"So That I May Not Appear As Uneducated Compared To Jane Fairfax"

My husband and I were talking last night about a list he had read of books which have been written in and heavily influenced the Western world, and which the list-maker suggested every man ought to have in his personal library.

The writer also suggested that every man have a personal library, which threw me wildly for I took it for granted that everyone would have a home library.

A few of the books mentioned, we have here at home (Plato's Republic, The Divine Comedy), and a few of the books I proposed to be on the list turned out to be there (Augustine, Summa Theologica) which of course plumped my feathers. 

Naturally it got us thinking about "books that are worth reading," and while I probably could put together a list of a hundred and one titles of books that I would like to read, and feel are really worth reading, I thought I could speak better to the books I have already read - and I don't know that I could form a list of a hundred and one titles that I have read that I feel are really worth reading.  They span from childhood to adulthood, but these are the ones I feel are really worth the time spent reading them and give a return for time invested.

"Let us be exclusive," said Charles Wallace.   "That's my new word for the day."

1.  Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
2.  The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
3.  The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
4.  John Ploughman's Talk by C.H. Spurgeon
5.  Horatius by T.B. Macaulay
6.  The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy Sayers
7.  The Ballad of the White Horse by G.K. Chesterton
8.  Letters of Marque by Rudyard Kipling
9.  The Discarded Image by C.S. Lewis
10.  Oliver Cromwell by Theodore Roosevelt
11.  Cur Deus Homo (Why [Did] God [Become a] Man) by Anselm
12.  Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
13.  The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis
14.  The Immortality of the Soul by Augustine
15.  Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace
16.  On Christian Truth by Harry Blamires

It is a subjective list in some ways, because some of these books have simply impacted me greatly, and I have a notion that they would impact others as well.  It is also a mixed list: I have various kinds of poetry alongside children's historical fiction, travel, anthropology, biography, and theology.  But I think these sorts of things ought to be mixed.  It is also a very short list, because I was being ruthless: there are many books in my library which I have read and loved and have shaped me (Puck of Pook's Hill, Simon, The Worm Ouroboros), but even those I felt might be too subjective, and I wanted this list to be as universally edifying as possible.

How about you?  Have you read any of these books, and do you have a list of titles which you have read, which you feel are really worth the time you spent reading them?  Do tell!