Things every adult should know

I love this article:

25 and Over

I would amend #9 to include regular shaving for men (and I acknowledge that I’m still bad about that). I’d also add a 21st point to the list: When to shut up.

Recommended reading – I

Every so often I get asked for reading suggestions. Being both a librarian-in-training and opinionated, I have many, many suggestions. I should note that I don’t find it easy or productive to rank books according to “best,” so I haven’t bothered to do so here. Ranking, say, A Clockwork Orange to William Webb’s Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals according to quality isn’t so much comparing apples to oranges as it is comparing starfruit to extremophillic bacteria. Where would you even begin, and what would you hope to accomplish? Instead, I’ve listed here a selection of the books that have changed the way I view the world. 

Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. What’s to say? This book needs no introduction. I can think of only one other book that’s affected the way I see the world as much as this one. 

What’s So Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey. And this the other one. It makes a good companion book to Mere Christianity, for if Lewis’s book is a photograph of the Christian walk, this is a portrait of it.

Wishful Thinking, by Frederick Buechner. Short, sweet, and funny, this book is a bit like Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary in that it is a compilation of idiosyncratic definitions of common words. It is unlike it in that it doesn’t take itself very seriously, doesn’t preach, and is likely to make you a better person for having read it.

“Leaf by Niggle,” a short story by J.R.R. Tolkien. Most commonly found in The Tolkien Reader. Although Tolkien claimed to dislike allegory, this story was his exception to the rule. It tells of a painter, Niggle, who yearns to finish painting a picture of a tree but never manages to get as much done as he wants. I won’t tell you what happens, but I will say that I know of no other work that echoes what I feel as a Christian trying to do art.