In a world competing for our attention, our guest this week admits: “It’s probably harder to read novels now than it ever was.” But their value cannot be overstated. The novel’s unique humanity, its careful and open treatment of the human experience, helps us to develop a sympathetic imagination, tuning our hearts and minds in a way that non-fiction argument simply cannot.

Christopher Scalia, author of 13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read), makes the case that it is a distinctly conservative interest to explore the Western tradition through fiction. Recommendations in hand, he invites adults to refresh their reading list with novels—from the very inception of the form up to the present.

Chapters:

1:47 The great book rut

4:11 Novels: the medium of recent Western tradition

5:30 The 18th-century bildungsroman

9:47 “Conservative” themes

16:18 The American dream in My Ántonia

22:39 Miraculous realism in Peace Like a River

29:02 Acknowledging the existence of evil

31:44 Wonder and encounter over strict interpretation

37:03 Revisiting works from your school years

38:47 Why narrative works

42:01 Books that nearly made the cut

Links:

13 Novels Conservatives Will Love (but Probably Haven’t Read) by Christopher Scalia

Christopher J. Scalia at American Enterprise Institute

The History of Rasselas by Samuel Johnson (1759)

Evelina by Frances Burney (1778)

Waverley by Sir Walter Scott (1814)

The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1852)

Daniel Deronda by George Eliot (1876)

My Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark (1963)

The Children of Men by P. D. James (1992)

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (2001)

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)

The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)

How I Won a Nobel Prize: A Novel by Julius Taranto (2023)

Also on the Forum:

Heights Forum Book Reviews

On Reading Literature by Joseph Bissex

Some Summer Reading Recommendations for Teachers by Tom Cox

Modern Literature: On Curating the Contemporary featuring Mike Ortiz

Guiding Our Boys through Modern Literature featuring Joe Breslin and Lionel Yaceczko

Featured opportunities:

Teaching Essentials Workshop at The Heights School (June 16-20, 2025)

Convivium for Teaching Men at The Heights School (November 13-15, 2025)