1. Bible
2. The Hiding Place, Corrie Ten Boom
3. Toss up between Mere Christianity, Abolition of Man, Great Divorce, and Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
4. “The Right Hand,” Solzynistyn (short story)
5. “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Tolstoy (short story)
6. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings
7. Confessions, St. Augustine
8. Gulag Archipelago, Solzynistyn
9. Complete poems of T. S. Eliot
10.Severe Mercy, Sheldon Vanauken
—Kelly Williams (B.A. from Hillsdale; M.A. from the University of St. Andrews) resides in Boston, Massachusetts, with her husband, Elliott, and her two daughters. She is an expert on all things T.S. Eliot, and she’s been a close friend for many years.
1. Confessions (Augustine)
2. Idea of a University (Newman)
3. Collected Poetry of John Donne
4. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
5. Notes from Underground (Dostoevsky)
6. Leisure the Basis of Culture (Pieper)
7. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
8. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (Annie Dillard)
9. The Undertaking (Thomas Lynch)
10. Jayber Crow (Wendell Berry)
—Casey Holmes is a senior English major at Hillsdale College. Casey, a woman of immense spirit, is devout in all she does.
We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an online journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Paul Elmer More, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism.
We address a wide variety of major issues including: What is the essence of conservatism? What was the role of faith in the American Founding? Is liberal learning still possible in the modern academy? Should conservatives and libertarians be allies? What is the proper role for the American Republic in spreading ordered liberty to other cultures/nations?
We have a great appreciation for the thought of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Irving Babbitt and Christopher Dawson, among other imaginative conservatives. However, some of us look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.”
I'm glad Pieper's book on Leisure finally made it on to one of these lists. It has influenced my thinking and view of reality on a level that not many other books have. What can possibly be more human than setting time aside to worship the Creator in Whose image he is made?