway, it’s where you introduce them to the broad categories of thought and orient them as to their positions on them.

In the later teen years and on into college they can then begin to nuance this thought and mature in their perspective. And once they’ve been given the elementary tools of thought, the Great Books will be both more comprehensible and more beneficial to them. IMHO.

Definitely agree on Marx. I had to read a good bit of Das Kapital in class. Impenetrable prose.

As for Sproul, I’m surprised at you. I can understand disagreeing with his approach to history, but it isn’t like you to ascribe bad motives like this.

I agree on the value of Edwards, Warfield or Machen. Hodge definitely belongs on the list, as well as Berkhof and John Piper. But again I think that children should walk before they sprint. In The Holiness of God and his many other books, Sproul does a great job of introducing complex ideas in an accessible way.

even more than Donne, I’d recommend Valley of the Vision. Have you checked it out yet? A fantastic, worshipful little collection of Puritan prayers.

Your pal,

J.

Rousseau is still relevant (he invented the idea of the social contract), but beyond his immediate relevance I think he’s important to understand the history of nationalism, socialism, etc.

I’d say that, in this day and age, any book is good. Hell, pick up “See Dick Run.” Just read. I’m glad to see that there are some parents out there that actually care enough about their children that they would put any sort of thought into what they should suggest for reading. Like I said, as long as more kids read, I don’t care what it is.

But, onthe subject of fiction:
Classics:
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas(my personal fave)
The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Current:
The Wheel of Time series - Robert Jordan
The Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice

I choose not to list books with more intellectualism than necessary. Kids need to just get interested in reading.

I was going to rant and rave on and on, but I think I’ll stop. I have to work.

Frank-

“Kids need to just get interested in reading.”

I think that was some of what I was saying earlier. Getting them into both the habit of reading and the habits of mind that allow them to read weighty books is important. I think though, that if they aren’t habitual readers by high school, it might be too late for them.

That’s why I’ll always love Harry Potter, no matter what some people say about their literary merit. My kids -devoured- them, and still do. Reading to them is a joy rather than a chore, y’know? I think Dumas and Jordan are good for keeping the fun in reading — though I think I’m going to avoid Jordan for awhile with them. They can learn about polygamy from the Bible instead.

I thought about the title of your post well after I commented. You’re absolutely correct about kids either being readers or not by the time they hit high school. I guess I just wanted to point out that most parents don’t encourage it in their children’s younger years and it stunts their intellectual growth exponentially as they mature. Most college kids these days can’t even write a decent 5 page paper. And, I don’t mean a research paper either.

You were discussing what you had your children reading at such a young age, and that’s why I pointed out that if parents made reading a joy, as you suggested, then when it came time for the weither subjects, they’d pounce on it. I implied it earlier; you inferred it. How’d you like that semi colon? http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/charles_bremner/2008/04/a-humble-punctu.html

I tend to disagree about the polygamy issue though. I think that reading should lead people to question things. Jordan may not be intellectual on an adult level, but it can definitely get kids asking questions. And, who better to answer them than their parents. It is fiction after all.

“I guess I just wanted to point out that most parents don’t encourage it in their children’s younger years and it stunts their intellectual growth exponentially as they mature.”

I totally agree. One study I read showed correlation between the number of books in a home and a child’s attitude toward reading. I wouldn’t want to infer too much from that, but I really do think that so much of our influence on kids is in what is “normal” to them. Parents who value reading and model it for their kids (and start them off with the right sort of books) end up with young, avid readers.

That’s an awesome semi-colon article. I was just reading a defense of the poor semicolon written by William F. Buckley. I use them all the time; my wife hates them.

“I tend to disagree about the polygamy issue though. I think that reading should lead people to question things.”

I was mainly kidding. I don’t want my kids reading too much romantic “boy-girl stuff” (their term for it) at this age, but I’ll let them read RJ in high school.

With you, I sometimes can’t tell when you’re kidding. I could totally see you not wanting them to read RJ because of that.
I think given time, they’ll gravitate toward RJ anyway. I’ll make sure I explain the storyline to them next month.

I’m a recovering full-time polemicist who’s still better at that than most other modes of discourse, so. . . .

I think the “sharp lines” is true, but bear in mind that logical and critical faculties are underdeveloped. Give them sharp lines on esoterica, they are likely to have trouble telling center from margin. Lots of time wasted getting out of ruts in their middle twenties….IMHO.

Sproul . . . I have a sharp distaste for his mode of writing. I used Willing to Believe as the core of a study I did which, following his outline and then reading his primary sources, turned into a work of polemic in its own right. That book was one big “lump and dump” (classify everyone you disagree with under one label, then heap pejorative terms on them) strategy, and it failed utterly to represent the actual terms and contexts of the arguments. He just picked heroes and villains, and construed at will to fit it. I don’t think he’s malign, but he’s falling well short of the mark he should be hitting when he deals with church history, and doing so consistently and prominently.

You can chalk it up to “not a fan” if you like, but I really would recommend a long list of others before Sproul (though Hoekema and Pink come in well below him). He just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Frame, by comparison, is one of my favorites.

If you’re scaling down, Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy is a disproportionately well-written slim volume.

I think Calvinists do a lot of wonderful theology, but generally they do it best where the Calvinism is least at issue. To the great detriment of Christianity, we have not yet found the way to put the Calvinist/restofus (for there are a lot of us who are not Arminian who won’t sign on to Dordt) controversy behind us, just like we haven’t found a way to get past the “pushing off” effect of Reformation / Counter-Reformation / Second Reformation that unbalance our theology, or the deleterious and division-promoting idea that there can be “denominations” of Christians that are mutually disfellowshipped but still “obedient” believers. That fiction is more pernicious than most….and invisible to most of us, most of the time.

As for who reads what, when . . . it depends VERY much on the temperament of the kids. I found Descarte, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, Montesquieu et al on my own; looked up Marx and Bastiat and Smith and more for projects; and read Sherlock Holmes and Hardy Boys in my childhood. Holmes and the Hardy Boys, in fact, were my great shared experience in reading with my father. I read Holmes from an old Complete in one volume that he had around the house; and he would sit up at night and read the Hardy Boys novels I’d just finished, before I’d send them back to the library.

Peace,
PGE