Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Make You Think

Most books do, actually; even most novels. Books that don't make me think seriously about anything are almost nonexistent—though some certainly provide far more matter for contemplation than others.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish! Do come join the fun...

Unfortunately, I'm still in a hurry, so this list is less "The Top Ten Books That Make Me Think" and more "The First Ten Books That Make Me Think That I Could Think Of Off The Top Of My Head." That said, I know at least some of the best made it in.

1. The Holy Bible. Yes, I know it's the Sunday School answer.
"...religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

2. The Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling
"In the end it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

3. The Ender books by Orson Scott Card
"It was the miracle of the wafer, turned into the flesh of God in his hands. How suddenly we find the flesh of God within us after all, when we thought that we were only made of dust."

4. Any Jane Austen novel
"The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of merit or sense."

5. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
"The little girl was very sincere in all this, for being left alone outside the safe home nest, she felt the need of some kind hand to hold by so sorely that she instinctively turned to the strong and tender Friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds his little children."

6. Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy
"In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one’s children, earn one’s bread, and pay one’s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else."

7. The Divine Comedy by Dante
"O human race, born to fly up to Heaven,
why at a breeze so little must you fall?"

8. Any book by C.S. Lewis
"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

9. Joan of Arc by Mark Twain
"She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a place in profane history."

10. Story of a Soul by St. Therese of Lisieux
"It is your arms, Jesus, which are the lift to carry me to heaven. And so there is no need for me to grow up. In fact, just the opposite: I must stay little and become less and less."

What books make you think?