1. Either Rough Stone Rolling (Bushman), or This is My Doctrine (Harrell)

2. Either Approaching Zion (Nibley) or Brave New World/Brave New World Revisited (Huxley)

3. Either Re-Reading Job (Austin) or Man’s Search for Meaning (Frankyl)

4. Either Cosmos and History (Eliade) or How to Read the Bible (Kugel)

5. Either Understanding the Book of Mormon (Hardy) or The First Five Books of Moses (Alter)

6. Either The Message of the Joseph Smith Papyri (Nibley) or The Shape of Ancient Thought (McEvilley)

7. Either The Odyssey (Homer) or Moby Dick (Melville)

8. Either The Bhagavad Gita (various translations) or The Analects of Confucius (various translations)

9. Either Letters to a Young Mormon (Miller) or The God Who Weeps (Givens)

10. Either The People of the Lie (Peck) or Common Sense 101 (Ahlquist)

RSR is probably too tedious to require most missionaries to read it, but if I had my way, the controversial aspects of RSR would be required knowledge for all missionaries. It would be a risky practice, but also one with more integrity than the current custom. On the other hand, I feel little obligation to maintain a missionary force, so take what I say with a boulder of salt.

It’s too bad you would be afraid to give a book as benign as Rough Stone Rolling to certain individuals. I guess this highlights the trouble with a church that can be so easily be taken down with the words of a book or the nasty Internet. It seems to me that the truth should prevail as this site declares, despite whatever anyone says, but maybe that’s simply a mirage. Maybe that’s why true scholarship is not really encouraged by those in authority as some would like.

Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion — I think most of his apologetics are really dated but this is a timeless book that is more religion than apologetics. While I don’t ultimately agree with a lot, it’s the type of book that challenges and makes you think about what Mormonism is really all about.

Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane also The Myth of the Eternal Return — Eliadei is problematic in some ways but this probably helps people understand Mormonism’s connection to the ancient world better than any other book. I think most Mormons misunderstand the temple and for whatever its problems this will situate them better than any other text. I’d put it far ahead of Campbell who is far more problematic I think. You might want to throw in Images and Symbols as well. All three are short and are readable even by people not as academic as probably many posting here are.

Leonard Arrington, The Mormon Experience. The best broad history of the church there is. Yes it’s somewhat superficial but it makes up for it in its breadth. Further it’s precisely because it doesn’t get into the nitty gritty that its so readable for new people.

Terryl Givens, Wrestling the Angel. Probably the best book on theology or Mormon intellectual speculation. Why I like it somewhat better than say Blake Ostler’s excellent series is it’s terse but also tends to give the spectrum of ideas rather than arguing for just one position.

Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative and The Art of Biblical Poetry. Both excellent books that will open peoples eyes when they read scripture.

Mixed on what Sorenson to give. An Ancient American Setting is the best intro but is also somewhat dated. Yet his Mormon’s Codex isn’t nearly as readable as an introduction. Maybe instead (although this might be too big)

Brant Gardner, Second Witness: Analytical & Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon. It functions well just as a commentary but also brings in a lot of mesoAmerican theories.

I kind of want to throw in some NT Wright as well. Maybe What Saint Paul Really Said.

There is a major assumption being made here, I think, that reading these books once in one’s youth will be sufficient for a lifetime of church leadership. Yet I think we can all agree that very little is retained if all we do is read through a book once; even less if that read-through is not accompanied by annotating, discussing, rereading, analyzing, applying, etc. This is part of the argument for the necessity of reading and rereading scripture throughout one’s life.

I’m curious if anyone has ideas for getting people to not only read books, but to retain what they read. I read a lot of books, but have yet to find a satisfactory system for retaining and applying what I learn. If I, as an avid reader, have trouble with this, what of the casual LDS reader, assuming you get them to read anything from this hypothetical book list? Are we assuming if they read these books in their early 20s, they’ll still be able to draw on the knowledge in their 30s, 40s, and beyond? I think this is why Elder Packer tries to make a case for continued attendance in gospel doctrine classes: he knows that getting it once isn’t good enough. (The cynical side of me would say going to gospel doctrine class isn’t going to help bolster one’s gospel knowledge in any meaningful way, but I digress…)

As an aside, Elder Packer’s projected trajectory for this young bishop, which he identifies with years and years of “[a]gendas, meetings, and budgets and buildings [which] will take up his time,” sounds like a nightmare to me, and reinforces why I don’t think I could ever make it in high leadership callings.

Off the top of my head at the moment. Another day might be completely different. But all of these completely changed the way I thought and read about my faith.

“according to the materials they are allowed to read, they are.” Again, depends. If they’re reading the Gospel Topics pages off lds.org, they’re certainly more officially informed than in the past. That said, (anecdata) I knew several of these things, but certainly nowhere near all of them.

I think it’s Joe Spencer with a blog post, talking about how he never blanket-recommends books without knowing the person, which is important. The recent conversation I quote in the post, it turns out the missionary in question “loved reading genesis with the student manual [and] listened to a lot of Bruce R Mcconkie talks on his mission so is that helps direct you at all.” So if the student manual and Elder McConkie are your baseline, then we need to move a bit slower, perhaps.

I think its dangerous to just say “okay, you’re home from your mission now, read away!”

shouldn’t we have some sort of innoculation schedule? Like read this, before this.

Ben S., if we just go with your list and immediately give someone David o Mckay’s biography, and the Teryl Givens book, I think it could be too much too soon.

So in no particular order,

History/Biography
Rough Stone Rolling , THE biography of Joseph Smith, though it’s not perfect.

Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930. This is really the period where things change to become the Church as we know it, more or less.

David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism , a history-cum-biography

The uncut pdf draft of Lengthen Your Stride, The Presidency of Spencer W. Kimball , which lives on a CD-rom that comes with the hardcover.

Scripture– This is the most important category for me, because our understanding of scripture affects everything else in the Church.

A good modern Bible ( Jewish Study Bible for OT, Harper-Collins for New Testament)

The two Deseret book volumes on < NT and OT.

By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion and anything else by the Givens ( Crucible of Doubt , Wrestling the Angel , the God Who Weeps, How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life

Rereading Job – A great exploration of scripture, doctrine, history, and suffering, modeling how to read and study scripture.

Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament– Assumptions are what often get us into trouble, and Enns examines three assumptions about scripture held by Evangelicals (as well as most Mormons.)

Mormons and the Bible – Examines how LDS have read and used the Bible from Joseph Smith on down.

Misreading Scripture Through Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible – a thought-provoking look at how cultural assumptions affect our understanding of scripture.

Sacred Word, Broken Word: Biblical Authority and the Dark Side of Scripture – I keep meaning to write a review/LDS application of this, which I would subtitle “Apostolic Authority and the Dark Side of Church History” Sparks puts forth a theory of inspiration and revelation which accounts for (in the Bible) slavery, misogyny, genocide, etc. IOW, how do we accept inherited tradition as “inspired” when it clashes with clear ideals of how things should be? A very important book, imo.

“Doctrine”
Women at Church: Magnifying LDS Women’s Local Impact

How Wide the Divide: A Mormon & an Evangelical in Conversation
as well as all the followups (the entire issue of FRB 11:2 here , the BYU Studies articles , etc. I don’t necessarily think Robinson (the LDS author) is right on every point, but he models a good way of reading scripture, analyzing, defending belief, in a respectful way.

That’s my quick-and-dirty list. Obviously, given my posts here, I have lots of books to recommend.