First, a warning.
Chesterton is NOT to be undertaken lightly.
He is an acquired taste: his writing has much more substance, more meat, to it, than most others, and particularly more so than the "intellectuals" of our day. But he does it (as did Dick Feynman) by writing as CLEARLY as possible, seeking to elucidate, not to impress: and to do so by example, not erudition.
Think of him as a Roman Catholic Rush Limbaugh, only writing in a time when 8th graders in Kansas had to pass tests that today's college graduates would fail.
He wrote in a number of genres and for different audiences, so it is difficult to assign a best.
So I'll go by category. Hypertext links to the works if I could find a free copy online readily:
Christian Apologetics
1) Orthodoxy
2) The Everlasting Man
Novels / Victorian Fantasy
3) The Napoleon of Notting Hill
4) The Ball and The Cross (one word: perdinavititis!)
5) The Man Who Was Thursday
6) The Flying Inn (TOPICAL 100 YEARS LATER. TO SAY MORE WOULD BE TO SPOIL IT.)
Short Stories
7) The Father Brown Mysteries or the Mr. Pond stories -- (Try When Doctors Agree or The Three Horsemen of Apocalypse or The Eye of Apollo
Memorable quote from Three Horseemen:
"Grock said no prayer and uttered no pity; but in some dark way his mind was moved, as even the dark and mighty swamp will sometimes move like a living thing; and as such men will, when feeling for the first time faintly on their defence before they know not what, he tried to formulate his only faith and confront it with the stark universe and the staring moon.
'After and before the deed the German Will is the same. It cannot be broken by changes and by time, like that of those others who repent. It stands outside time like a thing of stone, looking forward and backward with the same face.' "
Memorable quote:
Basil smiled at me. "You didn't know," he said, "that I had a practical brother. This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does all there is to be done. Just as I was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything. I remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a schoolmaster, a—what are you now, Rupert?"
Collected Essays
Memorable quote:
"A man offered me a newspaper or something that I had dropped. I can distinctly remember consigning the paper to a state of irremediable spiritual ruin. I am very sorry for this now, and I apologise both to the man and to the paper."
10) The Illustrated London News
For these (and others!) click here.
Cheers!
thank you for the links, gw