Recommended Books

C.S. Lewis - *Listed in order of recommendation for a new reader of Lewis

1. The Screwtape Letters - Why is this genre-defying book of Lewis’s first? Because I believe it is approachable to a wider audience. Introducing an adult to Lewis through his children’s books or even Mere Christianity can be challenging. Screwtape offers an entertaining, witty, and fun read that both inspires and challenges. Of course, I would not recommend this book for a young person under the age of 13 or 14 simply due to the challenging nature of some of the themes. It’s one of my favorite books by Lewis. I reread it every year. The audiobook version by Blackstone Audio is superb. You can listen to the entire book in three one-hour walks.

2. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe - Not much needs to be said for the Narnaid. It is a classic in the truest sense of the word. Though beloved, these books do not make my top five of Lewis.

3. “The Weight of Glory,” an essay found in the compilation The Weight of Glory - This essay, which was written as a sermon by Lewis, is one of his most quoted writings. It is a reflection on the nature of Christian discipleship. I have yet to read something by contemporary writers that compares.

4. A Grief Observed - This lament by Lewis, after losing his wife, is approachable and hauntingly beautiful. It’s a short reflective read and easily translates into our twenty-first-century culture.

5. “The Inner Ring,” an essay found in the compilation The Weight of Glory - This essay is essential reading. It’s full of timely wisdom and is relevant especially for young people today who are drawn into the rat race of trying to be in the “in” crowd. I reference this essay almost as much as “The Weight of Glory.”

The Advanced Lewis Reader

1. The Letters of C.S. Lewis - Volumes 1-3

2. All My Road Before Me

3. Surprised by Joy

4. The Cosmic Trilogy - Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength

5. Till We Have Faces

6. The Great Divorce

7. Miracles

8. Mere Christianity

9. The Four Loves

10. The Problem of Pain

11. Reflections on the Psalms

12. On Stories

13. The Discarded Image

14. Poems & Narrative Poems

15. Of Other Worlds

My Top Five Lewis Books in Order

1. Till We Have Faces

2. The Great Divorce

3. Perelandra

4. Out of the Silent Planet

5. That Hideous Strength

Honorable Mention

• The Screwtape Letters

• Miracles

• The Four Loves

• The Discarded Image

Literature

1. The Illiad, Homer

2. Paradise Lost, John Milton

3. The Odyssey, Homer

4. The Aeneid, Virgil

5. The Inferno, Dante

6. The Faerie Queen, Edmund Spenser

7. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

8. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

9. The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton

10. Call of the Wild, Jack London

11. The Old Man and The Sea, Ernest Hemingway

12. Lord of the Flies, William Golding

13. Lilith, George MacDonald

14. Phantastes, George MacDonald

15. At the Back of the Northwind, George MacDonald

16. Till We Have Faces, C.S. Lewis

17. The Cosmic Trilogy, C.S. Lewis

Poetry

1. The Sonnets, William Shakespeare

2. The Prelude, William Wordsworth

3. Lyrical Ballads, William Wordsworth & Samuel Taylor Coleridge

4. The Collected Works, Gerard Manly Hopkins

5. The Collected Works, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

6. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson

7. Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Philosophy

1. Timaeus, Plato

2. The Republic, Plato

3. Symposium, Plato

4. A Secular Age, Charles Taylor

5. The Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius

6. The Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkegaard

7. Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard

8. After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre

9. The Sources of the Self, Charles Taylor

10. I and Thou, Martin Buber

11. The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt

Theology

1. Confessions, St. Augustine

2. The City of God, St. Augustine

3. Works of Love, Soren Kierkegaard

Beauty, Aesthetics & Imagination

1. Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, Roger Scruton

2. Symposium, Plato

3. On Beauty: A History, Umberto Eco

4. Spirit and Beauty, Patrick Sherry

5. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Hans Urs Von Balthasar

6. Confessions, St. Augustine of Hippo

7. Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant

8. Either/Or, Soren Kierkegaard

9. Biographia Literaria, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

10. Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis

11. On Faerie Stories, J.R.R. Tolkien

12. Art & Beauty: Selected Readings in Aesthetics from Plato to Heidegger

13. The Portal of Beauty: Towards a Theology of Aesthetics, Bruno Forte

14. The Aesthetics of Architecture, Roger Scruton

15. The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis

16. The Idea of the Holy, Rudolf Otto

17. The Selected Writings of John Ruskin, John Ruskin

18. The Aesthetic and Critical Theories of John Ruskin, George F. Landow

19. The Lamp of Beauty, John Ruskin

20. Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil

21. Waiting for God, Simone Weil

22. Feeling Beauty, G. Gabriel Starr

23. The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, Paul Evdokimov

24. In the Beauty of Holiness, David Lyle Jeffrey

25. The Story of Art, E.H. Gombrich

26. The Enneads, Plotinus

27. The Sense of Beauty, George Santayana

28. The Religious Sense, Luigi Giussani

29. The Analysis of Beauty, William Hogarth

30. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, Edmund Burke

Postmodernism

1. The Crisis of Modernity, Augusto Del Noche

2. A Secular Age, Charles Taylor

3. The Postmodern Condition, Jean-Francois Lyotard

4. The Future of Religion, Richard Rorty & Gianni Vattimo

5. Postmodernism: A Reader, Edited by Thomas Docherty

6. The De-Moralization of Society, Gertrude Himmelfarb

7. The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt

My Books

1. The Beauty Chasers

2. Veneer

3. Home Behind the Sun

4. Longing for More

5. Shine So Bright - a Christmas story for families

6. The Dancing Boy Collection - early poems