20 books to read by the time you are 80...

Just today, I received an e-mail from a student who had been in my class a couple of years ago. He confessed to me that he had not read carefully all the books that I had assigned in class, but now with a little experience—he tells me he is a stand-up comedian in New York!—he realizes that he missed things that would be useful and important him now after a little experience. This is just what Plato said to young men in book seven of the Republic. He wanted to know if I had any books I might suggest to him! Well, I did. I told him to look up the lists in Another Sort of Learning but in particular to read James Thurber's My Life and Hard Times and Chesterton's Orthodoxy.

An interview with Father James V Shall, SJ

http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/print2008/schall_orderthings2_jan08.html