W

hen building a house, a person could be forgiven for forgetting to make space for a home library. It was once considered a great luxury, and as such has mostly been considered not to be a necessity.

However, if home is where the heart – and mind – is, what better way to furnish it than with books?

Embracing literature demands that people sharpen their faculties, cultivate their imaginations and broaden horizons. As such, it follows that choosing the right books for your home library makes for a uniquely challenging and elaborate task.

Ideally, a person will embark on a harmonious relationship with books at an early age, and parents can do no wrong by stimulating developing minds with classics such as The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Dr Seuss‘s rhymes are a perennial favorite come bedtime, and Roald Dahl, with his quirky twists and turns, should conjure up lively discussions during precious family moments.

Amid J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, CS Lewis’ Narnia, and Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, the young-adult market is positively brimming with imaginary worlds. Alternatively, there are the more realistic books on adolescence and none has been more popular in recent times than JD Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye.

For the more intellectual adult, reading the works of great thinkers is a compulsory for accessing their minds. Aristotle, Plutarch, Plato and Herodotus have been regarded as great men, who also wrote of other great men and the world around them in a series of chronicles just as riveting as imagined ones.

While journeying into the past, avoid the trap of buying into inaccurate histories and only buy books based on valid research or penned by cautious authors. Fitting the requirements, Edward Gibbons and Thucydides come to mind, as well as Steven Runciman with his A History of the Crusades.

Winston Churchill’s four-volume saga A History of the English Speaking People takes you from Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 BC right to the end of the Boer War in 1902, and the tales of T.E. Lawrence, or Lawrence of Arabia, subjective as they may be, are also worth perusal.

Of course, no library would be complete without a slice of Shakespeare’s plays and poetry. Though no literate person could challenge the Bard on prolificacy, it’s unwise to pass on the works of Wordsworth, Yeats, Keats and Blake.

Offsetting poetic romance on the bookshelf are intrigues and suspense commonly found in the mystery and crime genre. Its famous weavers are many, but Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Edgar Allan Poe set the bar high at the turn of the 19th century. More recent works, popularized by movies, include the memorable The Talented Mr Ripley and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Should the aforementioned titles be altogether too whimsical for your tastes, consider the radical writings of Marx, Rousseau, Machiavelli, Freud and Darwin, which continue to induce collective wide-eyed reactions to this day.

Regardless of the genres filling your shelves, collecting books should be as enjoyable as the pleasure evoked by opening each bound page.

Admittedly, books in a matching set would make an impressive view on your newly-built shelves. However, always remember that a library is not merely an aesthetic improvement of the home; it is just as important an investment for the mind.