The Top Ten Books
Recommended by Anchored Guests in 2023
By Faith Walessa
If you listen to CLT’s Anchored podcast, you know that we like to end each episode by asking our guests one very important question: “What is the most impactful book you’ve read in your life?” We see this as a highlight of the episode, because it is such a unique way to understand someone and how they think. It is also a great opportunity to make a fascinating reading list featuring the recommendations of our trusted, well-educated guests.
With that in mind, we’ve compiled a book list of 2023’s top ten most recommended books on the Anchored podcast. As a new year approaches, now is a perfect opportunity to set aside some time for reading and reflection with these tried and true books.
A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.
- The Bible
- The Cosmic Trilogy by C. S. Lewis
- Nichomachean Ethics by Aristotle
- The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
- Confessions by St. Augustine
- The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
- The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
- A three-way tie!
a. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
b. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
c. Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
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Faith Walessa is a rising senior from Ontario, Canada. She hopes to study English at Hillsdale College, write books, and someday travel to England. She loves fanciful poetry, theater, reading by flashlight, and mint chocolate chip ice cream.
If you’d like to read more about good books here at the Journal, take a look at our reviews of C. S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism, fellow Oxonian Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night, and Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. Or, if you’re finding yourself more curious about the folks what wrote the books, take a look at our author profile series—we have short introductions posted on the Epic of Gilgamesh, Peter Abelard, Hugh of St. Victor, the Nibelungenlied, Sojourner Truth, Virginia Woolf, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and dozens more! Thank you for reading the Journal.
We will be taking a break from our usual weekly posting schedule over the holidays. Come 2024, we will return for our last two author profiles (Billy Shakespeare and GKC), followed by a fresh weekly lineup on “the Great Conversation,” past and present. Thanks again for supporting CLT, and we hope you have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Published on 21st December, 2023.