Reading Room

The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis, 

is one of the very few sets of books that 

should be read three times: in childhood, 

early adulthood, and late in life. In brief, 

four children travel repeatedly to a world 

in which they are far more than mere 

children and everything is far more than it 

seems. Richly told, populated with 

fascinating characters, perfectly realized in 

detail of world and pacing of plot, and

profoundly allegorical, the story is infused

throughout with the timeless issues of good 

and evil, faith and hope.

1943 England, when all hope was threatened 

by the inhumanity of war, C.S. Lewis was 

invited to give a series of radio lectures 

addressing the central issues of Christianity.  

First heard as informal radio broadcasts, the 

lectures were then published as three books 

and subsequently combined as Mere Christianity.

C.S. Lewis proves that "at the center of each 

there is something, or a Someone, who against 

all divergences of belief, all differences of 

temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, 

speaks with the same voice," rejecting the 

boundaries that divides Christianity's many 

denominations. This twentieth-century masterpiece 

provides an unequaled opportunity for believers 

and nonbelievers alike to hear a powerful, rational 

case for the Christian faith.
  

Paradise Lost is the great epic poem 

of the English language, a tale of 

immense drama and excitement, of 

rebellion and treachery, of innocence 

pitted against corruption, in which God 

and Satan fight a bitter battle for control 

whose ultimate downfall is unyielding love. 

This marvelous new edition boasts an 

introduction by one of Milton's most famous 

modern admirers, the best-selling novelist 

Philip Pullman. Indeed, Pullman not only 

provides a general introduction, but also 

introduces each of the twelve books of 

the poem. In these commentaries, Pullman 

illuminates the power of the poem and its 

achievement as a story, suggests how 

we should read it today, and describes 

its influence on him and his acclaimed 

trilogy His Dark Materials, which takes 

its title from a line in the poem. His 

whole new generation of readers to 

this classic of English literature. An ideal 

gift, the book is beautifully produced, 

printed in two colors throughout, 

illustrated with the twelve engravings 

from the first illustrated edition 

published in 1688, with ribbon marker.

The Space Trilogy is CS Lewis's allegorical 

statement of theology and philosophy. Lewis 

was one of the most prominent Christian 

apologists of his time, but he always felt there 

was an audience he couldn't reach.  This was 

his solution, and we are left with a masterpiece 

both in the world of fiction and the world of 

theology.

The hero of the books is Dr. Ransom, a 

philologist who is a good man, though not 

exceptionally heroic at first. The first book 

finds him captured and whisked off to Mars, 

where he encounters a society much more

morally advanced than our own, and learns 

that the corruption of our planet is due to an 

evil influence (which we would call Satan). 

These higher creatures cannot grasp the 

concepts of war, murder, or any vice.

The second book finds Ransom transported to

Perelandra, also known as Venus. This is Lewis's

allegory of the garden of Eden, and here he 

encounters an unfallen woman who is being 

tempted into doing the forbidden. Here Ransom 

learns of the nature of sin, and of the temptation 

that (Lewis says) befell the parents of our own 

race.

The final book is quite different from the other two,

and Ransom, this time on Earth, is battling an evil

organization which is bent on penetrating the

mysteries of the universe and purifying the human

race. Ransom and his followers are aided by a power

that has long slept, and together they battle the

power of science gone haywire. We see, through 

their eyes, the evils of society and of so-called 

'higher thought.'

1943 England, when all hope was threatened 

by the inhumanity of war, C.S. Lewis was 

invited to give a series of radio lectures 

addressing the central issues of Christianity.  

First heard as informal radio broadcasts, the 

lectures were then published as three books 

and subsequently combined as Mere Christianity.

C.S. Lewis proves that "at the center of each 

there is something, or a Someone, who against 

all divergences of belief, all differences of 

temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, 

speaks with the same voice," rejecting the 

boundaries that divides Christianity's many 

denominations. This twentieth-century 

masterpiece provides an unequaled opportunity 

for believers and nonbelievers alike to hear a 

powerful, rational case for the Christian faith.

J.R.R. Tolkien's definitive three-book epic, 
the Lord of the Rings. Not just revolutionary 
because it was groundbreaking, the Lord of 
the Rings is timeless because it's the product 
of a truly top-shelf mind. Tolkien was a 
distinguished linguist and Oxford scholar of 
dead languages, with strong ideas about the 
importance of myth and story and a deep 
appreciation of nature. His epic, 10 years in the 
making, recounts the Great War of the Ring and 
the closing of Middle-Earth's Third Age, a time 
when magic begins to fade from the world and 
men rise to dominance. Tolkien carefully details 
this transition with tremendous skill and love, 
creating in the Lord of the Rings a universal and 
all-embracing tale, a justly celebrated classic.

One of the glories of Elizabethan drama: 

Marlowe's powerful retelling of the story 

of the learned German doctor who sells 

his soul to the devil in exchange for

knowledge and power. 

A masterpiece of satire, this classic has 

entertained and enlightened readers the 

world over with its sly and ironic portrayal 

of human life from the vantage point of 

Screwtape, a highly placed assistant to "Our

Father Below." At once wildly comic, deadly 

serious, and strikingly original, C.S. Lewis 

gives us the correspondence of the worldly-wise 

old devil to his nephew Wormwood, a novice 

demon in charge of securing the damnation 

of an ordinary young man. The Screwtape

Letters is the most engaging and humorous 

account of temptation -- and triumph over 

it -- ever written.

"Lilith is equal if not superior to the 

best of Poe," the great 20th-century 

poet W.H. Auden said of this novel, 

but the comparison only begins to 

touch on the richness, density, and 

wonder of this late 19th-century adult 

fantasy novel. First published in 1895 

(inhabiting a universe with the early 

Years, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar 

Wilde--not to mention Thomas Hardy), 

this is the story of the aptly named Mr. 

Vane, his magical house, and the journeys 

into another world into which it leads him.

Meeting up with one mystery after another, 

including Adam and Eve themselves, he 

slowly but surely explores the mystery of the 

human fall from grace, and of our redemption. 

Instructed into the ways of seeing the deeper 

realities of this world--seeing, in a sense, by 

the light of the spirit--the reader and Mr. Vane 

both sense that MacDonald writes from his own 

deep experience of radiance, from a bliss so 

profound that death's darkness itself is utterly 

eclipsed in its light. --Doug Thorpe