Ordering the books for my classes … for the last time. (A solitary tear slides down my cheek.) All 19th and 20th century texts, which is somewhat unusual for me, but not altogether unrepresentative of what I do. The one book on the list I’ve never taught before is the Balzac.

  • G. K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday (Modern Library: 9780375757914)
  • Simone Weil, Waiting for God (Harper: 9780061718960)
  • Dorothy L. Sayers, The Mind of the Maker (Harper: 9780060670771)
  • C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (Scribner: 9780743234924)
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (Fortress: 9781506402741)
  • Shusaku Endo, Silence (Picador: 9781250082244)
  • W. H. Auden, Selected Poems (Vintage: 9780307278081)
  • Balzac, Lost Illusions (Modern Library Classics: 9780375757907)
  • Eliot, Middlemarch (Penguin: 9780141439549)
  • Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (Oxford: 9780198748847)
  • Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (Picador 9781250788450) 

One of those classes will include music, art, and film. So probably the last two things I’ll teach will be The Brothers Karamazov and Malick’s A Hidden Life