The Academy · The Classics Shelf
Christian put his burden down. So can she.
Long before anyone called it personal development, these books taught the whole curriculum: WHO you become on the road, HOW you climb it, and WHAT you are given at the end of it. Every day of the thirty has a wardrobe to put on, a burden to set down, and a page from one of these books that says the same thing in older words. This is schooling made fun — and the purpose of the schooling is exaltation.
The Pilgrim's Progress
John Bunyan · 1678
A man walks out of a doomed city with a burden on his back and learns that every burden has a place where it may be laid down.
C · Christian character — WHO you become on the road
Bunyan gives you the whole CEO architecture in story form: the character (Christian, Faithful, Hopeful, Greatheart), the execution (the road, the hill, the valley, the river) and the outcome (the Celestial City — the office and inheritance).
CourageConstancyCompanionshipRead it free →Hinds' Feet on High Places
Hannah Hurnard · 1955
Much-Afraid is given two companions she would not have chosen and a promise she cannot yet believe, and she climbs anyway.
E · Execution — HOW she climbs, with Sorrow and Suffering as guides
This is the woman's climb. Every altar she builds becomes a stone in her pocket, and every stone becomes a jewel at the top — which is exactly how the ninety gems work in this house.
ConsecrationCourageCommunionRead it free →The Holy War
John Bunyan · 1682
A whole city is the soul, and the question of the book is simply who holds the gates.
O · Office — WHAT is governed: the town of Mansoul
The clearest picture of governance ever written for a person rather than a nation. Read it beside the Shadow Room: every anti-law is a gate given away.
CommandCustodyConsecrationRead it free →The Practice of the Presence of God
Brother Lawrence · 1691
A monk washing dishes discovers that the kitchen is not less holy than the chapel.
E · Execution in ordinary work
The bridge between heaven and earth in a hundred pages: your ordinary Tuesday is the ground on which godliness is actually practised.
ConsistencyCalmContentmentRead it free →As a Man Thinketh
James Allen · 1903
The mind is a garden, and it will grow something whether you plant it or not.
C · Character as the seed of circumstance
The shortest statement of the Law of Increase in the English language. Read it on Day 1 and again on Day 30.
ClarityComposureCultivationRead it free →The Little Princess
Frances Hodgson Burnett · 1905
Sara Crewe keeps behaving like a princess in an attic, and by the end the world agrees with her.
O · Office held without the title
The doctrine of bearing before the crown arrives — 'if I am a princess in rags, I can be a princess inside.' Give it to a daughter on Day 14.
CourtesyComposureCharityRead it free →The Greatest Salesman in the World
Og Mandino · 1968
A camel boy is handed ten leather scrolls and told to read each one for thirty days until the words work on him without his permission.
E · Execution — the ten scrolls, read three times a day for thirty days
Mandino gives us the method this whole house runs on: one scroll a day, read aloud, until habit replaces willpower. Our thirty days are three passes through his ten laws — good habits laid down like stones in a road.
ConstancyConvictionCheerfulnessRead it free →The Greatest Miracle in the World
Og Mandino · 1975
An old ragpicker collects human beings who have thrown themselves away, and hands one of them a letter written as if from God.
C · Character — the God Memorandum
Read it beside The Door. It is the plainest statement of the doctrine underneath the estate: you were never common stock, and the proof is the count of what is already in your hands.
ConsecrationConfidenceCompassionRead it free →
How to read them with the thirty days
- 01Open the day's planner page and put on the wardrobe — say the three pieces out loud.
- 02Read the adventure: the real moment in history where this law was proved, and what it opens in your future.
- 03Name the burden of the day and set it down in writing. Christian did it once; we do it thirty times.
- 04Read the matching classic passage, then print the page and hand-write the three lines in your notebook.
- 05Check in tomorrow. The shelf, the wardrobe and the notebook are how a month becomes a blueprint.