(Suburban) Kitsch, as adj.: A tacky or lowbrow quality or condition.

(From an internet meme…)

Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. They don’t have to be the greatest books you’ve ever read, just the ones that stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Here are mine, in no particular order, except the first two:

1. Ecclesiastes – Qohelet (could be King Solomon)
2. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving ***
3. Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality – Rebecca Merrill Groothuis
4. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
5. The Watchmen – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
6. Mere Christianity (or, The Case for Christianity) – CS Lewis
7. Reasonable Faith – William Lane Craig
8. Finally Feminist – John G. Stackhouse Jr.
9. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave – Frederick Douglass
10. Thoughts Upon Slavery – John Wesley
11. Nine Stories – JD Salinger
12. I Know This Much Is True – Wally Lamb
13. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
14. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
15. The Metamorphosis – Franz Kafka

*** Owen Meany was my favorite book of all time for many years (way before I was a Christian, I may add… also, for the record, John Irving is not a Christian and never was) until Ecclesiastes bumped it down a notch.

I feel bad that only two of my fifteen were written by women… but such was the great literature and non-fiction of the last few hundred years. I didn’t have much of a sample to choose from. Again, this is just a list of books that have stuck with me. I am not going to use this post to explain precisely why.