Reading Plan for 2014

On this feast of St. Thomas Aquinas, great doctor of the Church known for his love of books, I post my somewhat ambitious list of books I hope to read this year. I know that I definitely won't get to all of these this year, but I will at least be able to easily transfer those not read this year to next year's plan. The books in parentheses are the spiritual books for the month and don't necessarily have anything to do with the unit for the month.  These books are basically a bunch of books I've been wanting to read for awhile; I just organized them according to date written or the date of the setting for historical novels so as to have the right historical perspective. Post your own lists or plans below; I love to see what books others are reading! 

January: Folklore Unit

·     The Hobbit (Tolkien)

·     Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)

·     Beowulf (700 AD)

·     (Letters to a Young Catholic)

February: Fantasy/Fairy Tale Unit

·     The Princess and Curdie (MacDonald)

·     Lilith (MacDonald)

·     At the Back of the North Wind (MacDonald)

·     Peter Pan (J.M. Barrie)

·     Phantastes (MacDonald)

·     Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination/Child (Esolen)

·     (The Way of the Lamb)

March: Early Christian Church Unit

·     Quo Vadis (Sienkiewicz) 64 AD

·     Helena (Waugh) 250-300

·     Confessions of St. Augustine 354-430

·     Anthony Esolen’s Ironies of Faith

·     (Signs of Life-Hahn)

April: Medieval Unit

·     Gunnar’s Daughter (Undset) 900s

·     Francis of Assisi (Chesterton) 1181-1226

·     Master of Hestviken (Undset) 1200s

May: Medieval Unit Continued

·     Thomas Aquinas (Chesterton) 1225-1274

·     Robin Hood (Lancelyn Green) 1200s

·     Catherine of Siena (Undset) 1347-1380

·     (Dante’s Divine Comedy) 1308

June: Renaissance/Elizabethan

·     Edmund Campion: A Life (Waugh) 1540-1581

·     Come Rack Come Rope (RH Benson) 1570s

·     Don Quixote (Cervantes) 1605

·     Outlaws of Ravenhurst (Wallace) 1600s

·     (St. Teresa of Avila by Marcelle Auclair)

July: Renaissance/French Revolution

·     Betrothed (Manzoni) 1628

·     Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) 1780s

·     Song at the Scaffold (Von le Fort) 1780s

·     (Pilgrim’s Progress) 1678

August: Victorian Era/Gilded Age

·     Mansfield Park (Austen) early 1800s

·     Emma (Austen) early 1800s

·     Jane Eyre (Bronte) 1847

·     Little Lord Fauntleroy (Burnett) 1885

·     Eight Cousins (Alcott) 1875

·     Rose in Bloom (Alcott) 1876

·     Secret Garden (Burnett) 1910

·     (A Prayer Journal- O’Connor)

September: Russia- same time period

·     Anna Karenina (Tolstoy) 1873

·     Brothers Karamazov (Dostoyevsky) 1878

·     (Death of Christian culture)

October: Romance -Italy

·     Mill on the Po (Bacchelli) 1812

·     The Little World of the Past (Fogazzaro)

·     (Letter and Spirit-Hahn)

November: Early Modern

·     Diary of a Country Priest (Bernanos) 1936

·     The Power and the Glory (Greene) 1930s

·     Song of Bernadette (Werfel)

·     (Orthodoxy)

December: Christian/Catholic Sci Fi

·     Perelandra (Lewis)

·     That Hideous Strength (Lewis)

·     The Canticle of Leibowitz (Miller)

·     Love in the Ruins (Percy)

·     Lord of the World (Benson)

·     (Mere Christianity)

Modern Catholic Reads: (Extra)

·     The 27^th Kingdom (Ellis)

·     The Moviegoer (Percy)

·     The Heart of the Matter (Greene)

·     Black Narcissus (Godden)

·     Wise Blood (O’Connor)

·     Unexplained Laughter (Ellis)

·     Mr. Blue (Connolly)

·     Manalive (Chesterton)

Non-Fiction:

·     Flipside of Feminism (Venker/Schlafly)

·     Crunchy Cons (Dreher)

·     A Little History of the World (Gombrich)

·     Medieval World History (Bauer)

·     History of the Catholic Church (Hitchcock)

·     Montessori From the Start (Lillard)

·     Understanding the Human Being (Montanaro)