On Reading Well : Finding the Good Life Through Great Books

Read Well. Live Well.

Reading great literature well has the power to cultivate virtue, says acclaimed author Karen Swallow Prior. In this book, she takes readers on a guided tour through works of great literature both ancient and modern, exploring twelve virtues that philosophers and theologians throughout history have identified as most essential for good character and the good life.

Covering authors from Henry Fielding to Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen to George Saunders, and Flannery O'Connor to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Prior explores some of the most compelling universal themes found in the pages of classic books, helping readers learn to love life, literature, and God through their encounters with great writing.

The book includes end-of-chapter reflection questions geared toward book club discussions, original artwork throughout, and a foreword by Leland Ryken.

A Best Book of 2018 in Religion, Publishers Weekly

★ "[A] lively treatise on building character through books.'"--Publishers Weekly starred review

Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is the 2025-26 Karlson Scholar at Bethel Seminary. She is the author of You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful; The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis; On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books; Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More--Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist; and Booked: Literature in the Soul of Me. She is coeditor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues and has contributed to numerous other books. Prior is a frequent speaker, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, a contributing writer at The Dispatch, a research fellow for Comment, and a monthly columnist at Religion News Service.