Books and Poetry
This list is an idiosyncratic and limited selection of interesting works that are worth reading. Some of them are evidently valuable in engaging with and understanding the Christian faith, while others are simply good literature (if ‘simply’ is the word!). All beauty and truth point ultimately to the Logos, the One who is the Source of truth and beauty – sometimes more directly, sometimes more indirectly, but sometimes indirect light (and shadow too) brings out aspects of the beauty of the Word that we might otherwise miss. (And, as Dante shows us in Purgatorio, sometimes the direct blaze of heavenly light is too bright for our un-adjusted eyes!)
I will be adding to this list as time goes on.
Poetry
George Herbert (17th century): listen to a podcast about his poetry here.
John Donne – especially the Holy Sonnets: listen to a podcast here, and read the first part of a series about the Holy Sonnets here.
Christopher Smart
Gerard Manley Hopkins (19th century): listen to a podcast here, and read a piece about his poetry here.
Christina Rossetti: read a post about her poetry here.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson – especially In Memoriam
TS Eliot (20th century)
Seamus Heaney
Geoffrey Hill – Tenebrae
Medieval and Renaissance Literature
Beowulf: read a piece about it here.
The Dream of the Rood
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Dante’s Divine Comedy – I have a whole podcast series here.
Fantasy
JRR Tolkien – The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion
CS Lewis – Chronicles of Narnia, The Space Trilogy, Till We Have Faces
Charles Williams – War in Heaven
George MacDonald – Phantastes
JK Rowling – Harry Potter series: here is a podcast that talks (in part) about Harry Potter.
Bram Stoker: Dracula
Classic Fiction
Fyodor Dostyoevsky – Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov
Leo Tolstoy – Anna Karenina
Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre
William Shakespeare – Hamlet, Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Othello, King Lear, Merchant of Venice
Jane Austen – it’s all good – Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility
More Modern Fiction
Shusako Endo – Silence
David Adams Richards – The Lost Highway, Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace, Mercy Among the Children
Susan Howatch – the Starbridge series
Flannery O’Connor – short stories, Wise Blood
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn – One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Mystery Novels
GK Chesterton – Father Brown stories
Dorothy Sayers – Lord Peter series, especially The Nine Tailors and the Wimsey/Vane books
Edmund Crispin – the Gervase Fen books – clever and funny, with literary references
PD James – the Adam Dalgliesh novels
Margery Allingham
Understanding Non-Christian Worldviews
The Odyssey and the Iliad
Buddhist poetry
Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy
Philip Pullman – The Golden Compass series
Albert Camus – The Stranger
